"If proven that any of (Iraq's) national guards, police or army are agents of the Crusaders, they will be killed and his house will demolished or burnt — after evacuating all women and children — as a punishment," the voice said in the new tape that surfaced on an Internet site known for carrying extremist Islamist content.
The speaker announced "all out war against Shiites everywhere. Beware, there will be no mercy."
I do hope the spare the women and children memo gets out to the field because this is clearly a very new policy for Zarqawi's boys. And they might want to skip on the whole house demolition thing--sounds so Israeli. Heh.
And sadly, the jihadis get in the way of Western anti-war type arguments that we caused the whole problem. An all-out war against Shias everywhere is hard to square with righteous anger over Iraq. Just kill them all, the jihadis say.
Most annoyingly, the Crusades come up again though at the time we were but a blank spot on the map where dragons and monsters were thought to swim. And if I may point this out yet again without sounding tiresome, the Crusades were an attempt to recapture what was lost to the Moslem invaders who had earlier captured the region from Christianity. So jihadis and their Western apoligists getting all huffy over the Crusades is a bit too holier-than-though for the history of the region if you ask me.
North Korea remains on our plate as well but the talks are heading nowhere:
"The differences of our positions are so great that the talks are stalemated," Japan's top envoy Kenchiro Sasae told reporters.
"North Korea's demand for a light water reactor is strong. We are not in a position to accept it as it is. The prospect is bleak unless this question is resolved," Sasae said.
The classic stand-off. They want to nuke us and most of us don't want them to be able to nuke us. Tough to resolve that difference.
But as I've said before, I'm happy with talks that go nowhere with the Pillsbury Nuke Boy. His regime will collapse, and as long as we smile, shake their hands, and walk away from the table rather than feel pressure to come to a flawed agreement simply because that's what talks are supposed to lead to, we'll do just fine. Never ever save that nutjob regime from collapsing. Talking to lull the heavily-armed but tottering psycho-regime is the only thing we can really do now.
Then of course there is Iran. Iran has a terrorist president and has been hiding its nuclear weapons programs from the world. And that's in addition to its general record of oppression and terrorism. Great guys, huh?
So it is no surprise to know that Iran thinks it will continue to get away with murder when you consider that the international community is reluctant to actually do something about Iran:
Just days before planned action on referral, the diplomats and officials told The Associated Press that the idea of giving Iran a deadline of several weeks to comply with international demands on its nuclear activities is gaining favor.
"It would not be a change in policy but a change in timing," said one
European official about the possibility of delaying — but not withdrawing — the U.N. Security Council threat. There has been strong opposition from more than a dozen nations on the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency to a demand for referral at next week's board meeting.
Shoot, after decades what is wrong with a few more weeks? And then a new member of the IAEA will join so we'll need to spend months getting them up to speed on what forms have been filled out and what forms they're waiting on. Keep going this way and in time, if the form-makers have it their way, the Iranians will blow a nuke and the international community can heave a sigh of relief and throw up their hands that exclaim now they can do nothing since Iran has gone nuclear. Then the multi-volume, professionally bound report with bright ribbons will be issued in five years.
The nations united are supposed to band together to stop such rogues but that's just the theory. In practice, the international community simply refuses to act no matter how many forms we fill out and then sputters in indignation when America finally acts to solve the problem the vaunted international community wishes to study further. I expect the sputtering on Iran to start this fall. I hope.
On our last stop, we must look at Mark Steyn and his take on the United Nations. Not technically part of the Axis of Evil, I admit, but I always think of the UN whenever I dwell on the actual evil nations that we find we must deal with. There is a reason the UN seems to side with the thugs and run interference for the evil members of our community. So I agree that Kofi Annan staying is probably the best of a whole lot of bad scenarios for the UN:
I, too, am in favour of Kofi Annan staying on, not just till his term
expires in December 2006, but for five, ten years after that, if he wishes. If I was as eager for UN ‘reform’ as its supporters claim to be, I’d toss Kofi to the sharks and get some new broom in to sweep clean. But if, as I do, you believe 90 per cent of UN ‘reforms’ are likely to be either meaningless or actively harmful, a discredited and damaged secretary-general clinging to office is as good as it’s likely to get — short of promoting Didier Bourguet, the UN staffer in Congo and the Central African Republic charged with running a paedophile ring. A UN that refuses to hold Kofi Annan to account will be harder to pass off as a UN that represents the world’s ‘moral authority’, in Clare Short’s blissfully surreal characterisation.
What’s important to understand is that Mr Annan’s ramshackle UN of humanitarian money-launderers, peacekeeper-rapists and a human rights commission that looks like a lifetime-achievement awards ceremony for the world’s torturers is not a momentary aberration. Nor can it be corrected by bureaucratic reforms designed to ensure that the failed budget oversight committee will henceforth be policed by a budget oversight committee oversight committee. The oil-for-food fiasco is the UN, the predictable spawn of its utopian fantasies and fetid realities. If Saddam grasped this more clearly than Clare Short or Polly Toynbee, well, that’s why he is — was — an A-list dictator and they’re not.
This I know I've touched on. Even an honest UN would not really be in our interests. We'd still be voted down just because we're the biggest guy on the block but the body would have more reason to pretend it is the embodiment of a legitimate community of nations.
I prefer the UN as it is: thugs who we can ignore while we deal with the messes they enable. Sure, it is annoying that the Left continues to worship at the feet of an organization they'd make hand puppets for protests if it was called the United Halliburtons, but we don't live in a perfect world. So I'll take a UN as is, as long as we have people like John Bolton to slap them around and keep them busy by chasing them through the halls of Turtle Bay.
So there you go. Your Axis of Evil (and Friends) update. Stay tuned.
