MUSLIM REAX

Memri has the best round-up. Some usual suspects express support for the murderers, but I’m struck by the force of many more condemnations from mullahs and government leaders in the Middle East. Bombing London – a metropolis much loved by many Arabs and Muslims – may have backfired. This was particularly encouraging:

Columnist for the London Arabic daily Al-Hayat Jihad Al-Khazen, who often attacks the American administration and U.S. policy, wrote: ‘The Arabs and Muslims, from amongst whom has emerged most of the terrorism since September 11, must head the counter-terrorism efforts. We are responsible for this terrorism before the others, and thus we are responsible for resisting it, and the effort required [on our part] begins by not denying our responsibility for it … More than once I have written [this], and today too I write that the Arabs and Muslims must help the U.S. and not leave the running of the war on terror to it … There is no point in accusing the American administration of responsibility for the spread of terror. What is important is that this terrorism exists, and is killing innocents, and everyone must cooperate to defeat it … The first thing required from the Arab and Islamic countries is to launch a campaign [to increase] awareness amongst the societies that will strip terrorism of its well-known justifications and will emphasize that it constitutes a departure from the religion.”

Out of evil, hope.

A MOTHER ASKS

One Marie Fatayi-Williams, the immigrant Nigerian mother of a London-born son, Anthony, stood in Tavistock Square, near the Islamist massacre in London, and gave the following impromptu speech, holding a picture of her son. The oration speaks for itself. Perhaps in times like these, the rhetoric of ordinary people forced to confront extraordinary evil, is the highest form of rhetoric there is. When it is powered by a mother’s love, it reaches new depth and height:

“This is Anthony, Anthony Fatayi -Williams, 26 years old, he’s missing and we fear that he was in the bus explosion … on Thursday. We don’t know. We do know from the witnesses that he left the Northern line in Euston. We know he made a call to his office at Amec at 9.41 from the NW1 area to say he could not make [it] by the tube but he would find alternative means to work.

Since then he has not made any contact with any single person. Now New York, now Madrid, now London. There has been widespread slaughter of innocent people. There have been streams of tears, innocent tears. There have been rivers of blood, innocent blood. Death in the morning, people going to find their livelihood, death in the noontime on the highways and streets.

They are not warriors. Which cause has been served? Certainly not the cause of God, not the cause of Allah because God Almighty only gives life and is full of mercy. Anyone who has been misled, or is being misled to believe that by killing innocent people he or she is serving God should think again because it’s not true. Terrorism is not the way, terrorism is not the way. It doesn’t beget peace. We can’t deliver peace by terrorism, never can we deliver peace by killing people. Throughout history, those people who have changed the world have done so without violence, they have [won] people to their cause through peaceful protest. Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, their discipline, their self-sacrifice, their conviction made people turn towards them, to follow them. What inspiration can senseless slaughter provide? Death and destruction of young people in their prime as well as old and helpless can never be the foundations for building society.

My son Anthony is my first son, my only son, the head of my family. In African society, we hold on to sons. He has dreams and hopes and I, his mother, must fight to protect them. This is now the fifth day, five days on, and we are waiting to know what happened to him and I, his mother, I need to know what happened to Anthony. His young sisters need to know what happened, his uncles and aunties need to know what happened to Anthony, his father needs to know what happened to Anthony. Millions of my friends back home in Nigeria need to know what happened to Anthony. His friends surrounding me here, who have put this together, need to know what has happened to Anthony. I need to know, I want to protect him. I’m his mother, I will fight till I die to protect him. To protect his values and to protect his memory.

Innocent blood will always cry to God Almighty for reparation. How much blood must be spilled? How many tears shall we cry? How many mothers’ hearts must be maimed? My heart is maimed. I pray I will see my son, Anthony. Why? I need to know, Anthony needs to know, Anthony needs to know, so do many others unaccounted for innocent victims, they need to know.

It’s time to stop and think. We cannot live in fear because we are surrounded by hatred. Look around us today. Anthony is a Nigerian, born in London, worked in London, he is a world citizen. Here today we have Christians, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, all of us united in love for Anthony. Hatred begets only hatred. It is time to stop this vicious cycle of killing. We must all stand together, for our common humanity. I need to know what happened to my Anthony. He’s the love of my life. My first son, my first son, 26. He tells me one day, “Mummy, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die. I want to live, I want to take care of you, I will do great things for you, I will look after you, you will see what I will achieve for you. I will make you happy.’ And he was making me happy. I am proud of him, I am still very proud of him but I need to know where he is, I need to know what happened to him. I grieve, I am sad, I am distraught, I am destroyed.

He didn’t do anything to anybody, he loved everybody so much. If what I hear is true, even when he came out of the underground he was directing people to take buses, to be sure that they were OK. Then he called his office at the same time to tell them he was running late. He was a multi-purpose person, trying to save people, trying to call his office, trying to meet his appointments. What did he then do to deserve this. Where is he, someone tell me, where is he?”

Pray for her, and her only son.

THEY MURDER CHILDREN, DON’T THEY?

I can’t get past this story in the New York Times this morning:

Twenty-seven people, many of them children, were killed by a suicide truck bomb today as the children gathered around an Army vehicle where troops were handing out chocolates and other gifts. The blast was so powerful it set a nearby house on fire. The attack, which killed an American soldier and wounded three others, occurred about 10:50 a.m. in east Baghdad, according to the United States military. As service members in a Humvee were giving presents to a group of children, a vehicle filled with explosives detonated. “There were some American troops blocking the highway when a U.S. Humvee came near a gathering of children, and U.S. soldiers began to hand them candies,” a man named Karim Shukir told The Associated Press. “Then suddenly, a speeding car showed up and struck both the Humvee and the children.”

One thing we need to remember: the carnage we just saw in London is happening in Iraq on a regular basis. Iraq’s population is less than half Britain’s. Part of me feels very angry that we have not been able to live up to our moral and military responsibility to provide better security for these people in the wake of liberation. But part of me also realizes that total security is impossible when facing these theocratic monsters. The only hope is that the sheer evil of these people will turn moderate Iraqis and Muslims against them. Maybe they will destroy themselves. But we need to keep our moral senses from becoming numb, and remember that the human casualties in Iraq are every bit as terrible as those in London. And they are committed by very similar forces.

ROVE AS HERO

The Wall Street Journal has begun the campaign – to thank Karl Rove for exposing a CIA operative because her husband’s report on uranium in Niger was flawed:

Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove’s head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we’d say the White House political guru deserves a prize–perhaps the next iteration of the “Truth-Telling” award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud.

Just a thought experiment: can you imagine the WSJ calling to give, say, Sid Blumenthal a medal for outing a CIA operative to counter misinformation in the Bosnia campaign? Fox’s John Gibson echoes:

I say give Karl Rove a medal, even if Bush has to fire him. Why? Because Valerie Plame should have been outed by somebody. And if nobody else had the cojones to do it, I’m glad Rove did – if he did do it, and he still says he didn’t.

For the partisan right, outing CIA operatives in wartime is the patriotic thing to do. There’s only one real option worthy of Bush: give Rove the Medal of Freedom.

THE SPIN FROM ROVE

NRO’s Byron York has the scoop. John Podhoretz, Bush uber-loyalist, even suggests Judith Miller was the original source for the identity of Wilson’s wife. I think that’s called “going on the offensive.” JPod has no actual evidence fingering Miller, just his usual eagerness to say anything that might please his political masters. But, hey, I have no idea who leaked this stuff. I guess it could be Miller. Or, say, any other journalist or appointee in Washington. This much I do know: the Bushies aren’t going to go down without a fight. And this could get much nastier.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY

“[A] pundit should not recommend a policy without adequate regard for the ability of those in charge to execute it, and here I stumbled. I could not imagine, for example, that the civilian and military high command would treat “Phase IV” — the post-combat period that has killed far more Americans than the “real” war — as of secondary importance to the planning of Gen. Tommy Franks’s blitzkrieg. I never dreamed that Ambassador Paul Bremer and Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the two top civilian and military leaders early in the occupation of Iraq — brave, honorable and committed though they were — would be so unsuited for their tasks, and that they would serve their full length of duty nonetheless. I did not expect that we would begin the occupation with cockamamie schemes of creating an immobile Iraqi army to defend the country’s borders rather than maintain internal order, or that the under-planned, under-prepared and in some respects mis-manned Coalition Provisional Authority would seek to rebuild Iraq with big construction contracts awarded under federal acquisition regulations, rather than with small grants aimed at getting angry, bewildered young Iraqi men off the streets and into jobs. I did not know, but I might have guessed.” – Eliot A. Cohen, one of the most decent and honest hawks in Washington. I echo everything he writes, and take the same responsibility for being too trusting of the Bush administration in advance.

THERE’S MORE: I especially share the following:

“disdain for the general who thinks Job One is simply whacking the bad guys and who, ever conscious of public relations, cannot admit that American soldiers have tortured prisoners or, in panic, killed innocent civilians. Contempt for the ghoulish glee of some who think they were right in opposing the war, and for the blithe disregard of the bungles by some who think they were right in favoring it.”

It is inconceivable to me that Rumsfeld should still be defense secretary after one of the most botched wars in recent memory. But I do not live, as Cohen proudly does, with the knowledge of his own son being sent to war. If you need more reason to be angry at the Bush team, read this post. Money quote:

One story that really got me was the tale of former ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine suggesting to Rumsfeld in March of 2003 that it would behoove the Bush administration to develop a plan to pay Iraqi civil servants. Rumsfeld replied that American taxpayers would never go for it and that he was not concerned if they were paid for several weeks or even months; if they rioted in the streets in protest, he said, the US could use such an eventuality as leverage to get the Europeans to pick up the tab. Stunning, no?

Stunning, but at this point unsurprising.