Foehammer’s Anvil

I am a great admirer of Hugh Fitzgerald from Jihad Watch. The man is a genius and a kindred soul in many respects, from what I can detect in the majority of his writing. He may, perhaps, not be as liberal with the use of the “hammer” as I am, but that hardly makes him a dove. It just makes me an 800 pound gorilla with a keyboard, and Hugh a true scholar, and I admit that. So, I’ve again been enticed by Hugh’s writings today to post some serious, and at the very end, perhaps not so serious responses.

First, parts of Hugh’s article, which can be read in its entirety here, and then my response:

��G�l said that, in the case that the [Armenian] bill is accepted at the House of Representatives, there will be �a real shock in Turkey’ and that the Turkish government could not contain the demands by the public to halt cooperation with the United States�� (H�rriyet Web site, Feb. 08). – from this article

[parts removed]

As for G�l’s threat, he seems not to realize that the need for Turkey now is not what it was once perceived to be. Russia is no longer a military threat. The listening posts, the airfields, are only of value if they can be used against the forces of Islam. If they cannot be, and so far they haven’t been, then they are no use at all. That fourth division was not allowed to enter Iraq from the north, from those American bases in Turkey — so what good are those bases, they must be asking themselves in the Pentagon, if they cannot be used as we will obviously be needing to use them?

Turkey’s significance to American plans has gone way down. Turkey’s behavior — its willingness to allow the crudest anti-American and antisemitic books and movies (”Valley of Wolves”), and for its political figures not merely to oppose the war in Iraq (good god, I oppose the war in Iraq) but also to depict the American soldiers as “worse than Nazis” — has not gone unnoticed and will not be forgotten here.

There are other things that should not be forgotten as well. A few years ago, a naive visitor, I was invited to dinner in Istanbul by those who might once have been called “Ottomans” in contradistinction to “Turks.” These secularist Turks had studied or sent their children to study in the West. They greatly disliked all signs of resurgent Islam, and were acidulous on the subject of how Muslim women would stand in line at the American consulate or embassy to obtain visas, carefully removing their hijabs and putting on earrings and lipstick just before entering the premises. And once they had made their pitch or filled out the right forms, upon existing removed those earrings, wiped off that lipstick, and put back that hijab.

Yet in my innocence I asked why the Hagia Sophia could not be made again into a church. They looked at me as if I simply had not understood, could not understand, Turkish reality. What seemed to me (and some other Western guests) a perfectly reasonable thing to do, struck them as a fantastic request. “If we did that,” the most vocal among the Turkish hosts replied, “we would have a revolution on our hands.”

I began to understand that even in “secular” Turkey, Kemalist Turkey, the Turkey for which Bernard Lewis had offered such a stout defense, was not the Turkey that Westerners imagine. The Turkey for which several figures recently prominent in the Administration once worked as registered foreign agents, was not the real Turkey. Turkey remained deeply Muslim, and one has only to turn to the astonishing apologetics of Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu (google his name, and “Jihadwatch” for more), a prominent historian of Ottoman science and now the Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Countries, to see that the standards one normally applies cannot be applied in the case of many prominent Turkish academics. Filial piety, loyalty to Islam, simply clouds the mind and leads to the uttering of and belief in all sorts of nonsense.

[cuts again]

Well, I’ll give you my opinion, Hugh.

Here is what I would be in Iraq for (I’ve said this before many times on JW) — and that would be to make up for the shortcomings of our “allies” like Turkey when it comes to the use of our own bases. Indeed, we should pull out of the carnage that is continuing in the streets of Baghdad and the rest of Iraq as soon as possible, but only when we have the proper targets in Iran calculated and sighted.

Airbases in Afghanistan and Iraq, the “thumb and first finger” pinching Iran in-between. Artillery. Missiles. We don’t require permission any longer from Turkey to use our force within striking distance on Iran, because those bases in Turkey are simply no longer relevant. Our striking power no longer is having to come from just carriers or through the “good wishes” of sovereign nations under the sway of France or Islam. Being in Iraq and Afghanistan should have been parts of a longterm strategy. I believe they still might be.

I could be wrong. We might be training morons in our academies, but I somehow doubt that. The more likely scenario is that politicians are calling too many of the shots, and have been, and are holding the leash tight. And that’s why we’re in this current mess. I don’t believe that our military commanders wish to coddle the Islamists the way they are being forced to, or again, they are training fools at West Point.

The current policing of Iraq, the “troop surge”, needs to brutal and efficient and relentless. It needs to crush the enemy wherever he hides and drive the remainder fleeing for their lives to the borders.

And then we need to turn our eyes to Iran. Like it or not, we can not delay much longer. Iranian nuclear facilities must be destroyed at the very least. And if I was in charge, and I had firm proof of Iranian hands being dirty in the deaths of Americans these past 5 years (and possibly longer) then I would order air strikes upon Tehran itself and hit whatever compounds the Islamic leadership under Ahmadinejad and the current Ayatollah reside in.

At the same time I would strike Syria. Yes, Syria.

But, I have never been one to muck around when provoked. Perhaps it’s a good thing for the Islamists that I’m not in charge. However, I’m still young, so they shouldn’t get too comfortable. If Barack Obama has a shot at the Presidency, you never know who might end up in the White House someday. Not that I want the job, but I do a lot of things each day now that I don’t like because I love the United States, so I’m just saying — stranger things have happened.

Senator Foehammer has a nice ring to it.

*chuckles*

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