Egyptian girl dies in circumcision

Sat Aug 11, 7:50 PM ET

CAIRO, Egypt – A 13-year-old Egyptian girl has died during a circumcision operation, two months after the death of another girl prompted health officials to ban the widespread traditional procedure, local media said Saturday.

These people have such a fucked-up, medieval concept of “virtue” that they willingly rob their daughters of their sexuality by ripping out their clitorises.

But the subject of this rant is how the mainstream media wraps these barbaric atrocities in euphemisms:

Female circumcision. Say it enough and it sounds almost harmless, like removing a boy’s foreskin. No big deal. Circumcision. Ho hum, move along. That’s the power of a euphemism. Use an easier, softer, gentler word or phrase. Wrap a horrible barbarity in a euphemism, and you can make it sound almost normal.

Of course, the word “circumcision” is meaningless when applied to a female, because circumcision refers to the foreskin — something females don’t have. You might as well start calling castration a male hysterectomy.

“Female circumcision” is nothing but a made-up, bullshit word.

How about you reporters start calling it what it is:

Imagine cutting off half a boy’s penis so he doesn’t feel sexual sensations anymore, and imagine performing this horrible GENITAL MUTILATION to preserve the boy’s “virtue”. The same basic thing is being inflicted on these girls by their families. But the reporters don’t call it female GENITAL MUTILATION. They call it “female circumcision”.

The first step in stopping the problem is facing it. And to do that, you need to be able to describe it using accurate language.

Or, maybe it’s because of the stunning incompetence of the Republican Party. With a Republican Congress and Republican Presidency, there was an opportunity for great things (or, at least things that didn’t suck as badly as Democratic things). Instead, we got a bunch of stupidity. They passed on many opportunities to do something constructive, like fix Social Security, build a damned wall against Mexico, or undo some the damage of the Clinton years. They did none of those things. But you could definitely count on them to stick their noses where they didn’t belong, like between a doctor and her patient’s uterus. And they got more excited about some brain-dead woman in Florida than about making sure I’m not throwing my salary away on social services that won’t be there when I retire.

The one truly constructive thing they did was allow the moronic “assault weapons” ban to expire. Of course, that accomplishment simply required them to do nothing.

And what about fiscal discipline? In 1994, the Republicans replaced a thoroughly corrupted Democratic Congress that pissed money away to their cronies while not giving a flying fuck about the rest of us. And in 2006… the Democrats replaced a thoroughly corrupted Republican Congress that pissed money away to their cronies while not giving a flying fuck about the rest of us. And, what do I expect this newfangled Democratic Congress to do? Why, piss money away to their cronies and not give a flying fuck about the rest of us! New boss, same as the old boss. I think it’s time to explore term limits.

When the Republicans weren’t doing stupid things, they allowed the Democrats to paint them as doing stupid things. “Bush lied about Iraqi WMDs!” is the classic example here. “Bush Lied” is itself the big lie. The entire world agreed that Iraq was a WMD threat before the war. Now that the war has gone south (thanks largely to the Iraqis themselves), many people are simply practicing selective memory. The problem here is that the Republicans have not pushed back against this disinformation. They’ve sat on their asses and allowed the Left’s “Bush Lied” meme to become accepted in political discourse. Stupid!

As it turns out, Saddam did have WMDs, just not in the amounts the world had feared. People can be forgiven for missing all the press coverage of chemical munitions, chlorine bombs, and nuclear technical documents, since, um, the press hasn’t been covering it (that goes against the “Bush Lied” meme, after all). Essentially, Saddam was bluffing about the size of his WMD capability, and he didn’t expect the United States to call his bluff. After all, we hadn’t called the bluff in the Clinton years.

As for the war itself, “mismanaged” seems to be a good euphemism. General Petraeus seems to be going in the right direction with classic counter-insurgency tactics, if reports from embedded milbloggers are any indication. Too bad we didn’t do that in 2004. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

As for the Muslims — especially the Arab Muslims — all I can say is that’s a pretty fucked up religion. Most religions, especially the Abrahamic ones, are intrinsically messed up anyhow, but Islam takes the cake — hence its elevation to “fucked up”. And I’m not going to qualify or justify that statement; the Muslims do that themselves. There is a significant number of complete whackos in that faith, and the rest of them are simply enablers that do nothing to contain their whacko brethren. Westerners who still buy into the “Religion of peace” baloney after all the bloodshed perpetrated by Muslims all the way back to Muhammad are just willfully ignorant.

Maybe there’s still hope for those people. The kinder side of me still holds out hope. Our efforts to build a democratic Iraq are ultimately based upon that hope. But many days I have my doubts.

So it’s safe to say that I feel let-down. I’ve been let down by a Republican Congress that stank as badly as the Democrats they replaced. I’ve been let down by a bunch of Shiites that are more interested in settling scores than building a country.

And I’ve been thoroughly embarrassed by George W Bush, whom I confidently voted for, twice. It’s not that he’s an idiot. It’s that he’s stubborn and a very poor communicator, which together are essentially fatal bugs. I guess that when the Queen of England (or Helen Mirren, anyhow) declares that she “was a mechanic during the ‘war’”, she was referring to the American Revolutionary War. I wish John McCain had won the 2000 primaries. Or Joe Lieberman, for that matter.

I fully expect the new Democratic Congress to stink, and I also give the Democrats about a 70% chance of winning the White House in 2008. Trying to make things somewhat better by debating politics right now is somewhat akin to standing on the beach and commanding the tide not to come in — I expect to get all wet. And since no one else reads this blog anyhow, I expect it to be all wet on an empty beach.

In any case, all of the bloggers in my blogroll are better political writers than I am. Go read.

Conjecture 1: Terrorism has lowered the nuclear threshold.

Summary: The nuclear threshold — the point in which we attack (or counter-attack) with nuclear weapons — is crossed when an enemy has both the capability and the intent to use nuclear weapons against us. During the Cold War, the Soviets obviously had the capability to destroy America, but not the intent (in the face of certain retaliation). September 11 has shown that the Islamists have the intent, but they don’t yet have the capability. This has lowered the nuclear threshold, since if the Islamists get their hands on nuclear weapons, they fully intend to use them against us, and we’ll be forced to respond.

Conjecture 2: Obtaining WMDs will destroy Islam

Summary: As long as their capability remained, the Islamists would continue to attack America, even in the face of retaliation. Further, even if we wanted to negotiate a peace or surrender, there is no central Islamic authority we could even talk to. Such a scenario would eventually require us to annihilate the entire Muslim world. Wretchard: “The so-called strengths of Islamic terrorism: fanatical intent; lack of a centralized leadership; absence of a final authority and cellular structure guarantee uncontrollable escalation once the nuclear threshold is crossed.” And even if every non-Muslim were dead, they would then turn on each other with their new-found weaponry.

Conjecture 3: The War on Terror is the ‘Golden Hour’ — the final chance

Summary: The fate of the Muslim world very much depends on destroying the Islamists before they achieve nuclear capability. It is ironic that an American victory in the Global War on Terror is the best hope the Muslim world has.

Then there’s the the Postscript to the Three Conjectures, and the follow-on Fourth Conjecture. And of course there’s Den Beste’s response and disagreement with Conjecture 2. Wretchard then responds to Den Beste.

2.Thou shall remember that millions of Muslims in Europe have far more rights than non-Muslims in Arab/Muslim lands (for more info, contact the Christian villagers of el-Udaysaat) So quit playing the victim here. I simply don’t buy it.

4.Thou shall understand that the West gets their info on Islam not from your preaching nor from the books you translate to them but from your actions.

10.Your leaders should know that what was OK in the year 706 might not be OK in the year 2006. I won’t get upset if you changed a few things in the laws and regulations as long as you continue to profess faith in me, pray to me, fast during Ramadan, give alms, and perform Hajj if you’re capable of doing so.

A new prophet, perhaps? Now we just need it translated to Arabic!

Christianity experienced its dark ages, but finally emerged with the Enlightenment and the notion that religion and governance should be kept separate.

Islam is in its dark ages now, and with modern technology (none of which was invented by Muslims) linking the entire world together, they have the ability to take the rest of us down with them.

Islam must reform. They must have an Enlightenment, as their Christian brothers did. We can help; progress and elections in Iraq gives me hope that at least part of the Muslim world is ready and capable. But if reform in the Middle East is a failure, and Islam continues to threaten us, then we will have no choice but to destroy them.

Newsweek reported on May 8 that US personnel at Guantanamo Bay desecrated the Koran as an interrogation tactic, which has sparked rioting and calls for jihad (que scary music) in Afghanistan:

Newsweek magazine said in its May 9 edition investigators probing abuses at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay found that interrogators “had placed Qurans on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book down the toilet.”

Apparently they didn’t stop to think about the fact that it is physically impossible to flush any book down a toilet–even a book as shitty as the Koran.

Idiots.

Sure enough, this apparently occurred to someone at Newsweek, as they are now backing off the story. Of course, people had to die before they pulled their heads out.

Idiots.