There must be something wrong with the Islamic scriptures as they can’t all come to the same conclusions.

However, the salafist movement scholars (like late Bin Baaz) are against it. Very confusing.

The sympathy was there and from this point on they started to lose it. As Al Gore said the whole world was with us and we squandered it.

We disagree a wee bit about Afghanistan – if you recall at the time there was huge worldwide sympathy for the US after 9/11.

However I agree wholeheartedly that that was completely squandered by what went after. Cowboy diplomacy and US exceptionalism. Specifically:

the vindictive nature of Gitmo,

the lies over WMDs in Iraq,

the continuing belicose nature of the language being used over Iran,

etc, etc.

I also agree with you about where the UK and Europe ought to go.

With the whole world looking on at the time the USA refused and continues to do so – to provide evidence against people. That is a basic need and right. They wanted war and didn’t follow due process.

None of these invasions is achieving much.

Again with Syria I do wonder why they stayed so quiet at the time if they had the evidence and why bring it up now.

As regards Bin Laden why not produce the evidence that was available and keep world sympahy on side.

As you say the whole approach is war driven and targets are changing faster than Bush’s underwear.

I think the way the USA is going is sad and has massive implications for world peace. I think Europe needs its own policies if the US insists on going down the road they are heading because it isn’t now just the Muslim world that hates them it is the rest of the world.

This is because there is no such thing as a ‘Muslim community’. There are Sylheti Muslims, Kashmiri Muslims, Arab Muslims, middleclass Muslims, working class Muslims, young Muslims….you get my drift…

This is because there is no such thing as a ‘Muslim community’. There are Sylheti Muslims, Kashmiri Muslims, Arab Muslims, middleclass Muslims, working class Muslims, young Muslims….you get my drift…

So obvious in its fakedness.

Thanks for the link. I couldn’t agree more with her and you.

I more or less share your viewpoint. The invasion of Afghanistan had an arguable legitimacy and the instances of ‘liberal intervention’ prior to that had not yet tainted the concept. Given the resources available, it could have a success. Hell, with a tenth of the resources squandered on Iraq, Afghanistan could have been transformed.

The Iraq fiasco was madness – and callous madness at that – every bloody step of the way. Meets Tuchman’s criteria for catastrophic folly.

http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/3086/rev_tuchmanb.html

Clinton’s desperate appeal to the meat-head vote with her threat to flatten Iran removed any lingering doubts I had about Obama being the only viable candidate, heavily flawed though he is. (Just a pity that he felt the need to pander to the anti-science vote by equivocating over mmr/autism.)

Take your point about evidence, however Al Quaida were claiming the 9/11 atrocity very shortly after it took place, and Osama Bin Laden was on video, was he not? I could reasonably argue that that was ‘hot pursuit’ at the time, though after Tora Bora things went strangely quiet. No-one seemed to care anymore about catching the ‘Worst Person in the World’ and that mantle passed to Saddam Hussein. Rather than passing it back to OBL after Husseins’ death the neo-cons are now fitting up Ahmadinejad for the role. And so it goes.

I agree with you about McCain and Clinton. I hope it is just election rhetoric, an arms race on toughing it out, at least on Clintons part. McCain, on the other hand, seems to me to be a driven character, fighting long ago battles.

Well, that’s what I think. Anyway, I was trying to lighten the tone around here, and see what you’ve gone and made me do .

Rumbold,

Fletcher would have moved instantly into the Glaswegian equivalent of OK magazine. The Digger is a little weekly A3 magazine given over to the nefarious exploits of our middle class, aka villains.

Douglas this isn’t actually correct – the Taliban asked for evidence that linked Bin Laden to 9-11 and the USA refused to provide it. If it was there what was the objection to making it available and calling their bluff?

“but US policy cannot really be said to have resolved anything much, can it?”
So tru and so sad. The USA has been the cause of many problems around the world and its failure to resolve conflict is a sign of poor leadership.

The problem is it will be much of the same with McCain and Clinton. Hell Clinton is already waging war and it more of a war monger than Bush.

Would the USA hand over any citizen without seeign the evidence first – No. The only country that hands its citizens over the the USA without much fuss is the UK and as a result the USA will not hand over anyone ot the UK without seeing evidence.

“You can have what you can hold.”

What if you have large hands? Are you being handist now?

“Someone skilled in the art of the fletcher might be a good life partner, right enough.”

His greatest quote has to be:

“I used to consider myself working class, until I went up to Glasgow. Now I think of myself as middle class.”

Our manifesto owes everything to older ways of establishing ownership. None of this johhny come lately property rights nonsense. You can have what you can hold Someone skilled in the art of the fletcher might be a good life partner, right enough.

And, apropos nothing at all, what is this mortgage of which you speak? Has it something to do with money? I blame all our evils on the bloody Greeks:

http://www.fleur-de-coin.com/articles/oldestcoin.asp

Stuff of nonsense. Can you eat it? Can you hell….

What abour cave mortgage relief? Or are you in the pocket of homeowners?

Thanks.

I’m pretty sure Afghanistan was unavoidable, what with the government there refusing point blank to surrender Osama Bin Laden. The consequent utter failure to actually follow through properly on reconstruction there does seem to me to give the lie to it being all about liberal interventionism, right enough.

Iraq was wrong imho from the tail end of Gulf War 1. It was then, and only then, that we had some degree of moral authority for toppling Saddam. Everything that followed, the sanctions regieme, no fly zones, Shock and Awe and – sorry, I can think of no other way to put this – the utter fuck up of the ‘peace’, are the running sores of UK and US foreign policy failure.

Our policy wonks did not seize the day when they had the chance and basically have punished the Iraqi people ever since. Which, as you might imagine, is something I see as damn near criminal.

I don’t do the I/P conflict, but US policy cannot really be said to have resolved anything much, can it?

Rumbold,

Heh. One of its’ main manifesto commitments will be to provide caves to anyone that wants one!

“It is anti Metropolitan and anti Libertarian.”

What does it stand for? A good old bit of Calvinist sermonising? Heh. Not sure about the second bit of your party, but I think that a rural party would do quite well.

You say “you have to deliver, excuse me, a peaceful engagement in political discourse, rather than any apology for the opposite.”

Does this also apply to UK and US foreign policy? Because they clearly went the other way over the last few years.

It is disappointing to see friends, such as Sid and Saqib fight each other, when the famous elephant is in the bloody room! None of you are the problem, it is the nutters that want to blow us all up, and would certainly not have felt inhibited if a Muslim Saint had been on the Underground that day.

If folk have better ideas that QF, then I think this site should be highlighting them. But, if that is so, the likes of Saqib has to tell us what he is doing, and how that is applicable across the nation, rather than girning – a good Scottish word Saqib – about their lack of influence.

Get the influence. Work on that. But you have to deliver, excuse me, a peaceful engagement in political discourse, rather than any apology for the opposite. I do not think Saqib is in any way guilty of that, but the lack of a neutral moral voice in Islaam is a bit of a worry. It is as bad as the Christians when it comes to pushing their version of salvation. It might be useful for all the religious folk here to realise that around 90% of folk in this country don’t attend any of your ceremonies – apart from the occasional funeral or wedding.

Frankly, if you do live in Burnley, or wherever, you can join my new political party, “Anything but London”. It is anti Metropolitan and anti Libertarian.

It is not serious, but neither are the Metropolitans or the Libertarians.

Come to think of it, it could have quite a good manifesto. Something to rival the new UKIP, sorry UKLP or ‘BDSM are us’ or some such….

Politics, it seems to me, is more about what we have in common, perhaps through talking to each other, rather than this fragmentation approach that we seem to take these days. What I think I am trying to say is that there ought to be a consensus around sense, say? That there ought to be a consensus around best evidence. There is nothing in politics that suggests it is anything much more than a bear pit. Run by self serving chancers.

Frankly, I’d rather live under a regieme moderated by the folk I have encountered here than what we have right now.

If we ever met, Saqib, I’m pretty sure we’d get along OK. Not that we’d agree about anything!

‘Most of all, British foreign policy has a direct bearing on nurturing extremism. The occupation of Iraq, the byproducts of the “war on terror”, the perpetual suffering of the Palestinians are not amenable to Sufi solutions or deprogramming techniques. So we don’t need neocon ex-extremists to tell us what extremism is about. They are part of the problem, not the solution. But we do need a viable politics that tackles the root cause of extremism. Whatever the joy in heaven, we cannot allow former lunatics to take over the asylum.’

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/24/islam.religion

‘Sunny – you were going explain what was good about Jemima Khan’s Speech.’

Are you sure he was referring to her speech!