Yezidis slaughtered in Iraq: For years, to illustrate how little Americans know about the Iraq we've chosen to meddle in, I've been forecasting since 2003 that we'll all be learning more about, for example, the Yezidis: a religious group left over from the ancient Cult of the Angels that worships seven archangels, including Lucifer, whom they believe is just the victim of bad PR. And for years I've been wrong.
But, in the Middle East, all bad things come to he who waits:
In the northern Iraq attack, armed men stopped the bus as it was carrying workers from a textile factory in Mosul to their hometown of Bashika, which has a mixed population of Christians and Yazidis - a primarily Kurdish sect that worships an angel figure considered to be the devil by some Muslims and Christians.
The gunmen checked the passengers' identification cards, then asked all Christians to get off the bus, police Brig. Mohammed al-Wagga said. With the Yazidis still inside, the gunmen drove them to eastern Mosul, where they were lined up along a wall and shot to death, al-Wagga said.
After the killings, hundreds of angry chanting Yazidis took to the streets of Bashika in protest. Shops were shuttered and many Muslim residents closed themselves in their homes, fearing reprisal attacks. Police set up additional checkpoints across the city.
Bashika is about 80 percent Yazidi, 15 percent Christian and five percent Muslim.
Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a police spokesman for Ninevah province, said the executions were in response to the killing two weeks ago of a Yazidi woman who had recently converted to Islam after she fell in love with a Muslim and ran off with him. Her relatives had disapproved of the match and dragged her back to Bashika, where she was stoned to death, he said.
Do you ever get the impression that Americans and Iraqis aren't really on the same wavelength? That maybe we didn't exactly know what we were doing when we invaded Iraq to turn it into MacArthur's Japan?
On the other hand, some have argued that a bargain with Lucifer might offer the simplest explanation of George W. Bush's Presidency. Still, as Thrasymachus points out, conclusive physical evidence for such a theory is lacking. In The American Conservative, Gregory Cochran offers a more down-to-earth explanation.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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19 comments:
Actually, from what I've read they worship a 'peacock angel' who just happens to have the secondary name of Shaytan, which is the Arabic Satan. It's very picturesque and fascinating for us to describe a tribe of devil worshippers, but they're really just another Middle Eastern tribe. They don't actually worship another religion's figure of evil. Leave that to Western Satanists, who are mostly secular types who enjoy pissing off Christians. 'Black Masses' were sort of a way of sticking out your tongue at the Church.
there is an interesting contradiction here.
american propaganda for the last decade has been that "diversity is strength". but in iraq, diversity is death.
i'm sure this is completely lost on the average american, who suddenly became an expert on iraq about 4 years ago. the problem is that this lesson is also lost on american politicians.
i could write a lot about iraq and interesting observations i have made about what americans think is happening there.
also note that american politicians swear a wall on the mexico border cannot work, but the US military is now getting serious and building walls inside iraq.
yet another contradiction that is totally lost on american leaders.
The Yazidis seem to be a manifestation of a gnostic-neo-Platonic substratum in the region (cf. the Alawites and the Druze). They have taboos on lettuce and the color blue.
No doubt they'll start fleeing here and forming enclaves in St. Louis or Spokane. We've already got African religions with their animal sacrifice in Miami and the Bronx. Why not Yezidis?
And can't we all just get along?
Steve -- While you're insightful on domestic issues you don't have a clue on Iraq, the War on Terror, or anything else related to national security.
Iraq is mostly a great success. Saddam is gone, and as long as we stay there Iraq will not be a center for attacks or link-ups with Iran and/or Al Qaeda. Saddam wouldn't make a deal (and keep it) and was removed. That's a great victory and made people sit up and take notice.
Bin Laden and Khomeni argued that the US was weak and could be turned out of anywhere by sufficient casualties. That furthermore mass casualty attacks in the US would cause us to submit. That's why bin Laden approved 9/11 ... he thought the US would surrender. Al Qaeda and Iran's leaders still argue to this day the US will simply submit to Islam if they kill enough of us at home.
What DID fail was GWB's gamble that he could transform Iraq and from Iraq the Middle East. But that's like a hungry man having a cake with no icing.
Iraq is an ugly and brutal place with strife since Babylon and Gilgamesh. But it is no longer a place Saddam can make deals with bin Laden or Tehran. No more $300K checks to Ayman al Zawahari two months before the Cole. Or far worse.
The ME respects only force and fear. Saddam understood that much. If the US wants to be seen as a weak and inviting target, we should just give up and leave. That was Carter's, Reagan's, the first Bush's, and yes Clinton's policy. It only encouraged more and more escalating attacks. A two-term President Gore would have probably made much the same calls as GWB.
Bush is lazy, in hock to the Saudis (hence the half-measures), and a very poor communicator. This does not change the fundamentals: a global effort by jihadis to turn back the clock of globalization and "destroy" America. Sort of like the "fighting spirit" ideas of Tojo. That isn't going away any time soon.
Anonymous 8:07pm: That's an awfully long post. Aren't you running late for the rapture?
i wonder if anonymous is an american. anonymous takes the position that all pro-war white americans take.
they think the best way to make america safe is to invade muslim nations and kill muslim people. "Better to kill them there than kill them here."
but muslims are already here. that's how they killed americans on 9/11. and the government is letting more in every day.
invading muslim nations and killing muslim people makes america less safe not more safe. it creates more muslim terrorists.
white americans are clueless about muslims. they don't understand them at all. they can't answer simple questions such as "How much trouble did the US have with muslims in 1850?"
other americans are also generally clueless about muslims, but the "Let's go kill some muslims! Yeah, we'll go kill them until they like us!" crowd is 99% white americans who understand nothing about muslims. they think muslims are some new enemy that recently landed from outer space. they have no historical perpective.
white americans, the crowd driving the invasion of the middle east, are in demographic decline, and the muslim population is exploding. in 30 years, the effort that white americans are expending in iraq will be completely irrelevant, and there will be more muslims everywhere. in 60 years, when mexicans are 50% of the US, they'll simply vote to kick muslims out of the US, and to heck with invading any nation in arabia. white people can go do that if they want.
I had vaguley heard about these folks several times, in a "It takes all kinds" sorta context. I mentioned in broad swaths the tenets of their religion to a friend of mine and his response was, "It sounds like something from a bad anime... meaning it sounds like something from any anime."
Anonymous wrote:
"Steve -- While you're insightful on domestic issues you don't have a clue on Iraq, the War on Terror, or anything else related to national security"
Well, lemme see...........Sailer would advocate not letting more Arabs and Muslims immigrate like Bush lobbied for (an increase). Sailer would want a system of fences on the Mexican border to keep anyone from being able to come here without us knowing who they are. Sailer would be for less immigration from non-Westernized cultures and more from Westernized cultures. Sailer would be for a strong military, and not wearing the military out in Iraq and destroying its morale in a police action.............................................and "anonymous" would be for "staying the course" in Iraq, to more spending than the 500 billion the war has cost us, and to protect "globalization"---which most Americans are rather agahst at anyway.
Yup, I think I know who I'd more trust with out national security..
But then again, you (anonymous) are really concerned about some other nation's security aren't you? Our "ally" in the middle east perhaps?
The Ugly Truth
I don't think American-born Muslims have ever collaborated with terrorists. They would have to be insane to support any other country against America. It has mostly been the Saudis who've hurt us. That to me indicates that the Muslims already in America are not a problem and that the War on Terror is still essentially a traditional war of one alliance of nations versus another.
And that means we are still at war in Iraq and would be foolish to leave now, or indeed at any time within the foreseeable future.
I'm not the "Anonymous 8:07" poster, btw.
I don't think American-born Muslims have ever collaborated with terrorists.
Well, except for Ahmed Omar Abu.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Omar_Abu_Ali
Though in his defense, he only wanted to assassinate President Bush, which is a little different from blowing up scores of civilians.
Still, I hear there were a bunch of Muslim boys over in England who did exactly that in a subway despite having been born in the country, or something...
peewee is making all the classic mistakes that americans make when thinking about muslims.
if muslims who want to kill amricans are not already in the US, then how did they bring down the world trade center? they tried this in 93 and 01. reality is that muslims who want to kill americans are already in the US. more come every day. they get here on visas. it makes no sense to antagoize muslims with foreign policy and then invite thousands of them to visit.
aside from visas, muslims also come to the US as immigrants. after enough muslim immigrants get to the US, you will begin to see terrorists who were born in the US. you don't see this yet because most muslim immigrants are going to europe.
this is all beside the point that iraq had nothing to do muslim terror coming to the US. but invading iraq has certainly caused more muslims to hate america than before. the iraq occupation will cause many muslims being born today to carry a permanent grudge against the US. this will be a problem in the future.
we are living in bizarre times when illegal aliens from mexico have a clearer and more sensible approach to muslims than american leaders. catholic mexicans would just have no muslim visitors, no muslim immigrants, and no foreign aid for israel.
Please allow me to introduce myself . . .
"we are living in bizarre times when illegal aliens from mexico have a clearer and more sensible approach to muslims than american leaders."
And you know this because you have read the position papers published by one of the Mexican-American think tanks?
i know this because i know mexicans. mexicans do not like:
gays, jews, blacks, muslims, illegal aliens that aren't mexican.
in fact, this is the rule, not the exception, among the various peoples of the world. only whites are in the practice of trying to integrate and normalize radical amounts of diversity. almost every other racial and ethnic group is sticking to the basics.
you would have to be fairly americanized and insulated from the rest of the world to not realize this. there is no group more tolerant than white americans, and american politicians are busy importing immigrants who are hostile to every social movement white americans have developed. they're not real big on feminism, or tolerance, or equal rights. those are all white ideas.
"Yazidis",eh? Is that where Seinfeld got the "Yada yada yada" thing?
Jody: " ... in fact, this is the rule, not the exception, among the various peoples of the world. only whites are in the practice of trying to integrate and normalize radical amounts of diversity. almost every other racial and ethnic group is sticking to the basics."
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You are on target. Whites are so thoroughly off the wall with their misconceptions about "diversity," that it enters the realm of the laughable. Never has there been a group so bent on suicide.
jody said...
i wonder if anonymous is an american. anonymous takes the position that all pro-war white americans take..
Let me see if I can parse this out.
White Americans have higher IQs than blacks or hispanics.
High IQs correlate positively with higher income.
Being a Republican positively correlates with higher income.
Being a Republican also positivelty correlates with support for the war.
Wouldn't that tend to indicate that support for the war (absent direct evidence) is the smart thing to do?
BTW I'm an American.
M. Simon, what a farrago of logical fallacies. Go back to school.
Extraterrestrials are said to be green.
Many vegetables are green.
Eating vegetables is correlated with having greater health.
Health and wealth are strongly correlated.
Most Republicans are relatively wealthy.
It follows that most extraterrestrials are Republican.
Folks, we may have a Hannity refugee on here!...
i thinkits ironic that everyones accusing "muslms" its yezidis and kurds thts the problem.it was kurdsthat bombed 9/11, it is mainly yezidis that carry out so called honour killings. alot of muslims in iraq and other places only want peace. howeve... I do hate the army andi think theyre doing more harm than anything,because they tend to attack alo of innocent people instead of the guilty ones
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