Warriors and war-makers: US Marine Corps veteran reflects on Memorial Day 2009, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

Warriors and war-makers: US Marine Corps veteran reflects on Memorial Day 2009

For our warriors in uniform today, I have only praise. I do not support our current wars, and I understand that now as always there are rogues in uniform. But the great majority of our uniformed military personnel are exceptionally well-educated, exceptionally physically fit, and exceptionally committed to their service, whatever their branch, rank, race or gender. Indeed, having served in Vietnam in the Marines, I envy them. Justification for our current wars aside, they enjoy a measure of open, enthusiastic support from the American citizenry that I and my generation never had in our war. And their deaths are mourned openly in a way that never happened during the Vietnam War. I do not begrudge the current generation of service personnel that support. But in my heart of hearts, I would have given anything to have had even a small measure of it in my war, in my day.

The continuing tragedy, however, is that the appointed civilian leadership in the Defense department is even worse now than it was then, combining ignorance and incompetence with a predisposition to take America to war for the interests of a foreign country: Israel. The ignorance and incompetence are crucial, and it is by no means something new. For some odd reason, our political system increasingly has seen fit to put people in important positions, such as Secretary of Defense and the service secretaries and their subordinates, with little or no military experience themselves, and usually no expertise in military affairs. If Americans want to see the result of their handiwork, they need only note that Arlington National Cemetery and our other National Military Cemeteries are choked with the bodies of Americans in uniform who died needlessly because of the ignorance, amateurishness or outright incompetence of their elected and appointed civilian leaders. And if anyone doubts this, the next time someone you love requires emergency surgery, demand that the procedure be performed by the hospital's administrators, accountants and attorneys -- you'll doubtless be as pleased with the outcome as Americans in uniform have been with what has passed for their civilian leadership.

http://newageislam.com/warriors-and-war-makers--us-marine-corps-veteran-reflects-on-memorial-day-2009---/islam-and-the-west/d/1429

Islamic Fundamentalism in Pakistan: The price of moral cowardice, Radical Islamism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Radical Islamism and Jihad

Islamic Fundamentalism in Pakistan: The price of moral cowardice

What the Taliban ideology means

Editorial in Dawn, Karachi

19 Apr, 2009

The footage recently made public showing the flogging of a girl in Swat and the execution of a man and woman in their 40s reportedly in the Hangu district must have sickened anyone with respect for human rights and dignity. As such, these videos constitute a graphic reminder of the fact that behind the rhetoric of religion, the real face of the Taliban is one of unmixed brutality and murderousness.

This should come as no surprise. Since the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan during the 1990s and in Pakistan more recently, there has been ample evidence that the otherwise harmless moniker — which means ‘students’ — is a mask worn by an ideologically united group that uses tactics of violence, fear and gross coercion to get its way.

Given this, it is alarming that Pakistan’s state and society continue to bury their heads in the sand and resort to denial of either specific acts of brutality or the threat in general posed by the Taliban. The most recent example of this approach is an investigation team’s conclusion that the video depicting the whipping of the young woman in Swat was ‘fake and false’, as indicated by Interior Secretary Kamal Shah.

He quoted the final report as saying that that no such incident took place since the girl in question denied it and the area’s residents also expressed their ignorance. Yet anyone who has suffered such an act of barbarity, and who continues to live under the shadow of his or her persecutors, is unlikely to risk inducing their ire further. More dangerous, however, is the reduction of the issue to a debate over whether or not the video was ‘real’ and when exactly the incident took place.

http://newageislam.com/islamic-fundamentalism-in-pakistan--the-price-of-moral-cowardice---/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/1338