Year: 2004

So South Africa was awarded the honour of hosting the 2010 Soccer World Cup, the first time the tournament has gone to an African nation.

South Africa, which narrowly lost out to Germany in the race to host the 2006 World Cup, was chosen ahead of a trio of north African bids from Morocco, Egypt and Libya.

Former president Nelson Mandela, who had made an emotive case for South Africa’s bid on Friday, climbed on to the stage and joyfully lifted the World Cup trophy.

Tunisia already pulled out it’s bid for the 2010 World Cup a few days ago.

[More: CNN]

At a time when the Western world worries about weapons of mass destruction in terrorist hands, a more basic device has emerged as the weapon of choice – a life itself.

Data shows that the incidence of suicide attacks has increased from 31 in the 1980s to 98 in 2003 alone. The war in Iraq and escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have led to such an increase. Also, US foreign policy may be contributing to an acceleration of this trend.

In a ground-breaking study, University of Chicago political scientist Robert Papp has shown that there is little connection between religious fundamentalism and suicide attacks. The leading instigators of suicide attacks between 1980 and 2001 were the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a nationalist group whose members, though from Hindu families, are adamantly opposed to religion. Religion does not play as large a role as it is normally accorded.

Papp’s study shows that suicide attacks follow a strategic logic designed to coerce modern liberal democracies into making political and territorial concessions. “Terrorists have learned that it pays,” leading to a rise in suicide attacks over the past two decades, according to Papp.

After reviewing psychological studies of suicide attackers, University of Michigan psychologist Scott Atran concluded that suicide attackers have no appreciable psychological pathologies and are as educated and economically well-off as the surrounding populations. To understand why nonpathological individuals volunteer to become suicide attackers we must focus on situational factors, which are largely sociological in nature. In the the Middle East, these include a collective sense of historical injustice, political subservience and a pervasive sense of social humiliations vis-a-vis global powers and their allies.

To eliminate suicide attacks ultimately requires addressing and lessening the grievances of populations that carry them out.

I totally agree…

[Source: Electronic Intifada]

In a series of interviews in the Washington Post, senior American army officers have openly expressed doubts about whether the United States will win.

Major General Charles Swannack, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division which was in western Iraq for much of the past year, said that tactically the US was winning but when asked if overall it was losing, replied: “I think strategically we are.”

Colonel Paul Hughes, the first director of strategic planning in Iraq after the war, whose brother died in Vietnam said: “Here I am, 30 years later, thinking we will win every fight and lose the war, because we don’t understand the war we are in.”

A senior general at the Pentagon who chose te remain unknown said he believes the United States is already on the road to defeat. “It is doubtful we can go on much longer like this,” he said. “The American people may not stand for it — and they should not.”

Asked who was to blame, this general pointed directly at Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. “I do not believe we had a clearly defined war strategy, end state and exit strategy before we commenced our invasion,” he said. “Had someone like Colin Powell been the chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff], he would not have agreed to send troops without a clear exit strategy. The current OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] refused to listen or adhere to military advice.”

So, obviously some people think that the Nick Berg decapitation video is a fake.

Here are some of the questions some raised about the video:

• The timing of the video’s release – guaranteed to divert attention from the outrage over US abuse of Iraqis.
• Why Nick Berg was wearing an orange jumpsuit
  

As everyone already knows from the news yesterday, a video posted on an al Qaeda-linked Web site showed the beheading of Nicholas Berg, a freelance communications worker from Pennsylvania, USA.

The Web site said the killing was carried out by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a top ally of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

I didn’t post about this yesterday even though it’s the first thing I read in the news, simply because I wanted it to move around in my head for a while before I do.

I think it’s very disturbing and wrong.

They’re painting this as an act of revenge for what was and is still being done to Iraqis, and that’s one cause that a lot of people will relate to, but still I don’t think they’ll agree with the manner it was done.

Islam is against such acts and strictly forbids them even in times of war, no matter what the circumstances are.
Islam teaches people to treat hostages and prisoners of war humanely and with dignity and respect, and that’s a long time before the Geneva conventions ever existed.

I think that the anger and resistance are justified but that acts of beheading and mutilation are so wrong and unjustified no matter what.

I just found this interesting article by Howard Fineman for Newsweek called “Running Against Osama bin Laden”.

He writes:

George W. Bush’s political handlers are obsessed with a date on the calendar. It’s not Sept. 11 or Nov. 2. It is June 30 — the day of the “handover,” when America’s role in Iraq is supposed to begin winding down. Swing voters who have been withholding judgment about the war want to see if the “transition” produces stability in Iraq and a reduction in American casualties, a key Bush adviser told me. “That’s a critical time,” he said. “It could set the tone for the rest of the race.”

[…]

This is the sound of wishful thinking… They are not in control of events, and neither are our few allies on the ground in Iraq. Osama bin Laden is in charge. He’s the other “candidate” in this presidential race.
And he’s winning.

[…]

Bin Laden’s bet was, and is, that the United States is too weak-willed and economically vulnerable to last for long in a war against jihadis motivated by centuries of hatred for the West.

I think he’s overdoing it a bit and oversizing Osama Bin Laden’s actual weight, but still it’s interesting to explore this line of thought and see how much power certain people or groups can have over elections.

My son Arik was murdered when he was a soldier by Palestinian fighters. He was not murdered because he was Jewish, but because he is part of the nation that occupies the territory of another.

I know these are concepts that are unpalatable, but I must voice them loud and clear, because they come from my heart – the heart of a father whose son did not get to live because his people were blinded with power.

— Yitzhak Frankenthal, I Would Have Done The Same.

[Via Lawrence of Cyberia]