Well, anyone that doubts this hasn't studied their history books or genetics texts. Race trumps ethnicity.

lol at your Cthulhu link!
Ia! Shub'niggurath! the black goat of a thousand young!

Actually, I think the lesson here is more like: "money talks."

There has often been a massive failure of imagination that just by amazing coincidence always ends up agreeing with the critics political views. It is a dangerous mistake. WW2 started out with the Allies realing when Hitler secretly cut a deal with Stalin to divide up Poland. This threw the entire pre-war playbook out the window and millions of Poles paid a heavy price for it. Hitler seized power based largely on the promise to root out Communism.

While it is extremely tempting to compare the actions of Zarqawi's Shi'ites minions to Cthulhu worshippers in that they don't seem to have fully grasped what is likely to happen in the event that Zarqawi actually succeeds ...

Ia! Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! Cthulhu fhtagn!

Translation: "I don't care what you label Howard Dean so long as you call me president! President Dean!"

What does this have to do with Zarqawi?

It goes back to the old Arab proverb (quoted from memory):

I against my brother.
My brother and I against my cousin.
My brother, my cousin and I against the neighbor tribe.
All of us against the foreigner.

If they didn't have us to fight, they'd just be fighting with each other.

And they have the nerve to call US the "House of War."

Yes, greed has an important role in today's terrorism. It is not all about religion or ideology. Note that $1500 may be a lot of money in Iraq.

You also say:

One need only look to the Spanish Civil War, where the monarchists who sided with the Nationalists and the supporters of liberal democracy who sided with the Republicans both seemed blissfully unaware of the fact that they were both going to lose no matter who won.

No, I don't think so. Right wing Spaniards knew that the political system was over.

The assasination of the monarchic opposition leader Calvo Sotelo, four days before the uprising, by Socialist militants and policemen was a clear signal that the Spanish democracy had deceased. Please, take into account the fact that in a democracy the killing of the opposition leader by people close to the government and the party in office (by the way, what happened in Lebanon) means that it is over. Monarchists were pretty aware of that, I am sure. Some liberal democrats joined the Communist side, that's true, but it is also true that pragmatic ones sided with Franco. Democracy died in Spain on July 14th 1936, around 3 AM, when Calvo Sotelo was shot. Neither Franco nor anyone else could resurrect it. Many Spaniards and at least one Englishman, Winston Churchill, understood this pretty well.

Spanish left and Democracy don't fit easily. I hope this will bring you some light about Huarte's behaviour in the 3/11 plot.

So is Zarqawi a CIA plant. This makes it more likely

Joe A. - Some liberal democrats joined the Communist side, that's true, but it is also true that pragmatic ones sided with Franco.

Very many people in the Spanish Civil War had no choice of who they were going to side with, because someone else chose their side for them. That was especially true of Monarchists, and the Catholic or "Liberal" bourgeoisie. The anarchist and communist militias that rallied to the government blamed the bourgeoisie for Franco and declared war on all of them, including a lot of people who would have stayed loyal to the Republic - or at least stayed out of it - if they'd been given a choice.

Fortunately Zarqawi is no Franco, and the insurgents are not up to the quality of the Moors.

"Yes, greed has an important role in today's terrorism. It is not all about religion or ideology. Note that $1500 may be a lot of money in Iraq."

In the end it is always a question of money is not? These individuals could have done just as well by reporting the terrorists and collecting rewards for it could they not? The money maybe nice but to me it seems as though it is more than that they are after.

"Asked why he had carried out attacks on his own people, he said he had been attracted by the salary and the chance of becoming an insurgent "emir" - the title given to fighters who can prove they have killed 10 people or more."

In this case it was the promise of status and power as well.

Joe A:

I was primarily talking about the Carlists as far as the monarchists who sided with Franco are concerned. My own perspective on the civil war, inspired in no small part by blog mentor John J. Reilly. His conclusion that the least bad side won strikes me as probably the most apt way of summing things up.

I certainly don't plan on romanticizing the Spanish Loyalists.

a:

Just remember the black helicopters are on "whisper" mode so you won't here them coming until they're already gone ...

USMC:

I agree that status likely plays a role here given the glorification of the Iraqi insurgency in some venues, and I'm not just talking about Arab satellite TV networks. OTOH, according to Iraqi bloggers, being labeled a "Wahabbi" in southern (read: Shi'ite) Iraq these days is about the same as being labeled a child molester (if not worse) in contemporary America. So while these guys might have hoped for glory and status, one might question just who they were planning to brag to about their exploits against the evil American imperialists.

#6 Joe A

Did you see this?

Dan, you should check the link in #11, too.

Saw and commented.

Bottom line is that I'm more than a little skeptical of the idea that Morocco (as opposed to Moroccans, whose complicity I readily acknowledge) was involved in 3/11 if that's the best case that you can make.

Fair enough, but I wasn't making that case :-) (Replied back at mine.)

Yeah, but the article definitely seemed to be going in that direction.

Dan (#10)

God, Motherland, Fueros, King

Fuero is a regional code of laws developed during the middle ages. A summary of Carlism, a deep traditionalist ideology that opposed liberal democracy during the 19th century.

Did you know that ETA origins can be traced into it? Opposite extremes coming together or just an evolution of anti(classic)liberal ideologies through the centuries?

Dan:

Interesting post. Were I not such a rationalist I'd be tempted to chalk it up to the Homicide: Life on the Streets maxim: "Crime makes yah stupid."

How many Communists sat in the Spanish Cortés at the outbreak of the war? (Quiz, answer later.)

The Communists gained effective control of the Republic only after the Social Democrats' sister parties betrayed them with their cowardly Non-Intervention Pact, that they then refused to enforce.

Leaving aside the dubious conclusion that the Fascists were the least bad side—I'll concede that the Republican Government as it stood at the end of the war had strong Stalinite tendencies—the encouragement that Hitler and Mussolini got from the craven response of the democratic European governments was, IMHO, just as important as the Munich Agreement in provoking WW2.

Oh, on the post's original topic.

The mummy confessed.

AJL:

"Least bad" does not mean, at least for me, that the Nationalists were all sweetness and love. What I was more referring to was the kind of alternate history I linked a little further up. In any case, the leadership of both sides in the civil war seems to have had far more than their fair share of nasty people.

The answer to the quiz is 'Four'. And the Communist Party was not in the governing coalition. The Fascists viewed all Socialist and Liberal Parties as "Communist".

I think Dan missed the point of my previous post, which is that even if we assume that the Fascists were the least bad side for Spain (which i doubt, but let's assume it), the encouragement that the Fascist victory, and even more so the cowardice of France and England in the face of German and Italian intervention, gave to Hitler and Mussolini made their victory much worse for the world.

I should add, I'm unaware of any liberal democrats who adhered to the Fascist side. I know that what we would now call Christian Democrats did, and indeed they were probably just as appalled at the outcome as liberal Democrats would have been with a Stalinite regime.

The subject of this post is not the Spanish Civil War, thank God, because the argument would be endless. I've tried to focus my comment in Democracy, and how it can fail (I confess, the idea obsesses me), now that this way of government is being exported to Islamic countries. I think there are some common points between what happened in Spain then and what happens now here, or in Lebanon.

Andrew, the killing of an opposition leader by civil servants means that democracy is over. That the people on the top of the government don't want any resistance against them, that they don't want to play the democratic game anymore, or at least, that they won't play it unless their victory is certain. The political leaders that allowed that to happen in 1936 were in your fabulous governing coalition. In this part of the story, your quartet also had its role threatening Calvo Sotelo's life publicly during speeches in the Congress.

The Spanish Second Republic, created in 1931, was an intentional effort the Spaniards did to build a democracy as it was in other Western countries. In the first elections, in 1932, the right wing coalition won. When the left government got elected in 1936, they decided they will never lose them again.

Finally, as John Reilly says, Franco's victory, his good relations with Hitler but his reluctance to enter World War 2 (advised by the Navy) created a six hundred mile wide wall to protect Gibraltar, thus keeping the Mediterranean opened to the allied forces; and shelter Portugal so it could offer bases in the Azores and Madeira for antisubmarine patrol aircrafts.