When I first thought of starting my blog, I was going to call it "The Barricade: Which side are YOU on?"

[remainder removed at author's request, owing to special circumstances]

...come the day, I know where you will stand.

Joe,

The sad truth is that for some people, believing in the reality of evil is against their religion.

Such people will go to almost any length in denying evil including actively assisting in evil's triumph.

"Enabler" is not a strong enough word for such people. They are the enemy within. The only thing we need to know about such people is how to beat 'em.

The truth is that there's no excuse, no justification adequate to their acts.

Who are you take a stand against bombing of a civilian population in order to force a government to surrender or at least harm them in some fashion. The firebombing of Tokyo was exactly that, and if a pilot had chosen suicide over mission failure, then he'd be a hero.

Your comments are only an attempt to portray heroic American (and British) deeds and policy as acts of unjustified terrorism. You are a traitor to the cause you pretend to uphold.

Any act must be surveyed to see the justification for the cause. In World War II, deliberate targeting of civilians (an act that you would no doubt triumphantly write off as terrorism) were acts of righteousness. In the current situation, these acts are acts of terrorism as must be result in the destruction of their perpetrators.

Trent says: the reality of evil is against their religion

Trent, in what sense do you say religion is a "reality"? Are you saying that scientific instruments can detect its presence? Or are you saying that some people think evil exists (which is undoubtably true). If the latter, then evil is as real as, say, God, or Father Christmas, or morphic resonance.

Alan,

The Andy Joe mentions in his post brought up the bombings in WW II and claimed they were morally equivalent to 9/11 and the Palestinian suicide murders. In the comments, I made essentially the same point you make here, that context is everything. He was not convinced. You should have a look at Andy's original post and the comments that followed. It's instructive about a certain left-wing mindset.

Tokyo et. al. took place within a framework of declared, total war, in which both sides abandoned many limits and went after each others' industrial capability.

Den Beste had a very insightful post about this a whole back, and it mentioned his hope that The War on Terror would succeed in its current form so we do NOT see this again. Over here, Armed Liberal and others have made much the same point.

There are frameworks in which total war makes sense, in which it is a terrible thing but the necessary thing. In WW2, this was simply the model of how nations fought given conditions, technology, etc. All major countries in the war fought like this. Dresden and Tokyo (and for that matter, Hiroshima) were simply an amplified version of the London Blitz or Rotterdam, different in scale but not in kind. The concentration camps and Japanese treatment of Allied prisoners, on the other hand, were different in kind and outside even the framework of total war as understood at the time.

The current Arab - Israeli war is a genocidal war, a total war on all fronts (military, economic, diplomatic) in slow motion and by covert means. This is so only because full-scale wars of extermination using armies are no longer feasible for the Arab states in light of Israel's nuclear deterrent.

At present, this blueprint of total war is only true for the Arab-Islamist side. Yet this is not a situation that can continue indefinitely. In the long run the blueprint must either be torn up, or it must be adopted by BOTH sides... or it must succeed in its genocidal aim.

The key question is, which of these outcomes will one be a party to? Note that the word "wish" or "intend" were not used in that sentence.

"no hope" is a vile excuse for mass murder of civilians. The Palestinians have hope for a better future if only they would have a sane leader.

There are billions of people all over the world who truly live in miserable, hopeless conditions. No other culture brainwashes and encourages its youngsters to kill themselves and others, especially civilians.

A man without hope is in a spiritual crisis.

Killing himself in the act of killing others is not a just resolution of that crisis.

The answer to lack of hope is always this: make efforts to bring blessings to others.

My answer:Go read this.

BBC News:Palestinian militant turned peacemaker.

There's no sense of quoting;you really need to read the whole thing.

Perhaps the Party Spokeswoman for Children will, as a first step, come out and oppose "honor killings". Then after finally opposing people killing their own daughters (even if it is a cultural thing - who are we to judge?), we can move on to oppose people killing women and children because they happen to be Jewish.

Den Beste had a very insightful post about this a whole back, and it mentioned his hope that The War on Terror would succeed in its current form so we do NOT see this again.

And if it does become necessary, do you join the idiotarians that suggest that there may exist circumstances in which killing of civilians (whether requiring suicide or not) could be justified or do you betray your country (but avoid being an "idiotarian").

There are people on this board who (privately or not) believe that the Palestinian people and culture have progressed to the point where they are beyond any possible redemption and that their elimination is the only solution prevent Israel's destruction. Are they idiotarians too?

I understand why the Nazi's fought us with every tool at their disposal. Does the fact that I understand why our current enemies attempt to harm us using every tool in their arsenal (pretty much empty except for suicide bombers) make me an idiotarian?

Understanding the mindset is almost a requirement to being able to destroy it.

I think you mischaracterize Trent's point.

I've heard him outline some of the scenarios you speak of, and in several of them the Palestinians' destruction comes at the hands of their Arab brethren. Jordan 1970, Kuwait 1991, Lebanon... it's not as if that would be unprecedented.

What Trent et. al. are saying, and I agree, is that cultures or nations choosing the total war approach always run the risk that their opponents will accept their terms of engagement. So far, the Arab-Islamist culture's declared enemies have mostly restrained themselves from doing so (the Russians have come closest to answering in kind).

That may not continue indefinitely. Indeed, it is an unstable situation that cannot continue indefinitely. I have explained the 3 ways it can resolve, and believe that non-judgmental understanding / condoning feeds the course of disaster and undermines the only viable way out - which is rejection of the animating hate and the doctrine of total war even unto suicide.

Trent, as someone who sees historical trends in rather cold blooded terms, also sees an issue with the Palestinian culture itself, which may have metastisized into a threat to ANY nearby society. All in a region where the term "Hama Rules" describes standard M.O.

Being able to imagine such scenarios is an important corrective for policies in the here and now, because they illustrate the real stakes involved in a vivd and compelling way. Especially when a different course of action really would lead to a very different, and much improved, future. It's just that we won't get there by hope alone.

History teaches us that really bad stuff can happen. States with their backs to the wall can and will answer a challenge of total war with total war. Cultivated cultures of death usually result in the granting of their expressed wish, especially up against superior opponents.

I think it's useful to acknowledge that.

So... do we need to understand the mindset of the suicide bomber/ child soldiers/ insert cultivated violent pathology here? I would say no. We need to understand the agents and actors feeding the mindset, however, and make them stop. Then, and only then, will we have space where more personal psychology can be applied to avert Trent's cultural worries (perfect example: Africa's child soldiers).

It's not about analyzing water samples, it's about putting a dam upstream.

Great point about honor killings, Dave C. As for you Alan Francis, the Paestinians can redeem themselves, but to do so they must redeem themselves. They don't appear to see this. And why should we look at them, or treat them, any differently than the National Socialists 63 years ago?

We seem to be arguing at cross purposes. I do not mean to argue whether total war is justified by either the West or Israel.

I read the Ross Judson post and all it indicated is that there are circumstances when people will deliberately target civilians, possibly at the expense of their own life. He expounds that even we could do so given a specific situation. I'd hope he's right. (Or do if called upon to do so, do you think the US Air Force would face open mutiny if the government decided that total war was necessary.)

I think the circumstances he posits that would cause us to embrace attacking civilians are wrong, but that's beside the point. Western civilization has been in that position before and (God forbid), we may be in that position again. To call it idiotarian does a serious disservice to those who were engaged in total war to save our country.

I don't see how understanding that the terrorists believe that they are at "total war" makes Ross or anyone else an idiotarian. Or makes the terrorists in any way more sympathetic. Understanding that they are in a state of total war only means that they must be eliminated that much faster and more carefully.

Yeah, Alan. <-- What he said!

:)

For those who care...

Alan, Ross' problem is that he goes well beyond acknowledging that the terrorist mindset is one of total war. Had he stopped there, I wouldn't have said a peep.

The central point of this post itself is the moral issue of "understanding" for the worst tyrants, thugs and killers, coupled with a moral relativism that refuses to judge and lack of any similar "understanding" for those who fight the terrorists.

The problems with that viewpoint are manyfold. On a moral level, yes, as I've explained above. But on a practical level too, hence the digression into the discussion of total war and potential futures.

By collapsing all distinctions and working to paralyze all effective responses short of total war on the one hand, and providing aid and comfort to the Islamists in their campaign of total war on the other, these viewpoints make a future of total war on both sides MORE likely, not less.

That's the future viewpoints like Ross' and Jenny Tonge's are helping to bring into being. And that matters.

"Understanding that they are in a state of total war only means that they must be eliminated that much faster and more carefully."

And if those 2 are mutually incompatible, then in an age where WMD are becoming more accessible due to the technology curve, our response must be... "faster, please."

We are falling squarely into "why do I bother" land, here. "refuses to judge"? How could I have been more clear that I do, in fact, judge? "Working to paralyze all effective responses"? Show me where I say that.

I don't say it, and you know it full well, Joe. I argue more with your deliberate distortions than with your positions. Being clear and honest matters to me.

The central point of your post is your supposition that there are legions of liberals out there trying to bed Palestinian terrorists, in a fruitless effort to empathize with them, which makes them terrorists as well.

I get your point. I don't care how many liberals are out there doing that. I suspect there are quite a few.

The central point of my post is that a self-righteous, simplistic attitude towards discussion of the situation, complete with name-calling of the very worst kind, contributes nothing to the betterment of those involved, and perhaps does considerable damage at the same time.

If I were a Palestinian, I wouldn't be a suicide bomber. There would be so many things I could do, that actually stood a chance of making Israel back down, that suicide bombing wouldn't even enter my mind.

Suicide bombing is not only horribly ineffective as a combat tactic (95% of suicide bombings fail to kill any targets, not only by being intercepted but by the bombs going off early or not at all), it's also a waste of manpower. There are far more effective forms of resistance, some of which the Palestinians have actually experimented with but decided to discard when they realized that they were just about to win all the concessions they demanded, and decided they didn't WANT the war to end, even with a victory for their side.

"So... do we need to understand the mindset of the suicide bomber/ child soldiers/ insert cultivated violent pathology here?"

Yes we do. We not only need to understand it, we need to study it to see if that mindset can be subverted/diverted/changed, or even prevented. We will need every weapon we have, including psyops, to win this war without resorting to the use of the one weapon I do not want to see us (US or Israel) use.

Joe, as Ross' friend and fellow blogger, I am obliged to come to his defense. He and I disagree on many things, for he (as you rightly observed) trends a bit leftward and I certainly don't. But based on several years' friendship, I can assure you that he does not condone terrorism. Ross likes to question things, and wants to know why things are as they are. I know that Ross understands (meaning 1 from his post) that terrorism is a declared enemy of the west, and of the US. He has his liberal hot buttons. But remember, in his first comment on your original post, he said: "The first order of business in defeating an enemy is understanding him, and understanding his motivations."

Ross knows they’re the enemy. Joe, you said, "'Of course, I'm not condoning...' says the familiar ritual tone." I've never heard that tone from Ross. There are many liberals who would make that next step without breaking stride, but Ross isn't one of them.

You are right about it sounding like a conservative parody though...

My own thoughts are more in line with yours, I think. Ross wants to look at all sides and carefully measure everything and come to a logical conclusion that he is comfortable with. I imagine that he needs to do this because his liberal nature does make it hard for him to look at something, and conclude that it is just evil. This is a simpler process for us, but not one that is beyond Ross by any means. He isn’t an idiotarian.

btw, it's the Ministry of Minor Perfidy. We got the name from Lileks, so we can't be all bad.

I would like to take the time to agree with Kathy K.

We NEED to understand our enemies. We need to understand what drives them to blow themselves up in cafes and pizza parlors, killing people not so different from themselves. We need to know this if we are to try and stop it, and if we are to try and prevent it from starting elsewhere.

Its basic Sun Tzu. To understand the enemy is the first step to beating him. We need to understand the sick pathology going through their heads. That is the only way to prevent the outcome that Trent has talked so much about.

Regardless of whether it is possible to justify the method of total warfare to achieve a goal, it is impossible to justify the goal of killing ALL Jews in Isreal. The suicide bombers wish to kill Jews. The more Jews they kill the better. They select the method of toal war because it is the ONLY way they can kill ALL Jews. To "Understand" why someone might reasonably have this goal is to condone genocide. In the end the post-modernist insistance that one not judge leads to either the acceptance of genocide as a reasonable goal or the belief that Palestinian are less human then the "Understanding Westener" and cannot be held to any moral standard.

There are frameworks in which total war makes sense, in which it is a terrible thing but the necessary thing.

That may be, but 1945, when the Allies had already destroyed the Axis ability wage offensive war, was not such a time.

If anyone can explain to me why the mass slaughter of 40,000 civilians at Dresden a few weeks before the Nazi surrender was "necessary" I'll break out my checkbook; the steak's on me.

Phil,

Evil is real because it is a function of the human condition. It exists in the mass graves of Iraq.

It existed in similar mass graves in Rwanda; Srebrenicia in Bosnia; Kosovo; Cambodia; all the Nazi death camps in Germany, Poland and Russia; All the Communist deathcamps in detailed in the BLACK BOOK OF COMMUNISM; and in other Arab tyrannies like Hama, Syria.

When I speak of "The reality of evil being against their religion" I am referring to those who hold failed secular faiths like post-modernism, communism or "Deep Green" environmentalism.

They deny evil exits, yet they say "you can't make an omlet without breaking a few eggs" as they inflict mass starvation to "break the kulaks" and collectivize Russian agriculture.

They deny evil exists, yet they blow up forest executives, burn down homes and destroy SUVs for "eco-crimes."

They deny evil exits, yet they want us to be "understanding" of the Islamic death cult that wants the West extinct and the female gender enslaved.

They deny evil exists in everything...except the West and America; yet they still don't understand what America is capable of if fully enraged.

This is a column an author friend of mine wrote for the NY POST. He understands, like I do, the stakes we are playing.

http://www.johnringo.com/opoption.htm

Hemorrhagic smallpox is nearly one hundred percent fatal (194 out of 200 cases.) The only "cure" for it is to be immunized (general smallpox vaccination.) Immunizations last for approximately thirty years. Full population immunizations were discontinued in the US in the 1970s but military personnel were immunized up through 1989.

Imagine absolute horror for a moment. Imagine that right now hemorrhagic smallpox was being distributed by mujaheddin that were "living weapons." Imagine that it infected nearly one hundred percent of the American public.

All that would be left after it swept across the country is former military who served from 1973-1989.

Their children would be dead. Their friends would be dead. Their parents would be dead. Virtually every "liberal" in the US would be dead.

And they would still have enough nuclear weapons to vaporize half the world.

If you don’t think we would use them, you’re dead wrong. You don’t have to be hail to press a button. Bad knees don’t really count in an Ohio. There wouldn’t be a teary eye in the house as the Minutemen and Tridents arched into the sky. And the guys who had last piloted F-4s would be flying B-2s and screaming: "This is for my grand-children you rag-head bastards!"

Welcome to Option Zero. "At the end of this war, the Arabic language will be spoken only in hell."

I fear the evils of our Islamo-facist enemies less than I fear what fools like Ross may make both inevitable and necessary things that could have been avoided.

They wouldn't have to push the button. All their enemies would be dead too.

I think one reason this discussion seems to be so circular is that we have a definitional problem. From my reading of what Tonge said, she was using the word "understand" as in "sympathize," as was Andy. Many of the commenters on this board are using "understand" as in "comprehend" the way you can "understand" how a watch works so that you can fix it if it breaks. The first seems to me clearly morally problematic. There is no excuse for terrorism or for sympathy toward terrorists. About the second, I would say this: If there's a rabid animal running around loose in your neighborhood, it makes sense to try to find the source of the disease and eliminate it there if you can. It also makes sense in the long term to do research on the rabies virus so that it can be cured. In the meantime, however, you've got a rabid animal running around in your neighborhood potentially killing people and infecting other animals. Putting that animal down has to be top priority. We've got rabid animals running around out there killing people and infecting other animals. Eliminating their disease at its source or finding a cure for it are noble endeavors, but the animals are out there NOW. Putting them down MUST be top priority.

I think one reason this discussion seems to be so circular is that we have a definitional problem. From my reading of what Tonge said, she was using the word "understand" as in "sympathize," as was Andy. Many of the commenters on this board are using "understand" as in "comprehend" the way you can "understand" how a watch works so that you can fix it if it breaks. The first seems to me clearly morally problematic. There is no excuse for terrorism or for sympathy toward terrorists. About the second, I would say this: If there's a rabid animal running around loose in your neighborhood, it makes sense to try to find the source of the disease and eliminate it there if you can. It also makes sense in the long term to do research on the rabies virus so that it can be cured. In the meantime, however, you've got a rabid animal running around in your neighborhood potentially killing people and infecting other animals. Putting that animal down has to be top priority. We've got rabid animals running around out there killing people and infecting other animals. Eliminating their disease at its source or finding a cure for it are noble endeavors, but the animals are out there NOW. Putting them down MUST be top priority.

I like my own writing so much, I posted it twice. Actually, my internet connection fritzed. Sorry about the double post.

That's ok, Fred. To a great extent, I agree with you. Using your analogy:

Kill, or capture for study, the rabid animals, by all means, before they bite people.

Finding 'this' vector of infection and cleansing it is also important. BUT... Finding the cure isn't secondary. It's just as important, in the long run. Because if we can't find a cure we'll be killing rabid animals in various neighborhoods for the rest of eternity.

And finding that cure requires 'understanding' in the 'comprehend' sense. I agree that there may be some problem with symantics here. Joe, just so you know, I always use 'understand' to me comprehend. If I mean 'sympathize', I say 'sympathise'.

Semantics. (Sorry, was helping someone out with a computer virus today and my fingers typed some mutant hybrid between 'symantec' and 'semantic'.)

Gosh, what a discussion! My impression is that there may be misunderstandings on both sides of this debate. There is definitely a tendency on the part of many so-called liberals in their (post-Christian) self-hatred to make excuses (justify) the actions of those they regard as "oppressed" and, at the same time, exaggerate, even invent, the evil nature of the oppressors, usually part of the group of which they are members.

Any justification of suicide-bombing is literally self-negating for either of two reasons: It legitimizes the basest, most repugnant forms of human behavior. Or else it regards all forms of violence towards others as equal or relative and thereby negates morality itself. In any system of ethics, virtually by definition such positions are unacceptable either morally or practically. This is entirely separate from comprehending what the underlying factors leading to the behavior are. The same is true of murder or rape.

I did not regard Ross's statements as justifying such behavior, even if they may have reflected a degree of sympathy I would not feel comfortable with. In part, Ross's statements about our supposed inability to fathom suicide bombing in our world of comfort, our "shiny veneer of civilization", is a bit condescending and suggests sympathy. I suppose I can imagine that if I had grown up in extreme poverty with parents who were hardened criminals, I could have ended up a murderer, and I can "understand" that. But I could hardly defend murder as morally or practically acceptable because of those circumstances. Perhaps this is all that Ross intended to say.

And what if your parents, and your whole culture, taught you from babyhood that murder was morally acceptable, Gabriel?

Understanding that some people are brainwashed from birth does not mean accepting or condoning their actions. It's the first step to finding out how to counteract that brainwashing.

Those children who are brought up in a diseased culture that teaches them to believe that their only hope of being loved is to blow themselves up are also victims.

That doesn't mean I think they shouldn't be shot on the spot if they try to murder (a rabid dog is also a victim of a disease and I wouldn't hesitate to shoot one). It just means I think that the culture that abuses their children in such a way must be changed. Whatever it takes.

Ever hear of Frankl and Logotherapy? He takes off from the observation that those who survived the concentration camps were those with a purpose or goal that demanded survival. Healthier, younger, or stronger prisoners without that had much higher mortality rates. From this he moves on to the power of having a meaning or identification beyond the self with a larger sphere of life.

For every positive aspect of life, there is a dark reflection with similar power. If a Palestinian, or anyone, is persuaded that a suicide mission is going to be a powerful benefit to his group, clan, and ideological position, then it becomes a choice of "goods": take this opportunity now, or pass it by and wait for a better one or a better process.

So the critical link in the "convincing" bit. Once the emotions are overwhelmingly in play, such convincing is not all that hard. And the link given above by Jussi
shows how that's done and the effects.

This kind of comprehension is worth pursuing, because it helps identify the best targets for remedy.

A couple of notes:

1. Note to the Rest of the Planet: Make sure nobody gives Telenko the controls for the spaceship. He seems to think that letting your enemy know that you intend his annihilation and the death of his entire culture, is an excellent tactic in the era of the superempowered angry man. Yeah, right. What we exactly need, in these circumstances, is an open declaration of war against an entire people. Tactically, it's plain stupid. If you're going to kill somebody, you just do it. You don't let'em know it's coming.

2. Gabriel, my SUV comment was simply intended as an observation. I intend no disrespect or arrogance by it, although comments containing those words are often written with that intention. Rather, I simply seek to juxtapose our lifestyle with that of others around the world. Hell, I'm more or less in favor of the nice suburban lifestyle, if that's your thing. It's not mine. I'd like to see the environmental impacts of it lessened, and I'd like to see those SUVs in the driveways be hybrids, but those are attribute problems, not fundamental disagreements with lifestyle. I go out to my suburban friends' houses, and I marvel. ;) My biggest beef with suburbs is, frankly the #$^@%$%@ traffic jams that get created because zoning commissions are bought and paid for by developers...but that's a whole different post. :)

3. Katzman and I have been down this path before (http://perfidy.org/comments.php?id=P1231_0_1_0_C), and somehow I suspect this sand will show footprints again.

4. Katzman points out that "We need to understand the agents and actors feeding the mindset", while in the sentences before, indicating that we do NOT need to gain knowledge of the bombers themselves. Give me a break. In any sufficiently complex system, there are relationships between all parts. The agents and actors in this case are both within and without the Palestinian society. It would not surprise me to learn that some of the bombers are not from the territories; that would fit the patterns we see there. Why would we artificially restrict ourselves in analyzing this problem? To formulate strategy against the masterminds, we must understand how their techniques of control apply to those who are vulnerable (bombers). We must understand the sources of that vulnerability. It is all of one system; the interior political, exterior political, interior psychological, and exterior psychological. The men who have most affected history, have effected change that has given us our peaceful lives and the opportunity to have an SUV in the driveway, have been those who were able to avoid conflicts, turn disadvantage to advantage, conduct the most difficult and unpopular diplomacies...and even then, war is at times a necessary failure. We all do well to remember that.

5. The viral, memetic capabilities of Islam's usurpation by power-hungry, theocratical apologists for tribalism have never really been deliberately confronted by an adequate opposing force. Our cultural memes dominate at the levels of personal desire and freedom, the commerce level, and on many others. Why, then, have they been so unsuccessful in defeating or subverting Manji's "Desert Islam" at the spiritual and populist level? Non-religious forces (economics, tradition, pride) are at work in a complex system, defeating our implicit attempts in this area. Social memes represent the aggregate of what we all do, what we all think, all our contacts, formal and informal, with the opposing entity. Within such an intricately related system, butterflies matter...some of our butterflies better not have shiny red buttons. They'll make a mess of the roost.

Alan Francis-

If the PA was in fact fighting the Israelis with 'everything they had', I wouldn't be less angry about suicide bombing, but it would be less evil. It is the "we're at peace" representation while going through acts like that - and relying on the restrint of the Israelis not to counter in kind that is so repugnant.

Every culture has norms about attack under truce and about identifiable combatants - those exist, in modern war, to attempt to do two things: where possible, limit or focus violence on those aspects of society that are directly involved in violent conflict, and secondarily, to accept the moral responsibility and physical hazard that comes from these acts.

Truman took the responsibility, Arafat doesn't.

A.L.

Hi.

Joe Katzman said: "I have explained the 3 ways it can resolve ..."
Which if I understand correctly are:
(1) Genocidal war can succeed.
(2) Genocidal war can be called off.
(3) Genocidal war can be reciprocated.
Endless tension is not a resolution.
And you want the resolution not to be (1) or (3). I fully agree with that.

But I add:
(4) The attacking and/or the target population may vanish.
(5) Genocidal war can continue indefinitely, waxing and waning.

Example of 4: Suppose Amalekites wage a Palestinian style war against Hebrews, and eventually there is reciprocation. Amalekites vanish, not because of any mitzvah. Both an attacking and a target population ends: genocidal war is over.

Relevance of 4: Islam cannot vanish demographically (it is a strongly pro-fertility culture), but target populations with one-baby or no-baby families can go away whether they are attacked or not. Auto-genocide is a resolution. On demographic trends, tension between Islam and Europe (formerly "Christendom") may be on the way out, not primarily because of war.

Example of 5: Jihad calls for the elimination of all polytheists, but multi-god religions care primarily about following their own rules (diet, sex taboos or whatever) and are not all of one accord or one common cause, so: asymmetrical permanent genocidal war. But given human nature, "permanent" means there must be historical periods of depression and distraction punctuating the periods of zeal. So many Hindus alone, the goal is too far away, everyday life is more interesting, so let some later generation take up the sacred burden. "Allah make me a good Muslim - but not yet!"

Relevance of 5: This is my solution: those who want successful jihad/genocide in our time must be beaten and humiliated (like Saddam" down and out in Tikrit hills", the perfect example of what I want to happen) so Islam soon enters another period of depression and relatively latent menace.

If your holy book or civic religion says "live and let live, no genocide," and theirs says "kill the men, rape the women, divide the soils, end their generations," (5) is the best you can aim for, which is why I am for it.

The only objection I see to (5) is that nukes change the equation. With nukes going off in Western cities like Hamas suicide bombers going off in Israel, Trent Telenko would be proved right, and we would get a whole new civic religion. We are nowhere near that now. But we could get there, and then the words "hell to pay" would be inadequate.

By the way, I do not think "understanding" is the answer. Unreciprocated terror works. A morbidly over-sympathetic Western imagination looking for artistically interesting moral subtleties even where there are none only obscures the reality and impedes the solution. The solution is practical.

The world has seen a gigantic Muslim assassination cult before, and it was the Mongols that first demonstrated the only correct solution. First Hulagu Khan (1256) then Sultan Baybars sorted things out.

A.L. said: "Every culture has norms about attack under truce ..."

Remember that Islam was partly founded, as a practical matter, on raiding during the month of truce. Mohammed just made some weak excuses and went on with it, because it was advantageous.

(And of course it is advantageous if Jews or other enemies don't fight, whether it is because they have been tricked or because they are restrained by those who have been tricked, or any other reason.)

Though I may now be listed among those who blur the line between comprehension and solidarity, this is a genuine religious difference. Treaties and so on have a high place in Islam, but within and as useful parts of the divinely given perfect total system of conquest, not instead of it or in its way.

We should expect this and understand this, just as when a Muslim naturally wants the "House of Peace" to be worldwide, not leaving anybody out, we should understand what that means in his frame of reference rather than assuming it means what it would suggest in ours.

Islam is what it is, not what we would wish it to be. It's a whole 'nother culture. It doesn't respect our rules, out limits, our (from its perspective) weakness.

Many leftists claim that we are waging a war of revenge and obliteration against Islam. This is obviously false, but what is nearly always left unsaid is: We are waging a war of liberation now, in the hope that we can avoid having to wage a war of obliteration later.

In reply to Ross's latest screed, go read this post from the Belmont Club and think long and hard on the implications:

Thursday, January 15, 2004

The March Toward Total War

http://www.belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004_01_01_belmontclub_archive.html#107420230006555479

There is an old military maxim which holds that if a war is prolonged enough, the two sides will come to resemble each other. It is a recognition that a prolonged, indecisive struggle is often more brutal than victory. Thanks to the 'peace lobby', victory is now an evil, a triumphalistic phenomenon, to be avoided at all costs. In its stead, they will require the alternative: the slow and growing encrustation of human soul, until, in the fullness of time, it resembles their own.

Understand that I have walked down this road a number of times wargaming the possible responses to WMD terrorism. People like Ross, and his denial of hard reality, are just one factor I have accounted for. There are a host of others to include the blood lust of a provoked American people. After all, Americans are the only people on the face of the planet that have used nuclear weapons in combat.

The Belmont Club also addresses a number of the possible end states here in a post called THE THREE CONJECTURES:

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2003_09_01_belmontclub_archive.html#106401071003484059

It is supremely ironic that the survival of the Islamic world should hinge on an American victory in the War on Terror, the last chance to prevent that terrible day in which all the decisions will have already been made for us. That effort really consists of two separate aspects: a campaign to destroy the locus of militant Islam and prevent their acquisition of WMDs; and an attempt to awaken the world to the urgency of the threat. While American arms have proven irresistible, much of Europe, as well as moderates in the Islamic world, remain blind to the danger and indeed increase it. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad recently "told an international conference of young Muslim leaders ... (that) ... Muslims must acquire skills and technology so they can create modern weapons and strike fear into the hearts of our enemies". Fecklessness and gunpowder are a lethal combination. The terrible ifs accumulate.

People like Ross are delaying the American quest for victory such that after the Islamofacists start using genocide on one another -- which they will given the time people like Ross will give them. It will not phase America to do it to them. That is the horror of total war on the installment plan.

The above are data points on my personal worst case scenario, which I call "Incrementalism on the Road to Hell."

We are watching a whole culture play "Suicide by Cop" with America playing the role of the Cop on the Beat and the Islamofascist infected Mulsim world playing the deranged psychotic who is strung out on drugs and may have a (WMD) gun.

This was sent to me by a lurker here. It looks to be very much on-point.

Hilaire Belloc once wrote:

We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretched of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh.

But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on those faces there is no smile.

--Hilaire Belloc, contemplating the ruins of Timgrad in the Sahara Desert (in "Survivals and New Arrivals" I believe)

"9/11 has reawoken us to the fact that liberal passivity, apology and appeasement risk death for our loved ones, and suicide for our culture. Leftist collaboration and subversion promise murder. There are enemies that we cannot afford to ignore, and there are treasons that we cannot afford to forgive.

Mr. Belloc, I for one am not laughing."

Lee Harris goes into this subject in considerable detail in his latest book, Civilization and Its Enemies, which just came out. I haven't finished reading it yet. Here is the Amazon Books URL:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743257499/104-3450907-0019936

I urge everyone to read this book. He covers much of the ground mentioned in the discussion to date, but presents the various issues in a much clearer fashion.

Great minds think alike. This is a good discussion.

If anyone can explain to me why the mass slaughter of 40,000 civilians at Dresden a few weeks before the Nazi surrender was "necessary" I'll break out my checkbook; the steak's on me.

That's sadly easy, James. Broken spirits.

The great sci-fi author of the 60's, H. Beam Piper, best described this in his novel, Uller Uprising. I'll get back to that.

When Germany was defeated, America had to put up with almost four years worth of the German version of terror attacks. Most people don't remember this, because most history books don't mention it. From almost 60 years away, the deaths seem small, and unimportant. But at the time, Americans were horrified, and they made all the newspapers and magazines. A strange echo of what's happening now, in fact.

That didn't happen as much in Japan. Hardly any American servicemen were attacked. Why? Because we'd broken the spirit of the Japanese with the atomic bombs. They honestly believed that any further resistance would merely result in their country being turned into a nation-sized sheet of radioactive glass. Their spirits were broken in the same way you'd break the spirit of a riding horse, and for the same reason. To get unquestioning obedience and service.

Germany simply wasn't broken ENOUGH. They still had a little spirit left, and that was our mistake.

Remember I mentioned Uller Uprising above? It concerned a similar terrorist attack, and the Ullerian people attempted to gain a nuclear bomb of their own. The humans responded by obliterating one of their cities. To quote the man who ordered the bombing, General Von Schlichten:

"For one thing, he thought grimly, the next geek who picks up the idea of soaking a Terran in thermo-concentrate and setting fire to him will drop it again like a hot potato. And the next geek potentate who tries to organize an anti-Terran conspiracy, or the next crazy caravan driver who preached znidd suddabit (death to Terrans) will be lynched on the spot..."

That's what I want, James. I don't care if they hate me, as long as they fear me. I want Islamic Arabs to fall into two catagories.. ones who don't give much of a damn about their religion, the sort who take it as more of a social club than a fanatic belief - they are welcome to all the benefits of the 21st century.

As for the second, fanatic sort, the sort who howl for "One World, United Under Islam!".. well, I want them to look at me, and be so fearful of me, they don't even dare to look up in my presence. I want them to lose ALL hope. I want them thinking that even GOD can't help them defeat me, and that there is nothing left for them save obedience, and the possibility that their children, if taught by and trained by my nation, might be acceptable to me. And as for the few who'd rather die than give up their hopes of a world where their fanatical Islam rules over all, I want their own FAMILIES to fear me so much, they will kill their own rather than risk my anger.

The Romans understood this. That's why they crushed entire nations. And why they ALSO offered the people of those nations the possibility of becoming Roman citizens themselves. AFTER they'd been properly crushed, that is.

Abraham was willing to whack his own son, merely because the God he feared demanded it as a sign of loyalty. THAT'S what I want.

And with the passage of years, like Japan, the people of Arabia can go from submission to partnership, provided they leave their tribalistic traditions behind them in the dead past.

If they can learn to grow up like the Japanese did, that is.

Ed Becerra

Ed Becerra--

The Romans understood this. That's why they crushed entire nations...

True enough, but that's the Disney version. "The Romans" were savage peoples, surrounded by tribes and civilizations that were just as brutal, and worse. Any historically-accurate movie that you produced about Roman conquests, or border wars, or collapse, couldn't be rated PG-13 or R. Only X.

Proposals that we imitate the Romans must be stated clearly and without euphemism. In modern terms, we are talking about ruthlessness. The Ottomans towards Armenians, Hitler towards the Jews, the NKVD at Katyn Forest, the USAAF at Dresden and Tokyo, the Belgians in the Congo, the Hutus in Rwanda. And more. Blood, rivers of it.

Some of Trent Talenko's postings at WoC come across as extreme, but he gets it. The moral urgency of the Islamist threat is that we do everything we can. We of the West have to resist their nihilist embrace, and avert the future that has us standing at the precipice, forced to utter the damning words to a billion Muslims and the Qutbists at their head: "you or us".

Learn from history? By all means. But let's not emulate the Romans.

Ed & Amac,

Lee Harris has a whole chapter titled "Ruthlessness and the Origin of Civilization" in his Civilization and Its Enemies cited above.

I repeat that this book tracks this discussion in detail.

This is the book description of Lee Harris' Civilization and Its Enemies from Amazon.com:

Book Description

Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe....They forget that in time of danger, in the face of the enemy, they must trust and confide in each other, or perish....They forget, in short, that there has ever been a category of human experience called the enemy.

"That, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary. An enemy was just a friend we hadn't done enough for yet. Or perhaps there had been a misunderstanding, or an oversight on our part -- something that we could correct....

"Our first task is therefore to try to grasp what the concept of the enemy really means. The enemy is someone who is willing to die in order to kill you. And while it is true that the enemy always hates us for a reason, it is his reason, and not ours."

So begins Civilization and Its Enemies, an extraordinary tour de force by America's "reigning philosopher of 9/11," Lee Harris. What Francis Fukuyama did for the end of the Cold War, Lee Harris has now done for the next great conflict: the war between the civilized world and the international terrorists who wish to destroy it. Each major turning point in our history has produced one great thinker who has been able to step back from petty disagreements and see the bigger picture -- and Lee Harris has emerged as that man for our time. He is the one who has helped make sense of the terrorists' fantasies and who forces us most strongly to confront the fact that our enemy -- for the first time in centuries -- refuses to play by any of our rules, or to think in any of our categories.

We are all naturally reluctant to face a true enemy. Most of us cannot give up the myth that tolerance is the greatest of virtues and that we can somehow convert the enemy to our beliefs. Yet, as Harris's brilliant tour through the stages of civilization demonstrates, from Sparta to the French Revolution to the present, civilization depends upon brute force, properly wielded by a sovereign. Today, only America can play the role of sovereign on the world stage, by the use of force when necessary.

Lee Harris's articles have been hailed by thinkers from across the spectrum. His message is an enduring one that will change the way readers think -- about the war with Iraq, about terrorism, and about our future.

Tokyo was firebombed because they had decentralized their industries.

Japan had learned from earlier USAAF bombings that large buildings attract bombers. Factories, Aircraft Assembly Lines, machine shops, airplane hangars, anything and everything that can be identified from aerial photographs would be bombed.

Curtis LeMay, commander of the USAAF bomber groups, realized that the days of fat industrial targets was waning, and still the Japanese were producing fighters. He needed to crush the aircraft industry in order to achieve the total air supremecy required for invasion.

With the Japanese dependant on small family gardens for their foodstuffs, and with their aircraft industry "outsourcing" the manufacture of engine parts and propellers, the only way to knock out that capacity was to annihilate entire neighborhoods.

On the night of March 9th, Le May ordered his B-29's to strip their machine guns, and fly low over the target area. The bombers were heavily loaded with napalm sticks, over and above their normal bombloads. With the defensive machine guns removed, they had extra capacity. Surprisingly, there were very few bombers lost.

The results were spectacularly effective. Not only did Japanese aircraft production come to a halt, but so did a large portion of the food production. Over 1 million Japanese were left homeless (and therefore drained resources that the Government could have devoted to the war effort).

We were in a war. In order to defeat an entrenched enemy, we had to convince him that his defeat was inevitable and unavoidable. At that time, the Japanese government was mobilizing every citizen in anticipation of a US invasion. Citizens were being given explosives to use in case of US invasion (suicide bombers) and training on how to resist. When a Government exhorts its citizens to become combatants, trains them, and equips them, they lose their protected status. They are no longer "non-combatants".

However, if we hadn't used these methods to break them, we would have had to invade. The US Army, in its planning for the invasion, stockpiled hundreds of TONS of chemical weapons, and outlined plans for their use, including their use against civilians (you see, Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention's chemical weapon prohibitions). Even with the US Army, Marine Corps, and Airforce combined, the Japanese had more men and material to resist the invasion than the USA had to invade with. The Army brass knew the only way we could win under those conditions was to use chemical weapons.

In the event of a US invasion, the death toll would have been enormous. The US Army was projecting 5 million Japanese civilian casualties.

Now, if we had restrained ourselves, bombed only "good targets", and refrained from killing civilians, we would have killed MORE in the alternate ending. Only through the use of ruthless measures were we able to convince the Japanese government that resistance was futile.

Given this, why should Israel restrain itself when it comes to Palestinians and homicide bombers? Only when the Israelis become ruthless and grimly determined to win, even if that means exterminating the Palestinian people, will the Palestinans come to terms. Anything less, and the war will simply go on forever.

You cannot reason with entrenched totalitarian thugs. You cannont negotiate with rabid dogs, or with sharks. They don't believe in "live and let live". They are as fascinated with death as the Japanese Kamikaze pilots were. Death = honor. Surrender = dishonor. As long as they continue to believe that, and as long as their leaders preach that, Israel will never live in peace.

The situation in the Occupied Territories is grim. The Palestinians are being used as pawns. Arab regimes need pictures of Israeli tanks and bulldozers to turn their subjects' anger toward the Israelis and away from themselves. So they sponsor some terrorists, the terrorists blow up a bus, Israel sends in tanks and the regimes get more footage.

Should (God forbid!) Israel annex the West Bank and forcibly expel Palestinians or worse, the Palestinian issue will not exactly go away. It would become the Jordanian, Syrian, Lebanese and Egyptian issue. Israel would be no more secure, having lost its American allies and gained some enemies.

Warren Eckels

(By the way, the US pulled its punches in Japan. The original plan called for the bombing of Kyoto, the cradle of Japanese culture. They could have nuked the Imperial Palace as well.)