Hirsi Magan is a South Park carricature

Hirsi Magan (formerly Hirsi Ali) recently made a scathing accusation that the Dutch withdrawal of protection is to silence critics. While I would not put it past some of the Dutch politicians, I can understand they're fed up with Hirsi's criticism. On legal grounds she no longer has a right to protection, but on moral grounds the parliament at least provided her the money to hire guards while she lived in the US (where the Netherlands has no responsibility for her). It was made clear this was only temporarily. Yet when the funding was finally cut she started to blur the lines claiming she didn't know. I knew, and I really couldn't care less about her security.
Some people will say "but the US government isn't obliged to protect her either!". No, but maybe her boss would have arranged some security. After all, isn't he the leader of the neo-con thinktank 'Empire Enterprise Institute'? I thought such a big group would have plenty of funds or security and the need to use them. If I'm mistaken that means fortunately neo-conservatism is dying. But if EEI is just unwilling, that makes me think they want Hirsi Magan as their martyr, since Islamic Fundamentalism have the edge in this department. Time for the Islamophobes to catch up.

It seems Denmark has taken the Trojan Horse by offering her support. Seriously people, if you don't want another Jyland Posten riot, distance yourselves from Hirsi Magan! They say the Dutch government wants her out of the way, because she's become a nuisance to them. I totally agree. We have ourselves a situation here which we are trying to solve. First we get 9/11, but we could handle that. Fortuyn opened the wound. Then America compounds it by started a totally irrelevant war in Iraq and the stupid government did not oppose it. Then they kill Theo van Gogh. And finally, we get the fascist Geert Wilders spreading yet more hate. The last we need is Hirsi Magan in our country.
Yes, I do pity her somewhat. If she hadn't been raised as a Wahibi Muslim, her view of Islam may have been more moderate now. But while she supported the Fatwa on the author of "The Satanic Verses" in her youth, she now makes the equally insulting and threatening statements like "Mohammed is a pedo" and used the reductio ad hitlerum on him as well. Yeah, I know, they're statements by others, but you can bet Hirsi Magan thinks the same way. I do support her right to free speech, but she's just not using it to contribute anything useful. And the former government which fell because of her citizenship handled it all very poorly, especially her own party. But she can't feel bad, Labour is currently doing the same to an equally intolerant Islam critic.

But I simply wouldn't want to see another tax euro paid by me to be spend on her protection. She is putting this country in danger by formenting a split between Dutch and Muslims, and she does it with the same fevor as the Hofstad Groep terrorist gang. We need to root out extremists and take away their supportbase, not make potential recruits for them more suspicious of Dutch society or start persecuting Muslims.
Seriously, Hirsi's criticism sounds like a bad carricature like those on satirical cartoons like South Park or Drawn together. She's like the poo-talking atheists who say Christianity is a dangerous religion and spreads intolerance, and at the same time discuss how to best eliminate Christianity as they puke excrements out of their mouths. She's like the smug fart-smelling enviromentalists who trade in their cars for hybrids to contribute to the enviroment, but alienate and humiliate those who have not switched to cleaner cars. Or like the hippies who accuse the corporations of being all corporaty and organise a useless sit-in and music festival to fight the power.
Islam is Hirsi's Christianity. Atheism is her hybrid car. And her pointless insults are counterproductive like a sit-in about music instead of protesting corporations. Just what is the point to it? Same goes for Jami who founded a comittie for ex-Muslims. Help protect the disenchanted Muslims, don't accuse their fellow brothers of abusing the dissenters when it's the radical groups who do most of the abusing. You're not making yourselfs more popular with sceptical Muslims by calling them cultists and fools. If that's how you're treating the moderates and progressives of the group, you're taking away their incentitive to change, since they're going to be hated anyway. Why not hate back then?
Atheism is an intolerant religion. Replace words like 'zealot', 'inquisition' and 'crusader' with atheist terms, and you'll have a very shameful stereotype that reminds you of Christians at times. But don't feel bad atheists, you'll fit in snugly with all the other Abrahamic cults.

Fudge Srebrenica!

One of my continuing peeves is people blaming Dutch soldiers in Srebrenica for the massacre there. They are free of blame, they're heroes, they hurt nobody. I support these statements based on three simple facts: A) they Serbs killed the Bosnians, there are your murderers. B) Very few people could have endured in the terrible situation Srebrenica was in during the siege and stayed until the chips were down, not even Bosnia's own military which fled before the Dutchbat soldiers did. C) No incidents of friendly fire are reported with Dutch soldiers firing on allies (plenty of reports of Bosnians firing on Dutch troops though).

Really, Bosnians shouldn't whine so much. The fact is, the Dutch were willing to go there and try to stop the chaos, against an enemy who's ruthlesness wasn't even fully understood yet. They picked the worst defendable town and hoped to set a good example. Hopefully other NATO countries would follow. They did not, NATO and the UN abandoned the meagre force in Srebrenica while it was blatantly obvious the Dutch force was not defending, it was just a start. Srebrenica was actually a lost cause from the start with just 400 men. I apoligize to the people of Bosnia if we went into the breach to save your people from a genocidal, rampaging general even though his army had been underestimated. I know now that the people who stand up for a righteous cause get screwed pretty painfully.
And I know Bosnians aren't Christian (or most of them) and you might not have heard of it, but remember the ancient wisdom: "He who is without sin casts the first stone". Bosnians residents tried to gather food from local farming towns. Serbian farming towns. The escorts these gatherers got were armed. The Serbs did not trust them (and who would trust an armed company of men saying they're there to collect your food?). So most of these trips ended up as bloodbaths. Whoever put the Bosnians in the victim role clearly wants to make sense of the Balkan where there are no good or bad guys. This is not like WW2 with two sides: one evil and one not evil. There is a lot of rivalry, defensive nationalism, state nationalism and religious intolerance all over the region which has much to do with conflict dating back to the time of the Habsburg Austrian Empire and the Ottoman Sultanate. This is a region full of loonies that are responsible for mind boggling wars and attrocities.
And who is going to be surprised they ran? There was no fuel, no food, no water. Any sane person would have fled already. High command did little to alleviate the problems, so the soldiers had been deserted by their officers for once. What's worse is that the only fatal attack on Dutch troops came from the Bosnian army, not the Serbians! Seriously, if these are the kind of people you are defending, they next time they need help I say we ignore them even if it was the devil himself bringing his reign on earth starting with Sarajevo.
Do I blame the French and British for not having been able to prevent the Netherlands from falling to the German army resulting in five long years of fear, starvation and murder? I blame only Adolf Hitler and anyone who believed in that sociopathic dogma called National Socialism. Why then are Bosnians blaming Dutch troops why tried to help, but were severely outmatched, just like the Allies back then?

Yes, I know people are going to bring up Colonel Karremans. He might be a flip-flopping coward, but a whole company doesn't have to suffer for that right? I know being a soldier is a big responsibility. But nobody should carry responsibility for the maniacal reign of violence caused by the Serbian forces besides those part of it. I think even a lot of Serbs are not strong enough to bear such a burden.
If it makes up for it, at least the Republika Srpska acknowledges the attrocity in Srebrenica. And it along with Serbia see the warcriminals involved as a liability now, which means there is hope for a coming to terms. Have the Bosnians ever apoligized for the much less important skirmishes between civilians? Minor attrocities would seem easier to come clean about I'd think.

If you ask me, that fudging country is good for only one things: Ion cannon strikes!

On the verge of an Turko-Iraq war?

I hope so. I can't say I like either country on a political level. The only ethnic group in Iraq which I believe you can make deals with are Kurds. Sunnis on average still are the most sympathetic to Saddam Hussein, and a Sunni dominated Iraq would thus be little but a regime change, and hardly democratic to the other groups. Shi'ites may seem like a nice group to support being the victims of Saddam and all. But this is as dangerous as liberating Israel for Jews solely because of Adolf Hitler. The Shi'ites are on good terms with Iran. I'm not an Iran-bashing type, but their theocratic government is no way to model a country. Not Iran, not Iraq. But the Shi'ites seem more inclined to form a theocracy in Iraq.
Ruling these out, you're left with the Kurds, and they are at least as sticky. There are Kurdish minorities all around the region. Not just Iraq and Turkey. I think Iran and Syria would want to have a say in the whole Kurdish problem. The west would lose their allies Turkey and Iraq and gain a fledgling ally in the region. One that would even be very hard to defend against enemies from all sides.

My previous evils analysis of Iraq goes to Turkey as well, in a way. Just months ago everybody was protesting the Islamization of Turkey by Gul and Erdogan, especially the Turkish military. In the west, military involvement in politics is viewed with great suspicion, and rightly so. But Turkey's military maintains strong ties to the past and specifically Kemal Ataturk, the first president and a secularist. Since Islamization is distrusted by the west to, the Turkish military would sound like 'the enemy of my enemy'.
But it's more complicated. While Erdogan has proven to be a genocide denier, the military is that by default. The bill recently passed in the USA came under heavy attack by both powers, as well as the White House, which needs Turkey as a whole as an ally. While you could support the military against Islamization, there's nothing in Turkey that you can support against state nationalism. Armenian (and Assyrian) genocide recognition earns you the attention of radical nationalists who solve dissent with murder much like terrorists with Fatwas. Turkish nationalists (and there's a lot of them) will treat much like you're a neo-Nazi in Germany. This stubborn and dangerous nationalism goes through all layers or Turkish society and it can be blamed for the Cyprus question, since Turkey does not acknowledge Greek controlled Cyprus, just Turkish Cyprus which was illegally invaded.

What these nationalists need is a little bit of humble pie. The Germans got it after World War 2 and they don't deny anything. I think the Serbs are also starting to take hints, even in the complex diplomatic web of the Balkan. But countries like Japan or Turkey have a hard time acknowledging their crimes. I can understand that because they may be afraid the actions of the past reflect on them now. Even I think the Indonesian conflicts of the Netherlands are sad, but necessary (I still see Soekarno as a creepy fellow with his own brand of state nationalism which is why islands that did not join his republic willingly were invaded). But it would be better for Turkey to come clean and then we can all relate to eachother on equal terms. It's not like any European Union member is without genocidal incidents or cases of mass murder and unnecessary violence. Well, Norway maybe. But Scandinavians are perfect for a reason.

So yeah, I hope this blows up in Turkey's face and (Kurdish) Iraq retaliates. It will kill two birds in one stone: the state nationalistic Turks and that arrogant George Bush who thought this war was a good idea. A war at this point will be most disruptive for Iraq, just as Dubya's clique was hoping to score points on the Betrayus report. Yeah I know, it's not nice to wish this on Iraqis now that they are so down and the whole region is at a turning point. I wish it was the neo-cons who lived in Iraq. The only IEDs we can expect from them in the US are October surprises, fillibustering, vetos and dirty politics.