Posted on 08/10/2006 7:48:43 AM PDT by cdga5for4
Is Iran planning an apocalyptic strike against Israel and/or the United States for August 22? If so, what should the U.S. do to protect Americans and our ally? Such questions are worrying a growing number of officials in the White House, at the CIA, and at the Pentagon, and for good reason.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
I imagine those Iranian revolutionaries are on a pretty short deadline right now.
Will it be like the other Apocalyptic dates that have come and gone??
"In recent days, Ahmadinejad and his advisers have said that Iran will answer the world regarding the future of its nuclear program on August 22. That happens to be a very significant date for Muslims: It is the anniversary of the supposed 'night flight' by Mohammed from Saudi Arabia to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to heaven and back again. There is a worry that Ahmadinejad is planning some sort of apocalyptic attack as his 'response' on August 22. If so, time is short and the clock is ticking."
I've read them. I liked the first three. They aren't really deep, and the character development isn't great, but he understands the region and its issues very, very well. I'm really looking forward to his non-fiction book, Epicenter. I thought of his first four books, The Copper Scroll, his latest, was a little too Left Behindish. Some of the stuff in his first two books is amazing because the foresight on his part is remarkable. The interesting part of his newest two books is the Ezekiel 38 and 39 prophesies. I'm not saying the guys Tom Clancy by any stretch but he gets it and I support him because of that fact alone.
It isn't really Lewis's premise. He was kind of late getting in on it.
It's been written about for weeks (months?) since it was first mentioned by Ahmadinejad. (in June?)
But thanks for posting this.
Probably, but I think this one is different because this one is an evil man trying to create the apocalypse on August 22, rather than God.
bump
You're right. I apologize. Lewis brought it even more to the fore because of his history and profile.
Wow. I totally believe that Joel Rosenberg isn't trying to sell any books right about now. Since Mr. Rosenberg is a pre-Trib rapture kind of guy, I wonder what a "cataclysmic" event would do to his faith if he's not whisked away on August 21st?
Article here on the subject you might be interested in also, "The Missiles of 27 Rajab"
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23578
What will happen on AUG22 is new threats issued by Iran and they might be nuclear threats where they declare they have some nuclear tipped missiles. There will be no nuclear strike on AUG22 because Islamics much prefer stealth ambushes and sneak attacks.
Worst case scenario on AUG22 is Iran says Israel must back off doing A B or C because Iran will nuke them or already has a nuke secreted somewhere in Tel Aviv
Check out:
"The Middle East"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684832801/sr=1-2/qid=1155222095/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-8008250-3311049?ie=UTF8&s=books
Also:
"What Went Wrong..."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060516054/sr=1-1/qid=1155222163/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-8008250-3311049?ie=UTF8&s=books
There is more, here is an Amazon comment on from What Went Wrong...
Occidentalism, a recent New York Review of Books article, is destined to become the landmark counterpoint to Orientalism, Edward Said's dishonest 1976 theory. Avishai Margalit and Ian Buruma define a cluster of anti-Western and anti-American ideas that played a large role in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The haters see "arrogance, feebleness, greed, depravity, and decadence" as peculiarly Western or American traits, which they believe must be stamped out.
Islamist anti-Western ideas, rooted in fascism, mirror those of Hirohito's Japan, and of course, Hitler's Germany. Jorge Semprun's 1997 Literature or Life also notes the similarity between the two ideologies. He doesn't develop that point, but I was reaching the same conclusion when articles by Benjamin Netanyahu, Bernard Lewis and Daniel Pipes, among others confirmed my thinking. In exploring Islamism's ideological predecessors, Occidentalism serves as a brilliant companion to Bernard Lewis' equally brilliant book.
Readers familiar with Efraim and Inari Karsh's superb Empires of the Sand or David Fromkin's Peace to End All Peace may have an easier time absorbing myriad historical events in Lewis' thin but substantive volume. One need not know the history to understand what he says, however.
Lewis explains not the Islamists' anti-Western ideas, but the background for them. The history of Islamic defeats at the hands of the West--in trade, technology, printing, science, philosophy, political development, modernization, diplomacy, war--stretches back 600 years. In 1502 Venice warned the Ottoman Sultans of the threat posed to the spice trade by the sea route Vasco de Gama had opened up between Europe and Asia. The Ottomans ignored the warning, just as they ignored many other problems, and the Muslim East eventually felt the results.
To a Westerner this might seem odd. As Lewis has previously pointed out, Muslim peoples are both shaped by their history and keenly aware of it. The Muslim pulpit, schools, and media nourish the people's sense of history. While often slanted and inaccurate, teachings frequently reference events and personalities of the 7th century. But where in the West, historians consider the past partly to avoid repeating it, the Muslim East historically took different lessons from historical study. In Medieval times, Muslims wrote "vast, rich and varied historical literature," none of it on non-Muslims or even on pre-Muslim regional history.
Lewis reviews both events centuries before the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the cultural incompatibility which colonial powers carried into the region. The British and French constitutional and parliamentary systems for example collapsed in places unable to understand or support them. The fascist ideological and political systems of 1930s Germany and Italy, on the other hand, gained wide support and rooted, even after those countries were defeated in World War II.
Lewis covers myriad other cultural gaps as well. These include widely divergent attitudes on everything from women and science to music. Namik Kemal, a leader of the Young Ottomans, in 1867 expounded on the need to liberate and educate women and an Egyptian named Qasim Amin expanded the views in 1899. Concubinage fell by the wayside; Polygomy is now rare except in Arabia. (Slavery is still practiced in several Arab countries.) But Lewis notes that women's rights have become, for traditionalists, a noxious symbol of Westernization which must be barred from Islam, "and where it has already entered, must be ruthlessly excised."
Profound differences also occur over separation of faith and state. In Islam, the two are inseparable. In the Christian West, they can and must be separated. Even the sense of time and space is different. Arabs may have divided the day into 24 hours, but as they gradually imported mechanical clocks from Europe, they still had to be reset daily according to an old tradition and locally-made clocks lagged those of Europe.
Even the approaches to modernity differ sharply. Within a broad historical perspective, Lewis writes, "cultural innovation is not and has never been the monopoly of one region or people. The same is true of resistance to it." In short, neither the West nor Islam has a monopoly on success or failure.
But Lewis nevertheless believes that for the Muslim Middle East, things have "gone badly wrong. Compared with its millennial rival, Christendom, the world of Islam had become poor, weak, and ignorant." By the 19th century, as modernizers focused on military, economic and political reforms, results in Islam were disappointing. Quests for victory led to military defeats. Economic development nevertheless left whole nations impoverished, corrupt, in need of external aid and largely dependent on one resource--oil. Remedies failed. And the rise in nationalism--another European import--allowed and even encouraged Arabs to blame others for their failures. This included blaming Jews, and after 1948, Israel.
If Lewis is right, the war now facing Western nations has roots in the 15th century. The current path could make the suicide bomber a metaphor for the Middle East. That would lead to yet another alien domination. The alternative, Lewis concludes, is for Muslims to "abandon grievance and victimhood, settle their differences, and join their talents, energies and resources in a common endeavor" to again make the region "a major center of civilization."
Joel C. Rosenberg writes novels?
Currently they take folks suffering from clinical depression and prescribe the "suicide belt".
Now a device with a name like this, in the West, might be thought of as some sort of restraint to keep someone from hurting himself. In the Middle East it's viewed as a method for going to Heaven quickly.
A little Prozac blended into the public water supplies and wells would go a long way toward resolving this.
Satan has already done what he will do. The Apocalypse will be by the hand of Man per instruction by Satan.
IMHO, Ahmadinejad is f**king with us about 8/22. Unless he's made an alliance with Russia and/or China to back him up if he attacks (very unlikely), he has no chance of success and he knows it. After all, why attack us or Israel directly and galvanize American and Israeli support for a massive counter-strike when he's achieving 'success' via his 'mini-wars' by proxy in Iraq and Lebanon?
Of course, 'success' in these 'mini-wars' is assured when the so-called 'world community' attempts to force a premature ceasefire in Lebanon which leaves Hezbollah in place, and the Left in America attempts to force a premature bug out of American forces from Iraq. As long as Iran plays that game, they're in the driver's seat on their way to nukes because of our damned political correctness which is preventing us from acting pre-emptively against them. Iran will stall until they have a substantial nuke arsenal built up before they'd consider using them: I doubt very much if they're at that point, but you never know ...
The name of the horse was Buraq
There is an airline called Buraq
And Saddam modified the SA-3 was to be used to produce the Baraq missle (http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/missile/rumsfeld/pt2_katz2.htm )
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.