The Unobservant Fanatic

And do not kill yourselves, surely God is most Merciful to you.

Mohammed in the Koran.

The Prophet said, "He who commits suicide by throttling shall keep on throttling himself in Hell Fire and he who commits suicide by stabbing shall keep on stabbing himself in the Hell-Fire.

The Hadith.

It's now reported that Al Baghdadi followed the route of the great cowards who are comfortable with sending others to their deaths, but when the time comes for them to take up the sword, use it on themselves rather than bravely face the vagarities of real combat.  Al Baghdadi therefore turns out in the end to have just as much personal moral courage as Adolph Hitler, which wasn't much.  Getting somebody to storm the bunker for the Fatherland or for the Faith is one thing. . . doing it yourself, well that's quite another.

Hitler seemed to have that courage, we'd note, before he was a full blown racist hater.  In the Great War, serving under the Kaiser, he legitimately received an Iron Cross. But at that time he was a cog on the wheel of Imperial Germany.

And that's important to note.

Al Baghdadi has been hanging around in areas where he was at risk for a 500 lbs bomb whistling in any day, just like Hitler was at risk for a 75mm shell landing in the middle of his units dinner table.  But that isn't really the same as representing vast evil hatred, encouraging others to die for it, and then, when your turn comes, blowing yourself up or putting a pistol to your head.  If French Artillery sends one into your plate of brots and bread and blows you to atoms, or if an F-16 traveling so fast that by the time you'd hear it from where you are, you're already dead, gets you, well, that's not quite as scary as taking on, with deliberation, Ivan and his PPsh or Joe and his M4.

No, it isn't.

It's not, after all, as if these guys drew their Samurai swords, or perhaps more accurately for their place and time, their MP40s or AKMs, and said "follow me boys" and went to their deaths gun blazing.  No, they said "oh crap, my stupidity has run its course, I'm turning my back on everything, because I'm a big chicken bastard".

Hitler didn't show what the Ubermensch could do.

And Al Baghdadi didn't go down fighting either.  He didn't even go down as an  observant Muslim.

Mohammed never said that when your back was against the wall and the infidels coming in, well kill yourself.

No, he wouldn't have either.

And that's an important thing to note.

There's an odd fashion with fanatic movements to look back into an idealized past and imagine  yourself in a reconstructed future version of it, where you are nifty in the extreme and the glorified past is right there in front of you in its present glory. For Nazis, that meant that the good old Germany Aryans, who were never really like the Nazis imagined them, would be in the drivers seat and being all big and blond and whatever.  For people like Lenin, the good old working man would come into his own in a preternatural way and work would be cool, nifty and if Soviet Realism is any example, it would also apparently feature a lot of buxom blonds as well.  For people like Al Baghdadi, the centuries would roll back, a Caliphate would be created, and men would be in the driver's seat taking women as they pleased, apparently, who would be happy to receive them.

Odd.

And they were happy to have people fight for that.  They just weren't willing to fight themselves (with a bit of a pass for Lenin, who didn't kill himself after all).

There's something really narcissistic in all that.

And in Al Baghdadi's case, there's something deeply antithetical to his faith in it as well.  I'm certainly not a scholar of Islam and I'm also not a fan of it, but Muhammad did live at a time when prisoners of war didn't exist in the modern sense and slavery remained common.  I can't and won't sanction Islam's treatment of women, but I'm not really too sure that Muhammad, were he around today, would really be sanctioning enslavement of women for sexual purposes.  I doubt it.

And I'm sure he wouldn't sanction killing yourself.

Assuming that he'd approve of anything Al Baghdadi did, which is pretty doubtful, at the end he'd probably expect him to take up his sword and go down fighting.  This assumes that he wouldn't have found Al Baghdadi to be a scary nut in the first place, which is probably more likely.

A person's actions are, of course, a test of their belief.  And now we know.  As a Muslim, well. . . he could claim the title of Caliph with dubious qualifications, but he certainly didn't measure up in terms of radiance.

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi apparently killed by U.S/Kurdish strikes in Syria

Ironies abound.

We've recently been hearing how a U.S. presence in Syria isn't necessary anymore (and I'll concede that I both didn't think we should be in Syria in the fist place but, having gone in, we shouldn't leave and abandon the Kurds).

Now we find that Syria is hotter, ISIL wise, than we supposed.

And we've gotten Al Baghdadi, in a joint operation with the Kurds.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is the leader of ISIL.  Not a huge amount about him is known other than that.  He's an Iraqi by birth and had some university education, apparently being a student of Islamic law while attending university.

ISIL started off as the Iraqi component of Al Queda and became active after the U.S. occupation of Iraq.  It's early history is murky but Al-Baghdadi quickly became its leader and has been ever since.  His death would therefore be roughly equivalent to that of Bin Laden's, which came about in a similar fashion.

He took his group in a highly radical direction, at least as radical as that of Al Queda, if not more so.  He proclaimed himself to be the new Caliph, a proposition that's dubious under Islamic law in his case, and found adherents for a brand of Islam that is uniquely severe.  Included in its views are the wide scale use of violence against all opponents and the routine use of violence against non Muslims.  Moreover, his group revived the line from the Koran allowing men to take concubines with "their strong right hand", although that was interpreted, apparently, to amount to forced marriage.* All sorts of horrors have accordingly resulted.

Al-Baghdadi has an odd connection with the U.S. in that he was the apparent direct detainer of American Christian relief worker Kayla Mueller.  Mueller was working with Syrian refugees in Syria but stunned Doctors Without Borders when she showed up with a Syrian boyfriend in Aleppo.  They put her on a bus back to Turkey the next day but it was ambushed and she was taken prisoner and forcibly married to Al-Baghdadi who reportedly repeatedly raped her while she was his captive.  ISIL attempted to force her to renounce Christianity while she was a captive, which she would not do.** She also reportedly acted as a protector and sympathetic ear for younger captive "brides" of Al-Baghdadi.  She was later a casualty of a Coalition air strike.

All of things brings a number of points to the forefront right at the point in which there may still be time to do something about them, even though its highly unlikely the United States under the current administration will.

This raid took place in northwestern Syria, the very region we're currently pulling out of.  While ISIL is an opponent of the Syrian regime in Damascus, our withdrawal or quasi withdrawal is to that regime's benefit.  What would have occurred if Damascus completely reasserted its sovereignty on the portions of the country not occupied by Turkey and Russia isn't clear.

Murkier yet is what would have happened had this are been occupied by the Turks.  The Turks have shown a surprising level of ambivalence recently in regard to Islamic extremist and their occupation of what amounts to an expansion of their border with Syria has resulted in ISIL adherents being freed and the insertion of radical Islamic Syrian militias.  If Al-Baghdadi's enclave had been found in their territory, which is admittedly unlikely, what would have we done?  This points out that even with the U.S. out, we're much better off with the Turks also not in.

That would raise again my point about UN Peacekeepers.  Not that this is going to happen.
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*I'm certain many current Muslims would dispute that the Koran allows the taking of captive sex slaves but the fact of the matter is that it was at one time highly common in Islam and there is in fact a line in the Koran allowing Mohammed's male combatant adherents to have sex with women captives.  I'm  not a scholar on the topic so what the current counters to that within Islam are, I don't know.

In ISIL's case, however, the practice was widespread and apparently limited in the way it was originally was, i.e., the captives are non Muslims when forced into the relationship.  The Koran, however, may sanction taking slaves in that fashion (I don't think it actually requires the captor to marry the slave) but it doesn't appear to actually sanction rape.  That may seem like a distinction without a difference, but its noted here anyhow.  I.e., a woman forced into captivity in the ancient world in the role of  sex slave probably doesn't have a lot of choice in what she does.

ISIL does seem to depart in requiring that there be a "marriage" in these circumstances.  However, in the Christian view of marriage, no such marriage would exist as marriage requires consent of both parties and always has.

**The entire Mueller story was an example of monumentally bad reporting by the American press.

Mueller was only in Turkey as she was a Christian.  She'd previously gone to Guatemala in the same role.  However, Mueller was a Protestant of the supposedly unaffiliated type.

This particular topic is really badly reported in general as "unaffiliated" Christians in fact are affiliated, as they fit into the loose  American protestant tradition. This means that they aren't part of one of the "main line" Protestant faiths, but the "unaffiliated" churches are in fact fairly uniform in their theology and are affiliated, even if they don't realize it.

Her Christian status was nearly completely ignored by the Press.

As was the fact that she was naive.  Apparently the courage of her convictions really showed while she was a captive, but she never should have been where she was in the first place.

October 27, 1919. President Wilson Vetoed The Volstead Act.

The Act that was set to make Prohibition the law of the land and thereby bring teeth into the recently passed Constitutional Amendment.

The House of Representatives overrode the veto on this very same day.

Wilson's veto was based on the inclusion of enforcement of wartime prohibition which he felt was now unnecessary, therefore his objection was essentially technical.

My life has been running a lot like today's 1919 Gasoline Alley cartoon:

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Anne Catholic Church, Big Piney Wyoming

Churches of the West: St. Anne Catholic Church, Big Piney Wyoming:

St. Anne Catholic Church, Big Piney Wyoming

This is St. Anne's Catholic Church in Big Piney, Wyoming.  The church was built in 1934.

Best post of the week of October 20, 2019.

The best posts of the week of October 20, 2019.

What about meat? Lex Anteinternet: Foods, Seasons, and our Memories. Part 3. A Hundred Years Ago.

The election north of the border. The 2019 Canadian Election.

The Telephonic Fifth Degree

Librarian, Kentucky 1936.

The Clearance Dilemma

The 2007 Dodge in the high country.

I have a 2007 Dodge 3500 4x4.  It's the crewcab with a long box.

It's a great truck and I have no intention of trading it away any time soon, even though my wife feels that I should be trading it in, and even though there are a few valid reasons to do so.*  Indeed, I have no intention whatsoever of getting any new vehicles in the future whatsoever.

It's been a great truck.  It's had a few problems over the years, as they all do, but by and large, as a vehicle with 180,000 miles now on it, it's been remarkably trouble free.  As I'll post here shortly in another thread, it's also been a very safe one.  It preforms very well, in that context, on highway ice and snow, and I've had it on some dicey roads to say the least.  There are things that it doesn't compare favorably to in regard to newer trucks, but there are things it compares more favorably with, in my view.  For one thing, it has a standard transmission, something which is now a thing of the past with American full sized trucks. Automatics, the favorite of urban dwellers, have taken over.

But there's one thing.

As a very long, and stock, vehicle, it doesn't have the kind of clearance that I'd like.

Another 07 in a parking lot, photographed from the cab of my 07.  This one has about the perfect tire size in my view, and is leveled (not lifted) about 2".  It looks great and has better clearance than mine.  Of course, he isn't towing any stock trailers either.  I wish I'd run up and taken a photo of the tire size.

I've whacked rocks with the front differential and slightly dented it.  And I've high centered it on snow nearly annually.

I'm tempted to try to boost the clearance, and that would mean larger tires.

It came equipped with 265/70R17s, and I have an off road (that will also do highway) example of that on now.  That tire is 31.5" in width.  It will, as is, go up one tire size. Which gives you an additional .5" of clearance.

That's right.  One half inch.

Hmmm.

High lift 1983 Dodge crewcab on a used car lot. Didn't this lift go a bit too far?  But It looks like it does have good clearance.  It also has a full sized crew cab, something that isn't the case with the 07 for some odd reason. The box here appears to be a short box, which isn't what I'd want.  The tires on this truck are likely 35" tires, maybe 40".

On the other hand, there are off road tires that will fit 17" rims that are 35" in width. And that would give me an extra 1.5".  That doesn't sound like a lot, but it may be.

40" tires are also made for 17" rims, but I'm not going there.

The father of all modern 4x4 trucks, the first generation of the Dodge WC truck from World War Two.  These had great clearance, but this 1/2 ton model was also too high and prone to roll overs.

I'm tempted to go with 35" tires, but that means the tread width is also wider, which I really don't want if it starts to impact performance.  I like narrower tires over wider.  I don't want to float on wet roads or mud.

And some people claim that if you put 35" on, you need to lift the truck or put on a leveling kit. Others claim that isn't so.

Second model of World War Two WC 4x4 truck. This 3/4 ton truck was about perfect.

What would also be the case is that it would impact the gear ratio by making it higher.  My gearing is the lowest possible but that would effectively make both 5th and 6th gears overdrives.  A person can adjust this, I think, by changing the ring and pinion gears in the axles, but I hadn't planned on really doing that.

And of course it might mean that I'd need to lift it as well, or a leveling kit that also lifted the rear.  Modern trucks are canted forward on purpose, for fuel efficiency purposes, and a leveling  kit does just that.  It lifts, probably about 2" in this case, which would be fine, but that also means if you have a trailer on the rear, it's going to have its nose in the air.

All of which leads me to believe that maybe no more than one tire size bigger, if that.

Which really won't achieve much.

The two Dodges.

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*It's starting to get some rust over a wheel well.  It has a crack on the body of the box.  My brother in law, who is a diesel mechanic by training, warns me that sooner or later it'll need some major engine work, as old as it is.  And it needs a selection of odds and ends repairs to really get it back into ship shape if I'm keeping it, and that's money into an old truck.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, released.

Laramie Wyoming. 1940 and Now.

More Broken: Was Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: It's broken. Or at least its fr...

Blog Mirror: Wyoming Then and Now. Old Main, 1940/2019

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 Old Main, University of Wyoming. March 1940 #laramie #wyoming #307 #thenandnow #history #uwyo... 

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The 2020 Election, Part 3

Turkish Sanctions Lifted

I hadn't even realized sanctions had been imposed when they came off, but President Trump lifted sanctions on Turkey that followed its invasion of northern Syria.

The invasion followed the American abandonment of the Syrian Kurds, lead by the YPK, which we've been following.  Following that, the  Turks have aligned with the Russians which are now jointly patrolling an occupied zone of northern Syria, also occupied by Syrian Islamist militias which have been executing Kurdish prisoners and releasing some ISIL affiliated ones. 

The sanctions, a type of strike back that rarely works, were supposed to address Turkish excesses in Syria and were proclaimed now unnecessary in light of a supposed cease fire worked out by the United States.  It's hard to see what deal we actually reached as the Turks achieved their goal and moved oddly closer to Russia in the mix, something they're likely to regret.  Overall, the long term results are likely to be unhappy for everyone, including the United States which comes out of the entire affair looking simply awful.  It's worst of all for the Kurds and what little democratic forces there are in Syria.

October 26, 1919. A pagent

Marie Downey Werner rehearses the role of Victory in act to be preformed for the King and Queen of Belgium. Washington Times, October 26, 1919.

On this day in 1919, the Washington Times ran photos of a pageant being practiced for the visit of the King and Queen of Belgium.

Allegorical plays, particularly featuring women, were quite popular at the time.

On monarchy, on this day in 1919, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his twin sister Ashraf were born in Persia.  He'd become the final Shah of Iran.

His story is fairly complicated, and of course his downfall lead to epic consequences.

His father was Reza Khan Pahlavi and his mother was his second wife, Tad ol-Molouk.  Khan became the first Shah of the Pahlavi Dynasty, if you can consider it that, given its short duration.  His father had been a general in the Persian Cossack Brigade that served Imperial Russia up until 1920, and the British for a time thereafter.  He was of mixed Iranian and Georgian ancestry, and his mother was from a Muslim immigrant to Persia from Georgia.  They were not royals, but that changed when his father, a military strong man who was scene as the potential savior of Persia from Bolshevism, was elevated to that role following a 1925 coup. 

The son grew up in the shadow of a domineering father who was an admirer of Hitler and who believed that showing affection to male sons encouraged homosexuality.  His mother doted on him but was highly superstitious.  He rose to power himself when his father fell after a joint Soviet British invasion in 1941 which allowed a route to be opened up through the country for supplies.  The Iranian military offered no effective resistance and the embarrassment lead to the change in governments.

The new Shaw would rule until 1979 when he'd be put to flight due to the Islamist revolution which converted the country into an "Islamic Republic", which it remains today.  His monarchy was quixotic, and was in the unenviable role of attempting to be a liberalizing reformer while ruling as a monarch.  This lead to animosity with conservative Shiia clerics which ultimately lead to his downfall.

Grand Canyon Storm, October 25, 1919.

Grand Canyon Storm, October 25, 1919.

Blog Mirror: Wyoming Then and Now. Old Main, 1940/2019

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wyomingthenandnow

Old Main, University of Wyoming. March 1940 #laramie #wyoming #307 #thenandnow #history #uwyo... 

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