Anti-Subjugator

Wow, what a gift. Tired of waiting for America to find the balls to simply up and invade Iran without specific military provocation, Iran decided to up and invade Iraq by itself, creating a casus belli.

Like wow, man. Those old canards said against Iraq re "has invaded its neighbours" now get to be used against Iran. Speaking of which - Tony Blair has admitted the Iraq war wasn't about WMD in particular. Same as it was with me. Sure I thought Saddam had WMD - I was fooled by his cagey attitude. And sure I wanted them - whatever nastiness the man had available, I preferred him to hit us with it now rather than have future generations being hit with something worse. But as Blair said - even if both of us knew for sure that there were no WMD there, we would still have gone to war. Toppling dictatorships is its own reward. At least in the case where you think the replacement won't be any worse (both in terms of what it will do to its own people, as well as what it will do to the existing free world).

Obama should take the opportunity to get rid of the Iranian dictatorship immediately. It also has the seizure of the British soldiers to use, but the kidnapping they claim (ie lie) was done in Iranian waters. This is an actual border dispute where they have gone on to what Iraq claims as its own territory.

The Iraq war is long over. It has long ago reached the point where the indigenous Iraqi forces were stronger than all challengers and would eventually prevail. Actually that point was reached immediately after some semblance of Iraqi government (the Iraqi Governing Council) was created with sufficient Iraqi security forces to man the Iraqi tanks and air force, and the ability to sell oil to get more of everything. Hell, it could even hire mercenaries, but they really are unnecessary.

US troops do not need to remain there. And nor do they need to go to Afghanistan. Afghanistan needs minimal troops to hold it. Fighting the insurgency can wait for another day (as it has to date). The ANA should be the one doing raids on territory nominally controlled by the Taliban. If they don't have the ability to do that yet, so be it. That's their problem to deal with in their own time.

Iran is the target of opportunity and it should be seized. I am really really interested in hearing what the Iranians have to say about their "Islamic State". Zoroastrianism here we come!

I saw an amusing comment here:

"usually young males in their teens and twenties, who are drawn to this sort of mindless fanaticism. While only a few thousand people throughout the non-tribal populations of India and Pakistan, the Internet enables them to find each other. It also enables the police to find them".

This has been the great thing about the internet. People who have fairly obscure interests are able to find each other. Just go to google and stick in "mindless goofbags oil fetish" and hey ho, all of Foddy's comments on this blog come up.

Anyway, the "meeting of great minds" that I was looking for came about in 2003, where we were finally able to make contact with each other. Anyone in the world who had been working on the problem of worldwide freedom - genuinely working on it, with an air of desperation that was willing to use military force to make it happen, rather than simply going on a wankfest like left-wing arseholes like Human Rights Watch, with an emphasis on watch - would have been tracking Iraq closely.

Iraq was not just another liberation in a long string of liberations involving the US. This one was controversial, and part of resolving the controversy was allowing the Iraqis to give their opinions in an environment of freedom. So people all around the world would have been reading the same polls I was reading, looking for the side we hadn't heard from yet. And they would have been having the same arguments at the coffee machine as I was. But we had no way of knowing each other, because we worked in different companies, with different coffee machines, and the coffee machines were usually located in different countries too.

So still no opportunity to meet them. The Iraqi polls would have to suffice, with no other way of finding the people who would come to the obvious conclusion that we needed to speak to intelligent Iraqis in Iraq to find out what the hell they wanted, and how we could assist in building the world that both of us desired.

Then finally the Iraqi blogs came online, and for the first time we had an opportunity not just to discuss things with them, but also with each other. The number of great minds in the world turned out to be quite small, measuring in the hundreds. It seems that all the brand name institutions with cool names like "American Institute for Avoiding Debate" weren't willing to slug it out in the no-holds-barred free marketplace of ideas. Perhaps they can only lose brownie points by engaging in real debate. I can remember the tentative steps that these hundreds of blog commentors took. They were hoping the flogged-beyond-death horse of "Palestine" wouldn't come up and we end up finding that these seemingly nice Iraqis turned out to be yet more brainwashed bigots. It was such a delight to find real live Iraqis who were prepared to stand up for humanity.

These people told us they were the majority, but later we would find out from a secret ballot that they were only 0.3% of the population. But that's fine. The fact that it was non-zero was an extremely important data point, as it meant if you wanted to start defeating the enemy, "Arab Muslims" was the wrong target. That was in fact why I converted to Islam. So that I could explain that "Muslims" were the wrong target, unless you infidels could explain to me why I was a threat to you. As a Muslim, I am willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with you infidels so that we can eliminate our common enemy. I am more than happy - hell, I'm begging even - to point out all the bad (ie non-Mu'tazilite) Muslims to you. You provide the weaponry, and I'll pull the trigger. Guilt-free assistance to this sectarian war in the Muslim community.

Actually, that's what this blog is all about in fact. I tell the US government who *I* want eliminated, and then hope that they decide, however reluctantly, to accede to my request. Not just the US government. It's all governments I wish to influence. But of course, all of them are too chickenshit to get involved in a genuine debate (the sort that raged for nearly a year on the Iraqi blogs as each side brought their best to bear, ultimately getting squashed by message 666, where a checklist of all the differences were laid out - e.g. they support dogmatic notions, we oppose them - they are racists who don't believe in human rights for Arabs, we are anti-racist, etc etc). From time to time I still engage in those debates myself, e.g. I was debating an Australian yesterday, who insisted that because 2 people in America had some shares in oil, the war must be because of oil rather than what the 150 million Americans were adamantly stating to the contrary. Oh, I also got this moron to confirm that the view was not obtained from the Australian education system, thus the problem is not poor education in Australia etc, and thus the solution does not lie in "educating people".

I haven't yet isolated where decent Australians are picking up their decent opinion from though (church, parents, no idea). The person I have the most data on is myself, and even I have trouble figuring it out about myself. I think a large part of it is that I was just born with a tendency to dislike being subjugated (genetic instinct - subjugated people breed less), combined with a lot of brainpower used to figure out how to avoid being subjugated with the state of firepower in the world as it stood (e.g. how to prevent the commies doing to me what they were doing to their own citizens - and not relying on NATO to be superior for eternity, if it even was at the time), bitter opposition to my parents' own attempts to subjugate me by force of arms, and unjust Australian laws protecting the subjugators rather than the subjugated. Also there is "popular culture", which I was very surprised indeed to find out wasn't popular after all. Movies like "The Lighthorsemen" so brilliantly capture the spirit of freedom I thought ran rife throughout Australia, even if it was usually not verbally stated during peacetime to avoid appearing to be nationalists/bigots, and to avoid embarassing those who don't come close to our standards, and to avoid rubbing it in to those (like the beautiful people in Tiananmen Square in 1989) who are unable to participate in it currently and are saddened that they can't do a damn thing about their predicament since it is technically impossible.

So would weekly screening of "The Lighthorsemen" at primary school have the desired effect? No idea. No data available. All I have is one data point for one adult, who had that spirit even before watching the movie. Pretty Damned Useless.

So even though I know the solution, I'm still at a loss to know how to implement it. Getting people to internalize the spirit of freedom (on my/western terms rather than "Islamic State" or "independence from Britain" or other nonsensical use of the word). However, at least I know there's no point wasting resources on "education". Learning maths and physics does not turn arsewipes like AQ Khan into a decent person. In fact, an argument can be made that education is counter-productive, as it helps such arsewipes fulfill their evil ambitions. I'd rather take my chances with the illiterate Afghans of whom 88% or so oppose the (equally illiterate) Taliban. Apparently in Australia they used to teach why the Vietnam war was important, but the streets ended up being filled with arsewipes. I'm not saying that education directly caused the opposing reaction, and thus education of even Australians is harmful, but it's just to highlight the fact that resources are scarce and precious and you need to have at least some rough idea that if the resources are spent on xyz then it is likely to have the desired effect. Obviously the people teaching the importance of Vietnam can't have known in advance that it wouldn't have the desired effect, but without the benefit of hindsight it certainly seemed a reasonable use of resources at the time.

Where do we put resources now? For the most part I don't really know. So, as before, I am no longer funding any charities. I've stopped funding Iraqi and Afghan blogs because I don't think they will do any more than they have already. We basically have pro-freedom people on record explaining their diverse views. I have a couple of feelers out for other places, but nothing to evaluate yet. Interesting note - one of those great minds directly asked me where he should donate money to in order to promote freedom, and I told him that the pro-freedom Iraqi blogs that he was already donating to were the best thing I could think of at that point in time.

As anyone who ever listened to an anti-war moron for more than 20 seconds can tell you, they are obsessed with oil.

The reason that they opposed the war was not because they hated Arabs and loved the thought of a cruel sadistic dictator like Saddam murdering, torturing, raping and mutilating 27 million enslaved Arabs.

No, it really was because they were hoping that their anti-war position would pay off after the war was over, and that the Iraqis would feel humiliated by America and do their darndest to prove that they were independent (cf Canada, France, Rudd, etc etc) by refusing to do business with any pro-war country.

And it worked. It actually worked. While I personally couldn't give a rat's arse about China getting oil contracts, it's apparently all the anti-war care about. Well, I hope they're satisfied. But I would prefer it was done more honestly next time. We'll just sign a contract with China, France etc to say that they can have all the oil contracts (or Gin Seng contracts when it's North Korea's turn) for the next decade, and they allow a UN resolution to go through authorizing the war, which makes our life much easier, because there's a large number of morons in the world who consider the UN to be some sort of authority, no matter how many dictators are in it. That way everyone's happy. The Koreans et al get to be free, the Chinese and other scumbag dictators get the oil contracts, we get rid of a threat, and get to see the happy (or relieved) faces of the newly-liberated (e.g. see the Korean "comfort women" after WWII).

Do we have a deal, lefties? A sense of satisfaction for us, freedom for the enslaved, and oil/gin seng/banana contracts for you.

YES WE CAN, left-wing scum, YES WE CAN.

I ran across this article today. It's on a blog that says that Afghanistan is 10 minutes out of the stone age, which is a novel way of putting it.

Anyway, it basically explains the same problem I have when I communicate with people myself. I tend to assume that they will have the same grounding in science and logic, wherever possible looking for double-blind placebo-controlled experiments to validate all information, multiple independent sources etc.

Obviously that assumption is incorrect, but I am used to some sort of basic intelligence where people do question information from biassed sources. Hell, they even question their own government, even when it has a lot of evidence to back it.

So I was surprised to see that Afghans tend to be so dumb that they just take whatever nonsense the Taliban spew as the default truth. I mean, the Iraqis didn't do that with Saddam. They instead got their information from the rumour mill because they knew they couldn't trust anything Saddam said.

Anyway, this conversation that the soldier had:

“They really think that you are so stupid that you would believe something so ridiculous?”

Blank stare. The man searched for something… something that wasn’t coming.

“I’ve been talking with you for several minutes. You are going to go to college in Jalalabad to be a lawyer. I know that you are too smart to believe such a ridiculous lie.” Clearly, he wasn’t; but it was beginning to work on his brain.


should not be down to an individual soldier to come up with. There should be civilians teaching basic logic via TV, radio and schools. I mean, what's the point in having control over the media if you aren't using it to counter the Taliban? We're supposed to have a massive advantage over the Taliban because we get to control the airwaves. But apparently we're not doing it and it's left to some poor soldier to spend his time explaining fundamental logic. It must be infuriating for him that it's left to him.

I have tried raising this with my Afghan contact and will see if he has any suggestion. He's already confirmed what I suspected - the Afghans are racist and are voting along ethnic lines rather than judging who has the best policies/integrity.

While this still allows the Afghans to come up with something better than the Taliban, and I specifically like this quote:

"They don’t want a dialogue; they want to make all the rules. So they blame others for the result of their sociopathic behavior. ... bunch of thugs who cannot grow up and behave like reasonable men capable of living in a society where they are not guaranteed having everything their way."

That's basically what we're fighting. People who haven't grown up. Logic skills that belong in kindergarten. Tolerance levels that are pre-kindergarten.

The war against these things should be fought with education. With friendly forces now controlling the education system and airwaves, it should be possible to make progress. At the current rate it looks like we're talking decades.

We all remember the racist arsewipe who threw a shoe at Bush. Now the arsehole got a shoe thrown back at him, in a bit of cosmic justice.

The importance of this event is once again highlighting the fact that in every country, people are radically divided. There is no such thing as "Arab unity" or "Muslim unity". And the importance of that is that you are basically doing the wrong thing if you just try to nuke all these groups out of existence. After 9/11, that's exactly what lots of Americans had on their mind, for legitimate reasons.

No, the enemy is ideological, rather than racial or religious. It's true that many groups have been indoctrinated with racial hatred and religious bigotry (as well as both things coming naturally), but every society has its rebels, and those rebels will "interpret" the Koran to match their preconceived ideas of what is good and bad, no matter how much bad stuff is pointed out to them. If you want to see this for yourself, and can't be bothered sifting through all the bad Muslims to find a good one, it's easier to try on a Christian. Just go and stick Matthew 5 vs 17-20 and Leviticus 11 vs 7 in their face and try to get them to stop eating pork. There's zero chance of getting them to confess a lifetime of sin, a guaranteed spot in Hell, and a pledge to cease and desist from now on. The most you will get is some tortured logic worthy of a Special Olympics.

Anyway, the good Iraqi told the truth - that the original shoe-thrower was working for dictatorship in Iraq.

And in other news, Obama has decided to do a surge and withdrawal. Some of these things are quite good. It's good to get "military feedback", ie finding out what can be done with minimal forces. What happened in late 2001 in Afghanistan is the ultimate form of that. And British rule in India is another example. Hell, perhaps British rule in Australia is even better. In Australia the British succeeded in getting the ideology of freedom internalized in Australians before leaving. Obviously there were extenuating circumstances, like the fact that the Australians came from Britain in the first place, but it's the general principle. The sort of enthusiasm you see in the Baltics.

Anyway, I would like to see how little effort is required to keep Afghanistan, not so much "in check" but "reasonably free". Once again, if the US role can be limited to training, and preventing a military coup, and funding the Afghan military, then that would be great feedback to show "war really works".

And once again, the litmus test for war. If you have an opportunity to liberate people, and you can't see any security risk to the free world by doing so - then do it! When you're liberating people from a hostile dictatorship it's a slam dunk. You already have an enemy, so instead of a security risk, you get a security windfall in the process of liberating people.

When selling it to the mothers of the dead US soldiers, put it the other way around. ie you're eliminating a security risk and much of the suffering population was very grateful for your son/daughter's sacrifice too. When we run out of obvious hostiles, the argument will need to be modified a bit, but whatever is required to get the yanks in, do it or say it, as required.

And if you can get some layabouts like Australia to join in, that would be a bloody good move too.

There were some Northern Alliance videos posted on youtube. I'll have to see if there's been any progress in getting subtitles for them. I'd like to know what these allies of mine were saying as they drove the Taliban out, after a very long struggle.