mohammadalisalih.com Blog

(From GQ):

On April 10, 2003, the day after the fall of Baghdad , Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld prepared a top-secret briefing for President Bush, known as the Worldwide Intelligence Update.
The briefing’s cover sheet generally featured triumphant, color images from the previous days’ war efforts.
On this particular morning, it showed the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in Firdos Square , a grateful Iraqi child kissing an American soldier, and jubilant crowds thronging the streets of newly liberated Baghdad .
Above these images, and just below the headline SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, was a quote from the Bible, from the book of Psalms: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him…To deliver their soul from death.”
This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine:
March 31: A U.S. tank roared through the desert beneath a quote from Ephesians: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”
April 7: Saddam Hussein struck a dictatorial pose, under this passage from the First Epistle of Peter: “It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.”
These cover sheets were the brainchild of Major General Glen Shaffer, a director for intelligence serving both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense. Shaffer, a Christian, deemed the biblical passages more suitable. When colleagues complained to Shaffer that including a religious message with an intelligence briefing seemed inappropriate, Shaffer politely informed them that the practice would continue, because “my seniors”—JCS chairman Richard Myers, Rumsfeld, and the commander in chief himself—appreciated the cover pages.
But one government official was disturbed enough by these biblically seasoned sheets to hold on to copies, which “GQ” obtained recently while debriefing the past eight years with those who lived them inside the West Wing and the Pentagon.

(Email under: “This is why God gave them camels!”

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A brand spanking new Airbus 340-600, the largest passenger airplane ever built, sits just outside its hangar in Toulouse, France without a single hour of airtime.
Enter the Arab flight crew of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies (ADAT) to conduct pre-delivery tests on the ground, such as engine run-ups prior to delivery to Etihad Airways in Abu Dhabi.
The ADAT crew taxied the A340-600 to the run-up area.
Then they took all four engines to takeoff power with a virtually empty aircraft.
Not having read the run-up manuals, they had no clue just how light an empty A340-600 really is.
The Takeoff Warning Horn was blaring away in the cockpit because they had all four engines at full power.
The aircraft computers thought they were trying to take off, but it had not been configured properly (flaps/slats, etc…)
Then one of the ADAT crew decided to pull the circuit breaker on the Ground Proximity Sensor to silence the alarm.
This fools the aircraft into thinking it is in the air.
The computers automatically released all the brakes and sent the aircraft rocketing forward.
The ADAT crew had no idea that this is a safety feature so that pilots can’t land with the brakes on.
Not one member of the seven-man Arab crew was smart enough to throttle back the engines from their max power setting.
The $200 million brand-new aircraft crashed into a blast barrier, totaling it.
The extent of injuries to the crew is unknown due to the news blackout of the major media in France and elsewhere.
Coverage of the story was deemed insulting to Muslim Arabs.
Finally, the photos are starting to leak out.
“This is why God gave them camels!”

Mr. Richard Cohen, the Jewish columnist in “The Washington Post,” as I have been reading his pieces, every now and then, for more than twenty years, seems to me like a liberal and open-minded. Even, when writing about Israel.

But, recently, he wrote a piece criticizing President Obama for publishing the Justice Department memos about how to torture the Muslim terrorist suspects.

Cohen wrote that Obama, by releasing the memos, “not only failed to ‘make us safer’ but undermined ‘our moral authority,’ ” Cohen added that, a week later, a Muslim woman walked into a throng in Baghdad and blew herself up, “apparently she had not heard of our new moral authority.”

What did she have to do with America trying to climb towards higher moral grounds? Most probably, what she did had something to do with Cohen, i.e. what she did seemed to have scared him.

Read this from Cohen’s piece: “The horror of Sept. 11 resides in me like a dormant pathogen. It took a long time before I could pass a New York fire station — the memorials still fresh — without tearing up. I vowed vengeance that day.”

Eight years later, if a Muslim woman blew herself in Baghdad and scared a prominent Jewish journalist in Washington, America is not – or shouldn’t be – get scared.

America should be busy trying to be “A City Upon a Hill.” This is not the famous phrase mostly attributed to former President Ronald Reagan; he picked it from the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus gave, according to the Gospel of Matthew: “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.”

I am very much disappointed that Cohen said that morality should, in any form or shape, be judged by whether a person, or a country, is scared or not.

Am I over-playing the role of religion here, by labeling the Iraqi woman as “Muslim,” labeling Cohen as Jewish and quoting Jesus Christ?

I have come to believe that religions play more roles in the lives of people and states than most of them are ready to acknowledge. I have come to believe that religious feelings, declared or subtle, were an important factor, after 9/11 attacks, when President Bush, and his extreme Christians and extreme Jews supporters, declared the so-called “War on Terrorism,” which I have come to believe is but a subtle war on Islam and Muslims.

Sometimes, it is not even subtle.

Read this from Cohen’s same piece: “I vowed vengeance that day — yes, good Old Testament-style vengeance — and that ember glows within me still.”

If Cohen says he is driven by his holy book, maybe the Iraqi Muslims woman was driven by her holy book – and scared the hell out of him.

“The Washington Post” wrote a piece about First Lady Michelle Obama leading a ceremony in the Congress to unveil a statue for Sojourner Truth, a black woman who revolted against slavery during the years that immediately followed the Civil War.
“The Post” quoted Michelle saying:
“I hope that Sojourner Truth would be proud to see me, a descendant of slaves, serving as first lady of the United States … I am glad that African American children touring the Capitol, boys and girls like my own daughters, could come and see the face of a woman who looks like them.”
Then, “The Post” added: “The predominantly female crowd roared its approval to these lines.” “These lines”? “Females”? They didn’t cheer at other less provocative lines? They wouldn’t have cheered if it was not the First Lady? They wouldn’t have cheered if they were mostly males? What f they were mostly White males?
I found it interesting the way “The Post,” a mouthpiece of what I call “White Supremacy Complex,” handled what I call Michelle example of “Black Inferiority Complex.”
In my vocabulary, they both represent “The Complex”:
(A): When Blacks seem like they never stop talking about slavery, in a clear attempt to increase Whites’ guilt.
(B) When Whites seem to pretend that they might be guilty, while trying to hide their arrogance.
Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, also talked at the occasion, but, apparently, she didn’t talk about race. She said Truth was finally taking “her rightful place alongside the heroes who have helped shape our nation’s history.”
Couldn’t Michelle have said something like that? Couldn’t she have talked about the “post-race” ideas? Couldn’t she have avoided reminding everyone, Whites and Blacks, of slavery? Couldn’t she have looked to the future more than the past?

Only in America do the Chinese find such a civilized reception – not illegal ones who hide in ocean cargo ships’ containers, but bright students who come to study in universities.

Universities that usually look for outstanding test scores, terrific grades and rigorous academic preparation, like the University of Virginia, are receiving a surging number of applications from China.

“It’s this perfect, beautiful island of people who are immensely motivated, going to great high schools,” marveled Parke Muth, director of international admission at U. Va.

A decade ago, 17 Chinese students applied to U. Va. Three years ago, 117 did. This year, the number was more than 800 out of almost 22,000 candidates.

Until fall 2007, the number of Chinese undergraduates in the United States had held steady for years, at about 9,000, according to the Institute of International Education, which promotes study abroad.

But that year, it jumped to more than 16,000.

Most Chinese students find the math section of the SAT easy, several students said, but the vocabulary on the verbal test is difficult.

Demand is so strong that businesses now sell advice to Chinese applicants trying to decipher the U.S. admissions process. Some agents claim to work for specific schools or offer to write essays and recommendation letters.

“We get these absolutely stunningly beautiful booklets,” Muth said. One was 120 pages long. Some are like coffee-table books, he said,

Many schools are recruiting more intensely in China. Muth now travels to cities beyond Beijing and Shanghai, often to competitive magnet schools.

This year, U Va. started doing interviews by telephone, and “within literally 10 minutes of the first student having been called, I was getting e-mails: ‘Why haven’t I heard?’ It’s unbelievable, the networking,” Muth said.

Wait a minute. Is this director of International admission at U. Va. naïve? Or is she driven by greed, hers or her university, or that of “American Capitalism”? Don’t they all know that China is major Communist country? Don’t they know that the Chinese can barely hide their dislike, or distain, of America? Don’t they all know that the Chinese would like, on day, to be on the same level with them, if not above and if not be able to dominate the World, the way the West used to do for the recent few centuries?

Most probably, it is that special American spirit of pride, welcoming and civility that is behind this.

Only in America.

Four Russian-born hockey players, Alexander Semin, Sergei Fedorov, Viktor Kozlov and Alex Ovechkin, lead the Washington Capitals to the playoffs last year. This is a league in which Canadians hug Americans who embrace Swedes who play with Russians. In the locker room, the Russians form a cohesive group, ribbing each other in Russian while English fills the rest of the room.
“It makes huge difference,” Ovechkin said in his still-slightly-broken-but-hugely-improved English.
The Russian Capitals have not only combined to make the Capitals hugely popular in their home country, they also provide one of the few tangible bonds for Russians here.
Mostly, they head up Connecticut Avenue to Russia House, which serves its vodka — 107 varieties, including 29 from Russia — in pint glasses, has seven Russian beers and features a Russian-speaking wait staff.
Fedorov, who has played 18 seasons in the NHL, speaks Russian with his countrymen on the ice and in the locker room. Yet he says he draws no comfort from his native tongue. “It’s been 20 years,” he said. “I don’t care. But for them, it matters.”
Particularly for Semin. There may be no more interesting member of the Capitals than the enigmatic 25-year-old forward, a native of the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.
“Have I figured Semin out?” Capitals Coach Bruce Boudreau said after practice one day last month. “I want to pay a lot of money to a guy who can figure that guy out.”
Unlike Ovechkin, who made a point to learn English when he arrived in Washington and has improved at his new language every year, Semin regularly declines interviews in English. “He knows English,” said Ovechkin, Semin’s closest friend on the team. “He just doesn’t want to talk in interview.”
But there must, too, be time to be what he is, what all the Russian Capitals have been at one time or another: a young Russian adjusting to life in the United States.
“You have to have life here, too, other things you do,” Ovechkin said. “We all do. We need friends, reminders of home. Sometimes, you just like to speak Russian, do Russian things.”
COMMENT:
Been there, done that. When I first arrived in America, more than thirty years ago, I was almost like Semin, both shy and not able to clearly express myself in English. Now, I am sort of like Ovechkin: On one side, “You have to have live here too (Me: You are in America… But, sometimes, you just like to speak Russian, do Russian things” (Me: Like to speak Arabic and do Sudanese things).
Probably some day, Semin will marry a Cuban American, have mixed-race children and be, eh, eh, an American.

Mr. Jim Hoagland, columnist with “The Washington Post,” wrote a piece under: “War Within Islam,” where he mentioned the video about a 17-year-old Afghani girl begging not to be beaten, but the local Taliban commander continues to flog her without mercy as a group of village men watch in silence.
The alleged transgressions of the girl could not be definitively established, but the range of possible violations is from stepping outside her house without a male escort to having an illicit affair.
Mr. Hoagland related this to Obama’s attempts to reach out to the Muslim world. In Obama’s recent speech in Turkey, he declared that the United States is not “at war with Islam.” Mr. Hoagland said it was rather a war within Islam. And he agreed with what he called “the realists” in that the US and its NATO partners cannot “win” the war inside Islam. He added: “Perhaps all they can accomplish is to buy time for mainstream Islamic forces in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere to organize an effective response to the existential threat in their midst.”
COMMENTS:
1. Mr. Hoagland, like many “mainstream Americans,” has not been able to draw a line between “mainstream” and “extreme” Muslims. Who is an “extremist”? Am I one if I ask that the US should withdraw from, and stop bombarding, all Muslim countries?
2. Mr. Hoagland mentioned that the struggle in the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier is rooted, among other things, in “fierce nationalism.” But, in denial, like many Americans, he didn’t connect this with the presence of tens of thousands of foreign, White and Christian forces in Afghanistan.
3. Of course, the US hasn’t declared war on Islam. It didn’t declare war on Muslims either. But the US invaded and is occupying two Muslim countries (Afghanistan and Iraq); bombarded two Muslim countries (Somalia and Pakistan), threatened to bombard three Muslim countries (Iran, Syria and Sudan) and has killed, tortured, detained, chased and harassed thousands of Muslims in its so called “war on terrorism.”
4. I believe these US actions have not been results of a declared war on Islam or Muslims, but parts of a “subtle war” on Muslims.
Mr. Hoagland should talk about this and be rested that Islam and Muslims will be able to take care of themselves.