Month: May 2004

Andrew McCarthy’s essay on NRO reads like a summary of every argument I’ve had over the past two years about whether or not we’re in a religious war disguised as a “war on terror.” In general, he stops short of saying our enemy is “Islam” (he carefully uses “militant Islam”), and he clarifies that doesn’t mean a war against a religion, but rather against an ideology.

Given that his first clarification is something it normally takes me months to get from those I debate, I consider McCarthy’s point of view refreshing to some degree. But I was actually quite disturbed as I read through his argument when it was confirmed for me what this war is really about for some: assimilation. Now this had occurred to me before, but it wasn’t until someone as honest with himself as McCarthy outlined the ideas here that it became crystal clear.

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In the previous thread on this topic, Constant Reader Bird Dog raised a good question about why Arabs choose to believe anti-American propaganda. The following response from reader Hilzoy deserves its own thread I believe:

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When the Commissar states that one of the wars going on right now is the one “between our inner Thomas Jefferson and our inner Phil Sheridan“, he is being entirely correct.

When Donald Sensing warns about the consequences of making this war personal, he is being entirely correct.

And when Wretchard declares himself to be afraid what of what comes next*… a merciful God willing, we will not have to determine whether or not he is entirely correct as well.

Moe

UPDATE: Jeebus, you know that it’s been a bad week when Lileks is being grim:

The West doesn’t have the power to change Islam; it only has the power to destroy it. We have a lot of nukes. We could kill everyone. We could just take out a few troublesome nations, kill millions, and irradiate Mecca so that the Fifth Pillar is invalidated. The hajj would be impossible. Every pilgrim a martyr. I don’t think we’ll do either; God help us if we do, but inasmuch as we have the capability, it’s an option. But it would be a crime greater than the crime that provoked such an act, and in the end that would stay our hand. They know we won’t do it.

Strong horse, weak horse.

There is another path, of course. Simply put: if a US city is nuked, the US will have to nuke someone, or let it stand that the United States can lose a city without cost to the other side. Defining “the other side” would be difficult, of course – do you erase Tehran to punish the mullahs? Make a crater out of Riyahd? These are exactly the sort of decisions we never want to make. But let’s say it happens. Baltimore: fire and wind. Gone. That horrible day would clarify things once and for all. It’s one thing for someone in a distant city to cheer the fall of two skyscrapers: from a distance, it looks like a bloody nose. But erasing a city is a different matter.

Everyone will have to choose sides. That would be one possible beginning of the end of this war.

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Each time an Islamist terrorist commits some atrocity against us, it’s natural to be angry.

It’s also natural to be angry indiscriminantly at Muslims. Not honorable, but natural. Until reason kicks in, that is.

But as the War on Terror progresses, I’m seeing a trend whereby Americans can’t get past what they see as a fundamental faithlessness among so-called Moderate Muslims: Why don’t they decry this violence? Are we to take their silence as sanction?

Personally, this strikes me somewhat as laziness and xenophobia (we don’t need our fellow Americans marching in the street to tell us they don’t support the likes of Timothy McVeigh). But I’ve realized that listing dozens of links to moderate Muslim sites that do decry the atrocities will not convince anyone for whom this remains a problem. So I’m abandoning the quantitative approach. It’s a problem. But where does it come from?

Let me begin by acknowledging the perception: the Muslims of the world are not as vocal about these acts of terror as we want/need them to be.

Personally, this “silence,” such as it is, doesn’t confuse me. I put two and two together and figure if a military power like the US is unable to completely protect itself from these killers, let alone track them down and bring them to justice, how are the people of much poorer nations supposed to stand up to them? In other words, there’s a bit of fear at play here. I fully expect, however, that argument to issue in charges of cowardice, and that’s unfair to the brave Muslims I know (and some prominent Muslim thinkers strongly deny that’s it), so I took some time to look deeper.

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My defense of Rumsfeld provoked a fair number of fair critiques by the readership. Jesurgislac sums up one line of argument with the following:

Well, Von, this is what you said, quoted exactly: “What I do suggest is that torture and abuses are a routine and expected part of war, and that if there mere presence of torture and abuse in wartime was sufficient to require a cabinent-level firing, no Defense Secretary would last any war.”

How is this not saying that since it’s “routine and expected” that US solders will break the law (against torture), no Defense Secretary should be expected to enforce the law or be fired if he doesn’t?

I’d appreciate it if you would actually explain what you were saying here, rather than just let me keep trying to figure it out and telling me I’ve got it wrong.

Since I got tied up in other matters and didn’t respond much this critique or others, here’s another go at why, based on present evidence, Rumsfeld should stay.

Note: I intentionally leave out practical (perhaps Rumsfeld, flawed though he is, is the best person for the job) or political (firing Rumsfeld is a tacit admission by Bush that his Iraq policy is off track) concerns. This doesn’t mean that these concerns don’t exist — just that I’m feeling moralistic, not pragmatic, today.

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Hat tip to readers Victor Falk and JimPortlandOR for suggesting and providing information on this topic.
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the more you know the less you panic

I’m setting up this thread for the sharing of solid information about “dirty bombs” and what to do should one be detonated. A good source of key questions and answers is this thread from Vanderbilt University. This discussion also references a good overview published in the Washington Post a while back (I can’t find the article on the WP’s site, but the considerate Vanderbilt folks provide it on theirs). First two quotes below from that WP article.

Right to the most pressing question:

John Zielinski, professor of military strategy and operations at the National War College in Washington, estimates that, generally, someone a mile from the blast is likely to walk away unscathed. And “you could be within a couple hundred yards of it, and if you are upwind, you might not have a problem at all,” he says. “If they set it off in a street and you are one block over and behind a building, there might be no risk.”

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Prefatory Note: Despite the charges of cheapshotery my last attempt at this provoked, I’m going to dive head first into how much goodwill a touch of humility brings again. Given how Buddha-less the blogosphere has gotten over this torture scandal issue, let me note up front, for clarity, my driving concern here is the US’s image in the world (and how we need a good one to do right by Iraq), not Bush’s or Kerry’s image in the upcoming election.

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European allies are now even less enamored of our President than they were before the torture photos emerged. This is worrisome, given that before then, as a recent straw poll in Britain revealed, Bush was already pretty damn unpopular:

… perhaps the only surprising thing about the vehemence of anti-Bush feeling, based on a reading of newspapers, opinion polls and interviews around Europe, is how unsurprising it truly is. In fact, one reason the recent disclosures have proved so damaging to the American cause here is that Mr. Bush had so little good will upon which to draw. (emphasis mine)

This is not easily dismissed as transatlantic partisanship, unfortunately. Those polled here “were all Conservatives, by tradition and temperament the Republican Party’s natural friends across the Atlantic.”

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