We do not see a Klansman at a crossburning and wonder whether he might have been provoked by our insistence on integrated schools. We do not see a neo-Nazi salute, and propose that maybe it is the Jew who should move away. We do not see the gay man tied to a post in Laramie, and claim that he was askin’ for it. We — of the north, of the south, of the east, and of the west; we, of civilization — are made of better stuff than that.
There is a time for studies. There is room to attempt understanding. There is reason to learn action and consequence, and to be mindful of the connection between the two. But never forget that evil exists — and that there is no wrong in hating it. Fighting it. Killing it.
Norm Geras reminds us, again, of the nature of our enemies:
1. They attack Red Cross personnel.
2. They murder people working for the UN.
3. They kidnap and kill care workers.
4. They bomb holiday-makers, in nightclubs.
5. They blow up people travelling on trains – civilians.
6. They target people on buses – civilians.
7. They take civilian hostages.
8. They decapitate them.
9. They murder trade unionists.
10. They kidnap diplomats.
11. They kill people for being… barbers.
12. They fly aircraft full of civilians into skyscrapers where people are at work.
13. They take schoolchildren hostage and murder them.
14. They bomb synagogues.
15. They kill people shopping in a market.
16. They kill people queuing at a medical clinic.
17. They murder children in Baghdad.
18. They murder people on their way to work in London.
(And what have I forgotten?)
Do not forget.
Yes. Absolutely Remember.
Pity that we didn’t spend the last three years actually hunting these jackals down, spending our soldier’s lives, our treasure and our political capital doing so instead of wasting our time in Iraq.
It does. But there is also no great honour in striking indiscriminately. When those among us who as such “pansy liberal” questions as “why do they attack us?” it’s not so we can then go round their houses and offer them tea and “therapy,” it’s so we can effeciently eliminate the threat that they pose to us. Whether that’s by taking out the terrorists while leaving the bystanders unharmed (and thus less likely to turn against us themselves) or by using our vast economic and military bulks to create a situation where people are less likely to be swayed by the rhetoric of the extremists, or less tempted by the retirement funds for their families if they blow themselves up, the aims and goals are the same.
Be careful that you, and others further on the right than you, never forget that either.
“We do not see a Klansman at a crossburning and wonder whether he might have been provoked by our insistence on integrated schools. We do not see a neo-Nazi salute, and propose that maybe it is the Jew who should move away. We do not see the gay man tied to a post in Laramie, and claim that he was askin’ for it.”
If you’re implying something about the explaining vs explaining-away debate, I object and say your post is about irrational, not righteous anger.
Jesse Taylor at Pandagon
“I can spend my time discussing why terror needs to be stopped, or I can spend my time discussing how terror needs to be stopped. The latter discussion assumes that the former has already been settled in the direction of “evil and murderous”, and therefore we can skip the Bushian “I hate terror, yes I do, I hate terror, what about you?” cheers. You know why so many liberals are sitting here thinking about how our anti-terror strategy doesn’t stop terror? Because we want to stop terrorism. The question, then, becomes the end purpose of all these rah-rah boom keyboarders who have dedicated their lives not to winning the war on terror through the best strategy, but instead convincing you that their strategy would be the best if not for all those meddling liberals who insist on existing…”
Righto, von. We shouldn’t have to be reminded that the nature of our enemies is what it is.
And what have I forgotten?
Only to identify “they.” Otherwise you just start rounding up anyone you don’t trust and sort ’em out later.
The problem is, they (whoever “they” are; any “they”) have a list just as long. Righteous anger directed at what, at who? People who feel they are righteously angry? When does it end?
No, I don’t think righteous anger is the answer. Righteous anger only increases all the anger in the world, and there’s quite enough of that already, isn’t there?
If attacks such as today’s continue, I have visions of everyone of Middle Eastern and North African descent living in Europe being rounded up and shipped back to their (or their parent’s) country of origin?
‘They’ are all the same, and the act of one is the act of all of them and they are equally complicit. ‘We’, on the other hand, are completely different, and to blame one of us for the acts of someone at Abu Grahib, or to think that we are the same as the people to whom we ‘render’ suspects is a close to a treasonous act as one can get without actually supplying them bullets and C4. At least that is the impression I get from Charles.
At least that is the impression I get from Charles.
Your impression is wrong, LJ. Before getting the urge to place certain impressions as mine, try asking first instead of going off with meritless assumptions.
“We shouldn’t have to be reminded that the nature of our enemies is what it is.”
So it’s a good job that none of us here need reminding of that, isn’t it Charles? All on the same side here, aren’t we?
Hmmm?
Seems like a good day to practice the getting along discipline. Just sayin.
Your impression is wrong, LJ. Before getting the urge to place certain impressions as mine, try asking first instead of going off with meritless assumptions.
Ah yes, the old “I never really meant all those things I insinuated” defence.
I agree that we should all practice getting along. I am merely joining in with people in affirming that it would be the height of ignorance to imply in any sense that, for example, liberals in either country will respond to these attacks by offering the terrorists “therapy.” I am sure that we can all agree on this, and that there will be no dissent here.
All on the same side here, aren’t we?
You tell me, McDuff. I don’t believe in “striking out indiscriminately” either.
Ah yes, the old “I never really meant all those things I insinuated” defence.
Read the actual words, shoes, because I insinuated no such thing. Go distort someone else for a change.
Oh, I did so hope that you’d just answer “yes” to that question.
Is it that goddamn hard, Charles? Really?
To what Edward and lj have said I can only add this reminder that if we are to win it will be with American pop culture and not bombs:
or if that’s too inflammatory how about:
We shouldn’t have to be reminded that the nature of our enemies is what it is.
Actually the Iraq war advocates (such as yourself) do need to be reminded. None of these listed evils were being perpetrated by Iraq prior to the invasion — war advocates seem to have forgotten this in falsely advocating Iraq as part of the war on terror. Maybe if they kept their eye on the real evil, we could more effectively fight it.
By analogy, I assume that Britain should now go attack Iran (which probably had nothing to do with these bombings) in order to combat the latest bombings. Same logic.
Imagine how much more resourceful the war on terror could be if countless billions and political capital were not being wasted on the Iraq misadventure.
In the case of the Palestinian terrorists that were tempted by the retirement funds for their families if they blow themselves up, well, that money was being paid to the families by Saddam Hussein. We should remember that.
“We shouldn’t have to be reminded that the nature of our enemies is what it is.”
Who’s forgotten?
Read the actual words, shoes, because I insinuated no such thing. Go distort someone else for a change.
You seem to forget you have a body of work upon which you stand.
And who’s forgotten that even knowing all this, there are tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of people in the ME who nonetheless are happy to see the West stricken, so deep is their anger.
We can’t win if we can’t defuse it, and we can’t defuse it either by pretending it doesn’t exist, wishing it didn’t exist, or refusing to understand why it exists. Or by ignoring the Law of Holes.
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
— Auden
“(And what have I forgotten?)”
For one thing, you’ve forgotten that “we” (that is, the US government) has also bombed markets and other civilian targets, attacked clinics and hospitals, arrested and tortured innocent civilians in order to pressure their relatives (which I regard as analogous to taking hostages), and murdered children in Bagdad. Maybe if we stopped acting in a way that is practically indistinguishable from the way “they” act we’d be taken more seriously as a force for good.
Incidently, I live in NYC and have since 1999. I spent Sept 11, 2001 in Bellevue Hospital and saw a number of injured people. There were relatively few but all of them had a look of shock and terror that I’ve never seen on anyone’s face under any other circumstances. At the time, I lived in the East Village, about 1 mile away from where the towers had stood, and smelled the smoke from them for months afterwards. It was a particularly unpleasant smell, a sort of burned plastic smell with overtones of barbeque. I don’t wish these experiences on anyone. Not even if they are Iraqi or Afghani. Not even if Bush thinks their leaders might want WMD. Not even if they are fool enough to believe that al Qaeda is going to do something useful for the world. Violence is no solution. Find another way.
Is it that goddamn hard, Charles? Really?
What’s so hard, McDuff? We don’t disagree, and I don’t believe that von disagrees with you either.
By analogy, I assume that Britain should now go attack Iran (which probably had nothing to do with these bombings) in order to combat the latest bombings. Same logic.
No, not the same logic, dm. Do we really have to go once more ad nauseum into the reasons for Saddam’s removal? Personally, I’d rather pass.
You seem to forget you have a body of work upon which you stand.
Which means you have a whole body of work that you can distort, shoes. You’ve done it before.
I’m with you on the anger. What the terrorists have done is despicable. There is no excuse for their acts.
However, in response to the debate which your post have sparked, I must reply that one cannot defeat an enemy without understanding him. The sad truth is that people act for what they percieved to be good reasons, even when they are in actuality poor ones.
Racism is an excellent example. America did not simply attack the KKK as an institution or as a group of individuals. Rather, it acted to undermine the dogmas of racism both educationally and by eliminating the structural supports which allowed racism to thrive. One of those supports was segregation, which was undermined by (in one example) forcing people of all races to interact as young children in order to better understand each other. Listing the crimes of the KKK and prosecuting them and other racists, while important, would not have mitigated the problem to the high degree which the much more complex American reaction to racism has.
None of this involved the slightest sympathy for racists or racism. Americans had the strength to admit that institutions and behaviors in which they partook were a factor which contributed to the problem. Perhaps many also felt guilty. That is a matter of individual conscience (though that was perhaps a more reasonable reaction to rascism than it is to terrorism). But, guilty or not, they also changed those institutions and behaviors which contributed to the creation of racism as a serious problem.
This reponse was, I think, analogous (if imperfectly) to the perfered Liberal response to terrorism. Yes, of course we want to see those responsible tried or, where necessary or appropriate, dead. But we also want to honestly evaluate the factors leading to the creation of terrorism as a phenomenon so that we can better undermine terrorist dogmas and persued young people around the world that terror is not a legitimate, desireable, or effective means of actions. Even if it means considering the notion that America, as the most powerful actor in international affairs, may have to examine its own behavior for elements which provide terrorists with the means to argue that America is an evil nation, even if we do not ourself agree with this characterization.
Maybe if we stopped acting in a way that is practically indistinguishable from the way “they” act we’d be taken more seriously as a force for good.
Uh, I as much as anyone agree that the U.S. has behaved far below our standards and principles and far less than honorably over the last two years in Iraq, but let’s not go off the rails here. “Practically indistinguishable?” Come on.
Violence is no solution.
That depends on what the problem is, and how much violence we’re talking about.
Do we really have to go once more ad nauseum into the reasons for Saddam’s removal
If any of them were “stopping al Qaeda terrorism,” you might want to re-examine your premises. Apparently.
I also think that it is reasonable to look at the Klansman, the Nazi, the homophobe, the man who roams an engineering school with a gun shooting women, etc, and ask why they hate. If we can answer that question maybe we can find a way to stop them from hating or at least prevent others from falling into the pattern of hatred.
Phil:
I agree with you that ‘practically indistinguishable’ is way overstating it. Think of this from the other side’s point of view, though. The ‘we’ that they are fighting isn’t just the US. ‘They’ fought our proxy the Shah, they fought one group of ‘us’ in Afghanistan in the 80s with aid from another group of us, they’re fighting us in Chechnya, in Kashmir, etc. etc. Defined this broadly — in the angry way von speaks of ‘them’ — ‘we’ have done some pretty bad stuff.
Your impression is wrong, LJ. Before getting the urge to place certain impressions as mine, try asking first instead of going off with meritless assumptions.
I’m not sure how impressions are wrong. If I say I feel cold, it’s rather idiotic of you to suggest that I don’t. If I say that your post made me feel that there was a unitary ‘they’, you might want to consider why I feel that way. Anyway, the impression I get is that you think that the Baathists, the Sunni and the Shiites (as well as any palestinian, iranian, or iraqi nationalists) are one inseparable ‘they’. A veritable ocean of ‘they’. If that impression is wrong, they perhaps an update, noting the current assumed suspects for each of the links you give.
At any rate, I’m pleased that you didn’t list ‘they kill Coptic Christian families in NJ’ or ‘they form sniper teams to terroize the nation’s capital’, or ‘they plant deep cover agents as Muslim chaplins to gather intelligence in Gitmo’. I’ll take my silver linings where I can get them.
lj: are you thinking it was Charles who wrote the original post?
Parry, remise, thrust. Not only is flypaper in full use in Iraq, it seems to have found some function at ObsiWi as well. Von’s list and Charles’ acknowledgement are indisputable. I’m not sure if the counter argument is that our politics and way of life have pissed these people off so, that we should turn our nukes on ourselves make the world right; or if the contrarians have just found a home here. And we do not have to get along. You get along, we’ll get it right. You can thank us later.
How about “in praise of implacable justice”? The anger is extra.
By ‘extra’, I don’t mean ‘gratuitous’. Rather, ‘extraneous’, and maybe ‘distracting’.
Which means you have a whole body of work that you can distort, shoes. You’ve done it before.
Yes, well…”he said, she said”
However, I’m glad you are, here tonight, unequivocally of the view that the only difference between liberal and conservative is one of policy, and not of loyalty or fortitude.
The nature of our enemies sounds a lot like the nature of our friends. If Westerners were really the moral paragons of von’s imagination this would not be true. And interestingly, when I have brought up with conservative Christians the fact that Reagan embraced terrorists, mass murderers and genocidal killers, they always bring up his anti-communist motivation, almost as though support for terror is understandable if you know what people’s motives are. Apparently motivation matters when it is our allies who murder children in the most vicious ways imaginable.
It’s so tiresome to have to point out something that everyone knows to be true. Why do intelligent people have to get up on soapboxes and proclaim their hatred of terror (fine, I agree) and then ruin it by pretending our country has virtues it doesn’t possess? We hate terror directed against us and don’t want to hear about the terror we support.
Maybe if we stopped acting in a way that is practically indistinguishable from the way “they” act we’d be taken more seriously as a force for good.
Practically indistinguishable? If you haven’t done it, Dianne, I suggest you click on each of Norm’s 18 links, and then actually read them.
Violence is no solution.
Ever?
I’m not sure how impressions are wrong.
They are if they don’t reflect whatsoever the point of view that you are impressing onto me, LJ. If you feel cold and say so, I won’t challenge you on it. If I get the impression that you’re cold, when the reality is that your air conditioner is busted on a sweltering summer day, then my impression would be wrong, no? That is why I said your impression was wrong. Or should I say that your impression indicated an ignorance of my point of view. In either case, you made wild and unsupportable extrapolations from one single sentence.
Anyway, the impression I get is that you think that the Baathists, the Sunni and the Shiites (as well as any palestinian, iranian, or iraqi nationalists) are one inseparable ‘they’.
I do not consider them such, LJ. What more do you want? I’ve read sufficiently to be aware of the cultural and religious differences between the various groups and nationalities, and I am still learning as I go, just as you are I presume.
We’ve been “righteously angry” at terrorists for over five years. What’s it gotten us?
We’ve been “hating and killing” for over 2 years. What’s it gotten us?
The flypaper strategy – how’s that working out?
Bush’s WoT is a failure. Repeat: a failure.
None of the indices are improving. None of them.
There are more terrorists than ever.
There are more terrorist attacks than ever.
The terrorists are as well armed as ever.
Iraq is a pit, a quagmire, a failure of epic proportions; chewing up human lives at the rate of one London-style bombing every day, and Rumsfeld says it’ll be like that for maybe another 12 years.
Our intelligence services didn’t see the Bali bombings coming, didn’t see the Saudi Arabia attacks coming, didn’t see the Madrid attacks coming, didn’t see the London attacks coming. What’s the torture, murder, and extraordinary rendition good for, again?
Someone in the Bush Admin outed a CIA op who worked on WMDs, exposing her network, and probably getting her agents killed – and for what? Petty revenge.
The CIA’s former executive director thinks it’s fine that OBL is still alive and free. The current CIA boss says he knows where OBL is, but isn’t in any particular hurry to go get him.
The A Q Khan network was rolled up on Bush’s command, ruining Khan as a turned double agent.
The CIA kidnapped Osama Mustafa Hassan, ruining an ongoing Italian investigation into his network.
And, when the US kidnaps these people, imprisons them, sends them to torture-friendly countries for “interrogation,” if the US actually does find out anything useful, does it share that info with our “partners in the WoT”?
No:
“The American system is of little use to us,” said a senior Italian counterterrorism investigator. “It’s a one-way street. We give them what we have, but we are given no useful information that can help us prosecute people.”
… or prevent terrorist attacks.
Tell me something. If the Bush Admin was deliberately trying to lose the “WoT,” how different would its tactics need to be from what they are?
“And we do not have to get along. You get along, we’ll get it right. You can thank us later.”
Many Londoners today are appreciating your moral clarity, I am sure. Or is the challenge just to look and talk tough.
Don’t confuse all Bush-haters with peaceniks. His supporters stay loyal no matter the inadequacy of his behavior and policy, and hold him responsible for absolutely nothing. And people keep dying.
The point of understanding the enemy’s motivations, as others have said, is not to provide sympathy or therapy.
The point is to find a way to prevent people from continuing to turn to terrorism, since without that there can be no end. I don’t believe that using violence alone, trying to kill the terrorists faster than they arise, will ever solve the problem — at least not short of genocide.
I’m not interested in appeasing terrorists. I’m interested in finding ways to turn people who are not terrorists but might someday consider terrorism away from that path. And I don’t believe that further oppressing, angering, insulting, injuring, or threatening them is an effective means of doing that.
Yes, evil exists. Yes, the people who committed those acts were evil. I’m not too into getting angry about it–for me, it feels a little like getting angry about the weather–but YMMV. They exist, they’re evil, they’re a problem for us, and we need to try to solve the problem. OK, fine. So what? Are we likely to do a better job of solving that problem if we get good and pissed off about it first? I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t do my best thinking when I’m angry. And when we’re dealing with a situation in which the infinite gradations of “they” is a central part of the problem–how do we do kill or incapacitate the hardcore evildoers without convincing a whole lot of other people that we are the evildoers who should be killed or incapacitated?–it seems to me that working ourselves into a righteous rage isn’t the right approach. But I guess that must mean that somewhere deep inside I just want to sing Kumbaya with the Al Quaeda Boys’ Choir, right?
It took you three posts, Charles, of talking around the subject, to even say “I don’t disagree.” You still haven’t said “yes, of course we’re on the same side,” or anything so direct.
On a day like today, all the flags in the world flying from all the mastheads of all the blogs, and apparently those words are too hard for you to say.
And people wonder why there’s antagonism between left and right.
The more I see, hear and read the more I believe:
GWB is totally committed to “fighting” the war on terror but not the least bit committed to (or even interested in) winning it.
Thank you Norm Geras.
You know, I’d almost forgotten that terrorists were bad. Just the other day I caught some terrorists playing in my garden, but they were so cute with their little suicide belts and puppy dog eyes and shouts of “die infidel!”, and I just shooed them away with a rolled up newspaper.
I guess I completely forgot to find a convenient scapegoat country to bomb the hell out of.
OK, out of poetry mode …
I agree with everything von said. Partly this is because, knowing von in that odd way in which one can know someone one has never met (but actually spoke on the phone with yesterday; first time ever), I didn’t read the ‘they’ he referred to as meaning anything other than: they, the terrorists. Not ‘they, the people of the Middle East’, or ‘they, the Muslims’, or they anything other than: they, the terrorists. And if we — meaning ‘we, the people who read this blog’, not ‘we Westerners’, or anything (since who knows where our readers are?) are not better than them — not by some sort of inevitable ‘better nature’ but because of our own choices and our character — then we are in even deeper trouble than I thought.
Nor did I read him as advocating any sort of indiscriminate attacks. Again, here it matters immensely who you read him as calling ‘our enemies’. If it’s terrorists — actual people who have decided to join groups dedicated to spreading terror through violence — then it goes without saying that one needs to identify them in order to act against them.
You may think there is something else he should have said. But — speaking for myself — I try not to read things into omissions. Maybe this just comes of having, too often, written my own posts and then kicked myself later for leaving something out: not every omission actually means anything. None of us ever says all that needs saying.
The two quibbles I have are: first, I think I would want to know if the Klansman was provoked by our insistence on integrated schools. Not because I would be the least tempted to re-segregate, but because that would be the first step towards figuring out his motives, the one that allowed me to say: right, and why do integrated schools have this effect on you? And it’s only after figuring that out, and answering any further questions that arose, that I would know how to counter him.
The second is that I don’t think anyone needs to be reminded that there is evil, and that it must be opposed. But I would be very, very wary of attributing to von any specific thoughts about who needs to be reminded, and why; or even the idea that anyone does. When I first read his post, before all the acrimony, I just took it as an expression of resolve; more a response to what happened today than any kind of accusation. And writing anything in response to terrorism is, as I said on the other thread, really, really hard.
I have this rule: that I will never criticize anyone for the manner in which they grieve. Too few tears? Too many? Too buttoned-down? Too indecorous? I hate it when people ask these questions, as though there were a right way to grieve, and as though people should be expected to get it right in a moment when, God knows, they have other things on their minds.
I think we are all grieving.
Can anyone think of anything we could do, other than sending our thoughts and sympathy, to concretely help people in the UK?
lj: are you thinking it was Charles who wrote the original post?
Whoops! Yes I was. Now I’m not and I apologize to Charles for thinking that he wrote it.
But I’m still at a loss to understand how, simply by listing a set of terrible acts, done by people who may or may not claim to be motivated by the same intention, we have gotten anywhere close to ‘they’. We could list people tossed out of airplanes into the sea by argentinians, French going into an Algerian village and murdering all the men over 16, thousands of acts that have happened and continue to happen every day. Perhaps the ‘they’ is ‘people who do these things’, but why isn’t the BTK killer there? Or Eric Rudolph? Or Timothy McVeigh?
My students often, in lieu of writing, make lists. They are formatted like essays, but they are simply lists, with no order, no motivation. I would like to assume the same here, but I don’t think anyone can argue that this is the case here.
1. They attack Red Cross personnel.
2. They murder people working for the UN.
3. They kidnap and kill care workers.
4. They bomb holiday-makers, in nightclubs.
5. They blow up people travelling on trains – civilians.
6. They target people on buses – civilians.
7. They take civilian hostages.
8. They decapitate them.
9. They murder trade unionists.
10. They kidnap diplomats.
11. They kill people for being… barbers.
12. They fly aircraft full of civilians into skyscrapers where people are at work.
13. They take schoolchildren hostage and murder them.
14. They bomb synagogues.
15. They kill people shopping in a market.
16. They kill people queuing at a medical clinic.
17. They murder children in Baghdad.
18. They murder people on their way to work in London.
Supposing your country was occupied by a foreign power and there were unwanted foreign soldiers in the streets, and also supposing that you believed any and all of the above would help end that occupation, which of the above acts would you refuse to commit?
And as a reference point, would you claim that you would refuse, on pain of imprisonment or death, to participate in any of: the firebombing of Dresden, the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, the carpet bombing of North Vietnam, or the “reduction” of Fallujah?
Nope, that’ll probably do, Hil.
We’re a pretty well developed country, and in all honesty this attack wasn’t that bad. It’ll take us a couple of weeks to get the tube working, but after that we’ll be back to normal.
If you know someone personally over here who was affected, do what you can for them, that you know they’d appreciate. This isn’t going to even provoke a blood shortage, though. I appreciate the sentiment, but I really don’t think there’s anything we need, short of kind words and best wishes.
And even those, y’know… no flannelling. We get embarrassed.
And even those, y’know… no flannelling. We get embarrassed.
*plaids you anyway*
McDuff: I suspected as much. I won’t flannel (assuming I’ve interpreted it right.) But the thoughts are there.
LJ: Are you also going to apologize to Von for thinking that Charles wrote it?
And the thoughts are very much appreciated.
I almost wish that I could say, “yes, send teddy bears or blood or shoes,” because when people want to help and there’s nothing they can do, it’s a bit frustrating. But, on the other hand, I’m inestimably grateful that there really is nothing you can do to help, because it was small enough, and we were prepared enough, that we have it covered.
Oh, I just thought of something. If anyone knows anyone who’s in the process of photoshopping an angel onto a union flag with the words “Never Forget” in some cursive font, can you shoot them for us with one of your big American guns? That’s like the grandma’s Christmas sweater of “kind thoughts.” You don’t want to appear ungrateful, but, well… I’m sure you know how it is.
Anybody pray for rational anger?
LJ: Are you also going to apologize to Von for thinking that Charles wrote it?
But then, I might have to apologize to Charles for apologizing to Von for, well, you get the picture. However, I am very curious if I was the only one who made this mistake.
And as for photoshopping antics, may I just say, lay on, McDuff?
I swore to myself that I’d let a day pass. It’s close enough that I’ll let fly.
Von, you and Norm missed a few.
They blow up day care centers.
They kill doctors, nurses policemen and bystanders.
In fact, they kill damned near anyone you can describe.
Terrorism is a tactic, not an ideology. From InsideDefense.com, I’ll offer these remarks by General Wallace Gregson, currently commander of Marine forces in the Pacific:
To focus on the tactics only obscures our understanding of the goals that those who attack us are pursuing. Our anger must be tempered by our resolve to uphold our values in the face of an attack such as we have just seen. It is simply impossible to eliminate terror as an available tactic. Our best hope is to deter those who are currently disposed to its use. While we need to actively pusue the perpetrators the individual acts, we also need to go beyond these measures.
There will always be people out there with evil hearts and malicious intents. We need to find ways to shrink the pool of followers that will actually act out the fantasies of these demagogues.
Can anyone think of anything we could do, other than sending our thoughts and sympathy, to concretely help people in the UK?
It’s nearly 20 years since I left Britain, but I suspect a lot of people there would like you to ditch your Administration ASAP.
I’ve been trying to make a comment here twice, but got stopped both times because it might be comment spam. I suspect it was the number of links in my reply: can you advise?
jes
Yep, Typepad seems to have upped the barriers to deal with spam. I’ve had two posts bounce. If you take off the http, it might go through, though you lose the clik-thru. I’m thinking that google cache might be a way to get around it, but I’m not sure. It appears that they are catching whole domains, so it is a bit indiscriminate.
I didn’t read the ‘they’ he referred to as meaning anything other than: they, the terrorists. Not ‘they, the people of the Middle East’, or ‘they, the Muslims’, or they anything other than: they, the terrorists.
That’s great, hilzoy, but you’re usually pretty good at seeing through this kind of silliness. Is there some specific, nontrivial group of people that von might have been thinking of who have forgotten that “terrorists are bad,” and who needed reminding of such? If not, then it’s just irrelevant hand-waving puffery, no? I think that everyone whose opinions are worth nothing accepts the rather obvious tautology “terrorists are bad,” and so I don’t know who von thought he was reminding.
And if we — meaning ‘we, the people who read this blog’, not ‘we Westerners’, or anything (since who knows where our readers are?) are not better than them — not by some sort of inevitable ‘better nature’ but because of our own choices and our character — then we are in even deeper trouble than I thought.
Again, this is the far right’s game that you’re playing right into. I know we’re better than terrorists. You know it. Everybody whose name appears above mine in these comments right now knows it. Who needed reminding of it?
I have this rule: that I will never criticize anyone for the manner in which they grieve. Too few tears? Too many? Too buttoned-down? Too indecorous? I hate it when people ask these questions, as though there were a right way to grieve, and as though people should be expected to get it right in a moment when, God knows, they have other things on their minds.
It’s a fine rule. However, when people grieve by lashing out, or inciting others to lash out, a point can be reached where the rule has to yield.
The good news — and good is a really relative term here — is that Britain is the least likely nation to ‘lash out’ (either internally or externally)among major players. Whatever the terrorists wanted to accomplish, they will not accomplish from the Brits. If the Danes are next — an awful thought — they’ll take it like grown-ups too.
(I guess I don’t know enough to exile communities within Britain to make the statement as sweeping as I’d like: I’d like to think that Arab Londoners are going to approach the thing with the same resolve not to give in to paranoia as Brits in general — any Brits care to comment?)
Internally, we are very likely to lash out. In fact, I think I’ve heard reports of a petrol bomb attack on a mosque already. There are also areas up north like Oldham and Bradford where tensions between immigrant communities and poor white communities have reached rioting point in the past, about five years ago IIRC, where far right radicals might again manage to whip up people into a frenzy.
I suspect we will see an increased rate of assaults on Muslims over the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately, every country has its share of small-minded morons, and we were dealt an extra helping.
However, we won’t invade anyone, partly because of our magnificent stoicism that you’ve all noticed, but mainly for the not insignificant reason that we’ve run out of troops.
The good news — and good is a really relative term here — is that Britain is the least likely nation to ‘lash out’ (either internally or externally)among major players.
Well, yeah. 😉
I wrote pretty much just that on LSF just now.
I’d like to think that Arab Londoners are going to approach the thing with the same resolve not to give in to paranoia as Brits in general
Well, most Muslims in the UK aren’t Arabs, and the general fear is of an anti-Muslim backlash. But on the whole, I think, no. The Muslim Council of Great Britain got a lot of vicious e-mails, but there are no reports of any more physical reaction. I hope and trust that London schoolgirls who usually wear the hijab will be wearing it as usual today.
McDuff: . In fact, I think I’ve heard reports of a petrol bomb attack on a mosque already.
Sod. Where? I was searching for a reaction like this on the news this morning, and couldn’t find anything – much to my relief.
Every last one of them. There’s a difference between executing unconventional war on occupying forces and just going out and bombing the uninvolved.
There are also areas up north like Oldham and Bradford where tensions between immigrant communities and poor white communities have reached rioting point in the past, about five years ago IIRC, where far right radicals might again manage to whip up people into a frenzy.
Sadly true. There was also this report last year which makes it a very important question of whether it was home grown extremists or a foreign cell. Excerpts of the report are here. A number of commentators suggested that the notion of Islamophobia was simply political correctness. The Wikipedia link has a large number of links, though it conflates the phenomenon around the globe rather than discuss the aspects as it relates to the UK.
Slartibartfast,
What was Dresden? Toward the end of the Civil War? Our collateral damage throughout Iraq?
Righteous anger always justifies horrible actions against the children of “those evil dastardly people”.
This is usually less about good and evil and more about perceived threats…real or imaginary.
Survival…not The Lord Vs. Satan.
Jes: I heard it on R4 today, but I can’t seem to find any mention of it on their website now, so it may have just been a rumour or an attempt.
If so, well done us for not being fools.
This is the only part of your comment that seemed relevant in any way to anything I said, so I ask you: WTFO?
You said:
Every last one of them. There’s a difference between executing unconventional war on occupying forces and just going out and bombing the uninvolved.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | July 8, 2005 09:26 AM
————————–
I responded:
Slartibartfast,
What was Dresden? Toward the end of the Civil War? Our collateral damage throughout Iraq?
Righteous anger always justifies horrible actions against the children of “those evil dastardly people”.
This is usually less about good and evil and more about perceived threats…real or imaginary.
Survival…not The Lord Vs. Satan.
Posted by: NeoDude | July 8, 2005 09:47 AM
Posted by: Slartibartfast | July 8, 2005 09:50 AM
———————–
If the early American colonialist were willing to start an insurrection with Britain over “taxation without representation” (and let’s be honest, of all of Britain’s colonies, the Americans were treated with the most respect) what would they have done if the Crown treated the colonies like the United States treats it’s occupied areas?
Slarti: and just going out and bombing the uninvolved.
There is indeed.
I have no idea. I’m just telling you what I, personally, would not do. Alternate history is always an interesting topic, but it’s also always fiction.
But your analogy is itself interesting, so let’s discuss how apt it is. Is it your claim that it’s the Iraqi general population that’s involved in that laundry list of terror?
Well, since “Slartibartfast” is a nom de blog, I suppose it’s possible that he was personally responsible for either or both of the Dresden firebombing and the Afghanistan clusterbombing; but since we can’t know for sure, I think you’d need to find a statement of his in support of those actions if you want use them to contradict his description of his personal view of what he’d do in felix’s hypothetical situation.
Oops, should’ve previewed; also should’ve let Slart respond for himself; also should be working instead of commenting on blogs.
Unfortunately, every country has its share of small-minded morons, and we were dealt an extra helping.
Considering that we are you on steroids, that’s not very reassuring.
Seriously, though, I was talking about official action, or even broadly socially sanctioned non-state action.
Hey guys. Chill.
Yoda’s right about Anger->hate->dark side, okay? Hasn’t the past 4 years proved that?
We need justice. The world needs justice. Political, economic, human justice. Simple as that. The world is small. Resources are limited. Every time we choose aggression we lose the chance to use partnership.
Mothers everywhere weep for their children, dead because of someone’s anger.
Think. Think. Think. Act.
And you can make just such a list of horrilbe things we’ve done, shame on you for this kind of rhetoric Von.
Try pointing the finger inward instead of outward at a time like this, glass houses and all.
“Your impression is wrong, LJ. Before getting the urge to place certain impressions as mine, try asking first instead of going off with meritless assumptions.
I’m not sure how impressions are wrong. If I say I feel cold, it’s rather idiotic of you to suggest that I don’t. If I say that your post made me feel that there was a unitary ‘they’, you might want to consider why I feel that way.”
This is nonsense thinking. A crazy person may have the impression that he can he can turn people into rats–it would be rather idiotic to assume he can. A child gets the impression that when he hides his hand behind his face you can’t see him. But he is wrong. Only an intellectual could think of something so silly as to convince himself that you it is idiotic to argue with someone when they form a wrong impression about reality.
You are contributing to exactly the impression I had of you, however.
You still haven’t said “yes, of course we’re on the same side,” or anything so direct.
Oh, you were expecting exact words. Look, McDuff, I don’t know who you are or where you’re coming from, and it’s apparent that you don’t know where I’m coming from either. There is a chasm of political differences between myself and a multitude here, but I assume that commenters here are on my side (or me on theirs) in the larger sense, that we are at war with several radical militant Islamic groups, in particular one that has declared war against the United States, and that they need to be defeated so they do not attack us again. There are, of course, differences large and small on how to go about it, which is the subject of thousands of comments here. I generally agree with what you wrote here and here. I’ve never believed in “indiscriminately striking” at enemy targets, or that we should not try to understand and know our enemy. Most, if not all, conservatives are with you on that.
But let’s be clear about this. I’m not the one demanding whether or not you’re with me or against me. I’m not asking for some test of fealty. You are. Why? You ask: “And people wonder why there’s antagonism between left and right.” Perhaps the answer is that both sides are making the wrong assumptions about the other, trotting out straw men and making gross generalizations. I don’t claim total innocence here, and neither should you.
Many here have asked why the reminder is needed. Witness:
Please note the timeline. 9/11/2001 occurs BEFORE the invasion of Iraq which took place in 2003.
Please note the targets–people on the tube in London are not occupying anything other than their own affairs. Even under a rather loose definitions of targeting, that isn’t allowed under the Geneva Conventions. Please also note, they weren’t mistargetted or hit by a stray bullet which was aimed at an occupier.
Seems to me that the there are indeed people on this very board who need reminding.
Who’s “we”, wilfred, and when’s the last time you were involved in such activities?
“9/11/2001 occurs BEFORE the invasion of Iraq which took place in 2003.”
And no Iraqis had anything to do with it. Not even Saddam Hussein or any of his pathologic followers. It is a little as if, after Pearl Harbor, the US declared war on China.
“Please note the targets–people on the tube in London are not occupying anything other than their own affairs.”
One could argue that they were contributing to the occupation by paying taxes and re-electing Tony Blair. I’d find it a very weak argument, but it’s at least as valid as saying that anyone living in Fallujah is a fair target. Possibly moreso: Iraq was not and is not a democracy so its citizens have less control over and therefor less responsibility for, the policies of its government.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/07/08/a_look_in_the_mirror_for_america/
Has everyone forgotten Feluja, already…the football field used as a mass grave?
Mostly all the “evil terrorist” left the town, only “evil homeowners” were left to defend their houses.
Just because we changed the name of women and children to “evil terrorist” it didn’t change moral responsibility.
Like it or not, the United States made a conscious decision to use terrorist tactics, when dealing with the Middle East, as a whole. What happened in London, yesterday will force many others to believe that this is what needs to be done “over there” to “them”
Al-Queda has been playing many Americans like yo-yos. And many in the Middle East have seen what we do and come to the decision that only Anglo-American lives have value. Only Anglo-American lives deserve to be treated as if they are beyond good and evil.
http://www.boston.com/news/
globe/editorial_opinion
/oped/articles/2005/07/08/a_look_in_the_mirror_for_america/
sorry, couldn’t get this link to work.
Sebastian:
We’re a democracy, not a tyranny. This means that we own our governments, both the good and the bad. I do not get to wash my hands of abuses of power by those in charge. This is the price I pay for free speech, freedom of association, and a say in the workings of my country.
I assumed that this was considered to be true in America as well.
I am not saying this to justify the actions of the terrorists or to claim some kind of moral equivalency, but I would stress that, while on the surface we can say that this is black and white, such views are rarely helpful for forming a proper, working understanding of the situation that will help us prevent such atrocities in the future.
Slarti: Who’s “we”, wilfred, and when’s the last time you were involved in such activities?
I presume that in a democracy, citizens of the democracy feel responsible for atrocities committed by their soldiers in their name. At least, I feel that way when I read about the British army – in especial, I feel personally disgusted by the British use of cluster bombs in Iraq. (I am impersonally disgusted, if you get the difference, by the American use of cluster bombs.)
As you observed, Slarti, there’s a difference between war on military forces and just going out and bombing the uninvolved. Cluster bombs used in urban areas or on arable land constitute a direct attack on civilians, especially children, and their use is as repellent as any other deliberate attack on civilians.
Re: #16 in von’s list: how is that action different from the US attacks on hospitals in Fallujah? Should not both be condemned?
Expressions of righteous wrath aren’t really all that useful. Sure, it feels good in a way, but what’s the point?
The Bush admiistration used the rage and sorrow over 911 for domestic political purposes and as a justification for an unnecssary war. Their track record on real domestic security and real efforts to combat terrorism abroad is lousy, an mixture of incompetence, profiteering, and irrelevance. That won’t stop the current administration from using the London bombing for more “you must be angry and support me or you are for terrorism” rhetoric. I’m glad von didn’t intend his post that way, but I can understand why people would take it that way since there has been so much of that kind of talk in our political arena.
But as one of the posts near the top pointed out, the real question is how to combat terrorism, not who is more angry about it than who. One of the problems with indulging in expressions of anger is that it leads right to the desire to strike back with violence, which, in the case of fighting terrorism, isn’t necessarily the most effective tactic. Terrorism is best “fought” through domestic security, international intelligence action, efforts to secure source of nuclear materials, and efforts to address root causes. None of these things are as emotionally gratifying to an angry person as invading a country that we don’t need to invade or throwing a petrol bomb on the neighborhood mosque, but all are much more likely to prevent future attacks.
So I don’t see a positive point to calls for people to be angry. Instead we need a focus for responding constructively.
Diane, I think yours of 10:57 unfairly fails to respond to the most important point of Sebastian’s of 10:40. Taking a narrow “we” — the British government and its people — it’s fair to say that most if not all of the harm to innocents is a byproduct of an effort to harm the non-innocent. Now I’m not going to argue with you about whether the british efforts to harm the non-innocent are undertaken as carefully as possible, on either the micro or macro scale. It is, however, a significant difference that British authorities recognize that there is such a thing in Iraq and Afghanistan as innocents. AQ does not recognize the difference.
Charles,
“I’m not the one demanding whether or not you’re with me or against me.”
No, but the President you support is.
“I’m not asking for some test of fealty.”
No, you are just saying that people who do not wholeheartedly support the President are idiots at best, and traitors at worst.
“Taking a narrow “we” — the British government and its people — it’s fair to say that most if not all of the harm to innocents is a byproduct of an effort to harm the non-innocent.”
I don’t know any al Qaeda members. Normally, I’d say that is a fortunate thing, but in this case it leaves me without the ability to ask any AQ members if they intend to harm the innocent. However, I would hazard a wild guess that they don’t. Their idea of who is “innocent” is probably wilding different from yours, mine, or the average Iraqis, but I strongly suspect that if asked they would say that, yes, it was tragic that some innocents had to die in the holy war, but that it was inevitable and that they meant to harm only the guilty. The US and Britain have killed at least 25,000 civilians in Iraq, apparently mostly in bombings. And this is almost certainly an underestimate, perhaps an underestimate of an order of magnitude or more. This is how the British and US governments go about not harming the innocent? I’d hate to see what they’d do if they were feeling malicious.
Just checking in briefly, in the middle of a busy day:
Dantheman: “No, you are just saying that people who do not wholeheartedly support the President are idiots at best, and traitors at worst.”
I don’t see where Charles has said anything like this. If you’re referring to some part of his pre-ObWi oeuvre, it would help those of us who are unfamiliar with it if you’d cite. If not, then don’t put words in his mouth.
I have to say that Dianne’s point has been largely ignored. If my wife and boys were killed as “collateral damage” in an attack on some legitimate target, that would not make me any happier than if they were targeted directly.
Killing innocent people is American policy. Has been at least since WW2. We sometimes make more or less of an effort to minimize the number of innocents killed, but we have never renounced our right to kill them.
All in the name of minimizing our own soldiers’ casualties. Better that a civilian Iraqi family die, than that a U.S. soldier be wounded.
When I first started reading von’s post I thought it was by Edward, that he was listing American actions in Iraq, and that he was going to point out how we lose credibility and increase support for terrorism throught such actions.
The problem with glorifying righteous wrath is that everybody gets angry and everybody can glorify their wrath. We would like to think that our wrath is more glorious than the other person’s but the other person might not agree. So you just end up with people all puffed up with self-righteousness, using their wrath to justify behavior that could not be justified any other way. The sleep of reason produces monsters; the behavior of the terrorists and their targets converge.
It is morally better and much more effective in terms of self defense to be smart and self-disciplined rather than to be angry.
Yuck. This whole thread. Yuck, yuck, yuck. From von’s imperious, didactic “Do not forget,” (as if we, but not he, had done so), to the inevitable explosions of indignation (“How dare you! But the US is just as bad!”), to SH’s “some on this very board,” to, well, to this whole sad panoply of begged questions and unyielding assumptions, with the possible exception of CB’s 2:39. Yuck.
Er, CB’s 10:39, I mean.
Of course, everything that anyone writes is a make-wrong of someone else, specially if it doesn’t do so overtly.
Yuck, indeed.
If you’re referring to some part of his pre-ObWi oeuvre, it would help those of us who are unfamiliar with it if you’d cite. If not, then don’t put words in his mouth.
Well, your mileage may vary, but this post comes pretty close, in that insinuate but never actually say kinda way…
Notes on Righteous Anger:
My righteous anger, which I view righteously as much more righteous than anyone else’s, presents itself a little differently.
I misdirect. Big, big stuff like the London bombings leaves me numb; I may even do some ironic, totally lame commenting on it, like a guy in a foxhole who puts his finger through the hole in his helmet and remarks on the effing arbitrary vanity of the gods.
Then, like a Brit, I find a pub.
But the anger and its pure righteousness will emerge later. Say, a week later, I’ll stub my toe on a piece of furniture or fail to advance the runner in a close baseball game. Then volcanos erupt, the air around me turns spooky colors, and S.W.A.T teams belay from helicopters and cordon off the area.
And then the people around me take the brunt.
But it’s just that we swim in the same waters and righteous anger of various forms is a free-floating problem like the red tide.
It’s odd. I agree with Von, whose posts by the way are instantly distinquishable from Charles’ or Sebastian’s by the style of writing. But then I look at the behavior of the stock markets yesterday and I don’t see much righteous anger, or at least the amount of righteous anger I deem appropriate. It seems to me that when 40 or so people get blown to smithereens, the Dow should make a quick trip to zero for at least a week, just out of respect.
But it doesn’t. Which is one reason why I’m not utterly enamoured of markets being the final arbiter of anything, though they are useful, speaking ideologically.
That’s O.K. Nothing makes people hungrier either than a funeral, which is why you have those huge bowls of three bean salad and chili at mid-western funerals.
So here’s what I think about this thread. I think we liberals, Hilzoy being the best example of restraint, are misdirecting our anger (at Von, at Slart, at Sebastian, at Charles) in anticipation of something in the coming weeks and months.
Someone, probably at a conservative site yesterday, noted that Margaret Thatcher asked at some time of crisis that partisan bickering halt temporarily, that there would be plenty of time for that.
To which I thought, yes, good sentiment, but no doubt she had folks staying up all night getting the partisan ducks shot, dressed and set in neat rows.
So here’s what I expect, not from conservatives at Obsidian Wings (yeah, yeah, I know), but from the fishies in the common waters. This bombing will be invoked soon and furiously to once again impugn the patriotism of the Democratic Party and the very correct judgements many liberals have made about the invasion of Iraq.
Further, any questions, objections, filibustering, etc. of one, two, or three SCOTUS nominees (or any other domestic issue) by my representatives in Congress, will be tied to their and my imputed lack of righteous anger over the latest instance of terror in London.
FOX will lead. Rove will conduct.
And so we bite the fish closest to us. Even the innocent ones.
Charles–no straw men or ad hominems here…
…we are at war with several radical militant Islamic groups, in particular one that has declared war against the United States, and that they need to be defeated so they do not attack us again.
What I question here, and I have always questioned it, is whether, when some splinter group of anti-whatever freakazoids declares war against us or any other state, we should crank up the war rhetoric ourselves? This seems counterproductive. AQ is not a country. To call this a ‘war’ is to give them power and legitimacy that they do not deserve. To call it a ‘war’ is to imply that they are a group with which we can treat for peace (assuming such a thing were to happen after the ‘war’ became too costly for the other side).
AQ is an organized crime network or a hate group. We need to stop treating this as a war and start treating it as a police investigation. We need to act to prevent crime rather than respond to attacks. We need to work with others to make either an effective international police force authorized to work across borders, or get better at sharing information with the police forces already in these sovereign foreign nations.
We already deal with these groups the right way when it is a domestic matter. We need to take that same aproach for international matters. Beating war drums and sending in the troops only plays into their hands and helps them gain legitimacy.
I misdirect. Big, big stuff like the London bombings leaves me numb; I may even do some ironic, totally lame commenting on it, like a guy in a foxhole who puts his finger through the hole in his helmet and remarks on the effing arbitrary vanity of the gods.
Posted by: John Thullen | July 8, 2005 12:09 PM
That was beautiful.
AQ is an organized crime network or a hate group. We need to stop treating this as a war and start treating it as a police investigation.
I would have to disagree. It was, a few years ago. But it’s morphed from organization to movement, in that cult-like way. The law enforcement approach, though, is the best model. I mean, if you’re at “war” against terror, then it’s a bit foolish to say the terrorists “murdered” 50 Londoners.
A crazy person may have the impression that he can he can turn people into rats–it would be rather idiotic to assume he can. A child gets the impression that when he hides his hand behind his face you can’t see him. But he is wrong.
The fact of whether the person can or cannot actually do things is distinguishable — by necessity — from whether he or she has the impression that he or she can.
lily: The problem with glorifying righteous wrath is that everybody gets angry and everybody can glorify their wrath. We would like to think that our wrath is more glorious than the other person’s but the other person might not agree. So you just end up with people all puffed up with self-righteousness, using their wrath to justify behavior that could not be justified any other way.
Quite. Somewhere on an Arabic blog there is an Arab von with a very damn similar list, also in praise of righteous anger.
But, when we kill civilians en masse, or take hostages, or torture people to death, we do so in righteous anger: when they do the same thing, they do so unrighteously.
(Kipling. A man for all seasons, sure enough.)
McDuff, I was wrong and you were right, and I wish to hell you weren’t.
No petrol bombs – just some small-minded morons smashing windows and a policeman being racist.
Their idea of who is “innocent” is probably wilding different from yours, mine, or the average Iraqis, but I strongly suspect that if asked they would say that, yes, it was tragic that some innocents had to die in the holy war, but that it was inevitable and that they meant to harm only the guilty.
I’m as leary of mindreading as the next person, but putting a bomb in a bus — with no idea who may be riding it — is so utterly inconsistent with the notion of meaning to harm ‘only the guilty’ that I’m going to have to see something else before I’m going to entertain the idea.
It’s clear enough that if AQ is only trying to harm the guilty, they have a definition of guilt that is morally untenable. My own responsibility for the acts of GWB (for who I did not vote, against who I actively worked) is one thing, but that of my 10 year old son is surely another. And that of his 10 year old friend visiting from Germany this week is yet another. A view of guilt that does not even attempt to differentiate between us is so far out as to be a misuse of the word guilt.
I agree that US policy has from time to time included the intentional killing of innocents — Dresden is an obvious example. I do not believe that the British government has pursued this kind of policy in Iraq* or Afghanistan.
*Deciding to commence the war at all is arguably close, but I think sufficient moral distinction may be made between SH’s regime — and ordinary uninvolved people in Basra — that this does not come to the level of AQ. Iraq was not involved with AQ, but its selection as a target of british aggression was not random. It is morally different from someone just riding a train to work in London.
2shoes–…it’s morphed from organization to movement, in that cult-like way.
Okay, so it’s a ‘movement’–the point being that they are not an organization that controls any territory. They are ideological, rather than geographical. Hence the distinction between war and law enforcement. War implies borders and sovereignty and political control.
Our current approach to fighing AQ is rather like us declaring war on Mexico for harboring drug lords.
SH’s regime
First Edward, now Sebastian Holsclaw has a regime too? Is that one of the perks of being a blogger here?
Hilzoy,
I am referring to statements by Charles such as:
“Hagel and Kennedy are not the enemy, but they are the useful fools are who are too accepting of what they’re saying–letting it seep into mainstream discourse–and too eager to proclaim that we’re in a quagmire and that we’re losing.”
or
“and both have bought into the doom and gloom brigades, many of whom were never on board with the Iraq War, many of whom have unrelentingly cherry-picked every piece of bad news because they were never on board and wanted Bush to go down in flames. Yes, eager, McDuff. Kennedy especially.”
(both from the Iraq and the Occasional Communicator thread).
As you yourself said in that thread:
“Shorter hilzoy: give us facts. Don’t impugn our motives.”
Unfortunately, Charles does not meet this minimal requirement for reasoned discourse.
If you want something to get angry about, you could do a lot worse than this:
The saddest part of this is that I’m not at all surprised.
Juan Cole and the TPM Cafe have some interesting thoughts on the possible purpose and targets of the London bombings. There are indications that the bombers wanted to kill Muslim people, folks they perceived as too moderate. The purpose of the bombings may have been to intimidate moderate Muslims and to engage in an internal Muslim against Muslim war over the direction of Islamic interests.
Does anybody know?
Juan Cole and the TPM Cafe have some interesting thoughts on the possible purpose and targets of the London bombings. There are indications that the bombers wanted to kill Muslim people, folks they perceived as too moderate. The purpose of the bombings may have been to intimidate moderate Muslims and to engage in an internal Muslim against Muslim war over the direction of Islamic interests.
Does anybody know?
Hence the distinction between war and law enforcement. War implies borders and sovereignty and political control.
I agree. I was just the observation that AQ no longer is an organization in the traditional sense, and that using the Mafia as a model to combat it might fail. But using a cult model (Aum Sect, etc) might bring better results.
“I was just the observation that AQ no longer is an organization in the traditional sense, and that using the Mafia as a model to combat it might fail. But using a cult model (Aum Sect, etc) might bring better results.”
(This is a non-snarky question in that I think the answer could lead to an interesting discussion). How do you think one fights a cult? How is that different from say fighting the Mafia? What historical examples do you think apply and how do they work in the modern world?
And yes I have a regime, but it consists of only my roommate’s dog.
Well, a cult lives or dies on recruitment. Once “in”, a member has been subjected to brainwashing techniques, and thus would require “deprogramming”, which in terms of a terror group is probably on the late side. It’s my understanding that AQ type organizations do, in fact, subject new recruits in that fashion.
The key for law enforcement is to identify the vunerable and impede the recruitment process.
AQ members, and I use AQ as shorthand, do not come from one single demographic group. Recruitment is broad-based: schools, prisons, immigrant groups, etc.
As for a historical model, I’d have to get back to you.
What is the meaning of “evil”? In asking this question, I am asking for a definition, not an example or series of examples, such as von gave in the original post. It seems to me that people frequently use an “I know it when I see it” sort of definition for evil, which makes it easier to define things that they (whoever they are) do as evil, while things we (whoever we are) do may be mistaken or foolish, may have regretable consequences, or may even be wrong, but they are rarely, according to us, actually evil. Anyone have any ideas as to how to solve this problem?
And yes I have a regime, but it consists of only my roommate’s dog.
OMG! Rick Santorum was right!
Has everyone forgotten Feluja, already…the football field used as a mass grave?
Haven’t forgotten Fallujah, Neo. What football field?
Re: #16 in von’s list: how is that action different from the US attacks on hospitals in Fallujah?
Do you have a better source than Raimondo’s crackpot website, Dianne?
No, but the President you support is.
No, he is not, Dan. Bush said his words a few times in the wake of 9/11. He was directly addressing the governments of the world, asking them to side with us, to reject the sponsoring and harboring of al Qaeda.
No, you are just saying that people who do not wholeheartedly support the President are idiots at best, and traitors at worst.
That’s just pure undiluted horsesh*t. I am saying no such thing.
“No, you are just saying that people who do not wholeheartedly support the President are idiots at best, and traitors at worst.
That’s just pure undiluted horsesh*t. I am saying no such thing.”
As noted above, with citations from a prior thread, you have. When you were called upon it, you neither retracted nor withdrew the statements. You even dug yourself further into the ground by misrepresenting your statements as not impugning anyone’s motives. When multiple people pointed out precisely where you did that, you did not respond. Sorry, but it ain’t horsesh!t — it’s true.
CB: How about the The New York Times as a source? Or The BBC?
What football field?
This one:
Residents of Falluja have reportedly been burying the dead in their gardens and a football field because it is too dangerous to go to the cemeteries on the outskirts of town.
The statements in this post, are things I not only agree with, but seem so obvious to me that I take them for granted. I don’t necessarily think about actively on a daily basis. I would guess that that is true of a large number of us here.
Sometimes it is worth stating things taken for granted out loud, and thinking about them actively. I love my family, I take this for granted and so do they, but it is worth saying it and thinking consciously about that sometimes, and not only taking it for granted.
And the same is true of less pleasant and equally obvious things, like this. It motivates you to think more about the harder questions, such as: how do we stop this from ever happening again?
If we are going to guess at von’s motivations, I think that is probably all they were.
I just want to add one thing, which I think is only slightly less obvious than this post, but which sometimes seems to escape the President, his administration and some of his supporters–and which may be lost in a post titled “in praise of righteous anger.”
Bush talks a lot about “opposing evil”, as if that is the greatest thing one can do. Well, it isn’t. That our enemies our evil, is something to be recognized, but not particularly good proof of our own virtue. Lots of countries in lots of wars have had evil enemies. To use the crashingly obvious example, Stalin and Hitler both managed it–they had each other. Opposing evil is no guarantee that you are good.
I also think it is blatantly, crashingly, obvious that we are better than Al Qaida and their allies. But again, this is not especially hard or impressive to do. Communist Vietnam pulled that off in the war with Pol Pot.
The hard part is not finding evil enemies to oppose. And when history provides you with enemies like Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, it’s also no great trick to be less evil than your enemies.
A harder thing to do is to actually defeat those enemies, and do so without betraying yourself or becoming even a little bit more like them. It’s not just hard; the history of our own country suggests that it’s almost impossible, not to become at least a little more like what you are fighting. But that’s got to be the goal. It may be impossible to do it perfectly, but I know we can do both halves of it better than we are now.
Guy in a fedora walks into a small shop, says to the owner, ‘Nice place you got here. Sure would be a shame if anything was to happen to it.’ Tense moment of silence as this sinks in.
Owner grabs baseball bat from behind counter, waves it over his head, and says, ‘Get out of here, stop threatening me.’
Guy in fedora is pretty surprised, being used to the idea that in this neighborhood, shopkeepers just pay whatever protection money is asked. Says, ‘That’s total horsesh*t. I wasn’t threatening anyone. Just admiring the store.’
I suppose some innocent men in fedoras are going to get hit with some bats for doing nothing more than innocently admiring a well stocked merchantile establishment. Maybe in context, though, it’d be a good idea to find some non-threatening way to convey admiration for the stock. ‘Cause the shopkeepers are tired of paying protection money.
(For the inattentive, all I’m saying is that the treason card has been very substantially overplayed. Has CB overplayed it in prior incarnations? It doesn’t even matter, because it was overplayed before he ever started.)
I don’t think there’s any doubt whatsoever that the US government killed more people in this ongoing conflict (and probably in every conflict before this one) than any of its enemies; civilians, children, wedding parties guests and all the rest.
The key for law enforcement is to identify the vunerable and impede the recruitment process.
And the key for society at large is to reduce the conditions that creates potential recruits. Much has been made of the fact that the 9-11 hijackers were all middle class, college graduates who we would have thought were exemplars, but their sense of disaffection and alienation was drawn from the whole history of the West’s engagement with the Middle East. The inability to understand that sense of alienation, to attribute it to something, anything that is external to us is most disturbing. The desire to push it outside of ourselves and our world is understandable, but ultimately wrong. Already, the discussion of the authors of the London blast are, in some circles, a ‘sleeper’ cell. The desire is to claim that those who did this were already set in their convictions. The idea that they are among us, while horrifying (think the end of b/w Invasion of the Body Snatchers), it is much more ‘comforting’ than the idea that we may be, in some way, creating the conditions for this to flourish.
This list of Islamic terrorist acts should give some pause. These acts have been in the background for 40 years, but it is our interconnectedness and globalized society that makes them a threat that they weren’t before.
Well, your mileage may vary, but this post comes pretty close, in that insinuate but never actually say kinda way…
Nice try, shoes, but you’re way off subject. The point of my Michael Moore post was to demonstrate that he is an extremist crackpot, and that Democrats should have nothing to do with the guy.
What I question here, and I have always questioned it, is whether, when some splinter group of anti-whatever freakazoids declares war against us or any other state, we should crank up the war rhetoric ourselves?
Fair question, nous. Any old group can declare war on us, but al Qaeda had the means and ability to actually do it. Once they committed those acts of war, there is no choice but to take them seriously and at their word. Does it mean we must beat war drums? No. Does it mean we send in troops? Depends. As I see it, there is nothing wrong with the use of rhetoric against them. Propaganda is an integral component to this war, and they use the media pretty well, something that organized crime syndicates never did. Mafia dons also didn’t declare jihad against infidels and send squads of suicide capos to advance their cause. This is more than just a gang of criminals. I don’t think we differ all that much on tactics, but I think we’re in WW IV, and it’s a war unlike any other in history.
Dan,
Let’s revisit your 11:14am statement: “No, you are just saying that people who do not wholeheartedly support the President are idiots at best, and traitors at worst.”
To support your feeble case, you cited comments I made in another post about Durbin, Kennedy and certain groups who talked down the war from day one. Did I call them idiots? No. I did question the judgment of two politicians, saying that Durbin and Kennedy were useful fools. Did I impugn their motives as Hilzoy suggested? No. I have no idea what their motives were, and it doesn’t matter anyway. I criticized the actual words spoken. Did I call them traitors? No. When Hilzoy and Edward and Armando and others disagree with me or are less than wholeheartedly supportive of Bush, are they idiots at best and traitors at worst? Of course not. If you’re going to criticize me for a lack of reasoned discourse, look to your own beam.
Wise words, Katherine.
I sometimes think we’re hardwired for the disjunctive syllogism, “not P, therefore Q”–thus giving Q a free pass simply on the assumption that it’s one or the other, and that we can reject P without having to evaluate Q.
Our political emotions seem to be built on this principle, and it seems to apply to Bush’s rhetorical assumption that we’re not al-Qaeda, thus we’re paragons of virtue.
How do you think one fights a cult?
I wish I didn’t have to work today, because I think that merits a thread of its own and some research on my part. My initial take — based on a bunch of half-baked notions about both cognitive psych and self-organizing networks — is the same as 2shoes. Once cultified, people are incredibly hard to reach. In that sense cults are indeed very much like the mafia. The induction methods of criminal enterprises, cults, secret societies, and other “deliberate” or artificial clique systems overlap, and their core attribute is precisely that they are hard to undo.
I can think of a bunch of methods just off the top of my head: hazing (deliberately damaging and then rebuilding the inductee’s self-esteem), isolation from other influences, forcing the inductee into tasks that trigger fear, forcing the inductee to secretly perform tasks that are illicit or immoral or simply incompatible with social standing in the outside world, psychotropics and staged experiences, largesse combined with demonstrations of power over the inductee, disproportionately small rewards for tasks performed, disproportinately large rewards for tasks not yet performed, good cop/bad cop, etc etc…
All these things are variatons on a few basic themes, whether they show up in an interrogation room, frat house, or Senate cloakroom. And they are very hard to undo, especially when used deliberately and in combination… So yes, nixing recruitment is the rational approach. Whether that means preemptively indoctrinating potential recruits into an alternative “cult” of your own (easier, faster, riskier — see previous half-joke about pop culture) or training potential recruits to recognize and resist indoctrination (harder, more time consuming, less risky — see others on the sorry state of primary education in various “terrorist breeding grounds”), the key is not to let them get snared in the first place.
Nice try, shoes, but you’re way off subject. The point of my Michael Moore post was to demonstrate that he is an extremist crackpot, and that Democrats should have nothing to do with the guy.
Right. As I said, your mileage may vary….
How do you think one fights a cult?
Well, when we get some ideas, let’s try them out on Tom Cruise first.
have the boy go down to the sea
throw a rope
and save our enemy
if he won’t play play with my disease
show him how
we burned down Pericles
Posted by: liberal japonicus | July 8, 2005 03:02 PM
Man, I totaly agree with that.
These people deserve to be treated like men and women.
How do you think one fights a cult?
Well, when we get some ideas, let’s try them out on Tom Cruise first.
How about some republicans instead?
Charles–
We agree in large part on this, but my contention has always been that we must engage on smarter terms. I think Lind has this much right: you cannot use an army fighting a conventional war to combat terrorists and guerillas. We are only making it easier for them to recruit.
In the case of Afghanistan, troops were warranted.
In the case of Iraq, our decision to use the threat of military action was working. Our decision to invade has precipitated a loss of civilian life on the scale of Saddam’s purges and has ruined the infrastructure of the country and decimated the Iraqi’s ability to prevent ordinary societal violence, let alone terrorism. We are not necessarily the cause of the death, but our cure has the same mortality/morbidity rate as the ‘disease’. Afghanistan has worsened under our lack of attention, and now both of these places are better recruiting grounds for AQ than before the invasion.
Rhetoric is fine, but it needs to be appropriate to the causa belli. In this case, as outlined above, the war rhetoric has been used to sell a fundamentally foolish conventional war against a marginally involved player who had been contained through other means. We will not stamp out AQ with ordinary war, and so our rhetoric should point to the need for a nuanced response.
Unfortunately for all of us, the people in charge have suited their rhetoric to their response and keep wielding a chainsaw rather than picking up a scalpel.
Which is why I went with 2shoes emmendation on this.
If this is WWIV, it is a fourth gen. war and we need to get our 2-3 gen. army out of the picture and evolve.
I think we are farther apart on tactics than you indicate. I believe we cannot act unilaterally and need to start working with the rest of the world to empower the International Criminal Court. We cannot stop AQ or Aum or other non-territorial, non-state entities while we squabble over borders and jurisdictions. There must be a concept of society higher than individual state biopower and sovereignty.
How do you think one fights a cult?
Well, when we get some ideas, let’s try them out on Tom Cruise first.
How about some republicans instead?
Start with the easy cults, is my theory. 😉
(Don’t wax vexatious, Republicans. After you’re deprogrammed, the piece de resistance will be Noam Chomsky. As for the Dems, they’re too incoherent to be a cult.)
And the key for society at large is to reduce the conditions that creates potential recruits.
Precisely. Both in foreign policy, and domestically.
The Muslim minorities in various European countries have many legitimate claims for disaffection, and European societies really need to look in the mirror. One idea is to look to countries like Canada and Australia – the two industrialized nations with largest percentage of immigrants – for approaches and policies.
It is certainly true that the composition of the immigrant populations in Canada and Australia are more broad than they are in Europe, but it’s a place to start.
And it’s also true that of the 5 nations mentioned in one of OBL’s missives as being “targeted” for the invasion of Afghanistan, only Canada has not suffered an attack, and Australia was targeted outside it’s borders. Now, Canada is probably not much of a priority in the AQ scheme, but I also think it’s true they would have a more difficult time recruiting there.
Charley Carp writes: “I’m as leary of mindreading as the next person, but putting a bomb in a bus — with no idea who may be riding it — is so utterly inconsistent with the notion of meaning to harm ‘only the guilty’ that I’m going to have to see something else before I’m going to entertain the idea.”
What would you say about dropping a thousand-pound bomb without knowing who’s under it? Or lobbing a tank shell without having any idea who’s at the landing zone? Or spraying a car with 20mm cannonfire, without knowing who’s in it?
I’d also point out that being picky about civilian casualties is a luxury that comes with technical prowess and military superiority. When we use less precise weapons, we are much more accepting of civilian casualties.
If the US were in the position of having to fight with improvised 10 lb bombs, against a secure target nation, you might be surprised at what we’d consider acceptable.
There must be a concept of society higher than individual state biopower and sovereignty.
Precisely, too. The Rule of Law must be the foundation upon which international system rest (instead of the half-a$$ed implementation we have now).
“I believe we cannot act unilaterally and need to start working with the rest of the world to empower the International Criminal Court.”
The ICC is about punishing people after the fact. It is extremely unsuitable for stopping anything before it happens, or stopping repeat offenders who organize in countries that aren’t friendly and send their recruits outside their borders. If we fight terrorism by trying to prosecute the peon-level terrorists who actually come into Western countries while leaving those who do not safely tucked away in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia the War on Terrorism will indeed go on indefinitely.
The ICC is about punishing people after the fact. It is extremely unsuitable for stopping anything before it happens
The ICC is simply one tool that can be used.
“The ICC is simply one tool that can be used.”
Ok, well let us focus on the important tools….
In terms of prevention, the ICC is probably not the tool you would look to first, no, but that does not diminish it’s importance.
I would offer up the concept of Responsibility to Protect in that department.
There are basic intelligence gathering tools that are frequently used in law enforcement that would be of great use to us: infiltration, surveillance, getting somebody to turn state’s evidence. As we’ve seen, however, it is exceedingly difficult to penetrate a cult with these methods, particularly when the cultural milieu of the cult is so at odds with the intelligence gathering assets we have at our disposal.
This is probably a better site for Responsibility to Protect
“If we fight terrorism by trying to prosecute the peon-level terrorists who actually come into Western countries while leaving those who do not safely tucked away in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia the War on Terrorism will indeed go on indefinitely.”
And it won’t if we go on as we are?
Let’s take Iraq as a model, since the conservatives on this board generally think Iraq is going just fine and that Bush is doing the right thing there.
Each country then would require upwards of 200,000 troops (per Shinseiki), a commitment of 10+ years (per Rumsfeld), and $300+ billion (using current figures).
Iraq + Afghanistan + Iran + Saudi Arabia = 800,000 troops and $1.2 trillion. Are we doing this all at once, or stringing it out over a number of years? (And that list doesn’t include Pakistan or Syria, countries which fit your description of “places that shelter terrorists.” Why not add them to the tab? )
So, in any given year, we’re committing 400,000 or so troops and $500 billion (at least) and we’re going to be doing that every year for at least 20 years. And that’s if we don’t wind up invading Pakistan or Syria or both.
20 years? Without a draft? Without tax increases? Without allies?
I’m assuming, also, that the conservatives on this board would like to see the GOP in control of the WH and Congress for – well, forever, ideally; but let’s just say “for the duration of the war.” So, 20 years of that, too.
And 20 years of “The only people who oppose the war are weaklings, cowards and traitors!” This should get particularly interesting, as the casualty count rises and it begins to dawn on people that becoming a parent today means probably becoming a Gold Star parent in 18 years.
What kind of country do we have in 20 years?
What kind of casualty count do we have in 20 years?
What kind of federal debt do we have in 20 years?
Come on, guys. You want a world war, you want military action: spin me some scenarios.
Sebastian, I’m having a little trouble figuring out where you’re going with this business about the ICC not being an important tool. Is it an unimportant tool because it’s post hoc? That line of reasoning implies that there’s no deterrent effect to law enforcement in general. Or is it unimportant because it doesn’t totally rule out an occasional need for military intervention? In which case I find myself wondering why half a loaf isn’t better than no loaf at all. If getting the big fish is your goal, then what do you suggest as a strategy, and what is it about the half-a-loaf ICC strategy that interferes with yours?
What stops me dead in my tracks about posts like this is not the statements themselves (I agree with Katherine that most of what von writes here seems quite obvious to me), but the conclusions that I draw from them. The implicit (or at least what I take to be implicit) instructions within them. I spent the better part of a day on Tacitus recently arguing that the media need not focus every day on just how evil the insurgents/terrorists are…that I get it, instinctively, viscerally, intellectually, and even spiritually. They are not parallel to us in any sense I value. No matter how badly I was treated by someone, I would never kill their wives, children, etc. to get back at them.
But, again, what stops me in my tracks are the implicit instructions to hate the enemy more than I already do. “If only we hated them more…enough…then we could beat them” seems the underlying message. What that actually means, though, is if only we hated them enough, we’d put aside our better selves and sink to their level to get back at them. And what that would seem to mean is that we’d turn a blind eye to the sorts of atrocities we’d normally condemn by our own in the name of restoring equlibrium.
I just don’t believe that’s how it works. You never wash that stain off your hands completely. Moreover, that’s too high a price to pay for me. I value my better self. I would happily bust a cap in the back of Osama bin Laden’s skull for what he’s done to us. But it wouldn’t be an act of hate. It would be a mercy killing of a demented beast unfit to move among humans.
I don’t need to hate him to want to defeat him.
the key for society at large is to reduce the conditions that creates potential recruits.
This is overbroad. Not every complaint is reasonable, and those who want grievances usually find them easy to manufacture.
We just got BBC world at the LJ home, which is great cause American Morning can get the (in)attention it deserves, but rather difficult because, obviously, it is all bombing, all the time. However, there are some important points that should be noted
putting a bomb in a bus …is so utterly inconsistent with the notion of meaning to harm ‘only the guilty’
There is some speculation that the bus was not targeted, but that the person was en route. Viewing this as a simple question in military tactics, one would aim to have a number of secondary explosions occur after the main ones in order to disrupt and injure emergency service response teams (This isn’t my idea, this was pioneered by the Allies in WWII during firebomb raids in Germany and Japan) I don’t point this out to make out any kind of moral equivalency as that is a fight that I don’t want to get involved in now, but to suggest that there is nothing new under the sun.
Also, the reported small size of the bombs (around 10 pounds each) is really remarkable. What I fear (and what I think will happen if we don’t pull our heads from our backsides in the next decade) is that some bright spark will begin to target infrastructure that will cause our economy to grind to a halt. This sort of ‘non-violent’ resistance (imagine the east coast power grid treated to several blackouts over one summer) would attract more recruits. I believe that the economy is like a restaurant, and like a restaurant, the margin between being in the red versus being in the black is razor thin.
Even if this doesn’t come to pass, you still have the potential of all those disaffected, regardless of their background coming together
“You say they’re terrorists, I say they’re freedom fighters. And I want to instill the same jihadic feeling in our peoples’ heart, in the Aryan race, that they have for their father, who they call Allah.”
-snip-
“I don’t believe that they were the ones that attacked us,” Kreis said. “And even if they did, even if you say they did, I don’t care!”
Kreis wants to make common cause with al Qaeda because, he says, they share the same enemies: Jews and the American government.
link
Another interesting point that was raised on BBC (I’m still trying to figure out the schedule, so I’m not sure what segment it was in) was that those who were opposed to the EU becoming a super-state rather than a loosely confederated group of sovereign states are going to have to reexamine their ideas because if there is not this kind of coordination, it will be impossible to prevent this kind of act.
After 9-11, there was a closet industry of experts describing how vunerable we were/are. Eventually, I think they lost favor because it was so blinking obvious that we were vunerable and anyone with a few brain cells to rub together could think of hundreds of ways to throw sand in the works. One of the reasons that an open society works, beyond questions of morality, is that the money, time and effort invested in protecting things is not needed. If that advantage is lost, I’m not sure how much better we would fare against some sort of command control economy. But some would have us maintain our openness without admitting the possibility that the asymmetrical nature of our openness might be causing some of the problems. On the other hand, some would take the words about bringing freedom and democracy to the rest of the world as adequate substitutes for actually doing so.
On preview, Bernard notes that my claim is overly broad. I take his point, but when people have the increased ability to wreak havoc, we have to be more, not less, responsive to grievances. In all truth, I don’t see, the way things currently stand, that the US has been responsive to grievances except there they further their own interests, despite all claims of bringing freedom and democracy.
Not every complaint is reasonable
I don’t understand the logic. So….therefore no grievance should be addressed?
Why are you equating addressing reasonable grievances with addressing every grievance? Common sense need not be discarded.
“I would happily bust a cap in the back of Osama bin Laden’s skull for what he’s done to us. But it wouldn’t be an act of hate. It would be a mercy killing of a demented beast unfit to move among humans.”
I’m afraid I’m not nearly as nice as you. I do have a revenge fantasy against Osama bin Laden: I’d like to make him understand what he’s done. To truly understand it, be aware of the suffering he has caused and to know that he destroyed thousands of people. Not sent them off to paradise where Allah awaits to give them their just reward or punishment, but destroyed them utterly. And finally I’d like to make him face his true reasons for doing what he did, without excuse or mental defense. To know that he killed thousands of people not for some greater good but simply because he is a spoiled, angry man who is incapable of creating and instead seeks to destroy out of jealousy.
So I suppose Cheney is, in a sense, right when he claimed that “liberals” want to give AQ members therapy. What he failed to understand is that successful therapy could be the most vicious thing anyone could do to them.
CB: ” but I think we’re in WW IV”
Been working pretty hard these past couple decades.
Did I miss WWIII?
Why are you equating addressing reasonable grievances with addressing every grievance?
I am not doing that. The notion I object to is that anything we do that helps terrorists recruit must be changed. Maybe that’s an unfair reading of LJ’s point, but taken literally that is close to what it means.
Clearly, it is wrong to mistreat people, and I intend the word “mistreat” to cover a lot of territory. That is so irrespective of terrorism. Still, where perfectly reasonable, or even desirable, actions or conditions incite an irrational violent response I see no need to change things to cater to the irrationality. In fact, I think it would be wrong to do so.
Still, where perfectly reasonable, or even desirable, actions or conditions incite an irrational violent response I see no need to change things to cater to the irrationality. In fact, I think it would be wrong to do so.
Do you have an example of a “reasonable or desirable” act that is serving so?
Charles,
Nice try, but it doesn’t even come close to holding water.
“Did I call them idiots? No. I did question the judgment of two politicians, saying that Durbin and Kennedy were useful fools.”
You may think there’s a substantial difference between “useful fools” and the more frequently used phrase of “useful idiots”, but you are very likely to be unique.
“Did I impugn their motives as Hilzoy suggested? No. I have no idea what their motives were, and it doesn’t matter anyway. criticized the actual words spoken.”
This is actually funny. In that thread you described them as “too eager to proclaim that we’re in a quagmire and that we’re losing” and “wanted Bush to go down in flames.” I want to hear how this can be called a criticism of actual words spoken. Please provide a cite which contains actual words by either Senator where they proclaimed a desire for Bush to “go down in flames”. Please explain how the word “eager” can be viewed as anything other than a statement of motive.
I am sorry, but you have repeated your offensive comments far too many times for me to take your protestation of innocence at all seriously.
xanax: Did I miss WWIII?
Nah, you didn’t miss anything — It wasn’t worht the 6 bucks…
The word “I” somehow got removed from my second quote of Charles. It should read:
“Did I impugn their motives as Hilzoy suggested? No. I have no idea what their motives were, and it doesn’t matter anyway. I criticized the actual words spoken.”
Do you have an example of a “reasonable or desirable” act that is serving so?
Give me a list of all the grievances that Islamic terrorists have, and I’ll try to point out a few.
Bernard, reduce and eliminate are not synonyms.
Maybe that’s an unfair reading of LJ’s point
Don’t worry, I’m used to it ;^) But seriously, I’m not trying to lay out a bright line here, so I don’t want my comment to start a fight (especially since a previous one did such a good job already :^()
And I agree that we can’t simply assume each grievance as an honest statement. But we do have to provide a narrative that shows that we have responded in a reasonable fashion to it. I don’t think we are ‘catering’ to irrationality by suggesting (admitting?) that there are a lot more potential grievances out there than have been given credit for. And, setting aside how it is acted on, is it the height of irrationality for a middle class Saudi Arabian college graduate of a German university take the suffering of his co-religionists as part of his suffering? If we fail to understand that there is a human impulse at the heart of all this, as well as a burning desire for moral clarity that often results in black being white (a desire that is often on display in the blogosphere, I might add), we aren’t going to solve things.
Prove your case, Dan. You wrote: “No, you are just saying that people who do not wholeheartedly support the President are idiots at best, and traitors at worst.”
You are accusing me of saying that Edward, Hilzoy, Katherine, von, Phil, Gary, Jes, LJ, nous and legions of others–here and elsewhere–are idiots at best and traitors at worst. Instead of digging in your heels and stiffening your neck, you should be backing away from such an absurd statement. How can anyone, left or right, see you as credible when you unbendingly defend this tripe?
I believe we cannot act unilaterally and need to start working with the rest of the world to empower the International Criminal Court.
I’m with Sebastian on this, nous. The ICC is tantamount to closing the barn door after the horses have already escaped. Someone–and that someone is the US because no one else will–has to go in and get the guy, well after the crime has already been committed (see Mugabe and al Bashir), well after tens or hundreds of thousands have been murdered.
Give me a list of all the grievances that Islamic terrorists have, and I’ll try to point out a few.
Ah. By the decisive tone of your post I thought you already had something particular in mind. I guess not.
In terms of AQ’s expectations of the West, my understanding is that their main grievances consist of – in short – of “hands off” the Middle East (removing bases from SA, stop supporting dictators, etc), and a perceived lack of evenhandedness in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And I wouldn’t say you have to deal with the grievances of the Islamic terrorists, but with the grievances of the people who tolerate the presence of Islamic terrorists in their midst. The Admin has a theory about what is a principal one: lack of say in their national government. I don’t know of any empirical support for this, and tend to think it less likely than a feeling of powerlessness in the face of the onslaught of western civilization. Way tougher to sell to a US population, who like to be told that everyone wishes they could be just like us.
CB, I think you and Seb are just looking through the wrong end of the telescope wrt the UN and the ICC. These institutions, and others like them, are not useful because they are more efficient tools for some narrow task, they are useful for the legitimacy they confer on US efforts that are undertaken using these tools. Less efficient in the short run, I’ll grant you, but in the longer haul, maybe more effective.
Note I am not speaking of these institutions as if they have some kind of ability to act independent of US leadership. As I’ve noted before, they are only useful when used as tools by the US. They nonetheless provide a cloak of legitimacy.
It’s funny that the Admin is pursuing a worldwide quest for democracy, with the underlying philosophical underpinning that people will feel empowered by the small measure of control over their fates, and thus not channel resentment against the US, and then ignore the same philosophical underpinning for “internationalizing” parts of US policy.
The ICC is tantamount to closing the barn door after the horses have already escaped. Someone–and that someone is the US because no one else will–has to go in and get the guy, well after the crime has already been committed
Um….how is this different from the “after the fact” ICC, exactly?
And I’m very happy you chose to read the websites on the Responsibility to Protect concept.
Charles,
I am truly sorry that I thought you wrote this post and that my frustration with your previous posts and comments spilled into this one. But please don’t invoke my name to defend your statements. I can’t speak for the others, but I really think that you get taken away by your own words and end up saying things that seem self-evident to you, but are rather insulting to others. I also realize that you have a lot of posts on various fora, and not allowing for the tone and voice of those fora when those statements are cited is unfair. However, when you refer to those posts to defend your current positions, it gets much more murkier as to what can fairly be used in discussing these points.
I do believe that you have responded to complaints that I and others have made on this blog. Unfortunately, that response, which has (partially) been to use comments by people like James Carville and Armando to support your assertions rather than the NRO or various blogs of the right persuasion, has been (obviously IMHO) an attempt to avoid the problems of your rhetoric rather than confront the contradictions.
I say again that I am sorry for thinking that you wrote this post, and it is obviously something that I have to consider (i.e. the way I responded to you), so it is partially my fault that you are invoking my name here, but I don’t think it is right in this case, especially when you complain so vociferously that I am making assumptions about what you believe.
Sorry, Charles, but you said the first indefensible thing in the other thread. You refused to back away from it when multiple people pointed out its palpable absurdity. If you cannot back away from it when repeatedly called on it, why should anyone else back away at your request?
Charles–Someone–and that someone is the US because no one else will–has to go in and get the guy, well after the crime has already been committed (see Mugabe and al Bashir), well after tens or hundreds of thousands have been murdered.
You keep trying to cast the US as Gary Cooper, but I will say again that we cannot build any sort of international community if we continually exempt ourselves from it and lecture everyone else on what total schmucks they are. We are not the Shining Beacon on Freedom’s Hill, surrounded by Darkness and Apathy. We are an exceptionally lucky country that has managed to do a lot of things right and has managed so far to dodge the karma from the worst of our mistakes.
Africa does not act in Africa because they have no money and not a lot of infrastructure or state. Europe took far more from them than they ever gave in return. Asia is still trying to win the development lottery before globalization pins them in the losers bracket along with Africa and most of South America. Central and South America have enough on their plates in Central and South America.
That leaves us and Europe (and maybe China), and we are snubbing half of Europe and lecturing them on foreign affairs–we who are a fraction their age and who have not had to rebuild ourselves after two world wars, or had to get along with dozens of languages and cultures and governments for centuries, but who still fancy our not-so-sorely-tested selves as inherently superior.
By accident of location and resources as much as any perceived merit, we are the ones currently with the military might and the money, acting as if anyone else could intervene the way that we do and believing as only an American could that what we want is best for everyone else as well.
I’m not looking at what the ICC is (which is, in large part, what we have made it), but rather at what the ICC could be if we were to look at our current situation and decide to throw in with the rest of the world while we still have the power and resources to get things rolling, rather than waiting for China to come into its power, collapse our economy, and then proceed to follow our example and act unilaterally in their own best interest throughout the globe. I’m looking at what we could do to stop terrorism if we would quit acting like some jealous parent testing a child and start trying to build up the rest of the international community so that they can be our partners rather than our lackeys.
I don’t think the rest of the world lacks the will. I think they lack the resources we have, and we suck at sharing.
2shoes,
stop supporting dictators, etc
Are you claiming that Bin Laden is simply trying to promote democracy in the ME? I think his political goals are somewhat different. My understanding is that he would like to re-establish the caliphate, and have the entire area operate under Sharia. How do you think the US should address this particular grievance?
Bin Laden also complains of Gulf War I. Do you think that it was wrong and we ought to apologize for it? I don’t.
LJ,
No, it is not insane for “a middle class Saudi Arabian college graduate of a German university take the suffering of his co-religionists as part of his suffering.” It is, however, irrational for him to attribute this suffering solely to the West. Does it really make sense to think that the Muslim world bears no responsibility for its own problems?
I am not claiming that there are no legitimate Arab grievances, and that western conduct in the region has been irreproachable. I began, and continue, by trying to make two points:
1. Some grievances may have to do with matters that it would be undesirable to change.
2. Those who seek grievances will find them. The easiest thing in the world is to blame others for our misfortunes.
Are you claiming that Bin Laden is simply trying to promote democracy in the ME?
That is a distortion of what I said, or at the very least, a most unfair interpretation.
Living under dictatorships feed the sense of powerlessness and disaffection. Etc. It allows those like OBL – offering messages of self-empowerment, no matter how illogical the actual content of the message is – fertile ground to flourish.
Bin Laden also complains of Gulf War I.
No, he didn’t. He complained of US, read infidel, troops on “Holy ground”. You do know he offered Kuwait AQ’s services to fight Saddam, right?
“Do you have an example of a “reasonable or desirable” act that is serving so?”
Sure.
Letting women work.
Letting homosexuals live.
Making TV shows with morals that Osama doesn’t like.
Drinking alchohol.
Letting Spain be a non-Muslim country.
Letting Jews visit Jerusalem.
Letting Jews live.
Trying to stop regimes with close ties to Hezbollah from getting nuclear weapons.
And that is without thinking more than a single minute.
There is a human impulse behind rape and pedophilia too, but I’m not spending much time worrying about the why’s of that either.
I guess my problem with this whole concept is that there are lots of people (both in the sense of individuals and groups) in the world who have complaints–many, many of them far worse complaints than some whiney middle-class Saudi, who nonetheless don’t make it their business to blow up people going to work on the tube.
What is it about the Islamist greivances which makes them better?
Letting women work.
So you are offering up this as one of the reasons AQ has taken up arms against the West?
Letting homosexuals live.
You are offering up this as one of the reasons AQ has taken up arms against the West?
Making TV shows with morals that Osama doesn’t like.
You are offering up this as one of the reasons AQ has taken up arms against the West?
Drinking alchohol.
You are offering up this as one of the reasons AQ has taken up arms against the West?
Letting Spain be a non-Muslim country.
Can you cite some AQ statement in support of this assertion?
Letting Jews visit Jerusalem.
Well there’s one, although I think it would be more correct to say their objection stems form “letting Jews control Jerusalem”.
Letting Jews live.
Can you cite some AQ statement in support of this assertion? I mean, they want to exterminate all the Jews?
Or merely drive them from the Holy Land?
Trying to stop regimes with close ties to Hezbollah from getting nuclear weapons.
Can you cite some AQ statement in support of this assertion?
And that is without thinking more than a single minute.
I think you needed to spend more than a minute thinking about it.
“ The point of my Michael Moore post was to demonstrate that he is an extremist crackpot”
You forgot to mention that he was fat, though, Charles. Tsk tsk.
“How do you think one fights a cult?”
Is this a trick question? You fight them with the law, same as you fight any other destabilising influence on society. And it’s no different from fighting the Mafia, except possibly in some niggling details. In the broad strokes, you rely on intelligence and slow, plodding, painstaking work to gather evidence. You infiltrate the organisation and break it from within. You use members and former members against it.
All of these tactics would also work, are in fact essential, at countering terrorist activity. They will not work at combatting lone gunmen or isolated cells, but in terms of breaking “networks” there is little to no alternative method that I can think of.
Law enforcement has the singular honour of being the most effective and most despised method of solving problems of violence known to man. Everybody hates the police because they give them speeding tickets, and when something happens to them they bemoan their inefficiency and wail for the opportunity to don a trenchcoat and mete out some vigilante justice with a shotgun. But the rule of law is the reason we are not in desperate anarchy, and its lack is the reason that the international arena is anarchic and sympathetic to despots. Although such methods are deplored by those who wish to frame things only in the black and white contrasts of good and evil, we will only beat terrorism with police, not with soldiers.
And, can I just say that 2shoes does not speak for me on the “greivance” debate despite the fact that we are probably both “anti-war liberals”. The few vague inklings he has had towards a reasonable argument have long since been obscured behind obtuse rhetoric.
Suffice it to say that while it may not be necessary for everyone to understand why rapists do what they do, it is certainly someone’s job to do so. Criminal psychology is an important part of law enforcement, and vital not only in finding and capturing criminals after they have committed crimes, but also in preventing future crimes from happening.
Simply sitting there and saying “rapists are bad bad people” does not have the same practical applications, for all its veracity or moral fortitude.
I think that the point of the original post was that well meaning folks shouldn’t defend the indefensible, for instance AQ, and attack our own countries which by and large protect the values and freedoms that we hold dear. I don’t see the need for cites to assert that AQ is bad and against what I consider a civil society. The Taliban version of Afghanistan is a good enough example of AQ’s model society for me to be totally against what AQ stands for.
Hey Bernard,
I understand your point. But it seems that, with the G8 granting the money (3 billion?) to the Palestinians, (plus the debt relief plan) there is an acknowledgement of the kind I am talking about. I’ve only caught the beeb talking about the G8 communique, so I’m interested in any links to content and analysis.
And, can I just say that 2shoes does not speak for me on the “greivance” debate despite the fact that we are probably both “anti-war liberals”. The few vague inklings he has had towards a reasonable argument have long since been obscured behind obtuse rhetoric.
You know, when people lay such charges, it would be really nice to know the specifics of their objections.
The post directly above mine was the one that broke the camel’s back. Everything Sebastian said is well documented and can be found in speeches by people claiming to be members of Al Qaeda and by bin Laden himself. It should not be incumbent upon anyone to prove that radical Islamic Fundamentalist bombers really have mad-assed ideas.
I doubt you would object if I mentioned that particular breeds of Christian support the Jewish state because it supports their view that Jesus is coming soon to magic them to heaven, even if I didn’t pull a cite directly out of my ass.
The post directly above mine was the one that broke the camel’s back. Everything Sebastian said is well documented and can be found in speeches by people claiming to be members of Al Qaeda and by bin Laden himself.
Really? Those were the reasons AQ is bombing Metro Stations in the West, eh?
Bullsh!t.
None of those rationales presented by Bernard Yomtov were mentioned in the “press release”. Nor were they in any other press release after any other bombing against Western targets…or any other targets for that matter.
And I challenge you to prove me wrong.
I doubt you would object if I mentioned that particular breeds of Christian support the Jewish state because it supports their view that Jesus is coming soon to magic them to heaven, even if I didn’t pull a cite directly out of my ass.
Wouldn’t I? If someone Christian nut blew up the Syrian consulate in Los Angeles I would, in fact, examine their rationale regardless of what I might have read on the “internets”
Sorry Bernard, that should read Sebastien
The post directly above mine was the one that broke the camel’s back. Everything Sebastian said is well documented and can be found in speeches by people claiming to be members of Al Qaeda and by bin Laden himself.
Ayup. There used to be a really nice cache of all bin Laden’s interviews and public documents online but I’ve lost the link; anyone know where (or if) it still exists?
People, please. I don’t doubt OBL hates gays and wants women to stay barefoot and pregnant, just like the Christian right for that matter, but that’s not why AQ is bombing Western targets.
A rapist may hate the colour green, but that’s not why he rapes. It’s simply incidental.
Etc.
Anarch
I think you might be referring to this.
What’s wrong with treating terrorism as a criminal matter?
The people who were responsible for the first attack on the WTC are in jail. How’d they get there? Criminal investigation, trial, and sentencing.
The people who were responsible for blowing up the Murragh Building in Oklahoma City are dead or in jail. How’d they get there? Criminal investigation, trial, and sentencing.
The man responsible for setting off a bomb at the ’96 Olympics is, at last, in jail. How’d he get there? Criminal investigation, trial, and sentencing.
The people who were responsible for the Madrid bombings are dead or in jail. How’d they get there? Criminal investigation, trial, and sentencing.
Meanwhile, the “war” on terrorism has accomplished… what, exactly?
Bin Laden has said in as many words that it is. That AQ are latching onto genuine greivances does not make their utterly batshit insane reasoning go away, nor does it change the fact that, as Sebastian says, plenty of people have valid complaints against us and don’t plant bombs.
Don’t mistake the genuine complaints of the proles who find themselves caught i a war for the weird-ass religion of those who fund them.
And don’t grab reasons out of the air and stick them onto the police report for the World Trade Center bombing, Madrid, or Wednesday’s events.
The West’s position on gays and women is not why Saudi engineers fly planes into towers.
You need to understand why OBL’s “message” has resonance. I can tell you with certainty, it has nothing to do with the reasons mentioned.
You know, it might have something to do with the reasons mentioned in the AQ’s archive that LJ kindly provided. Maybe you should peruse them again.
As for legitimate grievances vs. bat guano, I am most certainly not confusing the two and wouldn’t hestitate to proverbially flip the bird and perhaps a grenade at anyone who would seek to impede the civil liberties of another citizen, though to make it seem so might make your argument stronger.
I appreciate critiques of the arguments I actually make. Yours wasn’t one of them.
link
Scroll down.
There are the objections to various things that you say. Occupations, American soldiers in Islamic countries. There are also objections to the very existence of Israel. There is also, at great length, a treatise telling us that we should rid ourselves of “the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling’s, and trading with interest.”
Money quote:
“If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation”
Now, can we stop talking about just how ridiculous and evil these people are, because it doesn’t matter and doesn’t help.
Okay, well..I’ve looked through the whole thing and golly, I don’t see anything about “letting women work”, and the single mention of homosexuality…
We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling’s, and trading with interest.
Yes. Liquor, gays, cards, and high interest rates. It’s like being in Sunday school again. A throwaway paragraph, don’t you think? Don’t really the heart of the message, eh? Considering all the words spent on other subjects?
Nor do I see anything regarding extermination of all the Jews. Oh yes, the dissolution of Israel is mentioned explicitly…that sort of goes without saying. But the rationale behind that….well let’s let AQ speak for itself:
It brings us both laughter and tears to see that you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine, as it was promised to them in the Torah. Anyone who disputes with them on this alleged fact is accused of anti-semitism. This is one of the most fallacious, widely-circulated fabrications in history. The people of Palestine are pure Arabs and original Semites. It is the Muslims who are the inheritors of Moses (peace be upon him) and the inheritors of the real Torah that has not been changed. Muslims believe in all of the Prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all. If the followers of Moses have been promised a right to Palestine in the Torah, then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of this.
Money quote:
“If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation”
So?
Who cares?
There are probably, at best, one or two people in this world of any religion who will blow themselves and a bus station up because Nathan Lane walks the streets of New York. I think the other parts of the message carry, you know, more resonance with potential recruits.
Which was the point: you want to weaken the recruiting message, and undercutting the major planks of said is the first and best step.
So, more listening, and less posturing.
In condemnation of righteous anger:
No one lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Katherine said: A harder thing to do is to actually defeat those enemies, and do so without betraying yourself or becoming even a little bit more like them. It’s not just hard; the history of our own country suggests that it’s almost impossible, not to become at least a little more like what you are fighting. But that’s got to be the goal. It may be impossible to do it perfectly, but I know we can do both halves of it better than we are now.
I hope so, too. What will not help us do it is intensifying our anger and congratulating ourselves on the righteousness of it.
And I’m less convinced every day that the war model (including ‘fighting’ and ‘defeating’) is useful in stopping or even reducing the attacks.
London, 9th July 2003.
Still missing; almost certainly dead; mangled corpses in underground trains still in the tunnels beneath London.
Neetu Jain
Phil Beer
Behnaz Moakka
Jamie Gordon
Rachelle Lieng Siong Chung
Christian Small
Miriam Hyman
Philip Russell
Marie Hartley
James Mayes
Anthony Fataji-Williams
Michael Matsushita
Shahera Akther Islam
Slimane Ihab
The names say it all. That’s London today. That’s us. This isn’t a war of religion or race. This isn’t even a war of ideas. The people who did this don’t have ideas. They huddle in the darkness, afraid of the lights in the distance, afraid of change.
Go and fight them, go an wreak death and destruction in their country, as they try to do in ours, and you provoke hatred. You give aid to the enemy. You start to turn us into them.
Bring them their own London. Turn them into us.
There is a human impulse behind rape and pedophilia too, but I’m not spending much time worrying about the why’s of that either.
When the question is how to punish them, I agree.
When the question is how to figure out whther someone is going to do something, or why someone who is not going to do it nonetheless approves of it being done, isn’t knowledge better than ignorance?
2shoes,
I have deliberately avoided bringing up Israel, as it tends to send threads off the rails. But I am astonished at how glibly you treat Bin laden’s call for the dissolution of Israel.
Above, you claimed that one of his complaints was lack of “even-handedness” in the conflict. Is calling for the dissolution of Israel your idea of even-handedness? What do you think would be the consequences for the Israelis?
LJ,
I have no problem, in principle, with aid to a Palestinian state. But this goes also to my point about responsibility. The Palestinians have received lots of aid. Much was stolen by Arafat and much else diverted to terrorism. Suha Arafat lives an extravagant lifestyle in Paris, while Palestinians suffer. Sounds like a legitimate grievance to me, but not against the west.
Bernard,
Stop attributing OBL’s positions as my own.
Thanks.
2shoes,
From your comments:
Letting Jews live.
Can you cite some AQ statement in support of this assertion? I mean, they want to exterminate all the Jews?
Or merely drive them from the Holy Land?
Merely.
In terms of AQ’s expectations of the West, my understanding is that their main grievances consist of…. a perceived lack of evenhandedness in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Lack of evenhandedness.
Nor do I see anything regarding extermination of all the Jews. Oh yes, the dissolution of Israel is mentioned explicitly…that sort of goes without saying. But the rationale behind that….
Dissolution. Rationale.
I did not attribute OBL’s views to you. I suggested that you seemed to have a cavalier attitude towards at least some of them.
And those items on Sebastian’s list you couldn’t really be cavalier about you simply dismissed out of hand as AQ motivations. I think “glib” is a fair term, even generous.
I really don’t care what AQ’s issue is with the West and I don’t care how Bin Ladin justifies himself. He’s just a power freak who has tapped into the deathwish of dependent, inadequate people, kind of Charles Manson on a larger scale. His thoughts don’t interest me.
As someone pointed out upthread, it isn’t the cult members that concern us. It’s the potential cult members, the potential helpers, supporters, enablers, or people who don’t participate but don’t object either. They are the people we need to understand and their possible grievances arre the ones that might need to be addressed.
On NPR last night a guy from Scotland Yard made the comment that there were only a hundred or so people actively involved in terrorism in England. From a police point of view the problem was that the thousands of Muslim who do not support terrorism are also afriad of and distrustful of the police and becoming increasingly alienated from English society. he felt that an essential step in terror prevention was to build trust.
This is, of course, totally a sensible attitude. it is also the kind of attitude that gets obscured if people focus on telling themselves how angry they are and how righteous their anger is.
On a larger scale the general issue of Middle Eastern Islamic people toward the West is resntment of Western support for dictators, resentment of Western interference such as the innstallation of the Shah in Iran or ithe invasion of Iraq, and resentment of Western opposition to a Palestinian homeland (this is, of course, changing). The vast majority of people who feel thses resentments don’t want to blow up anyone. We shouldn’t let AQ’s use of these resentments interfere with our acknowledgement of their basic validity. After all, Charles Manson claimed to be fighting for racial equality. We haven’t, as a society, rejected the idea of racial equality just because some vicious wacko used it as a rationalization.
Bold goes!
Sounds like a legitimate grievance to me, but not against the west.
I really don’t want to get pulled into this. I was just struck by the 3 billion figure. It does seem that the G8 views this as a grievance that needs to be addressed. I know that if we delve into it, there are going to be a lot of views about who fault it is, and on a certain level, I don’t really care. Just fix the d*mn thing is sort of the state of mind I find myself in. But when in that state of mind, the absolute worst thing to say (and I’m not saying that you are doing this) is to claim that everything is fine and that there is nothing wrong.
Lack of evenhandedness.
You are conflating two different things: the perception in the Middle East that the West is not even-handed in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the idea amongst some that Israel has no right to exist at all. The former drives some people into embracing the latter, sure. But they are separate. And you need to understand AQ is exploiting that perception, which would exist whether there was an AQ or not.
And those items on Sebastian’s list you couldn’t really be cavalier about you simply dismissed out of hand as AQ motivations. I think “glib” is a fair term, even generous.
Yes I was “glib” towards certain items on that list, (some of which are not actually AQ positions -> extermination of all the Jews, everywhere) in the way in which they relate to conversation on this board.
ie. What is it that attracts recruits, from many different demographic groups, to AQ?
And I suggested, again and again now, that Osama bin Laden’s position on gays and women is not one of the primary motivations people “join up”. It’s beside the point. Indeed, to harp on it is counterproductive.
As has been mentioned, many hardline Christian groups have similar positions on women and gays, yet don’t find people to chuck bombs. I would humbly suggest, then, that you look to those things hardline Christian and Muslim groups don’t share to explain the difference. Read the Statement of “Responsibility” from the London bombing. You’ll find no mention of women, gays, or even Israel (only an oblique reference to Zionism).
You can recite “Muslims chuck bombs because Muslims are inherently violent/nuts” over and over again, but you’ll be dooming us to this conflict for a long long time.
Again, the point of this exercise is not make a deal with Osama, but to undercut him.
JFTR, that’s not my instruction. In fact, I wouldn’t presume to instruct at all. Where I’d prefer to go, though, is more in the direction of getting more serious about handling terrorist organizations: intel, infiltration, prevention, etc. than in getting people more emotional about it. Certainly emotion can lend urgency and emphasis to any situation (example: Katherine was rather passionate about our practice of implicitly exporting torture and prisoner abuse, and that lent a rather energetic implacability to her efforts in documenting and bringing-to-light of that practice).
Forgive if the above isn’t all that coherent, but I just got in from transplanting some rather large shrubs, and the combined heat, humidity and beer/coolant has knocked me back a bit.
Dennis has resulted in a rather widespread storm area, which has made itself known since at least yesterday afternoon. Fortunately (and perhaps unfortunately for Mobile) it looks as if it’s going to miss us by a good bit. But, as last year taught us, you just can never tell. Ivan missed us on the first pass, but then drove through the panhandle, up through Alabama, the Carolinas, exited into the Atlantic, and then came around and hit Central Florida as a tropical storm. Maybe it’s all the mobile homes.
What is it that attracts recruits, from many different demographic groups, to AQ?
One of the factors that I think is among the most important is also among the most easily cured: It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure.
For you foreigners, that used to be the tagline of ads for joining the US Navy. I think this was a huge part of why people joined AQ in AF pre-9/11. Spend a couiple of years fighting the infidel far away, come home and be a chick magnet. Tell great stories the rest of your life.
Anyone on this list ever tour with the Grateful Dead?
This thread would’ve been more attractive if so many people didn’t think that “Charles Bird” is Bush’s nom de guerre on the internet. Lighten UP, people. You’ve never heard a conservative before?
(Being in Mississippi, I may just have more practice getting along with the Right?)
Bold begone!
My fault. Sorry.
Oops. It fixed it in preview.
LJ,
With regard to the $3 billion in proposed aid my point was that I’m for providing such aid so long as there is some assurance that the money will be spent as presumably intended – to build Palestinian society.
In the past, aid has not been so spent, with negative consequences for the Palestinians. Those consequences, at least, cannot be blamed on anyone but those who were guilty of malfeasance – Arafat and his associates.
I don’t want to get dragged into a long I-P thread either. I bring this up just to note that not all problems are the fault of the West or Israel.
Hey, Slartibartfast, wanna post something about your gardening project and the weather in your parts on the main page?
…weather in your neighborhood, might be better phrasing.
Go away bold!
Righteous Anger, having been praised to the four corners of the globe, from the lowest valley to the highest mountaintop, veritably, to skies above, has, consequently, grown far too big for his (yes, his) britches and now resembles nothing so much as a cranked out megalocephalic raver in the last throes of his steroidal rage and hence in danger of being declared unfit for duty. He badly needs to crash for at least a few days. May one of you kind-hearted, level-headed ObWi folk show him a spot of mercy and make a fresh post on a different topic?
Thanks.
Barry: we live to serve 😉
Thanks hilzoy. As long as you don’t live to serve man, that is 😉
Oh, and what Dave Bell said today at 6:53 AM.
Sorry, Charles, but you said the first indefensible thing in the other thread.
By your so-called reasoning, if I write something that–in your perception–is indefensible, that means you get a free pass in writing something indefensible yourself? Your logic has escaped, Dan. I hope you can get it back.
These institutions, and others like them, are not useful because they are more efficient tools for some narrow task, they are useful for the legitimacy they confer on US efforts that are undertaken using these tools.
I’m with you halfway, Charley, because I support the UN and our involvement in it. First, because we’re a signatory and second because it has done good and has the potential to be useful and a net benefit to world affairs. I don’t think we should be in an ineffectual ICC that addresses crimes of humanity well after those crimes have been committed just because it gives people the feeling of a sheen of legitimacy or international standing.
But please don’t invoke my name to defend your statements.
LJ, I included your name with a list of others to make a serious point that I do not consider you and a great multitude of my political opponents as idiots at bests and traitors at worst. Rather, the opposite if anything. I really don’t understand why you would feel offended about that. I included others’ and names out of respect, acknowledging that we have wide political differences but are on the same side in the larger scheme of things. But if you prefer that I never mention your name unless directly addressed, fine.
However, when you refer to those posts to defend your current positions, it gets much more murkier as to what can fairly be used in discussing these points.
I did not refer to my previous posts here, others did. Your concerns about murkiness should be with them, not me.
but I will say again that we cannot build any sort of international community if we continually exempt ourselves from it and lecture everyone else on what total schmucks they are.
We haven’t, nous. We’re active participants in the UN, NATO, WTO and many other acronyms. Just because another international body comes forth, doesn’t mean we have to sign on to it, especially a well-intended but unproductive group like the ICC.
Central Terror in the War on Fronts
(1) Operation: Show Toughness Through Operation Names continues unabated with Operation: Scimitar, which seeks to get under control those regions of Iraq that we got under control a number of times before. I notice that the weapons have been steadily…
Central Terror in the War on Fronts
(1) Operation: Show Toughness Through Operation Names continues unabated with Operation: Scimitar, which seeks to get under control those regions of Iraq that we got under control a number of times before. I notice that the weapons have been steadily…
2shoes, I’m not going to provide cites for things that anyone who has been paying the least bit of attention in the past 4 years should be a aware of. And for the single non-obvious case, whenever bin Laden talks about turning back the “tragedy of Andalusia” he means that Islam should retake Spain (and parts of France I think but I’m not super sure about the border issues from the 1400s).
Your response to most of my points is basically (with an implied tone of shock) “So you are offering up this as one of the reasons AQ has taken up arms against the West?”
The answer is yes. Absolutely, undeniabley YES. Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda attack the West because it is Western and because it pollutes the minds of pure Muslims everywhere with its very tempting decadent culture. The only ways to stop that is to either destroy the West or cut it off entirely from the Islamic world. And Spain isn’t gonna like which side of the divide OBL thinks it should be on. And OBL isn’t going for the second option anyway. There are lots of reasons why we aren’t fighting Islamist terrorism very effectively right now. Some are good, some are bad. But you can’t contribute much to the discussion of what is going to stop terrorism if you aren’t willing to accept basic facts about Al Qaeda. It isn’t just an anti-colonialist group. It is an anti-Western group.
Your dismissal of the anti-woman message shows very little insight into the greivances you want to investigate. More than almost ANYTHING else, the liberated women of the West symbolize how strange and scary and decadent the West is in the minds of an Islamist or Islamist recruit. You can’t look for purely logical reasons why an engineer would fly a plane into the WTC and attempt to kill 30,000 people. There has to be an emotional reason as well. And the disgust, the loathing, the hatred of how women are allowed to act in the West is a huge fuel to the emotional rage which Islamists harvest. Over more than 30 years the other reasons for hating the West come and go, but that one is always present. And that isn’t just Islamists, there is a whole contingent of fundamentalist Muslims in the Middle East who are repulsed by the same thing. You see ‘moderate’ Saudi clerics work themselves into a rage over it all the time.
If there is a single failure in understanding that leads us to underestimate the problem, it is the failure to understand how the greivances which piss them off the most are things that we absolutely cannot change.
Responding to lily:
This is a big sidenote. Some people may say that we shouldn’t try to do any good things that Al Qaeda might happen to accidentaly mention because it will be seen as giving into the terrorists. I’m certainly not one of those people, von certainly isn’t, charles certainly isn’t and Cheney, and Rice and Bush and a whole lot of other people not well liked by the left certainly aren’t among those people.
But neither should you believe that dealing with the legitimate or even arguably legitimate portion of the greivances is going to be much of a solution to our problem with Islamist terrorism. Hundreds of millions, if not billions of people share the legitimate greivances. Certainly hundreds of millions of people have it far worse than the Saudi middle class from which Al Qaeda seems to draw many of its recruits. If greivance-looking the only way to deal with the problem, we’re seriously screwed because the greivances that set Islamists APART from these hundreds of millions of other people are things that neither the left nor the right want to change.
If greivances are the problem when it comes to recruiting, you need to explain why the whole world isn’t full of millions of suicide bombers. There is something different to Al Qaeda, and you aren’t even trying to figure out what it is.
I’m not going to provide cites for things that anyone who has been paying the least bit of attention in the past 4 years should be a aware of.
Well, it’s your argument, if you dont’ want to support it, fine.
Your dismissal of the anti-woman message shows very little insight into the greivances you want to investigate. More than almost ANYTHING else, the liberated women of the West symbolize how strange and scary and decadent the West is in the minds of an Islamist or Islamist recruit.
If you care to offer supporting evidence…..
Until then, I tend to give substantially more weight to the “political grievances” many Arabs feel as the primary motivation for taking up arms against the West. Indeed, these are the only things the West can collectively address.
I would be and am first in line to fight any attempt to restrict the civil rights of female and gay citizens so as to conform to religious sensibilities.
Note, for example, this AQ missive “Why we fight America”
After the typical “America is evil” preamble, it cites specific acts in justification of its violent and self-described retalitory actions. Not one has to do with any sort of internal American “social policy”. No they are, entirely, perceived violent acts or support of violent acts against Muslims around the world (whether AQ is fair in this condemnation is another subject, we are simply examining their primary motivation).
These are, though, the things AQ piggybacks most successfully on.
Sebastian: Some people may say that we shouldn’t try to do any good things that Al Qaeda might happen to accidentaly mention because it will be seen as giving into the terrorists. I’m certainly not one of those people, von certainly isn’t, charles certainly isn’t and Cheney, and Rice and Bush and a whole lot of other people not well liked by the left certainly aren’t among those people.
I don’t know about the posters here, but you’re absolutely wrong in certain regards: there most definitely is a powerful, vocal group within the Republican Party (and, I’d argue, the Administration itself, including people like President Bush) who are opposed to actions precisely because those actions are believed to be what Al Qaeda wants. [See, for example, the GOP reaction to the Spanish withdrawal of troops after the Madrid bombing.] I’m particularly aware of this because I raise this question every time something similar comes up and no Republican has ever responded: if an action is considered to be in the best interests of the country, but it also seems to be “what the terrorists want”, should we do it nonetheless?
2shoes, your link only shows them to be insane; it doesn’t do anything at all to clarify the source of their insanity. Other than to point the finger at Islam, which I’m guessing most of the REST of Islam will (should, at least) take issue with.
Notably, this item:
Sweeeet.
2shoes, your link only shows them to be insane
If you say so. I’d say it show them to be extremely…..doctrinaire and Manichaean. But again, the internal consistency of the AQ “message” is not the point. It’s why they appeal to some in the first place.
We have the right to kill 4 million Americans – 2 million of them children – and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands.
It’s Western deaths for Muslims deaths…an advocation of an eye for eye – sentiments all too commonly expressed on some Western internet site, like Free Republic and LGF, too. “Nuke them ’til they glow”, and so on.
2shoes aside for a second, the Spanish electorate could, of course, decide it doesn’t care for OBL’s fantasies about 14th century Andalusia and take whatever steps are necessary to prevent its fruition, and still legitimately hold fast to the position that garrisoning Spanish troops in Iraq or Afghanistan is an unwise move.
And, as a little chiding sidenote to your big sidenote, it could be that one way the Bush Administration could use to get the anti-War Left more on their side would be to quit embracing the domestic enemies of decadence like, say, James Dobson, who seem to believe our increasing tilt toward decadence is bringing bad stuff down on our heads.
We could have billboard and bumpersticker campaigns aimed at the vaguely decadent Democratic Party, like, say:
“Kill Osama and Keep Those Nipple Rings”
“Enlist Now and Make Your Community Safe For Porn”
“Is Medicare Mentioned in the Constitution? OBL Thinks Not!”
“Contraception For Single Women — Pull Out (8) Of Iraq And You’ll Lose It”
“Did You Know That OBL Finds No Originalist Language in The Koran For Brown Vs. Board Of Education”
“Young Mothers Bending Over In Short Shorts — Don’t Let Osama Catch You Looking”
And, my favorite, because it is amusing, once aimed at Edward by a person of renown (who probably just got carried away):
“The War on Terror — Defending What You Are Even Though It’s Fundamentally Decadent”
Actually, that’s not my favorite. This is:
“Osama Bin Laden — Good For Nothing Except Helping Us to Destroy Federal Tax Receipts”
I’m being silly.
I think 2shoes is correct in a way, and I think Sebastian is correct in a way. The phenomenon of Al Qaeda can be traced to grievances of one kind or another. Legitimate or not.
But it has morphed into something resembling rabies.
Nihilistic foaming at the mouth.
My 2 cents. The invasion of Iraq, and its presentation by the crowd in power, poked a stick at a very pissed off sick dog and spread the infection and wasted resources which could have been used to, at least, throw a net over the dog, or better, kill the dog and conduct an autopsy.
Well, a cent and half, because I really don’t have any better idea than George Bush does on what to do about Al Qaeda. Unfortunately, it may be that no idea was better than stupid idea.
2Shoes, you have been presented with evidence, you are quite selective in your reading of what you have available. Osama bin Laden has a vast number of speeches decrying Western decadence–which is not a complaint about our support of Israel. The theme of Western decadence as a motif to inspire hatred has deep roots in modern Middle-Eastern Islamic society. You can feel free to ignore that. You can ignore the fact that more substantial ‘greivances’ come and go with the wind while that has remained constant for longer than my lifetime. You can ignore the fact that other people in the world have greivances at least as bad but somehow avoid creating monstrous terrorist organizations which bomb Spanish and English trains to get at the US, but you are only deluding yourself if you think you are getting anywhere near the question at hand by ignoring those questions.
“Until then, I tend to give substantially more weight to the “political grievances” many Arabs feel as the primary motivation for taking up arms against the West. Indeed, these are the only things the West can collectively address.”
That is your political choice, not your weight-of-the-evidence choice. And since you aren’t interested in engaging, I’m done with you.
And since you aren’t interested in engaging, I’m done with you.
As you wish, but I’ve now cited two AQ documents, and you haven’t cited any, so who really is the one who isn’t “engaging”?
The archive of said documents has been cited twice in this thread…why not peruse them and point something out that supports your argument?
We are here to learn, right?
2shoes aside for a second, the Spanish electorate could, of course, decide it doesn’t care for OBL’s fantasies about 14th century Andalusia and take whatever steps are necessary to prevent its fruition, and still legitimately hold fast to the position that garrisoning Spanish troops in Iraq or Afghanistan is an unwise move.
Of course. But what do you think primarily motivated the Madrid bombers: Spain’s actions now, or Spain’s actions in the 14th century?
Charles–We’re active participants in the UN, NATO, WTO and many other acronyms.
We actively participate in the UN only to the extent that we can control things through the Security Council. Otherwise, we ignore it or use it as a scapegoat to justify our own unilateralism. See your and Sebastian’s comments above.
We shall have to see what happens with NATO as we continue to push it in opposition to the EU’s CFSP.
And the WTO is the cause of much consternation in the EU, Japan, and Australia, among others because the US is using it to override restrictions on hormone treated beef, pesticide residues, etc.
Not that the EU and others aren’t exploiting the WTO in the exact same way for overriding our EPA standards.
The WTO courts are commonly used to allow corporations to dismantle national environmental and consumer protection. In that sense it is anti-democratic. It’s one more example of the free market over politics thinking that the neo-con/libs are touting to the profit of big corporations at the expense of grassroots politics.
Trying looking into the teachings of “Muhammad Abdel Salam Al-Farag” if you want some more background.
I’m not in the habit of providing links to common knowledge items. If prefer to believe that bin Laden is serious when he says that he hates America for supporting Israel (but only starting saying so very recently) but not serious when he says he hates American decadence (though he has said so throughout his entire career and is well in line with a huge number of fiery Muslim scholars) that is your choice. If you want to believe bin Laden when he says that he didn’t like US bases in Saudi Arabia but choose not to believe him when he says that he wants to regain Spain for Islam, that is your choice. You provide no reason for making that choice and in your initial responses you also chose to feign ignorance about the list of greivances which I named. That leads me to believe that you are not interested in discussion–but rather in verbal flamethrowing. This conclusion is strengthened by the dismissive response which Bernard has already brought to your attention.
I don’t have time to look up links for people who aren’t engaging in discussion.
LJ, I included your name with a list of others to make a serious point that I do not consider you and a great multitude of my political opponents as idiots at bests and traitors at worst.
If that is the case, you could have pointed that out rather than say
You are accusing me of saying that Edward, Hilzoy, Katherine, von, Phil, Gary, Jes, LJ, nous and legions of others–here and elsewhere–are idiots at best and traitors at worst. Instead of digging in your heels and stiffening your neck, you should be backing away from such an absurd statement. How can anyone, left or right, see you as credible when you unbendingly defend this tripe?
At no point did you say that you treat us as serious commentators, that despite our disagreements we are all working blah blah blah. You know, the acknolwledgement that there are certain ground principles that we agree with. Earlier, I suggested that I really think that you get taken away by your own words and end up saying things that seem self-evident to you, but are rather insulting to others. and this stands as a prototypical example. I certainly hope that you feel that the people listed are all working towards the same goal, but quite honestly, I’ve never seen you mention that here. (and I would be happy to be refuted on this)
Also,
I did not refer to my previous posts here, others did. Your concerns about murkiness should be with them, not me.
I believe that you have referred posters to your beliefs when Iraq was invaded (when you weren’t posting here) as well as consistently citing your own posts on Tacitus to underline your positions. This leads to other commentators examining the comments and back and forth. If you re-read my point, you will see that I am not trying to fix blame, merely pointing this out and suggesting that it is not helpful.
Obviously, it is a distraction to talk about your rhetoric rather than the subject(s), but if you are unaware that your rhetoric is a distraction, I wish you would take some time to consider the possibility. Other people have also complained about similar points.
I don’t have time to look up links for people who aren’t engaging in discussion.
Wow.
If prefer to believe that bin Laden is serious when he says that he hates America for supporting Israel (but only starting saying so very recently) but not serious when he says he hates American decadence
Ugh…I’ve picked myself up off the floor…I don’t know if you got up on the wrong side of the bed or what, but for the last time we aren’t talking about OBL, we’re talking about what attracts people to AQ.
As for Farag and The Neglected Duty, yeah, it’s all very intolerant and unyielding. Sort of how you are beginning to sound.
I don’t recall having said anything like that of late, myself. Do you therefore conclude that I regard that lot as a bunch of dumbasses?
I don’t recall having said anything like that of late, myself. Do you therefore conclude that I regard that lot as a bunch of dumbasses?
I’m sorry, the ‘you’ refers to Charles. I realize that I thought von was Charles (and apologized for that), but I’m pretty sure I didn’t think Charles was you. This is just an observation, because I do appreciate your calming influence on this blog, but I don’t recall you having posted any substantive post recently. Comparing your rhetoric with Chas is like comparing apples and pipe wrenches.
“Calming influence”. My mom would get a chuckle out of that.
I didn’t think you mistook me for Charles, I was simply pointing out what I thought was a rather large problem with your argument. Of course, it could be that Charles is somehow programmed to be thinking bad thoughts about people he’s not praising, in which case never mind.
And it’s always possible that you meant that another way entirely, in which case give me a virtual slap upside the head with a week-dead flounder.
John, re your 2:56 comment, Tom Tomorrow makes a similar connection in this cartoon (though he takes it in a different direction).
Charles,
“Sorry, Charles, but you said the first indefensible thing in the other thread.
By your so-called reasoning, if I write something that–in your perception–is indefensible, that means you get a free pass in writing something indefensible yourself?”
Hardly. It means that if you feel under no compulsion to retract indefensible statements when others point them out to you, why should anyone else feel any when you do?
Slarti: I didn’t think you mistook me for Charles, I was simply pointing out what I thought was a rather large problem with your argument. Of course, it could be that Charles is somehow programmed to be thinking bad thoughts about people he’s not praising, in which case never mind.
Given the context — in which McDuff asks “All on the same side here, aren’t we?” to which Charles responded “You tell me” — I think your position of neutrality is somewhat misplaced.
I didn’t think you mistook me for Charles, I was simply pointing out what I thought was a rather large problem with your argument. Of course, it could be that Charles is somehow programmed to be thinking bad thoughts about people he’s not praising, in which case never mind.
I hope this isn’t a week dead flounder, but I really tried to underline the fact that I think what Charles says is _not_ a true reflection of what he thinks. Perhaps this is more insulting than assuming that what Chas says is a mirror to what he thinks, but I think giving people the benefit of the doubt is a worthwhile thing to do.
Setting aside Chas’ mental state, my impression (and I don’t think I am alone in this) is that Charles starts out saying something attention grabbing and then slowly backs up from it. From some standpoints, it is quite effective, because if Chas simply said things that everyone agreed with, it would be rather anodyne. But the general absence of any markers of agreement (or, as Anarch notes, the demand that those who disagree with Chas prove that they are on the same side) leaves people to wonder, as well as serving to increase the temp in here. Which, I hope we can agree on, would not be a good thing.
If you’re basing all that on the “you tell me” comment, I think you’re concluding something from what he said that doesn’t necessarily follow. Of course, asking him what he meant by that may still be an option open to you.
And is the assumption that we’re all on the same side really warranted? After all, there’s substantial disagreement as to what the proper course of action re: terrorism is, and that sort of goes contrary to the idea of unified side-ness. Not so much of a with-us-or-against-us thing as…and here words fail me. I mean, can we even get concurrence here that terrorism ought to be opposed? I know we had at least one frequent poster that disagreed with that.
If you’re basing all that on the “you tell me” comment, I think you’re concluding something from what he said that doesn’t necessarily follow.
I think Anarch was simply providing an example that was readily at hand.
And is the assumption that we’re all on the same side really warranted?
errr, you tell me.
Slarti: Of course, asking him what he meant by that may still be an option open to you.
Sure, but we’re not likely to get an answer, are we? After all, if Charles wanted to explain what he meant by that comment, he’s had every opportunity to do so.
And is the assumption that we’re all on the same side really warranted?
Given the context – a thread discussing the terrorist attacks on London – I think it would be warranted to make the assumption that we’re all on the same side, yes: we are all opposed to terrorist attacks. You don’t think so?
I mean, can we even get concurrence here that terrorism ought to be opposed? I know we had at least one frequent poster that disagreed with that.
Cite?
Given the context – a thread discussing the terrorist attacks on London – I think it would be warranted to make the assumption that we’re all on the same side, yes: we are all opposed to terrorist attacks.
To which I would add that CB was responding to a Briton, on July 7, 2005.
Ah, let me amend that a bit. Frequent commenter. Can’t recall his name right now, but I’m looking. He’s been banned, FWIW, but not for thinking terrorist attacks are justified.
Which kind of brings up the question of whether one can be justified in defending oneself from a justified attack, but I never understood how anyone could think terrorist attacks justifiable to begin with.
But all this is not going to make much sense to you, lacking comments to place it in context, so you’re going to have to wait until I can dig them up.
I take it you mean DQ.
I’m not sure that you’ve made a fair characterization of his views — there being a difference between understandable and morally justifiable — so I’ll be interested to see the comment where he says we shouldn’t oppose terrorism.
On the bigger point, in any society, you’re going to find pacifists. Hell, a Republican congresswoman voted against declaring war on Japan in December 1941 (as she had done when confronted with a declaration of war aginst Germany in 1917). This hardly meant that one could then say ‘I’m not sure whether Republicans are in favor of the war effort’ or ‘there’s no consensus among Republicans that the war ought even be fought.’ Much less, ‘Republicans don’t think we should fight back after a direct attack.’ While there might be a sense that these statements could be said to have been true, they are at all times unfair.
At no point did you say that you treat us as serious commentators, that despite our disagreements we are all working blah blah blah.
I had to actually say it? Well, OK, LJ. Just so you know, if I didn’t believe my fellow editors and most commenters were not serious, I wouldn’t be here.
About my “rhetoric”, sometimes it is strong and sometimes it is taken in a way that I did not intend. I still maintain that if my facts are wrong, my policy is to fix them and have done so. If my opinions are “wrong”, then that remains a matter of opinion.
Hardly. It means that if you feel under no compulsion to retract indefensible statements when others point them out to you, why should anyone else feel any when you do?
Dan, there’s a difference which you do not seem to understand. Hilzoy has mentioned this very subject on several occasions. We are all free to express to strong opinions about various public figures. I’ve read countless incredibly harsh opinions about Bush, Cheney and others which are beyond outrageous. Which is fine. I expressed my opinion about Durbin and Kennedy, and you expressed yours that my opinions were “indefensible”. All well and good. You can make any old “indefensible statement” you want about any public figure, and I’m not going to demand a retraction. I may challenge you on it, but that’s a separate issue.
But when you state something about a commenter or editor, you’re in different territory. When you write as fact the following: “No, you are just saying that people who do not wholeheartedly support the President are idiots at best, and traitors at worst,” you have just made a personal attack, a completely false charge and a posting rules violation. A trifecta of bad form and bad faith. It wasn’t just indefensible, it was factually and actually wrong. You haven’t expressed an opinion or an “indefensible statement”, you trotted out a lie. And you are still perpetuating this lie by your defending it. You can’t back up the lie and now so you’re blocked up with stubbornness, you refuse to make even the slightest concession. Whatever, pal. Until you fully retract, I’m done with you.
Given the context — in which McDuff asks “All on the same side here, aren’t we?” to which Charles responded “You tell me” — I think your position of neutrality is somewhat misplaced.
You must have missed this response downthread, Anarch.
I concurred with McDuff, though.
I take it you mean DQ.
I’m not sure that you’ve made a fair characterization of his views — there being a difference between understandable and morally justifiable — so I’ll be interested to see the comment where he says we shouldn’t oppose terrorism.
This is fascinating. I thought that slart must have someone else in mind. I mean, DQ (assuming this was the truth) was a marine and served in Lebanon. I always felt that his way of stating things was linked to his marine training. (and just to avoid any misconceptions, I, along with several other people on the left, asked him to chill a bit because we felt his comments were over the top, for which he was eventually banned.) If Slarti was thinking that DQ was fundamentally an apologist for terrorism, it really seems to underline that one set of facts can lead to completely opposite conclusions.
If Slarti was thinking that DQ was fundamentally an apologist for terrorism, it really seems to underline that one set of facts can lead to completely opposite conclusions.
Um, he was certainly an apologist for retributive rape. I don’t give a rat’s ass which uniform he wore or where he served, that kind of stuff is indefensible. Timothy McVeigh wore the uniform and fought in Gulf War I, but that doesn’t mean we give leeway to his opinions about blowing up day care centers.
Whoops, post instead of preview.
I had to actually say it? Well, OK, LJ. Just so you know, if I didn’t believe my fellow editors and most commenters were not serious, I wouldn’t be here.
Actually, you don’t have to say anything. We obviously can’t compel you to write something. But given the fact that a number of people have pointed out the problems in your ‘rhetoric’ (I put that in quotation marks because you did, which I assume means that you feel the word is a bit high faluting, though I don’t know why) and suggested that we might have more informative debates if you would consider modifying your presentation, it is logical to assume that you are not changing because you don’t accept the assumptions behind that suggestion. Unfortunately, I get the impression that you imagine yourself in a Reggie Jackson role of being the straw that stirs the drink, so when we do discuss the problems we have with your ‘rhetoric’, you take this as validation of your approach. Of course, if that is true, there is really nothing we can tell you about your ‘rhetoric’ and we can only wait for you to make some factual mistake, at which point we pile on. (as I noted earlier, I believe the citation of Carville and Armando, among others is also a defense mechanism) IMO, this is not a very healthy dynamic, and doesn’t really add a lot, but that seems to be where we are.
Um, he was certainly an apologist for retributive rape.
I’m not defending his position, but if that position (which grew out of a discussion of ‘who won WWII’ IIRC) is going to be taken as a apologia for terrorism, we are basically putting everything in the blender and turning it up to puree. And everything will definitely taste the same.
I didn’t mean to inply that one led to the other, lj, just noting that, given that, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that he was, in fact, a terror apologist as well. I honestly don’t recall.
Unfortunately, I get the impression that you imagine yourself in a Reggie Jackson role of being the straw that stirs the drink, so when we do discuss the problems we have with your ‘rhetoric’, you take this as validation of your approach.
Ugh, LJ. More “impressions”. I don’t consider myself Reggie Jackson or any other sports figure. I don’t purposely intend to write inflammatory rhetoric or “rhetoric” or what have you. I do not write with the express intent of evoking some form of reaction from liberal readers here. More often than not, the responses from liberal commenters from my writings are not what I expect. I do intend to write directly and straightforwardly because that’s the sort of guy that I am.
I brought up Carville and others in comments because I really wonder if you might react differently if a liberal wrote something with the same content as something that I would. Your mistaken reaction to von in this very post gives me the impression that the answer might very well be “yes”, that you are looking past the content of the post but at the political color of the poster.
Charles,
“I expressed my opinion about Durbin and Kennedy, and you expressed yours that my opinions were “indefensible”.”
No, that’s not what numerous people found indefensible. It was that, after describing them with such lines as “too eager to proclaim that we’re in a quagmire and that we’re losing” and “because they were never on board and wanted Bush to go down in flames”, you then said you weren’t impugning their motives.
I’m not sure what you mean by “apologist” in this context, but he did say outright that (in a nutshell) an Islamic terrorist would be justified in attacking his family.
Justified. Now, the finer points of this position probably escape me, but in my book if you regard an opponent as justified, your opposition to said opponent is automatically unjust.
This could be an error in my thinking, I admit. And I don’t want to make this about DQ, because he’s obviously got issues that I honestly wish that he’d get sorted out.
Yes, I know about his military history, but it doesn’t automatically entitle him to unopposed positions that I consider loathesome.
On reflecting, the apologist label seemed inappropriate because DQ didn’t seem to be making excuses for terrorists, he seemed to be saying that a terrorist attacking his (or, by extension, any other American’s) family would be justified in doing so.
Ugh, LJ. More “impressions”.
jftr I use the word impressions rather than opinions because impressions can be corrected whereas opinions cannot. I use ‘impressions’ because I want to give you an opportunity to present something like a link that would stand as a counterexample. Unfortunately, you seem to be unable to do that.
Also, looking back at your first reply, where you said
Before getting the urge to place certain impressions as mine, try asking first instead of going off with meritless assumptions.
‘placing certain impressions as mine’ is rather incoherent, in that the impression is what remains after you have stated your point. Perhaps you believe when I use impression, I am adducing some property or characteristic to what you believe, but that is not what the word means.
I don’t consider myself Reggie Jackson or any other sports figure.
I’m sorry I wasn’t clear, I wasn’t musing about your athletic ability, I was referring to the notion that someone is needed to stir things up. This is why I often term your posts as ‘tarbaby’ posts. If you honestly don’t consider what the potential reaction by the regulars here will be when you are composing your posts, now would be a good time to start.
I brought up Carville and others in comments because I really wonder if you might react differently if a liberal wrote something with the same content as something that I would.
One factual correction, you cited Carville in a post, not a comment. Also, if you are using ‘you’ to refer to me in particular, you are again factually mistaken because I didn’t take up any of your points in that post. If you are using ‘you’ to refer to liberals in general, then your assertion that you are just saying things without regards to how people react is at best, rather misleading.
Of course, the citation of someone who is nominally an ally of the other side who holds a contrary opinion in order to suggest hypocrisy is a time honored one (cf. the glee at noting of your invocation of Brad DeLong as far more moderate than Krugman), but is often done in the absence of thoughtful statements of one’s own opinion.
Your mistaken reaction to von in this very post gives me the impression that the answer might very well be “yes”, that you are looking past the content of the post but at the political color of the poster.
Apparently you missed the last paragraph of this comment, where I note the need for self reflection on my part. Unfortunately, you obviously don’t see the need for any on your part. Opinions for me, but not for thee, I guess.
On reflecting, the apologist label seemed inappropriate
Good point Slarti, apologies for introducing that term. I agree with what you bring up, I just don’t think it is fair to use him as a reason to question whether we are on the same side or not.
I think it all depends on who you include in the group “we”, and what you mean by “side”. Clearly there’s a wide range of opinions on the matter, from folks who profess to want us to just nuke the entire Middle East, to those who are cheering on the import-insurgency “minutemen”. This is why I don’t subscribe to or engage in the “with us or against us”, because for me, there is no “us”, there’s simply people whose priorities parallel mine to a varying degree.
You must have missed this response downthread, Anarch.
I didn’t, as it happens; nor did I miss the fact that it took you three posts to get to a mealy-mouthed non-apology for your failure to answer a simple yes-or-no question with anything like a decent response. Again, if you don’t mean to sound both hostile and insulting — seriously, in what possible way is “You tell me” supposed to jibe with “I assume that commenters here are on my side”? — I strongly suggest you reconsider the way you write… or perhaps, more pointedly, actually consider what you’re going to write before you set metaphorical pen to paper.
This is why I don’t subscribe to or engage in the “with us or against us”, because for me, there is no “us”, there’s simply people whose priorities parallel mine to a varying degree.
I’m suddenly rather glad that I had some enforced down-time because I had been planning to make this very point, only with a lot more sound and fury signifying nothing. Ta.
An interview in American Conservative magazine with Robert Pape about his study of suicide bombings throughout history. It is worth reading.
It was that, after describing them with such lines as “too eager to proclaim that we’re in a quagmire and that we’re losing” and “because they were never on board and wanted Bush to go down in flames”, you then said you weren’t impugning their motives.
I stand by my opinion of Hagel and Kennedy appearing too eager to proclaim quagmire and that we’re losing, Dan. What is being impugned is their judgment, not their motives. I don’t know their motives for saying what they did, nor do I really care. I don’t get into analysis of intentions and motives because mindreading is not my bag. Words and actions should suffice. Whether you believe that or not is your problem, not mine.
When I wrote “many of whom were never on board with the Iraq War, many of whom have unrelentingly cherry-picked every piece of bad news because they were never on board and wanted Bush to go down in flames,” I specifically did not mention Hagel or Kennedy because I don’t believe they’re in that group, nor did I name names of anyone else. If I did, it would be folks like Kos, Gilliard, Gloom Cole and the like.
I use ‘impressions’ because I want to give you an opportunity to present something like a link that would stand as a counterexample. Unfortunately, you seem to be unable to do that.
When you write something like this, there should be no need for a link or a cite to tell you that your impression is wrong. You should at least give me enough credit to accept “no, that’s not how I think” without three supporting backup sources. Sheesh.
Sebastian aptly answered your “impressions” schtick. I object to this tactic because it can be easily abused, utilized as an underhanded cheap shot while retaining the thinnest veneer of civil discourse. Basically, this method gives you the ability to say just about anything–no matter how outrageous or untrue–and then you have a neat little fallback position, saying “well, it was just an impression anyway”. Personally, I find this little technique sneaky and not a little disturbing. Again, asking questions about my thinking is so much better than guessing or conjuring up “impressions”.
you cited Carville in a post, not a comment
Actually, I’ve done both, in the post you referred to and here and here.
I realize that we didn’t converse about Carville previously. I see nothing wrong with using prominent Democrats to make a case, just as I see nothing wrong with liberals using John McCain, for example, to make theirs. I don’t do it to “suggest hypocrisy” (another misimpression of yours), but to point out that it’s not just a moderate conservative who sees it this way. Many respected liberals do as well.
If you honestly don’t consider what the potential reaction by the regulars here will be when you are composing your posts, now would be a good time to start.
I never said that I don’t consider the potential reaction. I wrote that, more often than not, the reaction is not what I expect. If you were writing to an audience that is 95% right of center, I would venture to guess that the responses from the commenters would be similarly unexpected.
Apparently you missed the last paragraph of this comment, where I note the need for self reflection on my part.
No, I didn’t miss it.
Unfortunately, you obviously don’t see the need for any on your part.
Another misimpression on your part, LJ.
I didn’t, as it happens; nor did I miss the fact that it took you three posts to get to a mealy-mouthed non-apology for your failure to answer a simple yes-or-no question with anything like a decent response.
This is really amusing, Anarch. Many, if not most, liberals have objected to the “with me or against me” rhetoric. I’ve read that very thing on these threads too many times to count. Yet, when a liberal does it to me, I’m mealy-mouthed and non-apologetic. You’re applying a double standard. Do you realize how unfair your criticism is?
your “impressions” schtick.
Charles, I hope you just missed this. I would appreciate it if you would at least respect what I am trying to do in that regard. Please.
Basically, this method gives you the ability to say just about anything–no matter how outrageous or untrue–and then you have a neat little fallback position, saying “well, it was just an impression anyway”. Personally, I find this little technique sneaky and not a little disturbing.
However, you argue
I still maintain that if my facts are wrong, my policy is to fix them and have done so. If my opinions are “wrong”, then that remains a matter of opinion.
Behold the light absorption qualities of that kettle!
Of course, I appreciate the ringing defense of civility in discourse, which I am sure is responsible for your ‘you tell me’ response to McDuff. Keep up that work on maintaining a single standard, I’m sure it will pay off eventually.
I’m thinking that you and Charles are never going to reach any sort of agreement on this, LJ. In fact, I’d submit that you two stopped any sort of effective communication on this thread several posts (each) ago. I suggest that you both pack it in. Respectfully, of course.
Many, if not most, liberals have objected to the “with me or against me” rhetoric. I’ve read that very thing on these threads too many times to count. Yet, when a liberal does it to me, I’m mealy-mouthed and non-apologetic.
If a liberal were to do it to you, I’d agree and I’d take your back. No-one did that here, however, because the “with me or against me” rhetoric relies crucially on a) a restricted notion of “with me”, usually in a controversial paradigm presented as uncontrovertible fact — one which, I note, you continually employ and which I’ve yet to see McDuff do — and b) a variation on the fallacy of the excluded middle, usually in the notion that there are precisely two sides with everyone belonging to the one or the other, followed by c) a demonstration that the person in question fails to meet the restricted definition of “with me” (see a)) and ergo must be “against me” (see b)). None of these apply here.
Asking whether we’re on the same side in a generic sense, which what McDuff did*, is not the same construction as saying “If you’re not on my side you’re with the terrorists”. They’re at best superficially related; in fact, your “you tell me” is closer to the “unfair double standard” you incorrectly impute to me than anything I’ve actually written on the subject. And I wouldn’t harp on this except that, yes, your subsequent responses have indeed been mealy-mouthed and non-apologetic. Just accept that this was graceless and poorly written, apologize for firing off the cuff, and let’s all get on with our lives. The continual evasion is unflattering, destructive of your credibility and generally not productive.
* Except that he did it rhetorically, so the implicit presumption behind his question was that yes, we’re all on the same side. Your response, needless to say, did not confirm to this paradigm.
As an addendum, definitely falling in the advice-unasked-for category: you may be worried that if you make such an admission that this will tarnish you so much that, from now on, people will dismiss you because you screwed up once before. There are certainly sites on which that’s true, I’m sad to say — and to my eternal shame this appears to apply equally irrespective of their political orientation — but this isn’t one of them.
Slarti, I hope your mom is reading this. (well, not actually, but I hope you get my drift)
I think Tom Tomorrow nails it:
link
I appreciate the ringing defense of civility in discourse, which I am sure is responsible for your ‘you tell me’ response to McDuff.
LJ, are you really suggesting that my response to McDuff, after he asked me which side I was on, was uncivil? It’s not like I don’t have a readily clickable body of work. Reading a representative sample of them should make it apparent to anyone how stupid and insulting that question was.
Anarch,
McDuff was asking me which side I was on, followed by a “Hmmm?” as if he really wasn’t sure. Ergo, there is a side that is with him, so there must also be a side that is not with him. His preceding entry was an admonition to von and those to the right of him (therefore including me) on the perils of “striking indiscriminately” and to not forget that either. Which conservative supports that? None that I know. His comment displayed either an ignorance of conservative thought or an attempt to conjure up a conservative boogeyman or two. Does he really think I am on that side, a side that he opposes? I don’t know. Hence my terse question back to him.
I did miss Charles’ more full response, as it happened, but I’ve seen it now.
I wasn’t after “fealty”, I was after reassurance of what should have been obvious but which was lacking from the thread, and is sadly lacking from much left-right dialogue on terrorism.
It is a fact that the political climate is antagonistic at the moment, and that “the right” in general is a source for charges against “the left” that range from every liberal being a traitorous fifth columnist who hates freedom and is actually working deliberately to dismantle everything Americans hold dear, to the more insidious accusations that we want to give the terrorists “therapy,” or other variations on a theme that basically sums up quite nicely as us having neither the balls nor the brains to really understand that Bad Men want to kill us, and that all our “nuanced” discussion is really just us completely failing to get the truth: that we need to kill terrorists.
And so, on a day when London got bombed and a bunch of people got killed, Norm and Von decide that the most important thing to remind people of is the fact that those people who just blew bombs up and killed people are bad people, and you come in to endorse it. “Right on von, we should never forget!”
Who had threatened to forget? The fact that “the terrorists” have done their level best to remind us that they’re bad, y’know, with the bombs and the killings and the dead people, means that this post was completely and utterly superfluous from any reasonable, human point of view. We already know. So why post it, why write it? And then we refer outwards to the political context (not a hard job, because that’s where we live), and we think “oh, OK then, well, thanks for reminding us mate.” Or rather, I thought “et tu, von?” because I wouldn’t have thought von was the kind of guy to normally go into this kind of thing, but he obviously has. It made me angry, I’ll admit, reading this list of nasty things that “they” have done just in case I were to, y’know, see a bunch of dead bodies lying around, killed by terrorists, [and] wonder “so, is this good or bad?”.
And that’s the situation that led me to call people on the absurdity of it all. We’re all on the same side here. We all get that the terrorists are bad. We get it! That’s, like, remedial dealing with terrorism! If you have to remind someone that killing people with bombs is not good, that person is stupid, so you’ve got a post here written for an audience of entirely stupid people, “Peter and Jane Get Bombed” level of political commentary. When someone talks down at you in as patronising a way as this, it’s not unreasonable to say “OK, but we’re not dumb mother hubbards, are we? So there was no point to this, was there?”
It’s not about whether or not that you agree with me whether we should bomb things indiscriminately. That was the point! I wasn’t accusing you of that. “Hey, look, I can post about stupidly obvious crap too!!1one” I was trying to draw out a single concession that, y’know, even liberals don’t need to be reminded that bombs and dead bodies are bad things, so a big long post on the 7th July telling us that people who bomb things are bad is irrelevant at best and, if it’s actually aimed at any of us here, is tantamount to an outright insult.
All I was after was a concession, not that we shouldn’t bomb things indiscriminately, but that your fellow human beings on this blog comments section were human enough, despite our political disagreements, to not need reminding that bombs in London are bad. Especially the British ones. That we’re all on the same side such that such things should be common to all of us, and should not have to be preached from the pulpit with all the subtlety of a halfbrick to the ear.
I was not implying that you were on a different side to me. The reason I asked for it was because, despite the fact that it is something I always hold to be true, posts and threads like this make me wonder whether those on the right actually buy into their own publicity and genuinely believe us to be stupid traitors who want to give terrorists therapy. All I hear is that I hate you. I just wanted to know that, on that day, you could for once admit that you don’t really believe it to be true. I’m pretty good about acknowledging political gamesmanship when I know it’s there, but I think that on some days we can drop the guns and play Christmas Day Football, and that the seventh should have been one of those days.
And, of course, we’ve since had this in thread:
and this doesn’t make me angry, it makes me sad. I’m not a hopeless person, but that someone could look at a disagreement over methods and actually question whether we’re justified in being on the same side! As if the concept of “loyal opposition” in government and the whole point of party political representation were lost. The point is that we disagree but we are on the same side, that our common goals are the same and that our common strength is together. We don’t have to constantly affirm our allegiance to the flag because sheer circumstance has thrown us in this boat together, and we disagree because we have different ideas about what direction to steer but not because half the people actually want the boat to sink out of spite. It’s not the bloody liberals who’ve apparently forgotten that.
WE MUST NEVAR FORGET!!eleven
I’ve already responded in comments to this post by von, which plays on a list by Norm Geras and seeks to remind us that people who kill us with bombs are our enemies.
This is the combined intellectual might of the “sensible right” a…
Fair enuf, McDuff. I really don’t want to argue or fight about an issue where, when it gets down to brass tacks, we really are allies.