Blowback

Photo swiped from 'Dragon Lady'.

Ron Paul in his opposition to the war in Iraq referred to the terrorists being in America because the US was over there. This is the principle of ‘blowback’, which is basically the idea that all actions have consequences, especially if those actions are carried out by the free world.

The west has been in the Middle East for many years, in fact since WW2 when they freed it from the Germans and Italians. What followed was the cold war where a presence was required to prevent a communist takeover. This isn’t widely spoken of by those proponents of blowback.

Ron goes back a fair way in his denunciation of the US but if the latest statements on the Internet are to be believed he could have gone back even further. American forces attacked and defeated the Barbary pirates in the early 19th century, so blowback could come from there.

The reason I say this is that Al Qaeda’s 2ic Ayman al-Zawahri has now called on Muslims to re-occupy the Iberian Peninsula, or to use their term al-Andalus, you see the French, Portuguese, and Spanish, inconsiderate bastards tossed the Muslims out of there in the 15th century.

He maintains that this is only possible if it is ‘cleansed’ of the children of France and Spain, so it should get interesting for those countries should the people from the ‘religion of peace’ answer his call. Obviously there is more to the rise of Islamofascism than merely blowback, these rabid ideologues are hell bent on world domination with the aim of reestablishing the caliphate.

Any suggestion that this part of the call can be attributed to blowback is patently ridiculous, as it implies that the residents of an occupied country have no right to rise up and throw out the invader. The suggestion that this  is the case would also mean that the Allies were morally wrong to liberate Europe in WW2.

I am reminded here of a comedy show in which a sketch was done on the reunification of Germany, where the commentator 'quotes' the German Chancellor as saying, "This is a great day, but merely the first step. We now intend to reunify with France, Poland, Belgium,......"

The source is an article in The Australian entitled “Osama declares war on Musharraf”. I quote in part: -

Earlier on Thursday, al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri called on Muslims to fight the United States and its allies around the world, in a new video. 

Marking the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Zawahri said: "Stand, o nation of Islam, under the victorious banner of the Prophet ... and campaign against the crusader banner of (U.S. President George W.) Bush. 



"Go forth ... to the mujahideen, bear them arms, back them, defend them and don't be intimidated by the power of America, for these two blessed attacks have revealed that it is a power of iron and fire, with no faith or morals or principle." 


Zawahri, who praised the actions of al Qaeda-linked groups fighting in Afghanistan, north Africa, Somalia, Chechnya and Iraq, also called on Pakistanis to avenge the killing of Ghazi. 



Zawahri called on Muslims to restore al-Andalus -- the Arabic name given to parts of the Iberian peninsula under Muslim rule at various times from the 8th century. 



"O our Muslim nation in the Maghreb .... restoring al-Andalus (is impossible) without first cleansing the Muslim Maghreb of the children of France and Spain, who have come back again after your fathers and grandfathers sacrificed their blood cheaply in the path of God to expel them," he said. 



He also called on Muslims in Sudan to fight a force of African Union and U.N. peacekeepers set to deploy the volatile western region of Darfur. He said Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir had abandoned Islam. 



"The ... mujahideen sons ... must organize jihad against the forces invading Darfur as their brothers organized the jihadi resistance in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia," he said. 


Ron, it just isn't that simple.