Yglesias, Ackerman: Romney Versus The Muslim Brotherhood

Updated to clarify Y's link to Hot For TNR - my bad.

Let's remain objective here and only use mainstream sources, not Right-side blogs on the Muslim Brotherhood. Romney said this below at last night's debate:

We’ll move everything to get him. But I don’t want to buy into the Democratic pitch, that this is all about one person, Osama bin Laden. Because after we get him, there’s going to be another and another. This is about Shi’a and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate.

Matthew Yglesias attacks Romney and Republicans who allowed the comment to go unchallenged. He also responds with a defense of the Muslim Brotherhood and links to THFTNR calling Romney the Real Child of Hell:

To put it bluntly, the trouble here is that the Muslim Brotherhood just isn't a violent terrorist organization, and certainly doesn't commit acts of violence against the United States. It's an extremely traditionalist multinational civil society organization. It's true that a lot of violent types used to be in the Brotherhood and now they're in terrorist groups, but used to be is the key phrase here, they left the Brotherhood because the Brotherhood wouldn't sign on for their agenda. In one clause, Romney's just gone and broadened the war to include a huge new category of people who have no intention of waging war against the United States or even against Israel.

via the Washington Post:

The Brotherhood -- or al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, as it is known in Arabic -- is a sprawling and secretive society with followers in more than 70 countries. It is dedicated to creating an Islamic civilization that harks back to the caliphates of the 7th and 8th centuries, one that would segregate women from public life and scorn nonbelievers.

In some nations -- Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Sudan -- the Brotherhood has fomented Islamic revolution. In the Palestinian territories, the Brotherhood created the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, which has become known for its suicide bombings of Israelis. Yet it is also a sophisticated and diverse organization that appeals to many Muslims worldwide and sometimes advocates peaceful persuasion, not violent revolt. Some of its supporters went on to help found al Qaeda, while others launched one of the largest college student groups in the United States.

Or read this take by an informed American Muslim:

The case for choosing from the lesser of two evils as the authors note in their reckless comparison of Qaradawi’s Islamism to Zawahri’s radical jihadism is certainly easy to make but sure folly.  Zawahiri and Al Qaeda are a military threat with a militant Islamist ideology which speaks to only the fringe and most radical Islamists in the Muslim community.  Qaradawi and the Brotherhood are actually far more dangerous ideologically to the West.  Their similarly Islamist message may, in fact, resonate with a far greater number of Muslims in the West and the East as evidenced by the millions of western Muslims engaged almost daily by satellite watching al-Qaradawi.  He and the Brotherhood at times speak of “justice”, “a middle ground” (wasatiya), democratic principles (voting and parliaments), and of women’s rights, among other attractive principles.

Qaradawi, is moreover for the record, clearly no moderate. He has defended the barbarity of female circumcision and terrorism in Israel and Iraq.  His duplicity on such issues demonstrates the inherent pathology of political Islam which will often even among supposed moderates sacrifice principle for the ends of Islamism.  Yet, the attraction of Qaradawi and his so-called ‘moderate Islamism’, is built upon a societal and governmental formula which is incompatible with American governance and Jeffersonian democracy as we know it. 

The Muslim Brotherhood is based upon a strictly Islamist approach to governance and law.  At the very core of their approach to the branches of government is a toxic mixture of politics and theology.  The toxicity of this mixture was foreseen by our forefathers who escaped religious persecution by the Church of England and sought to prevent it after 1789 years of the absence of liberty in the West.  No matter how “moderate” or “democratic” Islamists report their processes to be, it is still under the mandate and intellectual control of Islamic scholars of sharia law also known as the ulemaa.

In light of the, many would argue, more than fair WaPo analysis of the MB, re-visit what Romney said:

This is about Shi’a and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate.

Romney isn't advocating killing all Shi'a and Sunni simply because he mentioned them and his mention of a worldwide movement to undermine moderate governments is spot on. One's left to ponder, who better to protect America, with her laws, traditions and values, Romney and like-minded others, who seem to have a reasonable appreciation for the threat posed by radical Islam and are willing to speak out against it, or Liberal Democrats so obsessed with the fear of throwing the baby out with the bath water, we'd all be washing our feet before we pray in fifty years?

The liberals and Democrat's inability to comprehend the threat to American culture from even only a truly political form of radical Islam is the best reason there is to not trust them with the Executive Branch. Political power is the very tool radicals with no regard for Western values seek to exploit to bring our American form of republic down.

Comments

[Sven]

"links to TNR"

Not an auspicious start in demonstrating your analytical abilities.

[Zifnab]

I just find it hilarious that seven years after 9/11, Republicans still have the balls to claim they're going to catch Bin Laden. For real this time.

[DaveP.]

I find it hilarious that Democrats, after seven years of evidence, still insist that they consider themselves "Americans".
Give it up, guys.

[Kelvin]

Such a bunch of losers. No WMDs, no bin Laden and a civil war in Iraq.

Miserable.failure.

[Hard Right]

"I just find it hilarious that seven years after 9/11, Republicans still have the balls to claim they're going to catch Bin Laden. For real this time."

Why not? You leftards had 8 years and an offer to give OBL up on a silver platter.

Zif, all you seem to do is whine. You must be a little girl. Thank god your kind is ignored when something of significance is being attempted.

[VJay]

I just find it hilarious that seven years after 9/11, lefties are still pretending that Bin Laden is the head vampire, and, if we'd only drive a stake through his heart, all of the millions of Islamists that want to convert, enslave, or murder us will simply come to their senses and return to being peace-loving, live-and-let-live good citizens of the world.

What a lovely fiction you've created.

[Hard Right]

Losers? Yeah, we only crushed the Taliban and Saddam's army. Caused Qadafi to give up his nuke program, and killed numerous terrorists. BTW, there is no civil war in Iraq. I know you POS want that to be the case, but it isn't as has been explained to you mentally handicapped child molesters many times.

[Kelvin]

Sorry redneck, say what you want but you fooks continue to lose a war to a bunch of people who don't use toilet paper. No bin Laden, the Taliban is still around the WMDs are now in Syria with Condi.

What an inbred...

[Nikolay]

The Vice President of Iraq is the head of the Iraqi branch of Muslim Brotherhood. Does Romney consider declaring war on "new Iraq"?

[jada]

mitt romney has PHONY written all over him. he was too calculating.

[Hard Right]

Soory hair boy kelvin, we aren't losing. I know how badly you want us to lose, but we aren't. Even you know that, but you love prick so much you even try to be one.

[VJay]

By the way, do any of you teenaged luminaries want to comment on the topic of the thread? You know, the whole "Yglesias shows himself an ignorant, morally-confused ass by carrying water for an insidious worldwide terrorist organization whose mission is the spread of a diseased, cancerous ideology incompatible with Western democratic principles through any means necessary" thing?

[Hard Right]

I love it. The leftards get nailed on how they are mentally ill traitors and come whining about it. The truth hurts, obviously.

[ET]

liberals tools like calvin can't grasp complexities or see beyond their slogans. The war is lost, right? Or does the foreign minister of Iraq present a somewhat more complex picture.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/03/AR2007050301548.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Compare this to calvin's comment:

"you fooks continue to lose a war to a bunch of people who don't use toilet paper"

Who looks like the fook now, calvin?

[jewel]

The Dems have annointed Romney , flipper. There were students in class today with T shirts that had flipper the porpoise with Romney's face on it. They were actually very nicely done and the talk of the school today! Funny

[Nikolay]

"by carrying water for an insidious worldwide terrorist organization"
OK, how about "the whole GOP presidential field carries water for Iran-sponsored jihadist"? (Al-Maliki).

[Hard Right]

VJay, they won't comment on it because they agree with Yglesias. Their mental illness does not allow them to accept reality. To understand why, you need only to understand how they "feel".

In their eyes America is evil. The Islamofascists are victims of America whose anger is the result of American meddling in the ME. If we just give them what they want we'll be left alone. That means leave the ME entirely and stop supporting Israel.

Short version: America evil. Terrorists innocent, rational people.

[VJay]

"say what you want but you fooks continue to lose a war"

Who are "you fooks?" You wouldn't be disassociating yourself from your own countrymen, now would you Kelvin? Because I've been assured, repeatedly and passionately, that you lefties are just as American and patriotic as those of us that actually don't cheerlead for our nation to lose wars. Telling.

"No bin Laden"

Bin Laden is either dead or highly marginalized, and neither of these feats would have been accomplished via the Clintonian "I care too much about my poll numbers to care about fighting terrorists" approach to foreign policy. But keep talking about OBL as if video footage of his rotting corpse would somehow give us just cause for declaring victory, packing our bags, and coming home. By that logic, the Allies could've called it a day if Hitler had been killed in an auto accident in 1941.

Of course, not even you drooling boobs are dumb enough to believe that OBL's life or death means all that much to the larger conflict; you simply use him as a convenient device (convenient because he's no longer relevant) so you can go on pretending that we've "lost" the war.

"the Taliban is still around"

Oh, yes, they're doing very well. Assuming, of course, that their life-long ambitions include living in caves, suffering lopsided losses in constant skirmishes, and/or being shredded to pieces by American assault choppers. It's a gilded life.

And yes, they're "still around". If your yardstick for success in Afghanistan -- by any objective measure one of the most overwhelmingly successful campaigns in military history -- is the complete extermination of every last member of the Taliban, well, then I guess you've got the "failure" your sad little ego so desperately craves. Tell me Kelvin -- how heavy are those goalposts?

"the WMDs are now in Syria with Condi"

It's rare that a lefty suggests that all those unaccounted-for WMDs in Saddam's arsenal couldn't have just magically disappeared. It's progress, at least.

[Hard Right]

How about some proof nikolay?

[mkultra]

Maliki is a terrorist, a tool of the Iranians. And the wingnuts love him for it.

But then wingnuts love Reagan, as was on display last night. You remember Reagan? He turned tail and ran from Lebanon when the Marine barracks were bombed.

Reagan also sold arms to the Iranians in the 1980's. Millions of dollars worth. And wingnuts love him for it. Guess it shouldn't be any surprise then that the wingnuts love the Iranian tool Maliki.

It should be even less of a surprise that the wingnuts want to stay in Iraq and defend the Iraqi "government." You know, the Iraqi government that has 30 members of parliament who swear allegiance to Sadr. The Iraqi government that has even more MP's who swear allegiance to SCIRI - the Supreme Council for the ISLAMIC REVOLUTION in Iraq.

Wingers love the Iraqi government. Wingers love SCIRI. Wingers want an ISLAMIC REVOLUTION in Iraq. Wingers want Americans troops to die to protect the Iraqi government so there can be an ISLAMIC REVOLUTION in Iraq. Wingers want American troops to die to protect Sadr's MP's.

Mitt understands winger love for SCIRI, Sadr, and Iran.

[mkultra]

C'mon wingers - please explain why you have so much love for Dutch "I sold arms to the Iranians" Reagan?

[VJay]

"OK, how about "the whole GOP presidential field carries water for Iran-sponsored jihadist"? (Al-Maliki). "

How about answering my question instead of changing the subject? Arguing via logical fallacy doesn't serve anyone's purposes.

What is your opinion of Yglesias's puff piece on the Muslim Brotherhood and his corresponding condemnation of Romney?

[Hard Right]

VJay, I see you've noticed the tactics of the left. The fact we haven't captured or killed OBL, wiped out every Taliban and terrorist everywhere, means we are losing. Yet if a Dem was running things they would declare it a wild success.
You see, their hatred of anyone who doesn't subscribe to the leftist cult is so extreme they will use ANYTHING to accuse the "enemy" of failure.

[SurgeON]

3 per day.

http://www.icasualties.org/oif/

[Hard Right]

1) The left can't and won't respond to the article.
2) The left agrees with Yglesias. That is why they keep trying to change the subject.

[VJay]

"Maliki is a terrorist, a tool of the Iranians. And the wingnuts love him for it."

Oh, yes, mkultra. We just LOVE way-too-cozy-with-the-Iranians Maliki. I'm sure, given your obvious and vast command of conservative thought, you can at least link us to some of the glowing praise we've heaped upon Iraq's Prime Minister.

Because, of course, you wouldn't just go around the blogosphere building idiotic strawmen that you can't defend and then patting yourself on the back when you knock them down, right, mkultra? Because I've also been assured by liberals that THEY command the intellectual heft in the conservative-liberal ideological schism, and these sorts of grade-school tactics would obviously be beneath a member of the illuminati such as yourself.

"Wingers love the Iraqi government. Wingers love SCIRI. Wingers want an ISLAMIC REVOLUTION in Iraq. Wingers want Americans troops to die to protect the Iraqi government so there can be an ISLAMIC REVOLUTION in Iraq. Wingers want American troops to die to protect Sadr's MP's."

Oh, dear -- that's an entire army of strawmen. If only we could reprogram them from their original task of inflating the hollow arguments of leftist morons into invincible (though highly flammable) terrorist-hunting killbots, maybe we really could bring the boys home.

Aren't any of you clowns even going to TRY and address the topic of the thread? Or is it safe to say that either (a) you agree with Yglesias's cluelessly warm embrace of the MB, or (b) your partisan pack mentality prevents you from condemning the dangerous stupidity of one of your own?

[southdakotaboy]

The dems will find any excuse to bury their heads in the sand about islam and its threat to us. They hate the right so much that they are willing to throw gays and women under the bus just to score a few political points off of the Republicans.
Lets face it islam explicitly calls for the stoning to death of gays. No ands ifs o buts about it. In hardline islamic countries gay people are executed by the state simply for being gay. This is what the left supports,the public execution of gay people when it shows support for islamic terrorist groups over the US government and Israel.
We need to start asking the lefties why the support the murder of women for reasons of "honor".
islam is a dangerous death cult that wishes to drag the world back into the 6th century and the libs want to help them.

[Hard Right]

VJay, the answer is A AND B.

[Nikolay]

"How about some proof nikolay?"
If a person was once a head of "Jihad office" of a terrorist organization (Islamic Dawa Party), that kinda means that he is a jihadist. That he's an Iranian puppet cannot be proved with 100% certainty, but it's a common knowledge in Iraq and every single fact of his biography and his every single statement fit the profile of Iranian puppet. Same thing with Chalabi.

"What is your opinion of Yglesias's puff piece on the Muslim Brotherhood and his corresponding condemnation of Romney?"
Yglesias didn't write a puff piece about the Muslim Brotherhood. He merely stated that it's not a terrorist organization. This, as far as I understand, is probably correct. MB has a lot of connections with various terrorists, but it's not a terrorist organization per se. Now, I'm not sure that criticism of Romney was correct -- he didn't exactly say that MB are terrorists, merely that they are trouble-makers, and that's certainly true. Still, as long as your official position is support for Iraqi government, doesn't sound that smart to condemn the organization that Iraqi VP belongs to.

[Nikolay]

"Oh, yes, mkultra. We just LOVE way-too-cozy-with-the-Iranians Maliki. I'm sure, given your obvious and vast command of conservative thought, you can at least link us to some of the glowing praise we've heaped upon Iraq's Prime Minister."
Well, of course those of yours that are not completely demented don't like Maliki personally. Still, technically you give him full aid and comfort, spin proposed Democrat's checks on him as defeatism and say a lot of lofty nonsense about "fight for Iraqi liberty" (i.e. Maliki's government) etc.
So, to call you fans of Islamism is just a mirror of "dhimmicrat" logic.
Just because you somehow think that Democrat's policy serves Al-Qaeda's strategy, you call Demorats all the slurs imaginable.
This given the fact that in fact it's your side that does what Al-Qaeda wants: "And they had been talking to one another, supposedly expressing disappointment that the United States had not chosen to retaliate more seriously against what had happened to the Cole. And one Al Qaida operative was overheard saying to the other, 'Don't worry; we're planning something so big now that the U.S. will have to respond."
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/05/judith_miller_t.html

So to call you Islamist-lovers because of the immense effort you put into promoting and financing Islamism is not quite fair, but it's much fairer than all the 'dhimmicrat' slurs. This is just a taste of your own medicine.

[Zifnab]

haha. Wow, this thread got lively awful quick.

So, if I'm to understand everyone correctly, Democrats are Islamist-lovers for being against endless war and for basic constitutional rights.

Republicans are saving us from terror by picking random fights with thugs in the Middle East and using strongarm tactics and saber-rattling as their first and only means of diplomacy.

My question to the wingnuts on the board who think they're such shrewd military strategists and brilliant geo-political thinkers is this. If we had invaded Iraq under Clinton in '98 or '99, would we have prevented 9/11?

[VJay]

Kudos to Nikolay for actually engaging the topic of the thread.

"Yglesias didn't write a puff piece about the Muslim Brotherhood. He merely stated that it's not a terrorist organization."

That explanation only holds up in the absence of the criticism of Romney. The MB is, in the most benign terms I can muster, a clearing house for Islamic terrorist organizations. It fosters and enables terrorism, and it embraces the barbaric, expansionistic, supremacist, theocratic ideology which motivates Muslim terrorist groups, especially Sunni Muslim terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. If Yglesias had done a little research on the MB outside of the brochure they faxed over to him, I doubt he could have been so adamantly defensive of them. But then, he and, to a lesser extent, Chait have long been the worst contributors to the decaying product that is TNR.

"This, as far as I understand, is probably correct. MB has a lot of connections with various terrorists, but it's not a terrorist organization per se."

Sorry, but this is a distinction without a difference. We're talking about the group which helped create Hamas and which provides all manner of material, economic, and political weapons for the jihadis to use. To argue as Yglesias does here is to pretend that the lawyers and bankers that launder the blood money of Columbian drug lords aren't really bad guys and that anyone that says otherwise should be criticized for impugning them. The Muslim Brotherhood, or at least those of its factions which work to advance its Islamist agenda, is our enemy, and Yglesias is parsing the meaning of "is" in suggesting otherwise.

"Now, I'm not sure that criticism of Romney was correct -- he didn't exactly say that MB are terrorists, merely that they are trouble-makers, and that's certainly true."

Fair enough, but considering the intellectualy lazy, slipshod job that Yglesias did in parsing Romney's statement -- by his standards, then, Romney was also saying that all Sunnis and Shia are "part of the problem" -- he's not catching a break here. The thrust of his piece is that the MB doesn't belong on Romney's list of "bad guys" because they aren't "bad guys", a premise I find absurd in the stretches one has to go to defend the MB.

"Still, as long as your official position is support for Iraqi government, doesn't sound that smart to condemn the organization that Iraqi VP belongs to."

I don't see how this is logical or even relevant. Another of our official positions, for example, is to support the government of England, whose Parliament contains many unsavory characters belonging to groups -- Islamists, Islamic apologists, Communists -- that I would hope someone running for President would include in a laundry list of "bad guys". Same with the Iraqis. And I would actually hope that the next President would impose more terms of accountability on the electoral outcomes of backwards states like Iraq. We shouldn't, for example, become chummy with Hamas simply because the "palestinians" decided that a group whose mission statement is genocide of their neighbors was the right group to lead them.

In other words, evil is evil. It doesn't become less evil simply because some VP of some government you're trying to prop up in a leap-of-faith endeavor embraces it. That kind of go-along-to-get-along thinking -- still popular at our excremental State Department -- has facilitated the spread of tyranny and jihadism in the Middle East for decades. I would hope that, even knowing that the Iraqi government had high-ranking officials belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood or any other terrorist or terrorist-enabling organization, Romney or any other presidential candidate would still condemn those organizations publicly and unapologetically.

While he's at it, I would also like him to call out the craven self-serving cowardice of the Iraqi Parliament for going on a two month vacation while American troops and Iraqi civilians are dying in the streets.

[templar knight]

Hell, mkultra is probably a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. On the subject at hand, Marcus and his gang of goofs are just against anything that Bush may or may not do, therefore they will align themselves with anyone who is against Bush, no matter the consequences to themselves or to their country. They just don't care.

[BARRASSO]

The MB are asses but how do you prevent people from being asses?

The National Rifle Association is urging the Bush administration to withdraw its support of a bill that would prohibit suspected terrorists from buying firearms.
(a) you agree with the NRA, or (b) your partisan pack mentality prevents you from condemning the dangerous stupidity of one of your own?

[VJay]

"My question to the wingnuts on the board who think they're such shrewd military strategists and brilliant geo-political thinkers is this. If we had invaded Iraq under Clinton in '98 or '99, would we have prevented 9/11?"

My question for the intellectually insipid leftards on this board: Is it as warm in the summer as it is in the country? Because that's analogous to your moronic inquiry.

But then again, you just see 9/11 as some shot-in-the-dark isolated incident. Just a tiny fringe of marginalized, radicalized actors catching a lucky break and pulling off a once-in-a-lifetime caper. No bigger picture. No massive, worldwide network of financiers, weapon runners, death cult pushers, logistical supporters, government enablers, propaganda ministers, and unarmed front groups trying to accomplish their goals by using our own political, economic, and social tools against us. Nope. It's all just OBL-the-master-vampire and his rowdy band of brigands.

There. I've treated your question with all the seriousness it deserves.

[charles]

mkultra = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKULTRA

just sayin

[mkultra]

"Oh, yes, mkultra. We just LOVE way-too-cozy-with-the-Iranians Maliki. I'm sure, given your obvious and vast command of conservative thought, you can at least link us to some of the glowing praise we've heaped upon Iraq's Prime Minister."

Here is what Bush said last November:

****

AMMAN, Jordan — President Bush reaffirmed his support for embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki Thursday, agreeing to accelerate transfer of authority of security forces to the prime minister and vowing to keep U.S. troops in Iraq until their mission is successfully completed.

"Our objective is to help the Maliki government to succeed," Bush told reporters after a meeting with the prime minister. "We talked about accelerating authority to the prime minister ... he's the right guy for Iraq, and we're going to help him."

Bush gave his endorsement at a news conference after nearly two and a half hours of talks with the embattled prime minister. Maliki is under pressure in Baghdad and Washington to do more to combat increasing sectarian violence in Iraq.

****

Bush has endorsed Maliki. Said he is the "right guy." And he said this even though Maliki had just snubbed him by not attending a dinner with him.

Wingers love Bush. Bush loves Maliki. Wingers love Maliki.

*****

"Because, of course, you wouldn't just go around the blogosphere building idiotic strawmen that you can't defend and then patting yourself on the back when you knock them down, right, mkultra? Because I've also been assured by liberals that THEY command the intellectual heft in the conservative-liberal ideological schism, and these sorts of grade-school tactics would obviously be beneath a member of the illuminati such as yourself."

Whatever. Answer the da** question. Why do you want American troops to put their lives on a line for the Iraqi government when that government is full of terrorists, Iranian backed thugs, and Islamic Revolutionaries? The ruling coalition is dominated by these people.

Again, why do you want American troops to die to protect Iranian interests in Iraq?

Answer the question.

As for the Muslim Brotherhood, name on act of terror committed by the Muslim Brotherhood in the last 10 years. One. C'mon. Let's hear it.

[VJay]

"This given the fact that in fact it's your side that does what Al-Qaeda wants: "And they had been talking to one another, supposedly expressing disappointment that the United States had not chosen to retaliate more seriously against what had happened to the Cole. And one Al Qaida operative was overheard saying to the other, 'Don't worry; we're planning something so big now that the U.S. will have to respond.""

This is one of my main gripes with the left. In order to maintain your anti-war posture, you have to invent wholly illogical, completely unbelievable theories regarding human motivation. I'm sorry, but as insane and deluded as the Islamists are, no one wants to be torn to shreds by the U.S. military. There's no blood in it for them, because most of these sub-human animals get offed without ever even catching a glimpse of their killers. The idea that the rate of jihadi enlistment is directly proportional to the drop in jihadi life expectancy is nothing more than wild speculation that the left likes to repeat but never bothers to factually support. The "killing terrorists only creates more of them!!!!" canard is nothing more than a useful, self-serving invention without an ounce of thought behind it.

The very idea that the leaders of Al Qaeda were just aching to give up their opulent life as honored guests of the Taliban so they could live out their years in caves next to piles of their feces, waking up from night terrors every time a camel backfires, and almost completely neutered from meaingfully advancing their grand schemes of world conquest in the name of their death god, is just outright ridiculous. The suggestion that somehow Bill Clinton actually THWARTED their nefarious plots by IGNORING them, as if they were six year-olds trying to get attention by crying for no reason, is as absurd as it is intellectually indefensible.

So, in any case, are you arguing that the proper response to 9/11 -- the one that would have denied those crafty, Machiavellian terrorists the mass butchering and loss of operational bases they've suffered over the past six years -- was NOT to retaliate? Is that your proposition? Because, if it is, then our invasion of Afghanistan -- which over 90% of Egyptians, Indonesians, Moroccans, and Pakistanis consider an infidel invasion to be repelled, according to recent polling -- just gave the terrorists "exactly what they wanted".

So your suggestion for responding to overt, mass-murdering acts of war is what, then? Issue subpoenas? Convene summits? I mean, you do realize that the Japenese knew full well we'd declare war after Pearl Harbor, don't you? Should we have made the "smarter" decision and stayed out of World War II in the name of not giving the Japanese exactly what they wanted?

You're going to have a real tough time supporting the war in Afghanistan but not the war in Iraq based on the flimsy criteria of "we gave them what they wanted by retaliating". And I have nothing but contempt for Americans opposed to the invasion of Afghanistan. Not saying you do, of course, but you need to resolve the inconsistencies in your argument.

[VJay]

And here's another thought. Maybe, just maybe, OBL and his boys were aching for a fight with the U.S. because they thought they could, oh I don't know -- win? You know, like they did against the Soviet red machine. It would seem to me, given OBL's repeated invocations of that event and the hasty U.S. retreats from Lebanon and Somalia, that he actually thought he could achieve victory on the battlefield. Crazy, I know, but, like I pointed out, he had his reasons for hope.

So, if we take Occam's razor out of its box, perhaps over-optimism, and not some ludicrously complicated plan that involved OBL losing his political and logistical cover, not to mention virtually all of his influence and thousands of his acolytes in order to achieve "victory", was at the heart of his desire for us to retaliate?

Nah. Just too obvious. Not enough layers.

[templar knight]

I see mkultra doesn't deny being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, nor does he comment on the Muslim Brotherhood's number one goal, the restoration of the Caliphate. Ask Eastern Europeans how the Caliphate treated them for hundreds of years.

Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood front group, has committed too many acts of terrorism over the past ten years to even mention. Google Hamas and terror, and watch it light up. You're not even a serious commenter, mkultra, you're nothing but an Islamist. A propagandist for terrorists.

[Hard Right]

Ummm, Bush = all Conservatives? Only to a loon like MK.

"Whatever. Answer the da** question. Why do you want American troops to put their lives on a line for the Iraqi government when that government is full of terrorists, Iranian backed thugs, and Islamic Revolutionaries? The ruling coalition is dominated by these people."

Your claim that it is "dominated" by such people is questionable. Obviously there are some of them there, but trust you as a source? Not buying it. On top of that you seem to think we receive no benefit whatsoever from being there. As we have been over that fact many, many, many, many times, you know we do. Your BDS blinds you to that fact.

[Nikolay]

"I would hope that, even knowing that the Iraqi government had high-ranking officials belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood or any other terrorist or terrorist-enabling organization, Romney or any other presidential candidate would still condemn those organizations publicly and unapologetically."
Well, the fact is, Al-Hashimi is quite a sane person. Certainly saner and more human-like than Al-Maliki and Al-Hakim.
MB _is_, in fact a complicated organization and _is_ in fact, sometimes a moderating influence. This Manichean "evil is evil" approach is 1) wrong, 2) leads to very bad consequences.
You have to understand that the rise of the political Islam was in fact a response to actual grievances and actual oppression. There is no "Evil, Islamism, oppression" vs. "Good, secularism, liberty" dualism there. In most cases "struggle against oppression"=="Islamism" in the Middle East. If you say that "oppression" is better than "Islamism", you could be right, but you have to understand what you're saying.
The fact that "freedom agenda"=="Islamism agenda" is a very important nuance that Bush seems to have totally missed. As long as your country insists on "promoting liberty" in the Middle East, you have to accept Islamism to some degree, otherwise your strategy makes no sense at all.

It's a nuance that is also lacking in everything you say about Syria. "Hey, Assad is the biggest promoter of terrorism! He's evil! Crush him!" This totally misses the fact that the main opposition force in Syria is also Muslim Brotherhood, that there's about a million refugees from Iraq there and about a million from Palestine, that there's a complicated power play there, and that Assad is actually just a poor schmuck stuck between the rock and the hard place trying to keep that country from falling into pieces.

[mkultra]

"I don't see how this is logical or even relevant. Another of our official positions, for example, is to support the government of England, whose Parliament contains many unsavory characters belonging to groups -- Islamists, Islamic apologists, Communists -- that I would hope someone running for President would include in a laundry list of "bad guys". Same with the Iraqis."

If you don't see the difference between the English parliament, and the Iraqi "government," you have no moral compass.

The Iraqi government is RUN by terrorists who are beholden to Iran. The English government is not.

Maliki is a terrorist. He is firing generals who are cracking down on the Shia terrorists. Sadr is clearly a terrorist. So is Hakim.

We are fighting to defend terrorists. Quit apologizing for them.

[VJay]

"Bush gave his endorsement at a news conference after nearly two and a half hours of talks with the embattled prime minister. Maliki is under pressure in Baghdad and Washington to do more to combat increasing sectarian violence in Iraq."

Wow! Bush came out and publicly supported an Iraqi-elected Prime Minister leading a dangling-by-a-thread government we're trying to salvage! Un-freaking-believable! If only you'd been here with these eye-opening quotes sooner, I might have been saved a life as an unquestioning goose-stepper in Bush's fascist Amerikkka!

Here's a clue, junior. Bush is obligated to defend that sleazebag, just as he's obligated to defend that slimy butcher Abbas. The people put him into power, and it would be a little improper of us, don't you think, to intervene and, what, assassinate the guy just because we'd really rather have someone else running the show over there? Seems as if you clowns can't decide which you detest more -- puppets of the Bush administration or puppets of our enemies. Seems like you're always branding someone one or the other, and then objecting to the notion of "solving the problem". Guess we should have made sure Chalabi was appointed god-king for life.

"Whatever. Answer the da** question."

I don't answer strawmen, junior. I mock the twit offering them in the absence of legitimate argument.

"Again, why do you want American troops to die to protect Iranian interests in Iraq?"

Why do you continue to take revealing pictures of the 14 year-old girl next door?

You're right. Asking stupid, leading questions can be fun!

"Wingers love Bush. Bush loves Maliki. Wingers love Maliki."

Yep, we "wingers" just looooove Bush and everything he does. That's why his approval rating hovers in the low 30's. I know you think that's because 70% of the public has decided to adopt your ideology's suicidal foreign and incoherent, fails-everywhere-it's-tried domestic agendas, but alas, it isn't the case.

But, to be fair, this super-tight application of the transitive theory of love is easily the sharpest thing you've posted here.

"As for the Muslim Brotherhood, name on act of terror committed by the Muslim Brotherhood in the last 10 years. One. C'mon. Let's hear it."

Since I was quite explicit in identifying the MB as an enemy not because of the terrorist acts they necessarily commit but because of the ones that they encourage, enable, and support, I'll dismiss this clumsy challenge with the rest of your idiocy. Ask your caretaker to read what I wrote about the MB and then ask them to explain it to you.

And then ask yourself why you're out here defending a group of totalitarian thugs like the MB while at the same time pretending to be all offended by Bush's politically-necessitated support of a thug like Maliki.

[Purple Avenger]

OBL is atoms blowing in the wind. Hasn't been any proof of life come out for him in several years.

[VJay]

"MB _is_, in fact a complicated organization and _is_ in fact, sometimes a moderating influence. This Manichean "evil is evil" approach is 1) wrong, 2) leads to very bad consequences. "

I don't agree, especially when I qualified my condemnation of the MB with "or at least those of its factions which work to advance its Islamist agenda". Their goals as they pertain to the establishment of an Islamic caliphate are inherently evil, and I won't apologize for saying so. To those members of the MB not buying that line of Naziesque dogma, kudos to them.

"You have to understand that the rise of the political Islam was in fact a response to actual grievances and actual oppression."

Islam has been a malignant cancer in the Middle East for about 1500 years. To the extent that Middle Easterners are oppressed, it's by internal actors deflecting blame externally. The United States, Israel, and all the other convenient boogeymen trotted out by the Religion of Perpetual Grievance (I wonder what the Hindus did to deserve such a fate?) are not responsible for their ills. They have adopted a twisted supremacist ideology crippled by a "divine" sense of self-entitlement and a degree of envy that drives them to extreme levels of hatred and violence. Their problems are the result of their own pathologies, not "oppression" by the West.

Sorry, have to run, but I enjoyed the conversation (at least with you). In parting, I would note that Assad is a brutal, amoral thug, not a "poor schmuck". Poor schmucks don't put their bootheels on sovereign neighbors and murder dissidents.

[mkultra]

"Your claim that it is "dominated" by such people is questionable. Obviously there are some of them there, but trust you as a source? Not buying it."

Again, who are the members of the ruling coalition? Who runs the interior ministry? The Shia thugs. SCIRI, Sadr, etc.

Now, since Bush bots tend to ignore bad news, I wouldn't expect you to know anything about all this.

From 5/1/07:

By Arwa Damon
CNN

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraq's prime minister has created an entity within his government that U.S. and Iraqi military officials say is being used as a smokescreen to hide an extreme Shiite agenda that is worsening the country's sectarian divide.

The Office of the Commander in Chief has the power to overrule other government ministries, according to U.S. military and intelligence sources.

Those sources say the 24-member office is abusing its power, increasingly overriding decisions made by the Iraqi Ministries of Defense and Interior and potentially undermining the entire U.S. effort in Iraq.

In a joint news conference, Iraq's ministers of interior and defense vigorously denied allegations the Office, as it is known in Baghdad, is run to achieve sectarian goals.

"It is a consultation office and coordination, nothing else," said Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi.

The Office was set up about four months ago with the knowledge of American forces in Iraq. Its goal is ostensibly to advise Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki -- the nation's new commander in chief -- on military matters.

According to a U.S. intelligence source, the Office is "ensuring the emplacement of commanders it favors and can control, regardless of what the ministries want."

Ali Dabbagh, spokesman for the Iraqi government, would not respond directly to questions about what authority the Office exercises within the Iraqi government. He denied allegations that the prime minister's advisers were trying to push a Shiite agenda.

However, a senior Iraqi army officer disagreed. The officer, who is seeking help from the senior U.S. command, said: "The Office is not supposed to be taking charge like this. It's overstepping its role as an advisory office. It's not a healthy thing to have. It's people with no power who want to have power."

A senior U.S. military official cited several cases in Baghdad in which Iraqi commanders considered capable by the United States were detained or forced out of their positions after cracking down on Shiite militias.

Among the cases, an Iraqi colonel in Baghdad, who had made strides in controlling the Shiite Mehdi militia, was removed from his job, the U.S. military official said.

The official also cited the case of an Iraqi National Police commander who was detained and then fired after ordering his men to crack down on Shiite militiamen. The same source said the Office is working to reinstate Iraqi officers the United States had successfully removed because the officers were frequently casting a blind eye to violence carried out by Shiite militiamen.

Every senior U.S. and Iraqi military official who spoke to CNN in Baghdad about the advisers asked not to be named due to the sensitive nature of the story and potential political or personal backlash.

*****

Maliki is undermining our efforts in Iraq. He is pushing an extremist Shia agenda. But you Bush bots still want American troops to put their lives on the line to defend this turd.

What is wrong with wingers?

[mkultra]

"Since I was quite explicit in identifying the MB as an enemy not because of the terrorist acts they necessarily commit but because of the ones that they encourage, enable, and support, I'll dismiss this clumsy challenge with the rest of your idiocy. Ask your caretaker to read what I wrote about the MB and then ask them to explain it to you.

And then ask yourself why you're out here defending a group of totalitarian thugs like the MB while at the same time pretending to be all offended by Bush's politically-necessitated support of a thug like Maliki."

I'm not defending anyone. I am certainly not defending the MB. I am merely pointing out a FACT - that the organization does not commit terrorist acts.

Now, if you want to talk about enablers of terrorism, why didn't Romney mention the Saudi royal family? They certainly support terrorists.

I made the simple observation that the MB does not itself commit terroristic acts. You made no effort to contradict me. Instead, you resorted to name calling.

And more to the point, I don't want to defend the terrorists in the Maliki government. I want to pull out of Iraq now. You want to stay in Iraq and defend Sadr, SCIRI, and all the other thugs in the Iraqi government. They are thugs. They are killers. And you want us to defend them. Why?

I don't want American blood spilled to protect killers, whether they be Shia or Sunni. Apparently, you do. That's the difference today between the left and the right in America.

[Hard Right]

Funny, I saw another side of the story that gave more info. Some of those officers were fired for doing a poor job even though they cracked down on al-sadr. Plus are you surprised they would try to inject politics? Not to mention you quote a claim that they are pushing a "radical shia" agenda, but not substantial proof. Not quite the smoking gun you thought.

See, you WANT that story to be true since then you get to pretend you care about our troops.
Is Maliki more friendly with Iran that I like? Yes. Has proof been offered that the Iraqi govt is owned and controlled by Iran? Hardly. Just another loony theory by a leftist.

[Hard Right]

Quick FYI, because Iran is controlled by Shias, and most Iraqis are shia does not mean they are in cahoots.