This leads to an unfortunate conclusion, though: kill the preachers of hate. If you cannot convince them with ideas to leave you alone, then you must coerce them with violence to leave you alone. I hate that conclusion, but it seems obvious.

The counter, and better, proposal would be to educate them about their own religion, which would run up against the wall of this mind set. Perhaps it would have been better, and would be better in the future, if we explicitly made those countries that we conquer insert freedom of religion clauses into their constitutions. At the very least, it would allow missionaries from other religions to try to educate them. (And isn't it odd for me, a pagan and deliberate non-proselytizer, to advocate Christian missionary work?)

I don't have any answers I like, in other words.

Sometimes, there aren't any answers that are likeable.

If their mullahs and imams tell them to kill unbelievers - and many do - that's obviously what Allah commands and that's what they will do. Period.

Hey now, what did I ever do to them?!?

To steal a line from the greatest editorial never published: I Don't Wish to Be Argumentative, But I Disagree with the Islamic Belief that I Should Be Killed

' "Oh, well, I guess they'll be killing us unbelievers, then," isn't an acceptable answer. '

No. It isn't. However, there is an acceptable answer. Not optimum, but acceptable. "They'll kill some of us unbelievers, and then we will kill every last one of them" is acceptable. And achievable.

More acceptable still: "They'll kill some of us unbelievers, and then we will kill every last one of them, destroy every last vestige of their stinking, evil demonolatry cult, destroy everything any of them has ever built, demolish every one of their cities and sow the ground they stood on with salt - or turn it into glowing glass".

Fletcher, we may get there at some point. But I hope we do not. It would mean hurting people like this guy. And I'd rather not.

Michael Totten, from The Liberation of Karmah, Part 2:

"The Middle East beyond Israel strikingly lacks anything resembling political correctness. I hear much more severe denunciations of radical Islam there than I do in the U.S., and I don’t mean from Americans. I hear it from Arabs, and from Persians and Kurds. I hear it in Lebanon all the time, and in Iraq too.

Sabah Danou walked with Commander Summers and Admiral Driscoll. He’s an Iraqi who works for the multinational forces as a cultural and political advisor in Baghdad. “Look,” he said to me and gestured toward a local man with a long beard and a short dishdasha that left his ankles exposed. “He’s a Wahhabi,” Danou hissed. “He is linked to Al Qaeda. That’s their uniform, you know, that beard and that high-cut dishdasha. God, what pieces of shit those fuckers are.”"

Jeff [#1]: Exactly how is killing the preachers of hate going to convince anyone (us included) that our belief in freedom of speech and religion is worthy of respect?

Fletcher [#4]: How is threatening their society with religiously-based and ethically-based genocide going to convince anyone (us included) that we are the Good Guys?

If you want respect for believing in the rule of law, then show that you believe in the rule of law. That means it applies to people you despise as much as to people you like.

Killing and torturing people is wrong. Punishing the innocent is wrong. You have to capture, try, and punish the guilty. You have to show that this applies to everyone.

Back in 2003, we missed the boat on being able to control Iraqi society sufficiently well to impose the rule of law. (Due to military malpractice, but that's another argument.) Then we did a variety of things to undermine our own credibility and respect, not only in the eyes of the rest of the world, but in the minds of our own country as well.

There are many honorable American men and women on the ground in Iraq. We have heard many of their stories here. But "mistakes have been made" (to be kind) at the highest levels of our government that have undermined all that good work. They have also poisoned the minds of many Americans with fear, to the point that people like Jeff and Fletcher are advocating courses of action that our fathers and grandfathers would have consider un-American abominations.

Yes, it's a dangerous world out there. Yes, there are people out there who mean us harm. But have the courage to believe in American values, and to stand up for the kind of honorable behavior that used to earn us the respect of the world.

I believe that it's actually possible to win this War on Terror (which never should have been named that), though it will be long and difficult. But few things give more aid and comfort to our enemies than advocating religious genocide.

Re: #6 from Beard. You addressed two people: Fletcher Christian and Jeff Medcalf. I'll only address what you said to Jeff Medcalf, because we seem to share perspectives to a considerable extent, whereas with Fletcher Christian, the only reason I rarely say any more that I don't agree with or like what he's saying is that I've said that so many times before and so definitely that there's no further point.

Jeff's talking sense, though I think "kill them" can be rephrased in a more abstract and more helpful way, with consequences that could be less bloody and more useful. The aim I suggest for our counter-jihad fighting is less Islam. The idea is that enemy will, skills and resources, matched against our weaknesses, generate the threat. We can't reduce our weaknesses very much, because we're not going to go for a homogenous and militant bloc of a society. Therefore, we must reduce the willingness, skills and resources of the enemy. We're not going to fundamentally affect their willingness as long as the system of Islam prevails. We can reduce hostile skills to some extent, by killing experienced preachers of jihad and veteran terrorists, but while that is all to the good it doesn't go very far. Therefore the only real solution is resource reduction. It can be killing, it can be writing down economic resources, it can be moving territories out of the camp of Islam and permanently into some other camp, or even scorching the earth in some areas, or it can address other elements of power, but the bottom line is writing down hostile resources.

This is how war is. It has its own rules, and "the rule of law" is empty words unless you first obey war's rules and win. Thus it ever was. Thus it ever shall be. As for notions like "killing people is wrong," that's a load of nonsense in war.

#6 from Beard:

"Jeff [#1]: Exactly how is killing the preachers of hate going to convince anyone (us included) that our belief in freedom of speech and religion is worthy of respect?"

When you're up against a supremacist doctrine, which Islam is, every concession made to that enemy is taken as a promise of further success to come, and it promotes further aggression against you, while setbacks blunt the enemy's zeal, eventually, as they mount, more than they inflame his vengeful malice.

The triumph of Islam means the extinction of our ideas on freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and everything else. Therefore, setbacks to the enemy, including the killing of preachers of hate, are valuable and sometimes essential in securing our ideals.

#1 from Jeff Medcalf:

"This leads to an unfortunate conclusion, though: kill the preachers of hate. If you cannot convince them with ideas to leave you alone, then you must coerce them with violence to leave you alone. I hate that conclusion, but it seems obvious."

Yes.

I think we can refine that a bit. But we cannot sanely reject the basic reality.

"The counter, and better, proposal would be to educate them about their own religion, which would run up against the wall of this mind set."

Yup, that's a loser.

"Perhaps it would have been better, and would be better in the future, if we explicitly made those countries that we conquer insert freedom of religion clauses into their constitutions. At the very least, it would allow missionaries from other religions to try to educate them."

I think this is such an important point that I consider our efforts to do nation building in states that constitutionally include Islam as a source of law to be worthless or counterproductive. In other words, without at minimum a real freedom of religion constitution, and a free run for missionaries, I don't see anything worth fighting to build up. And if the population is such that a real freedom of religion constitution would be unwanted or a dead letter, I see nobody worth fighting for, unless it's a rescue operation to evacuate jihad victims.

"(And isn't it odd for me, a pagan and deliberate non-proselytizer, to advocate Christian missionary work?) "

I reached the same conclusion from the same starting point. Logic says this is part of the solution, whether we like it or not.

"I don't have any answers I like, in other words."

Me either.

Humane, decent solutions - the only kind that a lot of good people are willing to resort to - work less than normally well against Islam. So the descendants of those unsuccessful decent people will be Islamic aggressors in turn. This is a strength of the Islamic system.

@#6 Beard:
Convincing anyone in a tribal, theocratic, or traditional despotism to respect freedom of speech or freedom of religion is something best left until later. The immediate requirement is much more modest: to convince the opinion-makers in those despotic societies that mass murder of infidels is not a good idea. One way of getting the point across would be by hanging some of those who advocate this practice and recruit its practitioners.

Don't look so shocked; we have already done this, and done it with as many legal niceties as any good process-liberal would like. Julius Streicher never personally killed a single Jew, but he urged many other Germans to do so. As an acknowledgment of his effectiveness, he was hanged according to the sentence passed by the Nuremberg tribunal. More recently, managers of Mille Collines radio and television received long prison sentences (one for life) from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for their roles in promoting genocide.

A few exemplary hangings of "fiery clerics" might serve to turn down the thermostat.

Beard:

I'm not an American, so I don't feel the need to advocate an American-style solution.

I believe that way back in the distant past, Rome had a civilisation on its doorstep just as incompatible with them as Islam is with us. That civilisation had some pretty unpleasant religious practises, too; such as burning babies alive in honour of their god.

Carthago delenda est.

The other side has been screaming "Death to America!" for so long that we have forgotten that they mean it. Fortunately, they don't have the ability to make good on it - yet. And pre-emptive self-defence is just as legitimate on the international scale as on the personal.

One way of making it possible to avoid the logic of the Three Conjectures is to tell the other side that the next time there is an atrocity (or even an attempted one) on the scale of 9/11 (and there will be one) then they lose a city - and if it happens again then they will lose another. And then make good on the threat.

No negotiation, no waiting for courtroom-standard evidence, no waiting for them to deny responsibility. Just a blinding white flash out of the blue. First target? Guess.

In reality, there are millions of Americans who, if you quizzed them about their religious beliefs in the same way that Capt. Traversa quizzed Hamid, would answer in almost exactly the same way. Of course you are right that, "It's the Hate Stupid!". However, you should look a bit closer to home and realize that it is just as awash in hatred as Afghanistan. To fail to do so is to mis-analyze the geopolitical reality of today.

In our system of laws, laws regulate behavior, not belief.

Murder is a crime. It's also a crime to be accessory before the fact (or after the fact) to murder or attempted murder. I don't doubt that Julius Streicher was justly accused, fairly tried, and correctly convicted and punished for genuine crimes. Although we have freedom of religion in our society, no religion has the right to human sacrifice or infanticide, however sincerely it follows from their beliefs. Or, to get closer to the point, religious leaders in our society do not have the right to incite their parishioners to murder other people.

However, in our society, the punishment must be appropriate to the crime. Murder, or being accessory before or after, is very serious, and is punished seriously. But only after a trial where the accused has the right to offer a defense, which is evaluated by a jury. Inciting others to commit a crime is also serious, but not quite at the same level, and it still requires trial, prosecution and defense, and a jury's decision before punishment.

Various writers here are taking a very different position: that we are at war, that violent repression without trial is appropriate, and that it is Islam as such, not bad behaviors, that must be suppressed or eliminated. I believe that these positions are not only antithetical to American values, but that they are also destructive to our hopes of victory.

I agree with Jeff Medcalf and David Blue that we should impose freedom of religion on countries we control, as well as much of the rest of the package of rights and obligations that our society has created. Recognize that that includes freedom for Islam (as well as the others) and freedom to say repellant things, as long as they don't cross the line and become incitement to criminal behavior.

The "War against Terror" is a conflict between the rule of law on the one hand, and the rule of fear and violence on the other. Terror is a tactic of asymmetric warfare used by the weak when the rule of law is overwhelmingly powerful. (Which it still is, for all its apparent problems.)

If that's the conflict you are fighting, you don't help the Good Guys win by weakening the rule of law in the conflict zone, and using tactics of fear and violence to intimidate your opponents. Making martyrs of a few preachers will do more for their side than for ours. At least some of those preachers would consider it a worthwhile exchange.

If you actually want to win (which I wonder sometimes), the way to do it is to strengthen the rule of law. Make it clear that criminal behavior will be punished, but that behavior within the bounds of our limits will be acceptable, even if we disagree or find it repellant.

Islam is a very heterogeneous religion, even if some imams disagree. Over time it will evolve, even as Christianity and all other religions have evolved. Some of the pressure for that evolution will come from measured consequences for criminal behavior. (Not speech; behavior.)

Gunning down radical imams strengthens radical Islam. People who fail to recognize this are contributing to our failure in the conflict between the rule of law and the rule of fear.

And Fletcher [#11], do you imagine that transforming yourself into a mechanical engine of destruction will not be noticed by third parties who have enemies they are unable to dispose of? (Notice how nicely GWB solved Iran's long-term problems with Saddam Hussein! I'm not saying they engineered it, but that part of it sure worked out well for them.)

Re: mechanical engines of destruction

Some may think fondly of the success of the policy of Mutual Assured Destruction during the Early Nuclear Era (1950-2000). However, that was the result of very careful and mathematically rigorous game theory. It depended critically on the assumptions that there were very few players in the game, and their actions could be unambiguously identified.

Asymmetric warfare cannot be as easily analyzed, but it is clear that there are winning strategies for minor players that involve inciting conflicts among the major players. (Recall that the USA won the Revolutionary War by gaming the conflict between Britain and France, which was far more important to those players than a bit of nonsense in far-off colonies.)

The bottom line, though, is that there was a very special time in history when making our country into a very specific kind of mechanical engine of destruction was a winning (or at least stable) strategy. But that time in history is gone.

"It's the hate, stupid!"

kill the preachers of hate.

Sometimes, there aren't any answers that are likeable.,/i>

Carthago delenda est.

More acceptable still: "They'll kill some of us unbelievers, and then we will kill every last one of them, destroy every last vestige of their stinking, evil demonolatry cult, destroy everything any of them has ever built, demolish every one of their cities and sow the ground they stood on with salt - or turn it into glowing glass".

Fletcher, we may get there at some point. But I hope we do not. It would mean hurting people like this guy. And I'd rather not.

I know I'm not alone in wondering how the naive belief of a US-employed interpreter in the perfection of his own religion, expressed while he is having a bull session with his employers, quickly sinks into speculations into the conditions under which that interpreter and all of his co-believers will have to be vernichtet (exterminated).

When did a belief in the perfection of your own religion become "hate?" I read the piece and I missed the part where Hamid calls for the extermination of all unbelievers. And, oh wow, an isolated, poor and mountainous country in which the USA spent millions up to 18 years ago to promote Islam as a ideological sword against Godless materialism now has rigid Islamic beliefs. Don't they know the line has changed, we are now at war with Islam and at peace with Godless materialism?

And I know I'm not alone in seeing the irony in JK and the like of "Fletcher Christian" talking about "hate."

Let me try the formatting again.

bq."It's the hate, stupid!"

bq.kill the preachers of hate.

bq.Sometimes, there aren't any answers that are likeable.,_

bq.Carthago delenda est.

bq.More acceptable still: "They'll kill some of us unbelievers, and then we will kill every last one of them, destroy every last vestige of their stinking, evil demonolatry cult, destroy everything any of them has ever built, demolish every one of their cities and sow the ground they stood on with salt - or turn it into glowing glass"._

bq.Fletcher, we may get there at some point. But I hope we do not. It would mean hurting people like this guy. And I'd rather not.

I know I'm not alone in wondering how the naive belief of a US-employed interpreter in the perfection of his own religion, expressed while he is having a bull session with his employers, quickly sinks into speculations into the conditions under which that interpreter and all of his co-believers will have to be vernichtet (exterminated).

When did a belief in the perfection of your own religion become "hate?" I read the piece and I missed the part where Hamid calls for the extermination of all unbelievers. And, oh wow, an isolated, poor and mountainous country in which the USA spent millions up to 18 years ago to promote Islam as a ideological sword against Godless materialism now has rigid Islamic beliefs. Don't they know the line has changed, we are now at war with Islam and at peace with Godless materialism?

And I know I'm not alone in seeing the irony in JK and the like of "Fletcher Christian" talking about "hate."

Metrico, I think you misunderstood my point at least. I was explicitly not calling for "killing the preachers of hate." My point was that it is short logical trip from "they only know about their religion what they are told, and they are told by someone who hates the US" to "then we have to kill the people telling them." That's not a good sequence, and there has to be a better way than that.

Beard, I'm not terribly concerned about following the rule of law on the battlefield. The point of the rule of law is that it replaces the rule of men, that rather than arbitrary (and unknowable in advance) personally-decided justice, justice is a known and equally-applied quantity. Those considerations apply in civil society, but not on the battlefield.

Jeff, all we know about the imam in the piece is that he preaches the supremacy and perfection of Islam. This is identical to what Pope Benedict preaches with regard to Catholicism. So how does that move to "preachers of hate?"

I looked it up - The Old Testament and Christian texts called for stoning or burning apostates. The Inquisition killed many Jews and Muslims after the Reconquista.

You can have a discussion about apostasy laws in Muslim countries, either in the context of Islamic law or international human rights conventions, but casting these laws as "hate" ignores history and the nature of Abrahamic religious belief itself.

metrico:

Hate (on our side, at least) has absolutely nothing to with it. I don't hate rabid dogs, particularly (if anything, I feel somewhat sorry for them) - but, threatened with lingering, agonising death by one and given the means, I would kill it.

As for the matter of third parties, there are two relevant points. First, who was it that got us to the point where killing a billion people is even being considered as a solution - by anyone? Wasn't us.

Second, what was the saying? Ah, that's right. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend". To which ought to be added; "for now".

Given that we don't have the means to seperate the sheep from the rabid wolves, the ultimately violent solution might be the only one.

One last point: At least one Islamic country has WMD - real ones. And that one isn't particularly stable. When it is taken over by Talibanesque lunatics, and gives one of those WMD to their friends, and they use it, then the entire West (probably including you) will be howling for blood and the less violent options will be gone.

Time to stop treating the struggle between civilisation and Dark Ages barbarism as a gentlemen's game.

Jeff, the problem with your position is that the "battlefield" has changed.

We don't have a tidy situation where there are red coats on one side, and blue coats on the other, and whoever captures the flag in the end gets to win the game.

We have a conflict between pluralist society operating under the rules of a particular kinds of laws, versus fundamentalist society that wants to operate under a very different set of laws.

The conflict is, in fact, fought out in the hearts and minds of the ordinary people. If they side with the pluralists, they will turn in fundamentalist extremists to the authorities. If they side with the fundamentalists, they will hide the extremists from the authorities, allowing them to continue asymmetric warfare against the authorities.

In the latter case, the fundamentalist extremists' best strategy is to goad the authorities into abandoning their pluralist position, becoming authoritarian fundamentalists in their own right.

We need to win the people to the pluralist position. We cannot afford to think that the military activity is taking place in a separate sphere, where we can simply use our big guns and export victory to the rest of the world. That might have worked in the 17th century, but not today.

We believe in pluralism, where good behavior (not right beliefs) are enforced by the rule of law. To win the people over to that, we need to demonstrate that we are willing to do what we say.

Is Israel included in the countries where we are bringing freedom of religion? It's a criminal offense there to proselytize for any religion except one, and Christian evangelicals from groups like Jehovah's Witnesses get deported from time to time.

Just asking.

Metrico, you mention Christian texts distinct from the Old Testament that advocate stoning and burning apostates. What are they?

Beard, that was more or less a perfect statement of "oh, well, I guess they'll be killing some of us infidels." Nice job!

"Exactly how is killing the preachers of hate going to convince anyone (us included) that our belief in freedom of speech and religion is worthy of respect?"

First of all, Beard, your answer makes it clear that you weren't even paying attention to the contents of this post. Do yourself a favor, read it again, and think this time about the mentality it describes.

Second, leaving the complete lack of civic understanding implied by your formulation, continued fomenting of war (and jihad is unquestionably war) by people who have declared and executed war upon us earns the responses of war. A response tempered only by calculation.

Leaving the enemy's center of gravity alone so their brainwashed followers get killed in droves while these guys remain safe, or leaving them alone until the situation escalates to a point where they get the total war they seek and preach (wouldn't take much to make this happen in Pakistan)... no, that isn't moral. Other words come to mind, but certainly not "moral." Or "smart."

Personally, I'd rather have destroyed the radio station in Rwanda with air strikes, hunted down and killed its personnel, and done the same for the Rwandan preachers of hate once it became clear the situation was moving toward genocide.

Beard, in contrast, would rather ineffectually try a couple of people after hundreds of thousands were horribly killed. Beard's solution just looks like a mix of self-indulgence and sadism to me - an ideology that is resolute in protecting the fomenters of genocide and hate, but never resolute in protecting their victims.

So yes, I do say "kill the Islamic preachers of jihad - and encourage and organize our allies within their culture to do the same." It's the proper response, the moral response, and their own religion's history shows that it is culturally appropriate and works. Should it be the only response? No. But it should absolutely be one of our responses.

Would Hamid's preacher be targeted? Maybe not. Probably not, in fact, since Hamid is cooperating with the Americans. If so, his imam can preach whatever nonsense he wishes, including the mentality Hamid displays. We'd have no good reason (note that I have not once used the word "rights" here) to interfere, and many good and practical reasons not to.

As I said above, the preaching of hate and jihad is not all pervasive. But we have more than adequate evidence that it isn't rare, either.

The question is, what are we going to do about it? "Nothing" is an unacceptable answer, on multiple levels.

What if there were answers short of killing the preachers of hate? Because we have to find some. One is simple; it's a job for which they are paid and if they were being paid to say or do something else, I bet they would. And I bet if the people who stopped paying them didn't pay them, how different do we think things would be?

Because I'm damn uncomfortable with the notion that even hateful speech against us deserves the death penalty.

A.L.

I think Joe and some others are missing a question of tenses. I don't think attacking Milles Collines right before the Rwanda genocide would have changed much. Maybe messed up the timing a little bit. If some magic bullet killed Julius Streicher in the cradle, someone else would have run his paper. Adolf Hitler was someone "special" to the Holocaust; most of the others weren't.

Terminating Islamic extremist pastors with extreme prejudice now is not going to quell Islamic extremism. Those that go beyond hate preaching to organizing terror cells, when we apprehend them, we can give them fair trials (not Bush-style kangaroo courts) and imprison them.

If you don't follow my argument, just turn it around and make the military the bad guys.

If I didn't give them to you in a concentration camp, where you had more persuasive methods at your disposal, I certainly won't give them to you now. And what if you track down these men and kill them? What if you murdered all of us? From every corner of your Republic, thousands would rise to take our places. Even Nazis can't kill that fast.

Actually, Joe, I did read the post carefully. Hamid's attitude is unfortunate, but not astonishing. In plenty of cultures, including our own, we have lots of people who are perfectly happy with their current beliefs, and don't feel the need to listen to alternatives. When's the last time you invited a Jehovah's Witness into your house when they rang the doorbell? (I actually did this a few months ago, but mostly to argue Biblical interpretation. Almost as much fun as blogging!)

I am certainly not advocating doing nothing. But I think we need to uphold the rule of law, and that means (in our society) prosecuting people for criminal behavior, not for offensive thoughts or beliefs. That doesn't mean waiting around until thousands of people have been killed before rounding up a few ringleaders, but it also doesn't mean pre-emptive murder of incendiary preachers.

I'm not a lawyer, but I expect that there is a pretty well-developed body of case law that defines the fuzzy boundary between offensive-but-protected speech and the criminal act of inciting others to commit crimes.

The position I'm exploring is that, if we are going to take over a country like Iraq, we have to do the whole job. And that includes imposing our legal system on their behavior, using our military to impose law and order, and prosecuting (with scrupulous attention to fairness, since this is an educational process) anyone who violates our rule of law.

(I'm "exploring" rather than asserting this because I'm not sure of all the implications of this, and it's quite a right-wing, imperialist departure from my usual left-wing position.)

Everyone knows that the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion was a disaster, because we hadn't planned and provisioned adequately to ensure law and order. Now we are in a fix that we may or may not be able to get out of. Furthermore, if we had done the planning in advance, we might not have had enough resources available to carry out a plan that would ensure law and order. In which case, we should not have done the invasion in the first place. That was the decision of George Bush I, and it seems smarter all the time.

This is more or less what we did in Japan after WWII. We wrote their constitution, we supervised their legislature and their courts, in order to import and enforce our Western values. In the end, it worked. Very different culture; very different people; different things are needed in Iraq.

If we want to win the "War on Terror" we have to show that we can live by the values we claim to be exporting. And those values depend on respecting the bright line between thought and action. You can punish criminal action (even the action of inciting someone else to do the dirty work). We don't believe in "criminal thought", or so we claim. If we start killing people for what they believe, rather than what they do, we undercut our whole enterprise.

#22 from Armed Liberal:

"What if there were answers short of killing the preachers of hate? Because we have to find some."

"Ought" implies "can". And "have to" in this case seems to mean "ought". Saying "have to" doesn't make it doable if it isn't.

#22 from Armed Liberal:

"One is simple; it's a job for which they are paid and if they were being paid to say or do something else, I bet they would. And I bet if the people who stopped paying them didn't pay them, how different do we think things would be?"

You wouldn't say things like that, Armed Liberal, without being paid, but that's because you're a reasonable man, operating within our system. They are unreasonable men, operating within their system. Or to put it another way, they're sane, but by their standards, not ours. That doesn't do us any good.

But you're right on this: if none of them ever had any money coming in, that would be a good thing.

Are OK with dwindling the Islamic world as much as practicable, including cutting down the income flowing into it as much as we can? For a start, how about just cutting off every dollar of "aid" - aid which is more like tribute, since we're paying our enemies.

And where our troops are able to be stationed only because we pay tribute, how about pulling those troops out? And if it's alleged that there will be killing if we pull our troops out, with various of our enemies killing each other once we're not paying them to let our troops stay there keeping them safe from each other, how about we act as if that's not our problem?

#22 from Armed Liberal:

"Because I'm damn uncomfortable with the notion that even hateful speech against us deserves the death penalty."

Deserving doesn't have a thing to do with it.

There's something we could try before we kill anybody.

We could relentlessly expose these people (and the organizations that house them) day after day, using their own words. Educate, educate, educate.

This pretty much what Charles Johnson does, and gets roundly abused for it. This is what MEMRI often does, to the sputtering outrage of Juan Cole. This is what dead Dutch filmmakers did.

The weak point of the fatwa-flingers is Western complacency, which is shot through with contradictions - like "liberals" apologizing for the worst forms of anti-liberalism, and Arab nations coddling people who are their worst enemies. Hammer that wall.

Personally, I'm more interested in freedom from religion than freedom of religion.

I looked it up - The Old Testament and Christian texts called for stoning or burning apostates. The Inquisition killed many Jews and Muslims after the Reconquista.

And when was the most recent time it happened?

I'm always amazed by the pathetic attempts at moral equivalence between what the Jews did thousands of years ago, and what Christians did hundreds of years ago, and what Muslims are doing today.

#26 from Glen Wishard:

"There's something we could try before we kill anybody."

"We could relentlessly expose these people (and the organizations that house them) day after day, using their own words. Educate, educate, educate."

"This pretty much what Charles Johnson does, and gets roundly abused for it. This is what MEMRI often does, to the sputtering outrage of Juan Cole. This is what dead Dutch filmmakers did."

That's all to the good, and I strongly recommend Jihad Watch too. (link)

Cabalamat (#27), the path to the former is through the latter.

David Blue:

For a start, how about just cutting off every dollar of "aid" - aid which is more like tribute, since we're paying our enemies.

Absolutely. Kirkpatrick Doctrine; if you take our money you act like our friend, and you respect our friends, or come next payday you can go piss up a rope. People are starving? Turning to Islamic radicalism out of desperation? F--k you, go trade your sovereignty to the Chinese for some crappy mortar rounds.

As D.P. Moynihan put it:

I looked down the list of those who go along [with hostile resolutions in the United Nations] and those who go along by abstaining. In half of them the present regimes would collapse without American support or American acquiescence. To hell with it. Something specifically bad should happen to each one of them, and when it has happened they should be told that Americans take the honor of their democracy very seriously, and never issue warnings to those who would besmirch that honor.

Of course Moynihan is dead, and we'd have to fight the remaining Democrats hammer and tongs, if you can find five Republicans with the stomach to do it ...

"I looked down the list of those who go along [with hostile resolutions in the United Nations] and those who go along by abstaining. In half of them the present regimes would collapse without American support or American acquiescence."

I remember this from A Dangerous Place by Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Hardcover - Nov 1978). I read it when it came out, and being young I waited for the Americans to start taking account of what it said. But they never did. (insert emoticon for: baffled)

It is not the hate. It is the tribalism.

Today I read about how Jordan is going to prosecute the Danish cartoonists and newspapers and ask for the extradition through Interpol of both the cartoonists and publishers. Where presumably they will face the death penalty.

This is not hate per se. It's tribalism. A society that has Hamids thinking for themselves, reading the Koran, deciding for themselves, has tribalism on the ropes. A tremendous shattering force to the entire orientation of that society. Is it any wonder that unity is found through attacking convenient foreigners? Infidels? Look at Jordan.

What this suggests is:

1. This conflict will never end until the West (broadly including China, Japan, South Korea) is tribal too or the rest of Islam is de-tribalized.

2. The more de-tribalization threatens a society, the more like Japan in March-Aug 1945 it will fight, desperately, to hold onto the tribal glue.

3. Reason won't work, since people thinking and acting for themselves DIRECTLY THREATENS the ENTIRE BASIS FOR A TRIBAL SOCIETY.

4. Trying to be "nice" or well-liked or caring about any of that is a fool's errand. It translates only to "weakness" by tribal peoples who see both aggression (cultural transmission telling people to think for themselves) and weakness.

5. The factors above, along with the understandable desire not to use force, and natural pacifism along with monumental stupidity (i.e. all peoples around the world are like people seen at the Apple Computer store) will guarantee Wretchard's Three Conjectures.

I really just don't see anything else.

If you've not seen Michael Palin's series about trekking through the Sahara, you should. He visits astonishingly poor Muslim places like Chad that are so poor, there is no cultural contact, and tribal basis for society is not threatened at all. There he is received with honor as a tribal visiting guest, in a deeply tribal (and ignorant) society so poor it doesn't even have radio (at Timbuktu, with the Imam who plans to revive the city by creating a really religious Madrassa, which will bring the caravans back). By contrast, Algeria looks like an arid France, with modern trains worthy of American envy. And a constant terrorist threat mandating massive security for Palin.

Timbuktu and Algeria IMHO prove my point.

I looked it up - The Old Testament and Christian texts called for stoning or burning apostates. The Inquisition killed many Jews and Muslims after the Reconquista.
And when was the most recent time it happened?

How long ago was the Irish Good Friday agreement? 2005? Although it was a little more shooting than stoning and burning. I don't think the West's 20th Century human rights record is anything to be excited about.

There are some people one cannot "reason" with. When
Genghis Khan came calling one either accepted his terms--in which case he let you live, but on HIS terms--or one resisted and was successful, (THIS time)or one was slaughtered...much the same as has been historically the case in the Muslim world. What I am worried about is that modern technology, in combination with the rise of religious fanatics in the Moslem world, has created the functional equivalent of the Andromeda Strain.

I believe the above to be true because the inter-net,
widely available digitalization of the banking system, encryption technology, cell/satellite phones etc., all combine to allow a very few dedicated adherents of whatever cause to plot, recruit, finance and travel under the radar to a degree heretofore impossible. This fact, when combined with the power of various wpns of mass destruction to paralyze modern civilization (the largest Post Office in D.C. is still entombed because of the 9/11 anthrax attack--imagine what would happen to this nation's commerce if, say, 20-30 of the nation's main P.O. centers were infected simultaneously.) means that the solution advocated by Fletcher Christian (which is essentially what we did to the Indians--which made the Transcontinental RR--and thus the settlement of the West--possible) is no longer logistically feasible--however desirable....and I am not squeamish.

When the above facts are joined with the realization that there will always be an endless supply of potential jihadists due to their CORRECT reading of the Koran, NOT a mis-interpretation of it, somber thoughts intrude. Statistically speaking, enough of those still unborn will someday correctly absorb the writings of the Koran enough to feel the tug of hatred of the "other" sufficient to move them
to terroristic, civilization paralyzing action. And they will have the technology to carry their desires
out. We can't guard every train trestle, tunnel (think Baltimore or NYC) bridge,port or inspect every container(smuggling is a 7 trillion-dollar business
world-wide--most of it in containers.)in the land. And it is physically impossible to kill every Moslem either. Most despairingly, unless every single copy of the Koran is destroyed, there will always remain
within its covers the formula and instructions for our demise. Hence: Welcome to the 2.0 version of the Andromeda Strain.

Corollary: people with a mentality like this won't be influenced by any outside events, including US policy, into being friendlier. If their mullahs and imams tell them to kill unbelievers - and many do - that's obviously what Allah commands and that's what they will do. Period.

When you unpack the implications of that, they're pretty significant, and go a long way beyond stupid bromides re: acceptance of different cultures' way of thinking. "Oh, well, I guess they'll be killing us unbelievers, then," isn't an acceptable answer.

Oh man, oh man. Does anyone here get the circular argument (catch 22) of the current GWOT (for want of a better term)? Because we are PC, we must respect their culture. After all, all cultures have value. But their culture says there can only be one religion and that anyone who says elsewise is either an infidel or an apostate. The only way to deal with the first set is to put them to the sword so that they submit to the rule of Islam, at the least. The only way to deal with the second group is the sword. But we accept that idea because we are better than that. On the other side, we must let them practice their religion which says we can either be them or die. Because we are for all the good stuff, we cannot commit the same genocide they would commit on us, etc. And round and round and round...

That was most likely badly said, but I think you get my drift.

From Fletcher Christian:

One way of making it possible to avoid the logic of the Three Conjectures is to tell the other side that the next time there is an atrocity (or even an attempted one) on the scale of 9/11 (and there will be one) then they lose a city - and if it happens again then they will lose another. And then make good on the threat.

Which is the 3 conjectures, lad. This is the modern game of tit-for-tat. Prisoners Dilemma. When do we not cooperate? They write 1×10^{6. We write 1×10}9. Done.

So what do we do? I see two choices.

1. Play the current losers game. Try to nibble at the edges. Be the weak horse. Wait for our new masters to take control through creeping sharia or outright conquest.
2. Do what the bad or blind or willfully ignorant guys of all flavors have accused and still accuse us of doing. Play Imperium Americus, to win. Take their oil fields and everything else of value from them. Be the strong horse.

After some years of a Pax Americus, they may be ready to join the civilized world of modern nations.

Or there is a 3rd choice, be also what some believe us to be, the evil kidz on the block. Commit the genocide and possibly go to our own cultural suicide.

Andrew:

I don't think the West's 20th Century human rights record is anything to be excited about.

If you took out the national and international socialists, it would be quite good. For that matter, the 17th Century was much better than the 16th, the 18th was better yet, and the 19th was magnificent.

The trouble is, some people seem to have missed all of these centuries.

The Old Testament and Christian texts called for stoning or burning apostates.

Apparently metrico does not understand the principal Christian text on stoning. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" does not mean "Go ahead and stone her, I don't care."

When Jesus said this to an angry mob 2000 years ago, they understood him. Apparently centuries of science and enlightenment have not made everyone smarter.

I don't think the West's 20th Century human rights record is anything to be excited about.
Not unless we're grading on a curve; but you weren't responding to a point about 'the West', you were ostensibly responding to a point about Jews and Christians. Did the Irish cite religious beliefs to justify their conduct? Certainly the Catholic and Anglican churches could not. Their scriptures won't support it. The simple fact is that the Bible is not the moral equivalent of the Koran, and only someone with the invincible ignorance of a Hamid or a metrico could claim otherwise.

bgates asks: "Did the Irish cite religious beliefs to justify their conduct?"

Yes. I won't elaborate on that, since if you don't already know this, the chances are you really don't care all that much. Nor is there any reason why you should; though it never ceases to amaze me when Americans, who plainly cannot understand Irish Catholics, who speak the same language and have a very similar cultural heritige, nonetheless think they can understand Iraqi Shiites, who have very little in common with them.

But if by any chance you do want to explore the topic, the writings of Padraig Pearse and Bobby Sands will give you some idea. You might also ask yourself whether it was just a coincidence that the Easter Rising took place at Easter. As an Irish journalist remarked, elsewhere Easter is the feast of the Resurrection; here it's the feast of the Insurrection.

Not that there is anything peculiarly Irish about a combination of religious fervour and nationalism. Joan of Arc considered that she was doing the will of God. If killing foreign soldiers is incompatible with sanctity, somebody should have told the Pope before he canonised her.

Absolutely, the Northern Irish quarrel was (and may easily again be) clear Christian terrorism, justified by specific Christian ideas on both sides, and with clerical encouragement on both sides. I remember reading of one fine Catholic killer who recollected that he went straight from killing to confession, and instead of getting the pro forma "tut tut naughty boy" that he expected was told by the priest: great job, do it again.

The case of St. Joan is peculiar in many, many ways. I do not think that she is the safest person to use to prove a case that slaughter is saintly. For one thing, the pope who canonized her first consulted the English, and only went ahead when it turned out that they were urging her case just like the French. If you kill people in droves in such a charitable spirit that their unconquered descendants think you own a halo, maybe you do.

While Joan isn't the safest person to make the case from, it's clearly correct. There have been plenty of bloody saints, including an organizer of street terror gangs. In general, in beating up pagans, anything goes, as their ways are detested by the LORD. To give you an idea how nasty you can be and be a saint, Torquemada's case failed for lack of miracles, not because of any flaw in his character or conduct. (Yes, that Torquemada.)

But Christianity and Islam are substantially different, and likely to remain so, for a lot of reasons.

One problem: the sex fantasies built into Islam, of captive slave maidens and hot, compliant houris in Paradise waiting to reward those who slaughter for Allah. That stuff's not going away. And it has deadly consequences, because dammed up male sexuality systematically focused to bloody ends is a powerful force. This is no joke, unfortunately.

Another: the example of the maximum leader for all time counts for a lot.

Jesus didn't go in for robbery, massacre, authorizing assassinations of his mockers, multiple marriage, this-worldly religious tyranny, and so on. Therefore, while permission to do most of that may be added to Christianity, and the option has often been exercised and may be again, getting rid of permission to do all this stuff is not a religious problem. One can demand that people be peaceful, even pacifist, without any tension with the leader's example, and indeed with his clear words to back you up.

Muhammed went in for all this and more, and is the ideal Muslim for the ages. It is not possible to condemn Muhammed's example, and therefore it would be very hard - if possible at all, which I doubt - to get rid of Islam's grants of permission to do the sorts of things Muhammed did.

Christianity didn't necessarily have to get over it's horrible phases. But it could, and generally it now has.

Nothing but wishful thinking says that Muslims are ever going to get over the idea that Muhammed is an excellent model for imitation.

It's particularly problematic that Muhammed used violence to silence his critics.

Most Muslims of course are moderate, just as most Communists have been moderate, most Fascists have been moderate, and we can confidently assume that most true-believing Aztec warriors were personally moderate. This is the default temperament of mankind, regardless of how the system works.

But when the system authorizes violence in seizing power, suppressing dissent and making war on outsiders who don't convert, you have a problem, because no matter how invitingly moderate the people are who build up the system in a given area, in time the potential force that is built is likely (in a more than chance way) to be wielded by people who are intractably aggressive and comfortable with violence.

It's not good enough to say "Muhammed is a lovely fellow, but oppressed. He wouldn't want to kill infidels if his mullah didn't tell him to, and poor Muhammed doesn't get a vote." Not if what Muhammed wants to do is build up a mosque and a community governed by rules that make it highly likely in the long run that his children will be indoctrinated in supremacist values and incited to practice aggression, and they won't get a vote.

It's not about the individual. It's about the functioning of the system.

Kevin Donoghue:

You might also ask yourself whether it was just a coincidence that the Easter Rising took place at Easter.

Well, it wasn't a coincidence, it was sound military planning. The uprising was planned for Easter Monday so that the traditional Easter Sunday parades and gatherings could be used to disguise the mobilization of rebel forces. St. Patrick's Day would have done as well, but the uprising was planned in January and they weren't ready in March.

They weren't ready enough in April, either, so "The bravest fell and the solemn bell rang mournfully and clear, for those who died at Eastertide in the springing of the year."

I don't know how the Irish got mixed up in this thread, but it's a very annoying prejudice of those who don't know any Irish history to assume that it's all about religious war between Protestants and Catholics. The generation of Irish republicans who came before the Easter rebels were primarily Protestant - Pearse was inspired by the Protestant nationalists Robert Emmett and Wolfe Tone. Emmett and Tone were inspired by the French revolution.

By the time of Bobby Sands, the latter-day "republicans" included Marxists as well as altar boys, and their inspirations extended to the Algerians and the PLO. Bobby Sands has a street named after him - in Tehran. Go figure those Shiites, huh?

Re #36 Robohobo:

I am quite well aware that what I set out was essentially the Three Conjectures. However, I think there is still a small window to avoid the 1E9 side of the equation.

That window is afforded by the fact that the other side does not yet have WMD - at least the really crazy elements of it don't. The next atrocity (and there will be one, make no mistake) will likely kill 1,000-10,000 of us. We need to make it clear that if and when it happens then there will be no argument, no discussion, no appeals, no waiting for courtroom-standard proof; just the Kaabah being turned into highly ionised plasma. Then wait a while. If they get the point, then all well and good. If they don't? Well, the boomers, the B-2s and the holes in the Kansas prairie will still be waiting.

On the choices set out by you? Of them, there is an unseen third. The oil only matters because they can buy stuff (food, know-how, weapons, you name it) with the money they get from it. So the third choice is to make the oil irrelevant - by spending a miniscule fraction of the money currently being spent on Iraq to go all out for energy independence. I am not going to set out all the energy-producing processes that ought to be tried; that has been done exhaustively here and elsewhere - except that I have a preference for SPS as long as it is built with space resources.

Once that work bears fruit - then confiscate all their ill-gotten gains, blow up all the pipelines, mine the Gulf and let them see whether they can eat oil. And if it's SPS that gets used, with all the other things it implies - then never, never, never let any Moslem or citizen of a Muslim country into space.

Of these two approaches, which should we try? Both.

AJL (#19)

"Is Israel included in the countries where we are bringing freedom of religion? It's a criminal offense there to proselytize for any religion except one, and Christian evangelicals from groups like Jehovah's Witnesses get deported from time to time."

Andrew, I think that's flat-out false, and I'd love to see some cites on it.

A.L.

DB (#22) -

Look, this is a long-held argument about whether we are a) in conflict with the ummah (the whole of the Islamic world); or b) in conflict (and at war) with a small, deluded, crazy movement within the ummah that intends to use friction with the West as a lever to take power within Islam, and then go ahead and take power in the West.

As long as I've been thinking about this issue, I have felt that the answer is b); that the vast majority of Muslims are not our enemy (while they may be our rivals or opponents, there's a huge gap between rivalry and war), and that the path to solving the problem lies in splitting off the radical minority from the larger population - classical counterinsurgency in theory.

So by deliberately accepting the Islamist frame - that the West is at war with Islam - you're handing them the first victory that they seek, and empowering them within the islamic world.

So no, I'm not buying the notion that we need to 'starve' the Muslim world into submission, or even to make it submit at all. I do think we need to do the hard work necessary to isolate the movement within the Muslim world, and to make sure that it doesn't proselytize or slaughter its way into power.

Just as we didn't need to 'starve' the Catholic or Protestant Irish into accepting peace; we just had to kill and isolate enough of the crazy radicals that they were no longer in the way.

A.L.

So by deliberately accepting the Islamist frame - that the West is at war with Islam - you're handing them the first victory that they seek, and empowering them within the islamic world. [A.L. #44]

Hear! Hear!

David Blue, Christianity is far different from Islam in that Islam is the glue of tribalism (though it can mitigate some aspects of it) while Christianity is acid that destroys tribes, melts them together into nations.

Tribes rely on Big Men, and resemble a pride of lions. A few big men monopolizing most of the women, young men as shock troops to raid other tribes, poor resource mobilization and allocation, inefficient systems that are however particularly robust in chaotic times.

Tribalism is the default social organization of man. When stressed, societies fall back on it or revert to it. Tribalism allows alliances based on family/clan to develop power through complex kinship relations, and has many advantages particularly in most of history and most places where there is no rule of law or nationalism (wide trust networks).

AL -- OF COURSE ALL MUSLIMS ARE OUR ENEMY. They are our enemy because they are tribal. Islam makes their tribalism worse in some ways (and better in others) but no one should delude themselves on that matter that tribal societies can live in peace along non-tribal ones. This has never been the case and never will be the case.

Jordan, a deeply tribal society, wants to use law to extradite Danish cartoonists for "blasphemy" which would get them beheaded. Jordanians are not doing this because "they are evil." They do this because it's the only way in which tribal societies can function: raiding constantly their neighbors, particularly when the neighbors do things the tribe finds offensive (honor/face societies). The globalization process makes Jordan and Denmark virtual neighbors so conflict is inevitable.

Liberal ideas of individual rights and such only make this conflict worse, since it destroys the tribal basis of society. Like a dagger pointed at their hearts. They know it too. Which is why the Danish Cartoons are such a fuss. They represent a direct and immediate challenge to tribal authority and thus must be crushed. Or more people will start to THINK FOR THEMSELVES.

The ONLY way to avoid Western Cities dying by tribes with nukes™ and thus survival of the West depending on wiping out the tribes, is poverty.

Really poor tribes, so poor they are not even connected to the globalized outside world, have no contact culturally or otherwise with the West and thus no threat to their tribal basis.

If the Muslim world which is currently quite rich compared to what they were, was impoverished to the point that it wasn't even worth while to connect them to the internet or satellite TV, let alone DVD sales and the like, their tribal societies could continue as happy and isolated in their slaughters as remote Amazonian or New Guinean tribes.

I just don't see this happening however.

AJL (#19)

"Is Israel included in the countries where we are bringing freedom of religion? It's a criminal offense there to proselytize for any religion except one, and Christian evangelicals from groups like Jehovah's Witnesses get deported from time to time."

Andrew, I think that's flat-out false, and I'd love to see some cites on it.

It is, of course, flat-out false. (That's the safe way to bet on any assertion AJL makes, especially those regarding Israel.)

#44 from Armed Liberal:

"Look, this is a long-held argument about whether we are a) in conflict with the ummah (the whole of the Islamic world); or b) in conflict (and at war) with a small, deluded, crazy movement within the ummah that intends to use friction with the West as a lever to take power within Islam, and then go ahead and take power in the West."

Look yourself: we've put this to the test, in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as in Palestine, and if the enemy was a teeny tiny gang of thugs engaged in anti-Islamic activities, we would have beaten it many years ago.

The course of the War on Terror during President George W. Bush's presidency, especially his second term of office, was a field test of his religious conviction that Muslims and Methodists are functionally the same, with the same passion for freedom. We've run the test, at a considerable cost in blood - I mean mostly wounded - and money, and the litmus test turned the wrong color. We continued to take casualties, because the "friendly" population we were defending against that gang of thugs till the people could raise an army of their own was unfriendly, in fact it approved of attacks on the infidel soldiers. We continued to take casualties after the friendly natives had built their army.

This is not where we were supposed to be, and not where we would be if the "small, deluded crazy movement" theory was true.

Consequently the War on Terror as it has been conceived from the start in line with George W. Bush's avowedly evidence-proof assumptions about the goodness of Islam and mankind's universal love of freedom is dead wrong. It's unsoundly based. Its bedrock assumption isn't so.

#44 from Armed Liberal:

"As long as I've been thinking about this issue, I have felt that the answer is b); that the vast majority of Muslims are not our enemy (while they may be our rivals or opponents, there's a huge gap between rivalry and war), and that the path to solving the problem lies in splitting off the radical minority from the larger population - classical counterinsurgency in theory."

Whereas I, when I saw that the friendly populations we were fighting for were morally supportive of attacks on the infidel soldiers - and not just soldiers, but perfectly harmless apostates like Abdul Rahman - changed my ideas to conform better to the evidence. That love of freedom we were counting on, if it existed, was in tension with the dynamics and intractable sentiments of a system whose hostility we consistently refused to acknowledge.

#44 from Armed Liberal:

"So by deliberately accepting the Islamist frame - that the West is at war with Islam - you're handing them the first victory that they seek, and empowering them within the islamic world."

Arguments like this suggest that we shouldn't fight at all, as the left says, and as top military historian Michael Howard warned us when we contemplated attacking Afghanistan. The "Islamists" want a fight, and in fact significant absolute numbers of them have wanted martyrdom. Don't give them what they want! Osama Bin Laden was luring us into a fight in Afghanistan. Don't fall for it, it will only give him what he wants!

War cannot be made or resisted effectively by putting in first place a requirement that the enemy not be given the fight he wants.

Politically, people are highly sensitive to violence and menace. Kill one film-maker, caution a thousand. Punish a few apostates, chill many potential apostates. Make it clear that correctly identifying the enemy is far from career-enhancing, and you can corrupt the terminology that our military and government experts use in thinking about the low level global war that it being waged against us. (And not only us.) In other words, the enemy's war-making is effective.

It requires a response, and in my opinion one that doesn't address only bullets, or box-cutters, or suicide-bombers (which are effectively human-appearing fire and forget munitions), but the system that organizes and inspires the enmity of the hostile wielders of weapons.

#44 from Armed Liberal:

"So no, I'm not buying the notion that we need to 'starve' the Muslim world into submission, or even to make it submit at all."

Me either. I have not set as our goal that we starve the whole Islamic world into submission, or for that matter that we kill all Muslims with nuclear bombs, or any other of the crazy aims that people like Fletcher Christian come up with.

I just say we should aim at less Islam. It's a system that's malign to us. If there's more of it, with higher ratings across various elements of power, we've got more trouble. If there's less of it, across various elements of power, we've got less trouble. So aim for less.

#44 from Armed Liberal:

"I do think we need to do the hard work necessary to isolate the movement within the Muslim world, and to make sure that it doesn't proselytize or slaughter its way into power."

I'll Godwin this thread now, because I'm irritated that you attributed to me the goal of obtaining the submission of the whole Islamic world by starving it into submission, which is not possible.

It wasn't our job to do the hard work to isolate the SS within the National Socialist world, to make sure it didn't slaughter or menace its way past the SA and into power, while at the same time we were obligated to subsidize National Socialism and praise it as an ideology of peace, show reverence for The Prophet Adolph (pbuh), and so on - and if we had accepted that it was our duty to fight only within that framework of support for the enemy system, we would not have done well, if only because our corrupt, Jew-influenced (neocon?) manipulations would not have had legitimacy within the system we were manipulating.

We could not have done very well by fighting globally to establish and build states that constitutionally established National Socialism as a source of law.

I do not think that what we are going now is very much more sensible than that. Do I support the troops, in the sense of wanting them to enjoy not only health and safe return but victory parades and thanks? Sure! Do I consider the missions they are doing well conceived and in our interests? No.

#44 from Armed Liberal:

"Just as we didn't need to 'starve' the Catholic or Protestant Irish into accepting peace; we just had to kill and isolate enough of the crazy radicals that they were no longer in the way."

I'm all for humane means. I would not have wanted war on Franco's Spain either, or to starve the populations of every fascist state in the world into total submission. (Like there wasn't hunger in Spain.) Just as long as it was clear that the Fascist system was not OK, that it was not our job to praise it or subsidize it, and that it had to go sooner or later.

We did not try to starve or kill every National Socialist in the world, or every Fascist in the world, or every Communist in the world, and we should not have. China alone is enough to show how ridiculous that aim would have been.

But I don't think we should subsidize these systems, praise their holy leaders, encourage their spread and so on. Less of all these things is better. And, carefully spending money and blood so as always to get the best bang for a buck, we should press for these hostile systems to grow less over time.

David, I think the part of your post starting with "the maximum leader counts for a lot" is exactly right, and invalidates much of what precedes it. My point was that Christian scripture won't support terrorism, because that is not how Christ's life is described, and it is not how Christ's followers were instructed to live. Anyone who claims otherwise is misreading the text worse than Manson misread the Beatles. You seem to agree with that point, yes?

It follows that there can be no Christian terrorism, there can only be terrorism committed by people who claim to be Christian.

Sorry to drag what looks like the "no true Scotsman" fallacy into a discussion of the Irish, but it's really not - the faith is defined by the foundational documents. For Christians, that means terrible crimes can be committed when we fall short of our faith. For Muslims, that means terrible crimes can be committed when they live up to theirs.

Shad, you're wrong here.
From the Jerusalem Post
"An American evangelical pastor and his wife who have been living in Israel for nearly two decades have been ordered to leave the country within two weeks, after their request for permanent residency was turned down, officials said on Thursday [July 15 2007]....The issue underscored the delicate balancing act evangelical Christian supporters of Israel face, between proselytizing, which is banned in Israel, and their fundamental belief that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land was foretold in the Scriptures and heralds the return of the messiah."

Fletcher Christian (#42), the reason we aren't already "spending a miniscule fraction of the money currently being spent on Iraq to go all out for energy independence" is that this amount isn't remotely enough to do the job. And that's not to mention that they will still find plenty of buyers if we stop cold, especially if that generates a big drop in price.

A. L., I'm in agreement with your basic conclusion in #44 regarding the "who exactly are we at war with" question. But isn't it possible to think, in complete harmony with that understanding, that Saudi Arabia ought to be divested of its control of its oil fields?

I won't hold my breath waiting for Shad's apology, but the article he cites nowhere states that religions are treated equally in terms of proselytizing. Freedom of individual worship is guaranteed by law in Israel, as his article states, but that is in no way the same as proselytizing.

I appreciate bgates finding a recent example. Some more.

The executive director of an anti-Jews for Jesus group ("Messianic" in this article means Jews for Jesus) celebrating the prohibition against "harassing" Jews by trying to convert them.

Unfortunately, much of what turns up with Google is from anti-Semitic sites, but in this case, they happen to be correct.

On Dec. 29, 1977, Christians in Israel and the occupied territories protested a new law passed by the Israeli parliament making it illegal for missionaries to proselytize Jews. Protestant churches charged that the law had been “hastily pushed through parliament during the Christmas period when Christians were busily engaged in preparing for and celebrating their major festival.” The law made missionaries liable to five years’ imprisonment for attempting to persuade people to change their religion, and three years’ imprisonment for any Jew who converted. The United Christian Council complained that the law could be “misused in restricting religious freedom in Israel.”

This next cite is from Shad's approved website, the Jewish Virtual Library (which, I might add, is a great site, if you actually read it).

One member of Jehovah's Witnesses was arrested and charged with "offending religious sentiment" for allegedly distributing religious literature at Tel Aviv's central bus station on March 1, 1999. The arrest followed a complaint by a member of the Yad L'achim [see below–AJL] organization. The individual alleged that he was singled out because he had filed five separate complaints against members of Yad L'achim [for harassment, assault, etc.–AJL]. On March 30, 1999, another member of Jehovah's Witnesses was summoned to a police station in Beersheva for allegedly distributing a religious tract to a soldier. She was charged with the "unlawful distribution of a religious tract to a soldier, attempting to convert him to another religion, and assault on religious sentiments."

Yad L'achim, literally "Hand to Brothers", is an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group devoted to combating Jewish secularization and finding incidents of non-Jewish proselytizing, for which it receives both private and government(!) funding. (Its website also boasts of rescuing Jewish women "forced" to marry Arabs, no doubt finding that such lurid tales are good for fundraising.) Their great crusade during the time I was living in Israel (a phrase I don't think Shad can say) was persecuting the Community Outreach coordinator at a large food processing firm, a resident alien Filipino Jehovah's Witness, who was being honored for work with lower-class youth. Yad L'achim threatened to call a nationwide boycott of the food company, allegedly because they saw his community service as a front for proselytizing (their own website linked above refers to community center, drug-treatment centers and such set up by missionaries to entrap Jews), but more likely as a test of their own power and because, as bigots, they resented any sort of award going to a non-Jew. The employee was removed to a less publicly-conspicuous position, but I think he was allowed to receive the award. (Israeli law does prohibit job discrimination based on religion, but as of 2001, this was winked at, which would be a whole 'nother post. The situation may be better now)

A lot of people think Israel is just Brooklyn with Hebrew. It ain't.

#49 from bgates:

"David, I think the part of your post starting with "the maximum leader counts for a lot" is exactly right, and invalidates much of what precedes it."

Then I'm glad at least I got something right. :)

#49 from bgates:

"My point was that Christian scripture won't support terrorism, because that is not how Christ's life is described, and it is not how Christ's followers were instructed to live. Anyone who claims otherwise is misreading the text worse than Manson misread the Beatles. You seem to agree with that point, yes?"

I try to avoid teaching Christians, or for that matter Muslims, the true meaning of their scriptures. ;)

My point was that that a Christian who condemns and punishes Christian terrorism experiences no embarrassment from the life and example of Jesus in doing so, while a Muslim who harshly condemns the same sorts of acts Muhammed (pbuh) committed, led and exhorted his followers to commit is in a weak position. Therefore Christianity is in better shape than Islam to put religious terrorism behind it.

This is the reason people try to draw moral equivalences, for example in the laws on apostasy, between what Jews did thousands of years ago and what Christians did hundreds of years ago and what Muslims do now and are likely to keep doing in the future. Christianity was more able to put these dark habits behind it, and it largely has.

#49 from bgates:

"It follows that there can be no Christian terrorism, there can only be terrorism committed by people who claim to be Christian."

I don't agree.

#49 from bgates:

"Sorry to drag what looks like the "no true Scotsman" fallacy into a discussion of the Irish, but it's really not - the faith is defined by the foundational documents. For Christians, that means terrible crimes can be committed when we fall short of our faith. For Muslims, that means terrible crimes can be committed when they live up to theirs."

I won't dispute it with you.

As I said, I try to avoid telling Christians, or most other people, the true meaning of their scriptures. Or whether their religions are defined mostly by founding documents, or oral law or tradition, or an apostolic succession, or whatever.

The state of Christian terrorism is me an empirical question, like the state of Hindu or Jewish terrorism.

Only in explaining what is already empirically observable do I refer to the contents of Christianity and Islam. Facts come first.

And of course I wouldn't agree to a theologically based counting system whereby no acts of Christian terrorism are counted no matter what Christians do, while with adherents of all other religions from Wiccans to Wahabbis I would count the bodies as they fall, neutrally.

I don't think it's Iran either, Andrew. Do you?

Corvan: No. In fact, there are a number of ways Israel is better than the USA (IMHO), but this thread isn't one of them.

I would say, though, that Yad L'achim would be delighted with an Iranian-type government for Israel with only one obvious alteration.

Glad to hear that, sometimes you make it hard to tell.

AJL -

This next cite is from Shad's approved website, the Jewish Virtual Library (which, I might add, is a great site, if you actually read it).

These cites are also from that site (although they appear to just be reprints of U.S. State Department reports on Israel):
2007:

Some missionaries were allowed to proselytize. Offering material inducements for conversion, as well as converting persons under 18 years of age, remained illegal unless one parent was of the religion to which the minor wished to convert. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints refrained from proselytizing under an agreement with the government.

2006:

Missionaries were allowed to proselytize, although offering or receiving material inducements for conversion, as well as converting persons under 18 years old remained illegal unless one parent was of the religion to which the minor wished to convert. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints voluntarily refrained from proselytizing under a longstanding agreement with the government.

2005:

Missionaries were allowed to proselytize, although the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints voluntarily refrained from doing so under a longstanding agreement with the government.

etc.

There's an Israeli law which prohibits missionaries from paying people to convert from Judaism (which was a practical response to events at that time). There is no law against religious proselytizing sans bribery.

Your claim in comment #19 -- It's a criminal offense there to proselytize for any religion except one -- remains false (as does the analogy implicitly drawn by that claim), so it was probably a good idea that you didn't hold your breath.

Everyone should read AJL's cite to Israeli insider as well to understand the behaviour and claims of the Messianic group AJL speaks of. The Anti Semitic sites he apparently googled and claimed to be correct in this case, you can give a miss.

Shad, which part of the word "Some" don't you understand?

The fact the Israeli government allowed "some" missionaries to proselytize does not eliminate the fact that other missionaries were not allowed to proselytize and were cited and/or deported.

AFAICT, the gist of Shad's cites are that the Israeli government has often refrained from enforcement of its anti-missionary laws. (The LDS Church entered into this agreement in return for permission to open a college in Jerusalem.) The gist of my cite is that such laws remain on the books and are enforced when the authorities choose to do so. (The Jerusalem Post, whence bgates pulled an example, is a center-right newspaper.)

I'm also wondering if Shad is willing to defend the law that makes proselytizing a criminal offense if material inducements are offered, which he, himself, cites.

Andrew, I'd still like to see cites of Israeli law that explicitly ban proselytizing as you state (as opposed to paying for conversions, etc. as above).

A.L.

David Blue (#48)

David, what do you think Iraq and Afghanistan would look like if we were at war with the whole population or substantial portions of the population? Hint: we wouldn't have 4K casualties, we'd have 5 - 10x that.

Look, it's something I go through pretty frequently with the antiwar folks...

A.L.

Israel has freedom of conscience and religion, their Supreme Court has ruled in favor of it repeatedly.

Israel does not have separation of church and state as we understand it - but then, neither does Great Britain. Jewish religious institutions are subsidized by the state.

Israel does not have an official religion. Great Britain does, along with most of Scandinavia. 26 countries have Islam as their official religion - restricted to Sunni in Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and Somalia; restricted to Shi'a in Iran. That's not counting Egypt, which has Shari'a courts but no "official" state religion.

Are we comparing Israel to the United States, or to Islamic states? If to the latter, then Israel is a utopia of religious freedom. Shall we compare the rights of a Christian in Israel with the rights of a Shi'ite Muslim in Saudi Arabia?

I have yet to follow through all of AJL's and Shad's links, but I do notice a trend. These issues are arising in the context of Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. These are groups that have been stigmatized in a number of Christian countries. Is that a coincidence?

Re: #61 from Armed Liberal...

I cannot tell from your post what sort of scenario you are inventing, except that it seems bizarre.

It seems to me you are trying to set up some kind of straw man, only your straw man example is so sketchy and weird it's impossible to figure out what it is.

Are you supposing that if we acknowledged that the system of Islam is dangerous to us and undesirable, we would follow through by keeping occupying forces in Afghanistan in Iraq in order to secure the survival and success there of constitutions that take Islam as a source of law, as we are doing, but at the same time we would declare personal wars against millions of Hamids and Hamid's wives and Hamid's children? American soldiers would rock up at Hamid's house and say, what? Some of you got the black ball in one of our daily kill-a-Muslim lotteries, so here we are to kill you?

What for? There is no goal. It's ridiculous.

David, what do you think Iraq and Afghanistan would look like if we were at war with the whole population or substantial portions of the population?

My guess is we'd switch away from the limited boots-on-ground approach and, to be casually dramatic, unleash the full force and fury of American technology on the population from afar. It would certainly look a lot different, and the Iraqis/Afghanis are fortunate they have not chosen to go that route.

Hint: we wouldn't have 4K casualties, we'd have 5 - 10x that.

Well, no, that would only be the case if we stuck to the exact same tactics we've been pursuing thus far. Casualties might scale that much higher on the other side of the scales, though. I'm definitely not advocating the "rubble don't cause trouble" position here, but the tactical implications of that slogan are hard to argue with.

FWIW David Blue is exactly right on this point in #48, and it's one of the reasons I originally supported the two wars:

The course of the War on Terror during President George W. Bush's presidency, especially his second term of office, was a field test of his religious conviction that Muslims and Methodists are functionally the same, with the same passion for freedom. We've run the test, at a considerable cost in blood - I mean mostly wounded - and money, and the litmus test turned the wrong color.

I don't mean to sound overly deterministic, but in my mind this test had to be made at some point once the rise of Islamism became apparent in the earlier part of last century. No matter how you judge Islam--as a religion of peace hijacked by extremists, as a fanatical religion experiencing an irregular period of general moderation, as a sustaining force for tribalism in the face of modernity--the West could not make any of these claims with finality until the effort was made to "test" Islam's compatibility with classical Western liberalism. And barring an organic movement within the Islamic world to do so, the only way to test was via a forcible purge of the violent element in some Islamic society.

From a historically-minded POV, it would be better to make the attempt earlier than later. Someone had to administer the test, and unfortunately (for us) 9/11 thrust the role upon the US. If GWB didn't try it, one of his successors would need to, potentially after some previous conflict had produced results we would not be proud of.

When Bush elaborated this position close after 9/11, I thought he had the philosophical quandary exactly right, but his conclusions were wrong and hopelessly optimistic. I hoped and still hope to be proven wrong; I really, really wanted to see a synergy between Islam and a modern, free society... because the alternative eventually leads to the 3 Conjectures. But the evidence just keeps piling up on the wrong side of the tallying table.

David - no, I'm suggesting that if the average Muslim in Iraq or Afghanistan was really intending or willing to go to war with us, we'd have a war that looked objectively very different from the one we have. I'm suggesting that most Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan - the countries where we're most likely to have conflict - just want to go to work, raise kids, and lead their lives.

There is doubtless some element of cultural clash, and competition, as their societies become more developed and wealthier. I can live with that, and so ought you.

What we can't live with is an Islam that believes at its core what the crazy Islamists believe, and so the goal is to delegitimize the Islamists among the larger Muslim population, and defeat them politically and militarily.

That's a vastly different project than 'defeating Islam'.

A.L.

These are groups that have been stigmatized in a number of Christian countries. Is that a coincidence?

I don't think so. What we're seeing here is an anti-missionary law that's enforced selectively. Jehovah's Witnesses refuse military service. That's not going to go over real well in Israel. You can imagine that Jews for Jesus are also especially unpopular. I wasn't aware that the anti-proselytizing law required material inducement, and I don't think that clause is as important as Shad and Armed Liberal do. To me, it's still an anti-proselytizing law. In the context of election voter bribery, an item as minor as a blessed amulet offered by one of the Jewish religious parties was attacked as an illegal material inducement. New Testaments? Subsidized vacation retreats? Those sound like they qualify to me. And such concerns existed when this bill was passed. Time Magazine, Jan. 23, 1978:

Beginning in April, under the terms of a new law passed by the Israeli Knesset last month, anyone who offers any "material inducement" to an Israeli to change his religion will be liable to a $3,200 fine and five years in prison. And anyone convicted of converting to another faith for nonspiritual benefit may spend three years behind bars. [SNIP] The worst problem lies in the loose construction of the bill's text. Christians point out that they could conceivably be convicted of offering material inducement if a recently converted Jew made use of Christian-run schools or hospital services.

Israel does indeed guarantee individual freedom of conscience and I have never disputed that. Nevertheless, BGates and I have submitted at least four incidents where proselytizers were arrested and/or deported. How that comports with freedom of religion has not been defended or explained. Yes, Saudi Arabia is much, much worse. Nu?

AJL:

How that comports with freedom of religion has not been defended or explained. Yes, Saudi Arabia is much, much worse.

Then what is your argument? "Freedom of religion" is a strictly relative thing, and unless we are comparing the religious tolerance of different nations, you are just nit-picking Israel.

But let's go back to your original statement:

Is Israel included in the countries where we are bringing freedom of religion?

Of course we're not bringing freedom of religion to anybody, as you know, and if we were there would be a hundred countries on the list ahead of Israel. You know that as well.

You have no argument, you are simply expressing tribal disapproval of any criticism of Islam. The left's infatuation with Islam is no mystery to me, but if it were your preposterous attempts to equate it with Israel would not explain it.

AJL: What we're seeing here is an anti-missionary law that's enforced selectively.

After reading your links, I think the answer is more likely in the first link in your post #52. Jews have a historic sensitivity to Christian efforts at proslytizing and conversion.

The two specific faiths in discussion are the most notorious for proslytizing. It would seem to me that any anti-proslytizing law would snare more Christians than Jews, and more Mormans and Witnesses than Catholics and Anglicans.

Good grief, Unbeliever (#65) and David Blue (#48), what's with the Short Little Span of Attention?

Consider, as a matter of historical comparison, the timespan between the conclusion of the American Civil War and the removal of the last vestiges of de jure segregation. That took about a century, didn't it? I realize everything is supposed to happen faster in the Internet age, but writing off the Iraqis because they couldn't surmount numerous such impediments in a mere half-decade... well, it's a bit abrupt, or so it seems to me.

The two specific faiths in discussion are the most notorious for proslytizing. It would seem to me that any anti-proslytizing law would snare more Christians than Jews, and more Mormans and Witnesses than Catholics and Anglicans.

They're also much newer and have had less time to establish any sort of protective relationship. The Anglican presence in what is now Israel dates to the late Ottomans and the Catholic Church, of course, is far older than that.

I should mention that Jews do not proselytize non-Jews and have not for many centuries. Whatever Jewish tradition may hold to explain this, it's probably best understood by the fact that in many of the places Jews lived, it was a capital crime to do so. Therefore the applicability of Israeli anti-missionary legislation to conversion to Judaism, which is allowed but not solicited, is moot no matter how the law is written. Any number of groups, many Israeli-government subsidized, try to persuade less observant Jews to adopt a greater level of piety. They offer material inducements such as dorm space for students, free religious retreats, invitations to holiday meals, etc. Official recognition of this activity is rather ironic when you consider than Ariel Sharon was widely rumored to eat pork (as do I) and Bibi Netanyahu didn't know how to light Hanukkah candles correctly (but I do).

AJL -

You statement in comment #19 -- It's a criminal offense [in Israel] to proselytize for any religion except one -- is a lie.

Hold your breath, don't hold your breath, it doesn't matter to me -- your statement remains a lie.

I have no desire to encourage your thread-jacking by engaging you on all of the other Israel-bashing propaganda you've thrown into the thread since then.

Cheers,

Shad

OK, Shad, if it makes you happy, here's the precise version:

It's a criminal offense [in Israel] to proselytize with material inducements for any religion except one.

You realize, of course, that these material inducements might include schooling, medical care, food packages, free entrance to religious retreats, holiday meals, etc. That version is backed up by your own quotes, including that the law is still on the books.

Israel is not comparable to the UK or Sweden in the benefits given to one religion. The level of support is much higher. To re-link this to the thread, it is far from clear to me that the problem in the Muslim countries in the Middle East has to do with the connection there between Church and State. If Church-State entanglement and disparate treatment of religion were an issue, Israel would be culpable too. I don't think terrorism has to much to do with Islamic dogma per se. It has a lot to do with the eschatological vision of various anti-Western clerical forces whose contempt for the West includes religion and much else.

My guess would b