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"However, the Archbishop’s iconic voice has also found another cause no less popular: The global campaign against Israel and the Jewish people. Tutu just promoted an appeal to the US pension fund of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association for cutting the partnership with Israeli companies. He also helped the Australian Marrickville Council approve a boycott of Israel's goods"
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So basically, as he denounces what he sees as apartheid policies in occupied Palestine then he must be, oh no not an anti-Semite, too abused, an empty shell, but that "he hates the Jewish people"!! Oh, the awful villain!
Please forgive the unrelated to post comment. This is about Assad's 2003-2008 aggression against Iraq:
ReplyDelete40K to 50 K Syrians fought in Iraq 2003-2008 according to Alastair Crooke--founder and director of Conflicts Forum and former adviser to the former EU Foreign Policy Chief, Javier Solana, from 1997-2003. Please not that these are his views, not mine. He is a biased sectarian partisan supporter of Assad against the Syrian freedom fighters:
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2011/07/unfolding-syrian-paradox.html
This is a "I LOVE SAYYED NASRALLAH" fanclub website. The Vineyard Saker and Sayyed Nasrallah partisans do not independently confirm the 40-50 K number, but neither do they dismiss the estimate out of hand. [My own personal best estimate is less than this number.]
Unrelated I talked to a former US Army NCO a few weeks ago who served in Najaf, Ramadi and Tal Afar. He told me about contractors that were hung near Najaf around April 1, 2004. The news was hush hush at the time. He also told
me that he fought many Jordanians. Some seemed to fight quite well. Could they have been retired Jordanian army? Not completely clear.
Alastair Crooke wrote:
ReplyDelete- Show quoted text -
> the roots of the bitterness lie in Iraq, rather than in Syria, in two
> distinct ways. Firstly, they extend back into the thinking of the Sunni
> jihadi trend, as advanced by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which evolved in Iraq,
> surfaced violently in Lebanon, and was transposed into Syria with the return
> of many Syrian Salafist veterans at the "end" of the Iraq conflict.
> Secondly, and separately, the bitterness in Syria is also linked to a
> profound sense of Sunni grievance felt by certain Arab states at Sunni
> political disempowerment following Prime Minister Nuri al-Malaki's rise to
> power in Iraq, for which they hold Assad responsible.
> In a precursor to present events in Syria, the Lebanese army too in 2007
> battled with a group of Sunni militants of diverse nationalities who had all
> fought in Iraq. The group, Fateh al-Islam, had infiltrated Naher al-Bared
> refugee camp in northern Lebanon from Syria, and had married into
> Palestinian families living there.
> Although the core of foreign fighters was quite small in number, they were
> well-armed and experienced in urban combat. They attracted a certain amount
> of local Lebanese support too. That bloody conflict with Lebanon's army
> endured for more than three months. At the end, Naher al-Bared was in ruins;
> and 168 of the Lebanese army lay dead.
> That event was the culmination of a pattern of movements from Afghanistan
> and across the region into, and from, Iraq. Most of these radicalized Sunnis
> coming to fight the United States occupation had gravitated towards groups
> loosely associated with Zarqawi. Zarqawi's al-Qaeda affiliation is not of
> particular significance to Syria today, but the Zarqawi "Syria" doctrine
> that evolved in Iraq, is crucial.
> Zarqawi, like other Salafists, rejected the artificial frontiers and
> national divisions inherited from colonialism. Instead, he insisted on
> calling the aggregate of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan, and parts of
> Turkey and Iraq by its old name: "Bilad a-Sham". Zarqawi and his followers
> were virulently anti-Shi'ite - much more so than early al-Qaeda - and
> asserted that a-Sham was a core Sunni patrimony that had been overtaken by
> the Shi'ites.
> According to this narrative, the Sunni heartland, Syria, had been usurped
> for the last 40 years by the Shi'ite al-Assads (Alawites are an orientation
> within Shi'ism). The rise of Hezbollah, facilitated in part by Assad,
> further eroded Lebanon's Sunni character, too.
Likewise, they point to
ReplyDelete> Assad's alleged undercutting of former Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi as
> an act which had delivered Iraq to the Shi'ites, namely to Malaki.
> From this deep grievance at Sunni disempowerment, Zarqawi allies developed
> a doctrine in which Syria and Lebanon were no longer platforms from which to
> launch jihad, but the sites for jihad (against the Shi'ites as much as
> others). The Syrian Salafists eventually were to return home, nursing this
> grievance. Many of them - Syrians and non-Syrians - settled in the rural
> villages lying adjacent to Lebanon and Turkey, and similarly to their
> confreres in Naher al-Barad, they married locally.
> It is these elements - as in Lebanon in 2007 - who are the mainspring of
> armed violence against the Syrian security services. Unlike Egypt or
> Tunisia, Syria has experienced hundreds of dead and many hundreds of wounded
> members of the security forces and police. (Daraa is different: the armed
> element consists of Bedouin who migrate between Saudi Arabia, Jordan and
> Syria).
TGIA, don't believe something just because I, or <span>Alastair Crooke, or Vineyard, or anyone else tells you to. Rather do your own due diligence. Carefully review hundreds of source documents Formulate your own estimate based on your own analytical models and your own judgement. [Much as strategic consultants at McKinsey, Bain,AT Kearney etc. do in their hundred page analysis.]</span>
ReplyDeleteIf you are "REALLY" interested, then you should interview actual Iraqi Army who fought Syrians in Iraq and ask them to elaborate.
I can see why you might be leary of Iraqi Army. You might see them as biased against Syria and Lebanese that you [that is you TGIA] admire and respect. And you have a point. You can't accept their words as the gospel truth either.
I like Desmand Tutu, and how he called for all South Africans to love, have compassion for and forgiveness for all former oppression.
ReplyDeleteDesmand Tutu opposed punishing any oppressors. Rather, he wanted them to publicly acknowledge their crimes and be forgiven.
I see some of this in Mustafa Barghouti too. [Full disclosure. I am a fan of Barghouti. :) ]
TG, you should have warned your saner followers that you'd handed your site over to a lunatic.
ReplyDeleteWell, he doesn't seem to take no for an answer so maybe now he leaves me with no choice but to ban his derriere.
ReplyDeleteI don't even read his drivel..
ReplyDelete<p><span><span>“Please forgive the unrelated to post comment. This is about Assad's 2003-2008 aggression against Iraq:” </span></span>
ReplyDelete</p><p><span>You’re a complete idiot and I can prove that <span>none of what you wrote</span> is true. In fact, since 2003 Assad has done everything he can to help the Iraqi government and now they can’t wait to return the favour. </span></p>
r.s. Maliki and Assad reached an understanding in 2008 and that understadnding still holds. This is one reason violence fell 95% in 2007 and 2008.
ReplyDeleteSome of the most infuential Iraqi leaders are demanding Iraq help the Syrian people win their freedom.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/10/iraq-support-syria-uprising-democratic-change
[Caveat, I have supported the author of this piece since 2006.]
Now Assad wants to become PM Maliki's sock puppet in Syria and serve Iraqi interests. If this works, Iraq will have its first modern puppet state. Let us see.
Who in their right mind would believe you? Why would they be helping Assad if he mass murdered them for five years? It is absurd to believe you. You have exaggerated things that are ridiculous.
ReplyDelete