Dealing with the devil

Posted by Lex, on August 29, 2006

Two years ago this August *, coalition ground troops wrested the Shi’a holy city of Najaf from Moqtada al Sadr’s mehdi army, a group of mostly Bagdhad-based thugs, louts and impoverished goons that had encamped there, threatening the clerical base of the more moderate Ayatollah Ali al Sistani. Sistani – the leading Shi’a cleric in Arabia – hewed to that sect’s tradition of separating the crerisy from mere political policy. Al Sadr, on the other hand, less invested than Sistani with theological street cred, used his revered father’s name to build a militia of his own out of human detritus of the Shi’a slums in eastern Baghdad, and sought to grasp his way to power through the barrel of a gun.

Credo

"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me."

— John Paul Jones

"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature"

— George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."

— Edmund Burke

"Μολὼν λαβέ"

— Leonidas

"Blogito Ergo Sum"

— Neptunus Lex