[High-falutin’ material deleted.]
Let’s quit with the high-falutin’-isms. Hugh Fitzgerald, Vice President of Jihad Watch, is an idiot. Exhibit A consists of his proposals "to defend human rights and resist the jihad threat in the wake of Congressman Tancredo’s remarks" [re: "nuke Mecca"]. All emphasis is mine:
[After rejecting "nuke Mecca" as a practical option:] But the idea of discussing possible means of deterrence, not of the determined suicide-bomber, but of all those who have helped to fund mosques and madrasas, or to supply the emotional and financial and intellectual support system (including the continued smooth practitioners of taqiyya-and-kitman in the West), and who can be threatened in all sorts of ways.
….Deterrent measures, that could be undertaken without waiting in some cases for any further attacks (but further attacks will help to justify the more far-reaching among them) might include, but not be limited to:
1) Seizure of Saudi-owned assets in the West, and sale of such assets to pay for the economic damage, including the cost of surveillance and other security measures, that are attributable to Saudi-funded mosques, madrasas, and propaganda all over the world.
2) Seizure of other Arab-owned or Muslim-owned assets in the West, for the same reasons. [Note that’s Arab-owned or Muslim-owned.] There need not be any distinction made between property owned by governments and those who are deemed to be enemy nationals — no such distinction was made during World War II. …
3) A complete ban on Muslim migration to the Western world (which needs to be undertaken in any case), and limits put on any contact between Muslims living in the West, who may already have obtained ciizenship [sic] and — unless they are native-born converts — their countries of origin….
…. 8) End all access to Western education, not only for those Arabs and Muslims studying any kind of science, but in every area. Attempting the hopeless project of "educating them" out of their belief-system will not work. …
…. 11) Keep the focus clearly on the belief-system of Islam and on Jihad. And after the next small terrorist attack on Infidels — say, 10 killed – begin to legislate to make sure that some of the measures suggested above become not merely ideas but the law.
….
These are things that can be done, should be done, long before suggestions about "bombing Mecca" need to be bruited about. ….
I’m not even gonna explain all the different kinds of stupidity represented in the foregoing. Indeed, pass the various immoralities. Pass also the fact that Fitzgerald apparently can’t distinguish due process, property rights, or the First and Fifth Amendments from his sphincer muscles. Let’s say we amend the Constitution every which way that Fitzgerald thinks appropriate and implement, say, only points 1 and 2 (seize all assets of the Saudis, Muslims, and Arabs. What kind of economic retaliation do you think will result? Friend, we’re talking a world-wide recession that will kill — by malnutrition, poverty, and disease — more folks in the West than ever got killed by al Quada.
I’m all for hunting down and killing those who attack us; judiciously using our power, police, and military to defend us and our allies; enacting sensible measures to protect ourselves from a terrible, hidden foe who offers no quarter; and unapologetically defending our liberty and the republic on which it stands. Yup, support all that. But, take note: Fitzgerald and his fellow travelers are idiots (and worse).
Jeebus. How sad is it that, 50 years from now, a B movie like The Siege is going to be regarded as either a classic or the Revealed Word for it’s eerie precience about our future? Get yourselves prepared for the phrase, “Lawrence Wright, genius.”
Cause ya whack-a-mole real good, all your moderate middles is now belong to von and Charles. Got it.
Must…fight…back.
Adults Only
Hating people obscenely simply because they are healthy and decent and normal is just plain wrong. I disavow and cast forth this vicious blogger who in no way represents my feelings for John Roberts. Scum. Filth.
Now can we abandon the fringes and argue the more difficult center?
I’m so confused, von…are you advocating the same measures?
#3 and #8 are so heinous as to be nearly evil to me.
I’m so confused, von…are you advocating the same measures?
The opposite, actually. I’ll clarify.
What a [posting rules]. What an evil [p.r.].
But, take note: Fitzgerald and his fellow travelers are idiots (and worse).
I vote for “worse”.
Thanks for the post Von.
Thanks for the reformulation, Von. It now much more clearly means what you mean it to mean, which should save a lot of noise. I had to read it three times before you edited in order to decide that you meant to condemn the report (which is what I expected from you). I’m glad I was correct.
I got it the first time. But I am worried.
I am certain von and Charles wouldn’t link to genocidal racists if it wasn’t interesting or important. You could link to nutcases or clowns(my link above) for humour, but this definitely wasn’t meant to be funny. I really ignore Holocaust deniers or ant-semites or the KKK…they are in now way important.
Now von and Charles are more in touch with Republicans and conservatives than I am, and they could be alerting us to a significant and growing faction within the Republican party. But I don’t believe it. I simply can’t believe these nuts represent anything but a tiny minority within the Republican party or conservatism. A miniscule faction.
But if only a paltry, puny little fringe, how could they be important enough they we need our attention diverted to such bile? Well, even the tiniest most contemptible minority can be important if they have sympathetic ears in high and influential positions. It doesn’t matter a whit what these people think…unless the only people in a position to actually make policy from prejudice….Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, the US Congress….hold similar or sympathetic views, or might be influenced by such views.
So I am worried. Either these people, these haters and genocidal trash have the ear of the President of the United States….or von has most offensively wasted my time with a gratuitous link to garbage of absolute irrelevance to real policy. I hold, I fear, a higher opinion of von than of the President, so I assume the former case and am deeply concerned.
But if only a paltry, puny little fringe, how could they be important enough they we need our attention diverted to such bile?
Don’t worry about that cigarette butt smoldering over there.
Lord. I guess I’d seen a few glimmerings of the idea of denying education to foreign (sorry: Arab/Muslim) students, but this is definitely the most absolute and stupid version I’ve seen. Has this meme been growing force down in the cesspool?
BM…
I understand what you’re trying to get across (I think), but I’m of the firm belief that when you see this kind of evil proffered up, you denounce it with all your might. The size of the intended audience doesn’t matter. No brushing it off as joking or sarcasm to make some sort of nebulous point. I’ll be the first one to credit Von for condemning this morally bankrupt idiot.
However, you also don’t mistake honest criticism of government policy with the same insanity as above. Our government should, if not welcome criticism, certainly not condemn it out of hand. Or evade it. If you truly feel you’re doing the right thing, you want to expose flaws and corruption in the process. It’s short term pain versus the long term gain of removing a cancer. The tactics used by this administration to stall and shift critique are truly shameless and (I believe) unhealthy .
After reading these “bullet points for victory” in the fight against terrorism, it seems like the snowball rolling down the hill of failure just keeps getting bigger and bigger…
“Has this meme been growing force down in the cesspool?”
That’s the question I always have when I read filth like this: how many of them are there, really? And how much influence do they have, really?
I adore the Internet, no question. But one think I everlastingly regret about it is that it allows people like Fitzgerald to find one another and validate their views. (You think he’s bad, you should check out the comments at his site.)
In the old days, they’d be writing illiterate letters to the editor, or holding meetings in their basements with the few kindred souls they managed to find in their neighborhoods. Mostly, though, they kept their spewings to themselves, since they didn’t get much encouragement from society at large.
I don’t know if there are actually more people like Fitzgerald than there used to be, or if it’s just that we notice them more since they’re all over Blogland.
Of course there is an ironic tone, and elements of sarcasm and snark in my comments. I am also dead serious. I think it is important to be able to recognize which fringe movements have potential to become dangerous, and which will remain fringe.
I read and like Dave Neiwert, but I have been waiting and waiting for the Order/Aryan Nations/militia movements to become a real problem. Now I know many have died at the hands of that species, but they have not reached very far into the halls of Congress and affected legislature. And I only really worry about those who gain some control over the levers of power.
I also haven’t seen any vast increase in anti-Arab or anti-Muslim violence or discrimination that one might expect. I am sure there has been some, and any is too much, but I don’t think there is even a level of growth or popularity so that law enforcement needs any extraordinary measures.
However there are movements I am concerned about. On the left protectionism has enough of a base that lefty blogs spend a inordinate amount of time defending free trade. And I see a blase’ secularism and contempt for religion that makes communication and negotiation impossible.
On the right of course I worry about Dominionism or radical Christian conservatism that actually suffuses the current Congress and gets bills out of the House on a weekly basis. And I also see the traditional Southern neo-feudalism that weakens the NLRB and leads to monetary and fiscal policies favoring rent-seekers at the expense of wage-labor.
Our really dangerous fringes are tough to deal with because, well, they aren’t so fringey. But should a nuke painted with a star and crescent actually go off in NYC, I think most Republicans and Muslims/Arabs would be colliding in the street in the rush to hug each other. Sorry.
Our government should, if not welcome criticism, certainly not condemn it out of hand
No, our government should welcome criticism. All other checks and balances are illusory.
“Now von and Charles are more in touch with Republicans and conservatives than I am, and they could be alerting us to a significant and growing faction within the Republican party. But I don’t believe it. I simply can’t believe these nuts represent anything but a tiny minority within the Republican party or conservatism.”
It is sort-of scarier than that. I live in California. Needless to say I have lots of liberal friends. A couple of months after 9-11 one of my most liberal friends (who would never even consider voting Republican) said “We should just nuke a Middle Eastern city each week until they stop”. And he totally meant it. Another super-liberal friend said after the London bombings, “We should just nuke Mecca”. I pretty much freaked out talking to her about the awful ramifications of that.
What scares me more than a little bit is that the world is freaking out NOW and as a whole the US citizenry isn’t nearly as pissed as we could be.
We like to have our people afraid. Fear a big companies perpetuates unions. Fear of whites perpetuates the minority power brokers. Fear of life less lived bolsters the AARP and those that prosper greatly from the elderly. Fear may be the greatest human weakness and the grist for those who prey on the weak. Once the barracks were bombed and we left Lebanon splattered with Marine blood, we handed the extremist Islamic terrorists their weapon. The classic Twilght Zone where just the fear of alien attack began a pattern of self destruction that hinted the final attack would not be necessary. The lessons learned are never the right ones. Our inability to recognize the enemy and our refusal to unite and risk the loss of short term power gives the fringes that sparked Von’s rage control over our fear. If the middle doesn’t close ranks and push outward, we should be afraid.
Unions, minority rights, the AARP, Marines in Lebanon, the Twilight Zone – anything else you’d like to throw in there?
My experience mirrors Sebastians: fear and frustration cut across ideological lines. To me, the biggest risk is brought on by the fact that both fear and frustration are, in many circumstances, justifiable, at least in part. To look at BBM’s examples — African-Americans, employees, Americans wrt Lebanon in the 1980s — both emotions have a history, a context, and are understandable. Now they can be taken to unjustifiable extremes, but it only works because there is a kernel of truth underlying them.
The only weapon against these enemies within — fear and frustration — is reason. And a cool intelligent determination to address the sources of the problems in a rational manner. For example, I don’t think fear that lynching will return on a widespread basis are reasonable. On the other hand, there has continued to be racial violence, and non-violent but quasi-official rascism, like the Tulia mess. (I haven’t followed the latter very closely, but have the sense that the malefactor has been caught and punished. While better than nothing, the victims can justly be both afraid and frustrated after what happened to them). IMO, pretending that racial equality has been acheived, when we all know it hasn’t, feeds, rather than defeats fear and frustration on the part of some African-Americans.
Fear of terrorism is tough to get a handle on. For the vast majority of Americans, there is virtually no danger at all. Only a very few of us are anywhere near the kind of target the foreign terrorists are interested in striking. (I work 1.5 blocks from the WH. I might be a lot less sympathetic to Mississipians, or Utahans who exhibit irrational fear, and support policies based on fear, than many of you. Being at the front will do that). I think Tom Ridge has a lot to answer for, that is, that he is a very lucky fellow that the election results in Ohio turned out as they did.
Frustration, though, we can all feel. This is one of my primary fears over this thing. I have long thought that the War in Iraq will not work, as a way of making the West safer from Islamist terrorism. I’ve been right so far, and, unfortunately, expect to be right in the long term. As it becomes clearer and clearer to the general public that the huge expenditure of blood and treasure didn’t work (as a means of making Americans safer)*, frustration will look to support more extreme measures.
Paul Cella had a post at RS on this a week ago, suggesting non-violent but liberty restrictive measures to combat the internal danger of Islamist terrorism. Fear and frustration are fairly mainstream, and getting more so by the month. Just wait until there is a successful London-scale attack in a major US city.
Wanting that kind of widespread revenge as an immediate, personal reaction to an attack is one thing. Wanting that kind of widespread revenge as actual policy, after you’ve thought about it for a while, is quite different.
I gave Bush a lot of credit for not striking out blindly right after 9/11. I supported the war in Afghanistan, because the regime there had been involved in the attack by sheltering its sponsor/mastermind.
But the war in Iraq shows how counterproductive warring against convenient targets is. Nuking Mecca, or major Muslim cities, for no reason other than that they’re Islamic, would be like Iraq x 100 in counterproductiveness.
Ah, but CaseyL, you have to realize that the people who live on this particular fringe do not believe that Iraq has been counterproductive at all, quite the opposite, so “Iraq x 100” means something very different to you than it does to them. “Bring it on,” and so forth.
Nuking Mecca, or major Muslim cities, for no reason other than that they’re Islamic, would be like Iraq x 100 in counterproductiveness
yeah. i think there’s a name for attacking innocent civilians in order to effect political change. it begins with a T, and ends with “errorism”
s/effect/affect/g
It should go without saying that Hugh Fitzgerald is an idiot. It should go without saying, but it probably doesn’t and that’s what worries me.
When the Administration’s UN nominee is enthusiastically supported by people who fear “global taxes”, some Congressmen play spy vs. spy and others talk blithely of nuking cities, then the fringe ain’t so fringy anymore and I can hear the black helicopters circling above my compound.
Well, Fitzgerald may have a friend in the WH. With all appropriate caveats (haven’t read the article,couldn’t really be true, could it?, it’s just one of many plans, etc.), see here. If this is true, I have to sort of admire the Republicans. They really are committed to rooting out the most monstrous parts of the American psyche and giving them life.
cleek: your ‘effect’ was right the first time (‘effect’ as a verb means: to bring about.)
And I agree about fear and frustration. Back in September, or whenever it was that I wrote my ‘Why I will not vote for Bush 1: the Constitution’ post, which was about what I took to be Bush’s assault on fundamental liberties and limits on Presidential power, I was really, really taken aback by some (not most or all, but some) of the responses it got, which basically said: hey, we were attacked, if we have to lock people up without a shred of due process, or suspend habeas corpus, or grant the President the sorts of powers that only absolute monarchs have, so be it. What really shocked me about that was not just that people said it at all, but that they did so with so little hesitation, and without any real thought about whether the suspension of some of our most fundamental rights would actually be productive. It stunned me. (I had originally planned for the next entry in that series to be about the deficit, but plunged straight into national security instead, and that was completely due to this line of thought.)
The more seriously you take threats to our country, the more you need to think — really think — about what will actually help to address them and what will not. And what really unnerves me about ideas like nuking Mecca, preventing Muslims from studying here, seizing their assets, restricting the travel of citizens, etc., is not just that they are vile, but that they are thoughtless responses to a problem that requires serious thought.
Yeah, Cleek, I was pretty impressed with “effect.”
cleek: your ‘effect’ was right the first time (‘effect’ as a verb means: to bring about.)
yep. after using it, i stared at it for a second and then second-guessed. so, i looked it up here, which says:
affect (transitive verb): to produce an effect upon
effect (noun): etc..
i didn’t read the rest of the page, though – that’s where effect (trans verb) lives. and the sample sentence for effect (v trans) is: <the citizens were able to effect a change in government policy>
i feel like a gymnast who went for the big landing, nailed it, then tripped walking off the mat. sorry coach.
What really shocked me about that was not just that people said it at all, but that they did so with so little hesitation, and without any real thought about whether the suspension of some of our most fundamental rights would actually be productive
exactly. i’ve always wondered, what good is a constitution if it (or parts of it) can be set aside in times of stress ? if people are perfectly comfortable with bending the rules when the going gets tough, then someone will eventually find a way to ensure that the going gets tough during politically convenient times and that the rules will bend in their favor.
that damn Goebbels quote keeps coming back.
Yglesias has a little somethin on this topic: In Case of attack, Bomb Iran.
Cleek:
I think MY’s discussing the same Justin Logan post to which I linked (but didn’t ID; sorry) above. I only mention it because MY’s pseudo-famous, and Logan could use the love. Henley’s not going to live forever.
“is not just that they are vile, but that they are thoughtless responses to a problem that requires serious thought.”
Speaking of serious thought, it is also useful to give serious thought to the actual lack of smallish attacks in America over the last few, or even last thirty years.
As seen in London, this ain’t rocket science. And I have repeatedly said that al Qaeda could probably gain maximal terrorist effect with Uzis at grade schools in Evanston. Given a population of 300 million, there has to be more than one potential Unabomber or Rudolph.
I actually find the infrequency of terrorism quite interesting.
….
As far as the nuking Iran thing, I have been expecting it all summer. I am pleasantly surprised…so far. Any Jane-type fanboys around to tell me if bunker-busters exploding below ground level are the worst for fallout creation? I had heard that the closer you explode a nuke to ground level, the less immediate damage but the worse persistent contamination.
To the tune of Barbara Ann, of course.
To the tune of Barbara Ann, of course
man, i loved that song “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran”, when i was 9. i was all like “WTF is Iran? Ah, who cares, I like bombs. Look, I drew a bomber and here are the bombs and then we beat the Nazis!”
forgot my link: Bomb Iran Lyrics (scroll past the Bomb Iraq verison).
affect (transitive verb): to produce an effect upon
effect (noun): etc..
Here’s the bad part: in philosophy jargon, “affect” is also a noun, meaning more or less “a particular emotion.” Survives today, outside classrooms of the damned, only (?) in the adjective “affectless.”
Anderson: not just philosophy; it’s part of psych too. (Think: seasonal affective disorder.)
there’s also the little-used iffect.
“affect” is also a noun, meaning more or less “a particular emotion.”
And a very fine and useful word/concept indeed, one I vote to retain. I had defined it as a “directed emotion” or “emotion with a chosen concious object.” Necessary I think for one of my favourite Nietzsche aphorisms:
“It is not the intensity of an affect that determines its value, but its duration.”
Wisdom for the young & romantic.
Getting away from affect-effect-iffect for a moment, if anyone could suggest a single website that I could monitor to keep track of the current bomb-Iran rumor-mongering, I’d be really grateful.
Like Bob, I’m getting nervous about this, and every time I hear a new murmur, I end up spending about an hour futilely surfing around.
It turns out that you don’t have to search the fringier RW sites to find nuke-Iran! conspiracies.
You can find them in the Office of the Vice President of the United States:
“The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons.
“As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing–that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack–but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.
Disclaimer: This is from American Conservative Magazine (by way of dKos), so I don’t know how credible it is.
But if it is credible, our country is clearly in the hands of diabolical lunatics.
With Bush’s approval ratings plummeting, Rovegate unraveling, and Iraq setting new benchmarks for FUBARness, I wonder how far the Admin will go to hold onto power. We might soon be in the awful position of hoping the military will disobey any orders Bush-Cheney give them.
Hi – normally a lurker from the UK.
Just to say that if you think that this is irrelevant because JihadWatch is so extreme your ideas of the blogosphere are rose-tinted. This sort of conspiratorial Islam-hatred stuff starts out on fringe sites like JihadWatch/DhimmiWatch, LGF and, in the UK, USS Neverdock, then gets promoted into the more respectable right-wing blogosphere and mainstream media through people like Daniel Pipes, Mark Steyn, Melanie Phillips in the UK and just about everyone who likes to use words like “dhimmi” or “Eurabia”, then leaks in whenever some moderate right-wing or pro-war-left site links to or blogrolls those people and through extreme comments on moderate sites. Even one of your own bloggers got taken in by a rumour started by the bigots that Muslims were murdering Middle Eastern Christians in New Jersey (though I give him credit for recanting as soon as the story was disproved).
Since the bombings over here, pro-war UK bloggers have been demanding that everyone who is anti-war not merely condemn these bombings unreservedly but refrain from making any comment about the Iraq invasion as causative. I personally think that such people should show some reciprocity and disassociate themselves from anyone in the “SMASH ISLAM!” wing. At the very least, they should deblogroll and not approvingly link to anyone who argues that most Muslims are conspiring to violently subjugate non-Muslims, or that Islam is a uniquely and irredeemably violent and evil religion, and also confront such opinions in comments.
Even kooks hit a grain of truth occasionally.
I think we need to shut down immigration completely until we get some sort of handle on the Mexicab border problem and the illegal alien problem.
Border Patrol agents apparently fear for their lives because the smugglers of drugs and humans are heavily armed and absolutely ruthless.
And the number of illegals in the country has gotten so great the labor markets are being warped.
A complete shutdown will of course shut down Muslim immigration as well. We need to look at this issue before we end up in a mess like several European countries, with huge Muslim minorities unwilling/unable to assimilate.
None of this will sound so radical when a significant chunk of Manhattan is blown up and irradiated.
Now von and Charles are more in touch with Republicans and conservatives than I am, and they could be alerting us to a significant and growing faction within the Republican party.
I’m not close to guys like Fitzgerald, bob. There is a strong anti-immigration, close-the-borders segment in the party, but many went off the Republican reservation to join Pat Buchanan.
And the number of illegals in the country has gotten so great the labor markets are being warped.
i love that i almost never hear demands that we do something about the demand for cheap (so cheap it has to be illegal) labor. all i hear is complaints about the supply side. upset about illegal workers? don’t eat US produce, don’t buy new homes built by illegal labor, etc..
This is slightly off topic and out of date but worth repeating I think: