Lingua Islamica

The Side of Compassion Loses a Spokeswoman

It is incredibly sad that getting people like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz or Gonzales to resign for their crimes is like pulling teeth, but a voice of compassion like Cindy Sheehan is forced to find some normalcy in her life because Bush won’t give her the time of day.

It is also interesting to note that Sheehan blames Democrats equally, because she is “disillusioned by the failure of Democratic politicians to bring the unpopular war to an end”.

From CNN:

Cindy Sheehan, the California mother who became an anti-war leader after her son was killed in Iraq, declared Monday she was walking away from the peace movement.

She said her son died “for nothing.”

Sheehan achieved national attention when she camped outside President Bush’s home in Crawford, Texas, throughout August 2005 to demand a meeting with the president over her son’s death.

While Bush ignored her, the vigil made her one of the most prominent figures among opponents of the war.

But in a Web diary posted to the liberal online community Daily Kos on Monday, Sheehan said she was exhausted by the personal, financial and emotional toll of the past two years.

She wrote that she is disillusioned by the failure of Democratic politicians to bring the unpopular war to an end and tired of a peace movement she said “often puts personal egos above peace and human life.”

CNN: Anti-war mom Cindy Sheehan gives up her protest

Labels: iraq

Salon.com: Wolfowitz’s Tomb

وَمَكَرُواْ وَمَكَرَ اللّهُ وَاللّهُ خَيْرُ الْمَاكِرِينَ

Wa makarū wa makara Allāh. Wa Allāhu khayru l-makirīn.

They plotted and planned. And God plotted and planned.
And God is the Best of Planners.

(Qur’ān, Sūrat Āli ‘Imrān, Āyah 54)

Here is an except from an excellent Salon.com article about Paul Wolfowitz’s decline from the architect of “shock and awe” to the his recent forced resignation from the World Bank.

A lead architect of the Iraq war, he believed shock and awe would transform the Middle East. But his policies failed -- along with his tenure at the World Bank.

Paul Wolfowitz’s doctrines are a summa of numerous failed political dogmas of the 20th century. His notion of politics was essentially Bolshevik, but less democratic in practice than Lenin’s. Wolfowitz had no concept of mass politics. Nor did he have an idea of democratic centralism, the core of Leninism, by which the vanguard led the cells of the party. Wolfowitz believed only in the vanguard...

The squalid ending of Wolfowitz’s glittering career, bickering over lies about payments to his girlfriend, submerged his grandiosity. Wheedling with the World Bank board, he appeared as a shadow of his former self, the intellectual field marshal pulverizing the opposition with the artillery of his arguments, reduced to using a Washington lawyer to make fine points.

The Independent: Exclusive: Secret U.S. Plot to Kill Al-Sadr

British newspaper The Independent reports how the U.S. army attempted to assassinate Muqtadā al-Sadr in an act of desperate deceit.

The US Army tried to kill or capture Muqtada al-Sadr, the widely revered Shia cleric, after luring him to peace negotiations at a house in the holy city of Najaf, which it then attacked, according to a senior Iraqi government official.

The revelation of this extraordinary plot, which would probably have provoked an uprising by outraged Shia if it had succeeded, has left a legacy of bitter distrust in the mind of Mr Sadr for which the US and its allies in Iraq may still be paying.

Keith Olbermann: Democrats Betray the Voters’ Mandate

Olbermann hits hard again, this time about the weak leadership that Democrats displayed by agreeing to Bush’s demands for an Iraq war budget without a timetable for withdrawal.

This is the best quote from his Special Comment:

Those who seek the Democratic nomination need to—for their own political futures and, with a thousand times more solemnity and importance, for the individual futures of our troops—denounce this betrayal, vote against it, and, if need be, unseat Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi if they continue down this path of guilty, fatal acquiescence to the tragically misguided will of a monomaniacal president.