Redstate

In spite of the fact that most all of the people I know would rather not have it that way, it is an option.  Be it recorded that I include myself with "most all of the people I know".

However, it could be remarked that it is more up to "them" than it is up to us.

If the "jihad" contingent continues to make life dangerous for anyone not of their faith, and if those of us of a Christian persuasion in the West would not be content with banging our heads on a rug five times a day, sooner or later things are going to fall out badly for someone.

And it could be noted that our side is the one which has the MIRV's, and the LGB's, and all the rest of the stuff that would make life awfully interesting in Saudi Arabia or wherever if they insist on propagating the "convert or die" philosophy as espoused by the extremists.  

We keep hearing that a goodly proportion of their cooreligionists espouse the same philosophy.  Maybe it is time to allow them to prove that wrong, or to make it clear that if they don't, we could, in fact, make Muslims an endangered species on this planet.

I hate that idea.  But I hate it less than being forced to convert to their idea of religion.  Or their idea of the correct social structure, to stay strictly temporal about the whole thing.

If they want to dance, the piper is going to eventually come ask to be paid, now isn't he?

If there was a reasonable possibility that the Muslim world might forcibly convert us, you would have a point.  But that's not the case: we are, in the end, mostly dangerous to ourselves by dint of our failure to be assertive and self-confident.

If defeat is something we will have to embrace for it to even be possible, I wouldn't particularly regard the victors as the primary villains.

How much more need I say on the subject of some folks in this Nation "embracing defeat"?

He's the archetype for what will cause us to have to pursue the genocide option, IMO.

But given our current options, how many of them do you think would avoid being another "Jimmuh"?  TEOTWAKI isn't hard to find in there, now is it?

I'm scared crapless by most of them and their subservience.  Bush may proclaim Islam as "The Religion of Peace", but I know where he's coming from, and he's saying that to keep from exercising the start of option "C".  No one in their right mind wants to do that, unless it's clearly down to the brass tacks.

And it may not yet be, so I'll cut GWB that much slack on that one.  But put another Carter in there?

How many firearms and how much ammo can I bury in obscure places before they stop me from buying it?

... there is a similar difference between a sober analysis of the role of the Koran in abetting an ideology of evil, and the declaration that it -- and inevitably, its admirers -- are evil per se

I think I see the distinction you wish to make.   But what happens if ultimately it proves to be a distinction so fine that it's basically useless?

To wit:  Suppose there is a cult, which by definition means that members are coerced and/or deceived to join, and coerced to remain.  Suppose the goal of the cult is a theocratic world wide state that brooks no dissent and requires outward subjugation of those outside the cult, et cetera.

Well, golly!  At first glance I wouldn't have a problem calling such a cult "evil", neither the "holy book" that was the sine qua non of the cult.

Now here is the reason you object: ...many if not most Muslims -- who revere the text and do not draw from it the lesson that the infidel must die, nor his societies branded corrupt, nor his people subjugated

Is it true that they do not draw those messages from that book? Or is it only demonstrably true that they do not outwardly act upon those messages?

Hmmm... Well, I dunno.  Do you?  It seems to me that it's a legitimate question.  More to the point, I think that this is a legitimate question, call it Question One:

Are those who support that cult but do not actively partake in it's advocated violence culpable in any way for the violence others in the cult do commit in the cult's name?

If we are fair, then we need to answer that question as well, and here's why:

When sensitivity is allowed to take precedence over liberty, the cause of the latter is damaged.

In other words, political correctness trammels our quest for truth.  Quite so.  Ergo, no matter how quickly we are called racists, bigots, etc, if we care about "the truth" then we have to call a spade a spade... if it turns out that what we're talking about is, in fact, a spade.  

If you don't want me to say that the "non-violent members of the cult"  are "evil per se", well fine.  It's no skin off my nose.  But Question One remains, and depending on how it's answered, the distinction you wish to emphasize may be highly semantic.

Consider suburban Nazis who never operated let alone came anywhere near a gas chamber, whose only "crimes" were to attend Nazi rallies and wear the swastika: were they culpable at all, do you think?  Or do they get a pass, because they were "non-violent"?

Just askin'.

If there was a reasonable possibility that the Muslim world might forcibly convert us, you would have a point.

I do not worry about forcible conversion to Islam. I worry about forcible conversion into plasma, since I live about 6/10 mile from an obvious Ground Zero.

My own thinking concerning Option C is that it will occur by public demand upon the third or fourth ignition of an atomic weapon on U.S. soil.

We are just not going to have that happening, OK? If it starts happening, it has to be made to stop. And if we can't find the exact perps, Allah will just have to sort them out, because we won't have time. We're not going to sit around and wait for the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th ones to go off while we "hunt for the new bin Laden."

I share jefferson101's belief that Bush's "Religion of Peace" rhetoric is just him saying 'nice doggie' in the hopes that he won't have to bonk it with a rock.

By the deeds of their hands, shallt thou know them: http://interterror.org/

What is evil?

Evil is a point of view, measurable in dollars

it earns you and lives it destroys.

Making generalizations of religions' evilness is

futile and "racist". It is but an excuse to insult

and oppress people.

Do unto others are you would have them do unto you.

then it's time for the so-called moderates within their ranks to forceably take their religion back and prove to the world that they can coexist with the world's other great religions.

I fear the moderates within Islam lack the power or sustainability it will take to defeat the radicals.

I must agree with you, Nick.  One nuclear detonation on American soil and the Middle East will most likely become one extremely large sheet of glass.  The American people will demand it.

especially this:

"I fear the moderates within Islam lack the power or sustainability it will take to defeat the radicals."

The extremists have hijacked the religion. It actually happened about 500 years ago, but they just now have the economic power to act out their baser impulses.

Actually, Trevino, I see another intermediate alternate, which is that we (we being the USA, but I suppose it could be any country) adopt a policy of deporting radical islamists.  If an individual trying to come into the country, or one already here, is determined to believe in radical islam, then they would be deported. I favor enactment of laws to make this possible.

Right now an individual who believes in violent jihad as a way to resolve problems, wants to establish sharia law, etc. etc. but has not broken any laws, can remain in the US.  For those who can't get used to the idea of deporting people for their beliefs, think of it this way:  The Islamic Fundamentalists want to kill or convert the rest of us; all we want to do is deport them.

It is not our job in the non-Muslim world to take into our countries Islamic Fundamentalists who want to kill or convert us all with the hope that somehow, through exposure to our education or political system, they will change.  Note I am not talking about all Moslems, just those who are islamofascists.  I understand that defining who is a radical islamist presents problems, but I think it will be worth the effort.

returns again.

I occasionally wonder if our error was in not reaching far enough immediately after 9/11. My expectation at the time was that expelling the Taliban from power would take far longer than it did, Musharraf would be killed in an internal uprising, and we'd wind up in a world war with most of the Middle East. There'd be a draft, war on a massive scale, and the whole world turned upside-down for a number of years. And in the end, what was left of the Islamic world would have serious philosophical qualms about poking infidels with sticks (or car bombs, as the case may be) to see if they bit, and we could go back to worrying about the Chinese.

Well. Didn't turn out that way, did it? Now, I'm not sure there's much to be gained by sending the U.S. Army to kick over more apple-carts at this point in time; picking a quarrel with Saudi Arabia would have the useful effect of shutting down funding for the Wahhabi movement across the globe, but I don't see public support for it, and the idea of trying to make that country into a functional society that doesn't fund violent religious psychopathy is rather far-fetched.

But I think the failure of the Islamic countries to stand up together and get roundly smacked in the name of religious solidarity (while a tactically sensible response!) will make things much worse in the long run. Rulers like Musharraf and the Sauds are caught in a cleft stick: if they invite the U.S. in to really sweep militant Islamists out of their countries, there won't be much left to rule when it's over, and it's far from clear they'd be doing the ruling, anyway. If they throw in their lot with the Islamists, the U.S. won't wait for an invitation. So they jam another piece of furniture against the splintering door, and proudly announce that they've "almost eliminated terrorism" in the country, or some such.

Behind the door? A "charitable foundation" has just disbursed some money to a bank account. A man with the authority to draw on it has a wishlist: precision machine tools, quartz chemical apparatus, air-handling equipment and incubators. The door may hold, for the time, and the leaders struggling to bar it die in quiet (if uneasy) beds, having had peace in their time. But one day, the man will break down the door.

I would say that Muslims who do not partake in violence are, ummm, ordinary people.  Like, say, my cousin's husband, for example.  

They are not culpable for fundamentalists or terrorists anymore than every Christian was culpable for the Crusades, or conservative Christians are culpable for the Rev. Jim Wallis, or he is culpable for Jerry Falwell, or I as a Jew am culpable for Jack Abramoff.

I don't believe any sect of people, Muslim or otherwise, to be guilty of sympathy for terrorism until proven innocent.

Feel free to call me PC - my opinion on this matter happens to coincide with the one that offends the fewest people, primarily because I know some of the people in question and they don't deserve to be offended.      

of yours I've ever read. Bravo.

Since there is no God, Islamists are in fact basing their ideology on a fiction, and are therefore not just the enemies of Christians (who suffer from similar, albeit fundamentally different, delusions, as do the Jews, etc.), but are essentially enemies of reason and of rational men, and should be approached as such.  If I were in charge, I'd say we appeal not to any phony religious nonsense, but to the rational side of those in the Middle East backwaters; after all, 99% care much, much more about feeding and housing their children, and having dignity, than they are about destroying Western civilization.  That's ultimately why the Cold War ended, and why the war on Islamism should be dealt with in a similar manner.  Live secularly and rationaly, be fair, honest, and generous, and try not to hold a grudge -- all, good, solid, Western notions, despite our imperfect track record -- and do our best to do end antiquated spiritual debates.  Or . . . persist in the PC notion that all religions should be respected, and let irrationality flourish and watch the weeds of superstition, nationalism, and barbarism quickly follow.  So I'm with ya on the idea that we shouldn't give Islam more respect than it is due, but as long as you persist in claiming that Christianity, on the other hand, is somehow of a different nature, you'll never get anywhere with it but into a war.

I see our current conflict as being between scienctific materialism, which is what Western civilization was founded on and flourished under (despite the lingering Greek, Roman, and Christian, superstitions that tagged along with our continuous drive toward a rational -- as opposed to "faith-based" -- civilization), on the one hand, and irrationality, on the other.  America was founded in the Age of Reason, by men who eschewed traditional religious ideology so thouroghly that they staked their lives and futures on demanding freedom from the Islams of their time: the English Church.  The Middle East has yet to enter this phase, and it is best to help them with it -- not push them back into the stone ages by flushing the Koran down the toilet.  The Koran should be ignored, or at best treated as literature a la Greek and Roman mythology, along with Christianity and Judaism, because you can't have a rational debate with someone who lays claim to authority which cannot be reasoned with, whether a book, or a voice from the clouds you saw in a dream (or . . . did you just dream that happened?), or the sworn testimony by this guy that came down from the mountains and said he'd been handed two big tablets that now had to be made into law.  

If someone wants to argue against abortion, for example, reason is the only authority they can rest their case on if we are to find the one, correct -- rational -- course of action; you can't just say, "well, this book, see, it says you can't do it . . . I mean, not the word 'abortion', but . . . "  Similarly, if you want to argue a Muslim out of becoming a Jihadi, you can't appeal to the Koran by saying, "well, it says here that Mohammed commanded Muslims to exempt Jews and Christians from a Jihad because they also beleived in God", becuase if you're arguing with someone who believes his own particular version of the Koran (and everyone has a unique one, naturally), you're not arguing with someone at all; you're butting heads.  Since there are never clear directions in the Koran or any other religious texts (remember, the word "abortion" does not appear in the Bible), basing one's argument on a such a book is no more than essentially answering the question, "why do you think that" with "because I said so".  When an Islamist says, "Mohammed would have wanted me to attack Americans", you can't retort with, "but we are peaceful, Jesus was a prophet of peace" (though of course Conservatives make fun of pacifists nowadays, but I'm just bein' hypothetical here), because the truth of the matter is that both parties came to their conclusions on their own, just as 100% of the non-telepathic population on the planet does, regardless of how much they choose to let others influence them, and neither has a case beyond, "because I said so".  But if they say, "Mohammed wants me to smash the infidel", and you instead turn and say, "friend, have you heard the 'good news' about secular humanism?", you're not necessarily going to win any converts, but you're also not going to have the conflicts that inter-religious tiffs erupt into because both sides are essentially irrational and thus totally irreconcilable.

So, what the Middle East needs -- what the world needs -- is for the West to approach things on rational grounds, as opposed to absurd discussions about how much or how little Islam or the Koran should play in the role of a democracy (as if a democracy would ever wish anything to be dictated to it by foreigners!).  It should play none at all, and the only way to make such a case at all feasible is to do away with our own silly religous notions.  Religion has that "emperor's new clothes" vibe big time, even between conflicting camps -- it's easier to be irrational if everyone's doing it, even if it's all in different ways -- and to consistently repeat ad nauseum, "um, dude, the Emperor has no clothes", maybe, just maybe, it might sink in.  Repitition works for Bush's "propoganda", I don't see why it wouldn't work for us.  But first y'all have to get on board this winning solution, and that's never going to happen.

The reasons Conservatives, particularly fundamentalists, are unable to find an angle at which they can effectively critique Islamists is because they are essentially one and the same.  You can argue over which one is "good" or "bad", but the problem you will always be weaving around and avoiding is that fundamentalists are essentially irrational.  You cannot base a system of belief on a book and say that you're rational; we're not talking about my basing my "belief" in physics that I learned in a book, either (basic physics is provable in front of my very eyes, and the rest I can reasonably assume I could learn because so many attest to it being provable in front of their very eyes that I have no reason to doubt them), we're talking about putting our faith in history, which nobody can ever prove anything about, of course, because it's in the past, which is forever beyond our knowledge (though not our imagination, which is used for other things).  This might seem like a small detail of the "atheist comment" on religion, but it's really the foundation of the schism between secularism and fundamentalism, and the reason the two can never be reconciled: you either use reason to dictate your spiritual beliefs, or you don't.  You can't be a little rational and a little unrational, any more than you can be a little bit pregnant.  If your basic worldview is based on something, anything, other than reason -- and I'm talking based on Reason, not just illustrated by or something -- then there is no way to overcome this basic flaw in the foundations of your worldview to defeat dangerous foes who have made the same fatal mistake themselves.  You just argue and argue and argue about things that cannot be reconciled, and it goes on for hundreds and hundreds of years.  It's 2005, and the Crusades haven't yet ended because the Crusaders are alive and well, and so are the Moors.

So, since fundamentalist Christians happen to be making the decisions now, what can they do to defeat fundamentalist Muslims?  Bomb them, basically, and vice versa.  Good luck with that.  I'll be doing my part to root for the secular team, carry on with our founders' dreams -- as futile as they seem to be in decades like this.

on this topic.  I'd give you a "5" if I could.

I got exactly this far in your post:

If I were in charge, I'd say we appeal not to any phony religious nonsense, but to the rational side of those in the Middle East backwaters; after all, 99% care much, much more about feeding and housing their children, and having dignity, than they are about destroying Western civilization.

Before I realized that, when it comes to knowing how seriously people (and especially Muslims in the Middle East) take their religion, you don't have a flippin' clue.

I'd be seriously impressed if anyone managed to make it all the way through your screed - even more than I was with myself the other day for making it through all of theEnvoy's diary entries - especially since this single post was longer than theEnvoy's entire diary.

and couldn't do it.

So, I guess I'll just have to agree with him on one point.  It sucks to be him.

to this-

"And if we can't find the exact perps, Allah will just have to sort them out, because we won't have time."

and this-

"I share jefferson101's belief that Bush's "Religion of Peace" rhetoric is just him saying 'nice doggie' in the hopes that he won't have to bonk it with a rock."

is...Amen, brother Nick!

Here here conservativemutant! You speaketh the unabashed and non-politically correct truth! Bonus points for the non-politically correct nature of your post! Well said! Sorry to all for the gratuitous use of exclamation points, but in response to this post, they were certainly justified! Thanks for showing the courage to write what a lot of us feel!

His view of the "common sense" folks of Saudi Arabia sure explains why your average peasant is peacefully demonstrating for the removal of the royal family, while eschewing all that Wahabi nonsense.

A nice theory, except that it's totally divorced from reality. Kind of makes me stop reading the rest of a post. Even one that isn't complaining about how awful hard it is to be an atheist these days.

I got about this far:

Since there is no God.

Thanks for the kudos, but it is thoroughly depressing to me that we are sitting here talking about exterminating human beings as if they are vermin.

I understand that doing this would only occur if there were literally no other way, but that does not make me much less uneasy about it, or even thinking about it.

I see the same path through this maze that Bush sees, and it just amazes me how many people cannot foresee how this must end if Islam does not join the 21st century, and relatively soon.

We hear that we cannot democratize the Middle East. We hear that we cannot even democratize Iraq. "Oh heavens, the bad guys have just set off another car bomb; how long must this insanity go on? Bring the troops home now!"

Do the people advocating this short-term 'feel good' stuff not understand that this is about heading off genocide at our own hand? Do we want genocide on our resume? I don't. If it comes to that, I'd like to know that first we were willing to "pay any
price, bear any burden, meet any hardship" to keep from having to do it.

I do not want to think that we folded our tents, went back to watching American Idol, and left those people to stew in their own juices until the proper (i.e. in self-defense) time came to spray them like bugs. That is not the America I stand for.

If we end up having to do this, I want to know that we first Tried Our Best to not have to do it.

You articulate well why persons of the Constrained Vision (which generally maps onto conservative politics) must remain in charge. We do not insist on perfecting the M151 Human Being, O.D. Green, 1 Each before taking such actions as we can with the actual human beings that are available.

Since you specify no means by which your vision comes true, I am left to imagine busloads of Anti-Jehovah's Witnesses dispatched to the Middle East to convert the savages to secularism. You seem to be overlooking the point that these are savages, and they do not want to hear about your Superior Way any more than they want to hear about Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Your missionaries will get tossed into the pot with peas and carrots, right alongside our missionaries.

We may therefore conclude that we need not implement your suggestion that we perfect ourselves first, before dragging the savages into the 21st century by their ears. Your suggestion becomes only a prescription for delay, while the nuclear genie continues to leak from the bottle.

And so ultimately your post is just a tirade from another flavor of religion, the one that calls itself the AntiReligion. When we join the One True Faith (yours), we shall be unstoppable.

Surely you recognize what a Rational Person® would do with that argument. Out it goes, wrapped in the New York Times.

Re: One nuclear detonation on American soil and the Middle East will most likely become one extremely large sheet of glass.

No, that won't happen for the very good reason that the Middle East contains the world's largest source of energy.

Please tell me that the statements above are sarcastic? Not even the readers of redstate can be that.... well, not sure which word to use

First, I agree that there are a few Muslim fundamentalists that have a weird view of the world, but you can not seriously treat Islam as a threat?

Why not ask yourself why some peaceful Muslims turn into terrorists? Could it perhaps have something to do with the American terror bombings in Iraq and the support for the terror regime in Israel?  

Please face the fact that there is nothing wrong with Islam, the problem is the American aggressive politics in Middle east.

Warning: Persons subjected to nuclear attacks may exhibit Short-Term Thinking Behavior.

 agree with the statement "The extremists have hijacked the religion.", but wasn't that 5 years ago when Bush was elected? Well, you can always argue about the term "elected", but at became president. The world is truly dangerous with religions extremists in both east and west.  

..then I guess we (the United States) has been doing it wrong all these years.

Maybe that was the problem with Vietnam.  Sweden, for instance, supported the North Vietnamese terror bombers.  I guess we should have proceeded to start conducting massacres of Swedes whenever and wherever we could find them.

That'd have taught them not to support a country that we didn't like, wouldn't it have!  

I'm not even going strain myself by trying to figure out why Israel is a "terror regime", but Syria or Iraq or Iran or suchlike aren't.  I can only strain at so many gnats and swallow so many camels before my system rebels.

Not in religion in its relation to God, but in its relation to the world.

The false notion that Israel is a 'terror' regime is part and parcel of the islamic world view that has made violence acceptable.

Is there any country in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims are free to practice their religion in the middle east?  Is there any country in the middle east that doesn't practice apartheid based on religion or gender or both?  Is there any answer besides Israel?

Didn't you ever notice how Arabs can serve in the IDF? how muslim arabs can vote in the Knesset as well as in the elections for it? and how it is forbidden for a jew to travel within Israel's enemies?  how merely allowing jewish travel rights is cause for condemnation by islamic countries?  Which is a terror regime?

The islamic war of terror against the west began in 1960's with hijackings and murder.  It is America's fault that we waited 40 years to do something to stop it and allowed France and Germany to pay protection to the terrorists without demanding they do something about them poliitcally, but "aggression" ain't the problem.

we have of a nation subjected to a nuclear attack is WWII Japan, which acted quite sensibly in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Here's predition: if the US is hit by a terrorist nuke we will first ascertain the source of that nuke. If it's a stolen Russian nuke we won't retaliate against Russia, for obvious reasons. Instead there will be a huge domestic brouhaha over who short-changed the Russian nuclear decommission program. If it's Pakistani, North Korean or Iranian, we will retaliate against those countries, though probably not with nukes  (although North Korea would be the most likely candidate for such). The goal will of course be regime change, and a Nuremburg style trial for the guilty parties. The US will be constrained by both its own self-interest and by the limits of the possible.

to their "reasonable" behavior were the following facts:

1. Their military was dilapidated to the point that an offensive retaliation would have been impossible
   
2. They didn't possess a nuclear weapon to retaliate with.

That does have a tendency to make people "reasonable" when dealing with others who have dropped nukes on their soil.

that we should discuss the the systematic extermination of over 1 billion people, including women and children, to win the war on terror?  This includes approximately 6 million U.S. residents (rather an inconvenient number if you think about it).

I think that such a cure would most certainly be worse than the disease.

Anyone who has not yet read this post from TigerHawk should immediately do so.

Although I am not a particularly religious person, when I hit the first sentence I stopped reading because I sensed that 'moral relativism' lay ahead.

....only in the context of making sure that never happens.  I think you're reading me wrong.

or Crazed Catholics start strapping bombs to their bodies and blowing up school buses, discos and the Pirate of the Carribean ride at Disneyland.

Otherwise, ya know what you can do with your facile "moral equivalency" argument?

Josh, your net is too wide.  Muslims in Senegal, Muslims in China, Muslims in Turkey, Muslims in Saudi Arabia, and Muslims in America are quite different from one another.  Some have a history of violence; others have none.  How would nuking Dakar or Timbuktu help us if God-forbid we were attacked by nuclear means?  I remember OK City alongside 9/11 as a sneak attack by terrorists to strike fear into our country.  I'd much rather have a Nigerian Muslim living next door to me than a White Nationalist.

I see the point you are driving at, but I find it both premature and flawed.  Let's take the unlikely but possible scenario that terrorists detonate multiple WMDs on American soil in separate incidents over a period of time.  Obviously fear will rise (and rightly so) as will the determination to take action.  If we find a nation (as opposed to religion) that is harboring these terrorists or anyone in their organization, we may be justified in responding in kind to their attack on our nation.  However, if that nation is not a democratic society I could not stand aside those calling for utter annihilation.  If it were Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, action would be necessary but it should be directed at creating a stable democratic society not eradicating the one that exists.

In fact, the conflation of individuals with the state is one of the defining characteristics of the terrorists themselves.  They attack NYC and Washington D.C., killing innocents who have not raised a hand against them.  They conflate those who live in America with those who wish to eradicate their lifestyle.  They demonize the entire nation for the views or actions of a few.  If we are to stoop to their level, we have lost.

Genocide is not the answer and never will be.  If that becomes the position of this nation or this party, it will not longer be my nation nor my party.  

Japan, which acted quite sensibly in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I salute your reliance on empirical evidence to demonstrate that surrender is the only known response to an attack with two nuclear weapons.

I caution you, however, on extrapolating a trend from a single data point.

If it's chemical or biological, we'd use nukes as well.  Our response to an attack on this country with WMD will be in kind.

and it's amusing that you even eschew the process you worship when coming up with such amazing statements as

The reasons Conservatives, particularly fundamentalists, are unable to find an angle at which they can effectively critique Islamists is because they are essentially one and the same.

Consider

Most irreligious individuals, quite understandably, do not like to acknowledge the inevitable and logical consequence of their irreligiosity -- that life is ultimately purposeless. ...

If there is no God as Judeo-Christian religions understand Him, life is a meaningless random event. You and I are no more significant, our existence has no more meaning, than that of a rock on Mars. The only difference between us and Martian rocks is that we need to believe our existence has significance. ...

Given that the need for meaning transcends all other human needs, its absence must create havoc individually and societally. In government, secularism is a blessing; but most everywhere else it is not.

Looking at rotwang's comment, it did occur to me that there has been a little opaqueness here and there in this, at least in my comments.

I pretty much was operating on the theory that no normal and civilized human being would want or hope to do anything of the sort.  

But we can dither around, waffle back and forth on our policies, get upset about the possibility that someone's book was tortured and/or abused, and suchlike for far too long.

If we convince the lunatic fringe of Islam (And that is what I think we are dealing with) that they can keep on keeping on, sooner or later they are going to perpetrate a large enough atrocity to cause some serious payback.

IMO, the longer we string things out, and the more loopholes, boltholes, and safe havens we allow these people (and I use the term "people" loosely), the more likely it becomes that they will have the chance to pull some stunt that has a lot more backlash than would be preferable.

Is anyone under the delusion that if Iran or someone was to enable these folks to get their hands on a nuke, and they did use it on an American city, that we wouldn't figure out where it came from fairly quickly, and make someone's country glow in the dark?  Or maybe several countries, depending on what we could track of the movement and financing of the thing?

Would it not be far better to inflict whatever swats alongside the head we need to now to convince them and their enablers that this is not a productive or fruitful way to operate, rather than waiting for something sufficiently outrageous to happen?

And before anyone points it out, I understand the purpose of the article is to find ways to avoid this gruesome fate.  My rebuttal is that this fate is avoidable no matter what.  We have sufficient justification for strong military action against terrorists as it is, we do not need a "don't make me do it" mentality with respect to genocide to motivate us to defend the nation.

Pape is right.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-wolfson091603.asp

I can't get through to Papes article and I don't have time to dig for it but NRO discusses the salient points.

One of Pape's most important findings is that suicide terrorism is guided by clearly identifiable strategic goals. It is not a mere act of wanton cruelty, though it is certainly that. Nor is it an act of desperation by the dispossessed. Rather, suicide -attacks are nearly always carefully calibrated to accomplish the political goals of nationalists groups. Of the 188 suicide-terrorist strikes from 1980 to 2001, a whopping 95 percent were undertaken as part of an organized political campaign; that is, only 9 of the 188 attacks were unplanned.

Every suicide attack in the period under study was launched against a democracy.

It is more destructive than regular terrorism -- from 1980 to 2001 suicide attacks made up 3 percent of total terrorist attacks but produced 45 percent of all casualties -- and that's not even counting the immense carnage of September 11. Moreover, suicide terrorism more often than not achieves its strategic goals. By Pape's accounting, of the eleven separate suicide campaigns from 1980 to 2001, six produced "significant policy changes by the target state toward the terrorists' major political goals."

The people in this thread who think that Muslim radicals are going to try to forcibly convert us and try to kill us all are woefully misguided.  Their goal is to reestablish the Caliphate in the lands once controlled by Islam.  They do not care about us or our culture except inasmuch as we prevent them from doing this.

And they will not use nukes against us as long as we are in Iraq.  Fighting a long war of attrition with us in a far-away land (a la the Soviets in Afghanistan) is the strategy that they believe will break us and force us out of their lands.  By invading Iraq and attempting to install a democracy we gave them everything they could ever want.  They could never have taken Iraq from a ruthless dictator like Saddam, he would have crushed them and anyone else he had to in order to end insurrection.  A democracy will not and cannot do that.  Now the "Caliphists" have the chance to take one of their most holy lands with a huge oil supply and on the border with their crown jewel Saudi Arabia.

To some degree, Israel serves as the canary in this mine. That's because Israel is a one-nuke country, meaning it won't take two to put them out of business. They can therefore not afford even one mistake in guessing as to their enemies' capabilities.

The recent hoo-hah in the media concerning how a single Iranian EMP device would neutralize the entire United States was misplaced. The EMP is the perfect weapon to use on Israel, which after all has a large Palistinian/Moslem population that Mullahs would presumably wish to spare. But an Israel deprived of its all-electronic air force and its telecommunications is a sitting duck.

Obviously fear will rise (and rightly so) as will the determination to take action. If we find a nation (as opposed to religion) that is harboring these terrorists or anyone in their organization, we may be justified in responding in kind to their attack on our nation. However, if that nation is not a democratic society I could not stand aside those calling for utter annihilation.

I think you are inaccurately treating the problem as one which concerns appropriate retribution. Let me suggest that after 3 or 4 attacks in which we lose 300,000 to 1,000,000 people each, finding the guys who did it and punishing them will take a far back seat to making it stop. Now.

Never mind "hunting down the perps." Make it stop. Now. That is what the public will demand. And rightly so.

Even after the first one, there will surely be major, emergency steps taken to 'seal the borders,' and all that good stuff. But if it happens again anyway, and another half-million people die, the ones left are going to get real, real, antsy. A third one will set them off, and there will be no end to their wrath, and no steps they will not take to stop a fourth one.

That is the problem. People are going to be in no mood to hear about how we are working with 'our allies' or the UN to find the bad guys. All rationality on this subject will be gone if New York, Washington, and Los Angeles are craters full of corpses.

and in many Moslem cultures, neither is anyone who is not a Moslem.

Can we start a list of 20th century genocides that are in the name of Jihad please?

Ill start - 1914 marked the beginning of the Armenian genocide in the ottoman empire - where most of Anatolia was clensed of Armenian christians.  

Next?

while it tends to crack down on fundementalists, would be an example.

why the two articles are at loggerheads. Tigerhawk's point was not that homicide bombing was not a political and strategic tool, but rather that it was a political and strategic tool that is unique (or very nearly so) to Muslim fundamentalists.

which is something I always find very annoying on these boards.

I did NOT say that the only sensible response to a nuking is surrender. I only said that the Japanese acted sensibly, thereby disproving your generic claim that after a nuke attack nations do not act sensibly. The sensible thing for Japan to do in 1945 was of course to surrender. Should America be hit with a terrorist nuke the sensible thing to do would be to identify the responsible parties and go after them like the wrath of God, then do what can be done to insure that such a horror never happens again. It would however be decidedly counter-productive to destroy the natural resources on which the world (and America, and America's military) depends or to murder lots and lots of random people, as if we were some latter day Genghis Khan on crack, whose only offense might be speaking the same language as the terrorists.

are a bit question mark since they've never been used on any large (and successful) scale. Chemical weapons, nasty and vicious though they are, do not deserve the WMD nickname since they do not cause mass destruction or even mass death. In fact, they are quite inferior to conventional explosives in that respect.

tend to shut down Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, parts of Saudi Arabia and maybe even Cyprus and eastern Turkey?

You assume that only American cities would be targets. Au contraire, I see London, Rome (because it's the HQ of the Roman Catholic Church) Moscow (because the Chechnya business), Tel Aviv, and New Delhi or Bombay as being as high on the list as NYC or Washington. On the "B" list you'd probably get cities In Australia, Japan, Canada, and other Western European cities (e.g, Paris) too along with other American cities too. Such a possibility would (unless utterly bungled diplomatically) create a vast coalition against the guilty. America would not be in the stew alone.

Should America be hit with a terrorist nuke the sensible thing to do would be to identify the responsible parties and go after them like the wrath of God, then do what can be done to insure that such a horror never happens again

I agree, and that is what I expect Americans to do. The problem comes if it does happen again. And then again. And then again, in spite of our best efforts to stop it.

We both know that various bad guys bring in tons of cocaine and heroin every day. I find it hard to believe that if determined bad guys wanted to bring in nukes, or even just 3 kilos of anthrax spores, they couldn't do that too. This 'fright scenario' is nowhere near unrealistic, if the bad guys ever get their hands on the stuff.

We shall see. I hope it never happens. But if it does, and it keeps happening, I am nowhere near as sanguine as some people about how 'rational' Americans will continue to be as entire cities disappear one after another.

be this long.

Genocide is immoral and a crime against humanity.  Anyone who even considers it is an evil irrational racist and should be condemned by anyone who wants to be considered a moral human being.

That's what he said.

The first two reasons we may dismiss easily enough: it is there, and the peace of the grave is also peace; our enemies do not eschew it, and that is proof enough of their evil.

Is that so hard to understand?

Is still a very legitimate concern of military strategists and policymakers.  I'm very glad that this administration is taking it more seriously than it had been in the previous administration, until at least 1997.

For example, if a megaton class weapon were to be detonated 400 kilometers above Omaha, nearly the entire contiguous 48 States would be affected with potentially damaging EMP experience from Boston to Los Angeles, from Chicago to New Orleans.

OK that's a megaton-class weapon, and it has to be lofted high.  The chances right now seem very remote that anyone possesses the capability to do something like that from anything other than an identified state.  But forever?  Ten years from now?  Twenty years from now?  The capabilities of our enemies to launch a rocket that could carry a megaton-class device that high from, for example, littoral waters are classified -- and for good reason. I think a lot of the "public panic" type of fear is unfounded -- right now.  But that doesn't mean it will be impossible in the future, and it certainly doesn't mean someone else in the world hasn't read the report at that link and could be thinking about it.

In many ways, with that type of device, America is also a one-nuke country, outside perhaps the C3 of the military, which has presumably been hardened to EMP well enough that it could withstand it.  But the economy of the United States would instantly collapse if it were to happen.  We need to be vigilant, too -- and proactive.  This is one area that I agree strongly with the people who look candidly at these problems, including the nonproliferationists.  This is a complex problem and it isn't enough to say "well, we'd glassify their asses if anyone did it."    

What I want to know, in a kind of dark-humor sense, is whether Omaha was chosen because it is the home of Berkshire Hathaway?

Genocide is immoral and a crime against humanity. Anyone who even considers it is an evil irrational racist and should be condemned by anyone who wants to be considered a moral human being.

Then why do you think so many people oppose the only obvious way to head it off? This is a mystery to me.

Re: The problem comes if it does happen again.

I don't see that as happening. Nukes are hard to get and hard to make. Most likely sceanario is for some terror group to get hold of either an ex-Soviet weapon or, possibly, get handed a fission device by rogue elements in Pakistan or Iran (I discount the possibility the source would be North Korea as Dear Leader is certainly not a Muslim and has no real incentive to want to draw America's ire by such a gambit, nor would "rogue" elements, if they exist, within his government.) An outside possibility is that the terrorists manage to cobble together a very primitive nuke of their own. The possibility of their getting multiple nukes is fairly small, though the latter possibility (they build their own) leaves open the door for that eventuality.

Now the terror group is not going to want to risk losing its nuke(s) if it does have several of them and, after the last several years, it will be well aware that once it detonates one such device it will have signed it own death warrant. Hence the suggested strategy is to use all of them at once and go out in a blaze of glory. Thus my scenario where London, Moscow, Rome, Tel Aviv, New Delhi and NYC and/or Washington all join the ages together. Their hope being no doubt that their "martyrdom" will ignite a universal war between Islam and everyone else.

Casualty figures by the way may not be as large as suggested, unless they do succeed in getting hold of a Russian thermonuclear device. If the nukes are Hiroshima-sized (which is most likely--easier to make, easier to transport and hide) the number dead would be under 100K at least in the US and Europe (a hideous thought even that though). Our cities are sturdier and less flammable than Japanese cities were in 1945, though the fact that such a device would detonate at ground level, creating a radioactive fallout problem downwind (which was mercifully lacking in the airburst Japanese bombings) is an unknown factor in the ultimate toll. Also unknown here: the extent to which America and other nations so struck might be necessarily distracted by relief efforts toward the survivors (an immense task), and how crippled governments might be by nukes detonated in capital cities.

...the Religious Right that seeks to insulate itself into the lives of average Americans; even in that most sacred space:  the bedroom.  I'm not anti-Christian.  In fact, like many people, I attend church regularly, am thankful for the blessings bestowed on me by the birth/death of Jesus and the redemption that his life/example has served/provided for me.  I love the Lord.

BUT, I don't think that God cares one hoot about whether Janice Rogers Brown gets confirmed to the federal appelate court.  I don't think that God cares if Bill Frist gets elected as the next President.

I think that God is about mercy and compassion and love.  God (for me, that is) is about trying to live a life where you emulate the message of Jesus.  Where you worry about the 'least of these.'  God (in my Christian Bible) is about forgiveness.  In fact, he even reminds us that he is the only one to judge whether we live a god-like life; not men/mankind.

I'm less worried about Al Queda and the likelihood of my being forcibly converted to Islam.  I have seen the workings of God in my life and am thankful for the continued blessings.  I'm not so sure that I could get that through Allah.

I'm more worried about a movement --  and a set of leaders (read Mr. Dobson and the other so-called religious organizations) who insist that they know best what God wants for each of us.  While I don't knock people who are Catholic, I beleive that I can communicate with God on my own, without the intercession of others.  I'm afraid for my country because of this American Taliban.  They --  and people who profess to have similar beliefs -- are the singular most dangerous element facing America.

I think that this anti-Islam screed is unfortunate and misplaced. It is particularly disheartening because we didn't hear the same rumblings about Christianity after Mr. McVey killed those poor souls in Oklahoma.  We didn't hear that same outrage when the white supremacists in Idaho attacked federal law enforcement officers, while the President --  YES, the nation's chief law enforcement officer --  called his own police force who were enforcing a lawful court order 'jackbooted thugs.'

The American Taliban is a greater threat than Al Queda could ever be!

I would say that I find it hard to believe that someone who says "I attend church regularly, am thankful for the blessings bestowed on me by the birth/death of Jesus and the redemption that his life/example has served/provided for me" would also refer casually to the "Religious Right" and "The American Taliban", but I'm so sure that this person doesn't exist that I don't have to.

Clearly this is a stealth slam.

starts paising Christian suicide bombers and elevating them to sainthood is the day I start to fear that they are the equivalent of Al Qaida. Mind you, I dislike our home-grown Christian Mullah would-bes too but comparing them to Al Qaida is like comparing a head cold to the Black death.

Focus on the Family/the religious right/the Catholic church with the Taliban is just over the top.

Last I recall, neither group has control over the government.  Nor do they oppress half of the population, kill dissentors, etc...

Such comments are merely trollish.

A "1" for you this morning on this topic.

because then he went into a long discussion about other reasons why Genocide was a bad idea, which I really didn't understand and contained some very weak arguments.  For instance, claiming that "there's a reason Muslim terrorists run amok across the globe while Methodist and Hasidim bombers do not" when of course this is simply untrue.  He had already mentioned the IRA, and have Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph already been forgotten?  And just this past week videotapes of Srebrenica massacres were released.  That included footage of an Orthodox priest blessing Serbian militia before they slaughtered an estimated 6-7,000 Muslim men.

Right out of the Talking Points.

believe that the President or most of this country is willing "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship" as you put it above to solve the problem.  The Army and Marines missed their recruiting goals for the first four months of the year and apparently missed them in May too (although the delayed the reporting, so it must be really bad news).  You would think that the President would make an address to the American people demanding its young people to serve their country and encourage parents to urge their children to serve.  Heck, maybe he could lead by example and get his daughters to sign up.

Or maybe he could say that this war demands financial sacrifices and we shouldn't burden our children with the cost of the war.  He could propose temporary tax increases to pay for at least the $80 billion a year he keeps asking for in supplemental appropriations for the war.

Democracy promotion is a wonderful idea, but when we continue to support oppressive dictatorships in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and other countries just because they are on our side in the war on terror the words ring hollow.

To crab about the recruiting and the money, and then say it's all hollow unless we also open up five new and simultaneous fronts, is a form of oral flatulence that deserves no serious response.

1.  Recruiting is a serious problem.  Overall manpower is an even more serious one (even if we were meeting our recruiting goals we can't maintain current troop strength in Iraq and Afghanistan much longer).  The Administration is not seriously addressing either of these issues.
   
2.  We have borrowed every single penny to fight this war.  A serious Administration would have demanded sacrifices of the American Public as a whole to pay for this war, not put it all on a credit card.
   
3.  We don't have to open up five new simultaneous fronts, just not accept that the current governments are doing "the best they can" to democratize or that the alternative is a fundamentalist Islamic government.  This excuse is often used for Pakistan in particular, while ignoring the fact the Mushareff has eliminated all the secular, moderate opposition.  I equate this to the man who kills his parents and then begs the court for mercy because he is an orphan.

IRA, McVeigh, Rudolph, even ETA and the ELF... none of them "run amok across the globe" seeking to enshrine their brand of fundamentalism on all who disagree. Islamofascists do. Big difference. One is bent on world domination (that means killing us, here at home) the others are bent on domination in a particular sphere.  

That, and, the Orthodox priest who blessed the militia...  Sounds a lot like the age-old question about having chaplains in the military. Was the Orthodox priest blessing the men like any priest would bless any person, or was the priest blessing their upcoming slaughter of innocents? Do any of the Christian churches have a significant and vocal and generally accepted portion that explicitly condones the mass slaughter of 6,000-7,000 Muslims?  No.  Such atrocities are soundly denounced as evil in the strongest terms.  Yes, there will be renegade individual clerics who twist some passage or other into legitimizing slaughter but notice that Trevino mentions that as well in his post, and does so immediately before the passage you quoted:

...those of us who are Christian and Jewish have in our own holy texts some rather distressing passages of cruelty that have in the past been interpreted as commanding such. This is not to posit a gauzy equivalence between the two examples -- there's a reason Muslim terrorists run amok across the globe while Methodist and Hasidim bombers do not -- but to argue that rationale matters.

But you will not see those strains of Christianity widely accepted or advanced, whereas the opposite appears to be true of Islam these days, where the "corrupted" Islam is ubiquitous and those who denounce violence in the name of Islam are defeaningly quiet about denouncing the distortion of their faith.

So Trevino's distinction stands and your protestation still appears to be a misreading of what he actually said.

in Pape's study are the Tamil Tigers.  They're not muslim.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/051805F.shtml

The leading instigator of suicide attacks is the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion. This group committed 76 of the 315 incidents, more than Hamas (54) or Islamic Jihad (27). Even among Muslims, secular groups like the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Al Aksa Martyr Brigades account for more than a third of suicide attacks.

And even among "muslim" suicide terrorists they aren't all fundamentalist muslims.

You're really missing the point here.  Suffice it to say that there's no support for genocide coming from my end.

With regard to genocide, I mean.

At worst the "islamofascists" want to reestablish the Caliphite covering the middle-east and central Asia.  They have no interest in world domination.  They want to take a great swath from North Africa to Central Asia back to the Middle Ages when Islam led the world in science and knowledge.  They hate us because we are corrupting their holy lands.  If we left we can rot in our moral corruption and infidel status for all they care.  Historically, Muslims has been much more tolerant of non-believers in their midst that Christians have been.

As for condemnation by the Serbian Orthodox Church of the Bosnian Genocide here is their statement about the concentration camps "In the name of God's truth and on the testimony from our brother bishops from Bosnia-Herzegovina and from other trustworthy witnesses, we declare, taking full moral responsibility, that such camps neither have existed nor exist in the Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina."  And the Serbian Orthodox Church has yet to offer condemnation or an apology for the war crimes committed during the Yugoslav confict.

Oh I know one... Germany circa 1940... wait that was an avowed Christian.  Hope nobody nukes me for having the same religion.

ask FIFA.

The middle east is Africa and Asia.

okay.. . a good point anyway, as long as you aren't Kurdish or Armenian... so that would a little apartheid based on race, but to be fair I didn't ask about race, just gender and religion, unless you count being Armenian as making you automatically a Christian, but there are so few left it can be hard to tell...

Between us and the peaceniks, we should make a good team :)

Historically, Muslims has been much more tolerant of non-believers in their midst that Christians have been.

Wow.  Just wow.

you don't have the same religion. which is the point (bender's notion aside) of discriminating between those Muslims who wish us dead wholesale and those who don't.

I say that about you and Hitler the same way I say that I and the "Catholics" in the IRA don't have the same religion, though they claim to be Catholic.

they sure are globe-trotters these days.

I believe my point was that no Christian group that enjoys a world-wide, or anything approaching that, following, or is at all a mainstream notion within Christianity, would subscribe to the notion you've pinned on the Serbian Orthodox.  And considering the Serbian Orthodox bishops don't speak for that many people, don't possess much global influence and/or appeal, my point stands.

but that said, if you have a link with info about the Serbian Orthodox support of genocide I'd love to see the text of the salient documents.

on the part of mainstream Islam in condemning the actions of terrorists.  So I found an example of recent silence and outright denial by what one would consider a "mainstream church" of what is undeniably genocide.  I can also point to the Anglican Church in Rwanda's complicity in the the genocide there.

If you want outright embrace of genocide by Christians, do a google search of "Christian Identity" or perhaps read the "Left Behind" series which seems to have no problem with the wholesale slaughter of people (even 2/3 of all Jews) who refuse to accept Christ.

We can go back a little further to World War II and find that both the Orthodox and Catholic Church were both reluctant to condemn Nazi atrocities.  It took the Catholic Church more than 50 years to admit its mistakes in not speaking out and I'm not sure the Orthodox Church has yet.

Finally, as for the idea that Muslims do not condemn 9/11 or terrorist attacks in general, you might want to start here before you condemn the second largest religion on the face of the earth.

I have argued many times that the President's most egregious and damaging lie ... was the one he told in apparent sincerity: that "Islam is peace.

So his lie about wmd's that took a nation to war is smaller than an obvious statement of appeasement where he's trying to rally some of the moderate Islamist out there (which I think is actually smart for once :shock:)

This much, one hopes, is self-evidently untrue, and it need not take a hater of Islam to acknowledge it.

yeah, that's where your hard chain of arguments drove the point home ... let's talk about Islam (or something like that)

 

that your time here will be mercifully short. Of your previous 5 comments to RedState, four have been troll rated. I can only imagine that the fifth escaped the notice of anyone - I'm fairly confident that your sixth will not fare much better.

after the laughably ignorant comment about Christian-based societies being less tolerant of other faiths than Islamic-based ones I almost pulled the plug on continuing this thread, but was interested in the content of what the Serbian Orthodox issue was.

Now I see it was a mistake and you really are hurling rhetorical bombs devoid of context and not worthy of a response.  The dig against the Catholic Church is laughable. Your copy of Hitler's Pope must be as dog-eared as Lenin's copy of The Communist Manifesto. And the Serbian Orthodox church is hardly "mainstream." And I still haven't seen the content of the documents you site, coupled with a marked lack of interest in Googling it on my own since I don't consider this argument worth the time.

That, and I never condemned Islam in this space. Quite the contrary, if you look at other comments I've made here.

Peace out.

thanks for being the one who noticed - gotta come back at least once more now ;)

It appears that more reading is at the top of your list of needs.

I offer you

This and

This and