[Note: Chester has been kind enough to offer me some valuable real estate on his must-read site for some some regular posts--my first contribution is up today.]
Live by the sword...
He was an idiot. It was a Sunni funeral, not a Shia one.
-- Iraqi housewife Um Self, commenting on the homicidal martyr who, on Saturday, rode a bicycle into a tent full of mourners in southwest Baghdad before detonating himself, killing three and wounding 55
(Dexter Filkins, New York Times)
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Abominable snowmen
The Taliban have enough forces now, and we are regrouping to increase the number of fighters and attacks following the winter throughout Afghanistan.
-- Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi, speaking from his hideout on an icy mountaintop in the winter-bound province of Zabul
(Sayed Salahuddin, Reuters)
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Unless you're manning an Iranian air-to-ground missile battery at a nuclear facility
You never want a president to say "never."
-- George Bush, when asked by reporters in Washington whether the U.S. planned to attack Iran
(AP News)
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Lebanon Agonistes
God forbid, if the roof collapses, it collapses on all of us.
-- Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on the need to "remedy the crisis" through peaceful means.
(Alistair Lyon, Reuters)
Naturally. Hezbollah is in violation of U.N. Resolution 1559, passed in September, 2004, which calls for the "disbanding and disarming of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias." Should Syria withdraw from Lebanon, the Shia terrorists (or, social service workers, if you're French or work for the U.N.) would lose their protectors and face international pressure to lay down arms. No wonder then, that Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Kassem told his follower in Beirut last Friday,
To those who say, "What are we going to do about the international resolution 1559," we say: "Come, let's bury 1559 together. Say with us: God's curse on this international resolution. If we do not bother with it, it will fall by itself, because America, Israel and France and those behind them cannot enforce it directly, they need hands.
Ominously, Sheik Kassem added,
Stop the hands from helping them and it will fall.
Four days later, a massive explosion killed Rakif Harriri; the prime minister was widely perceived to be an influential force behind 1559.
*
We cannot stay hostages, prisoners of a police state. The Lebanese will stick the course and Lebanon will be independent, free and democratic.
-- Opposition leader Walid Jumblatt, member of Lebanon's Druze community, speaking to a crowd in front of Hariri's Beirut home.
(Mohalhel Fakih, Al-Ahram Weekly)
The always-excitable DEBKafile reports that Syrian authorities have begun "distributing weapons to groups supporting Damascus and the 1.4 million expatriate laborers in the country." Meanwhile, Lebanon's pro-Syrian prime minister Omar Karame has accused Jumblatt, in addition to allies among Lebanon's Christian and Sunni Muslim communities, of planning a coup d'etat.
Sunni Muslims in Lebanon feel that the killing targets them, their existence, role and dignity.
-- Sheikh Mohamed Rashid Qabbani, Lebanon's Sunni Mufti
It's interesting to note that the situation in Syria, and to lesser extent Lebanon, is in some ways the reverse of Iraq. Syria's ruling clique is Alawi Muslim, an off-shoot of Shi'ism, and totals some 12 percent of the population, while the Sunnis comprise around 70 percent. (Martin Kramer has an informative run-down on the history here.) By pushing against the Assad regime, Washington is in effect assisting Sunnis against their Shia oppressors. An example, perhaps, of the U.S. strategy of playing the various sects of Islam against one another for maximum advantage.
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