So let me get this straight.

It's wrong to use a headline saying "Militants avenge abuse with taped beheading" because it implies that militants have some kind of just cause for an act of vengeance - even though any legitimacy is immediately cancelled by the savagery and self-promotion implied in "taped beheading."

But it's OK to have a headline like "Spinning for Al Qaeda" to describe writers and editors who'd go with such a headline, even though the clear implication of such a headline is that they are working on behalf of terrorists? One man's neglect of quotes around a word in a headline justifies another's blanket smear of the negligent quote-omitters? Live by the headline, die by the headline?

This must come under some definition of "balanced, nuanced media analysis" of which I'm unacquainted.

Tell me you didn't choose "Spinning for Al Qaeda" as the headline, Michael.

Michael JT, thanks for a great headline, and perhaps a start about the least acknowledged part of the War on Terror.

It's a strategically important attempt -- but I'm afraid I think it's your weakest, somehow. While clear, there’s not the passion you usually have. Or is it me?

Yes, I’m enraged at the unjust media coverage. You end with mere resistance to the idea from the famous Pogo quote:
“We have met the enemy, and he is us”. Resist.

Perhaps my own passion against the lousy press coverage blinds me to yours. The press, as do you in your article, chooses how to cover, but mostly what to cover. You noted the near lack of coverage of Nick’s beheading; certainly as compared to Abu. But where’s the reference to Daniel Pearl’s videoed execution, which surely fits in your thesis? (I only saw Nick’s snuff film, and only once, and your warnings were well written. It’s sickening.)

Why do they hate us? Yes, why does the media hate democracy coming to Iraq? Why does the media hate Bush? The media is an enemy of the terrorists’ enemy – the media is a third kind of friend to AQ. It seems your own desire for this fact to not be true reduces your passion for objecting to it.

I think if the media is biased against Bush, and I think it is, such a bias has to be called wrong. In fact, such a bias is more irresponsibly wrong, and dangerous, than the release of the Abu pictures.

While the TCS note was fine, I was disappointed – you’ve done much better. Good luck in Libya.

"Spinning for Al Qaeda" doesn't meet Tom Grey's standards for passion. Well, take a look: ignoring the problematic title for the moment, it's not intended to be passionate. It's media analysis. It's not bad as far as it goes.

But it doesn't go far enough. Take this passage:

The Arab-Israeli conflict is routinely referred to as a tit-for-tat "cycle of violence," as though Israelis and Palestinians are chimps with sticks beating each other over the head for no good reason other than that the other chimp just did the same five minutes ago. It belies the fact that Israelis are still defending themselves from a half-century-long eliminationist onslaught.

That's one way that "cycle of violence" can be read, and no doubt many do read it that way. But that primate-instinct gloss doesn't do justice to how the decisions are made on both sides. The term "cycle of violence" applies even in the full and final analysis.

Israel generally resorts to a relatively moderate response to terror attacks. Somebody blows up a bus. Israel blows up some homes after getting people out of them. A bomb in a cafe kills many innocent people, including Arabs, and Israel assassinates a terrorist leader. Whether or not the man (or woman) on the street, on either side, construes "cycle of violence" in passionate terms, it is still a cycle of violence even when the decision makers are dispassionate. Israel can't not respond, or the Israeli political leadership's image will be seen as too soft by the electorate. The terrorist groups can't not stop staging attacks, or their constituencies will come to doubt their fervent devotion to the cause. (Besides, it's what their patrons around the world are paying them to do.) What do the terrorists cloak themselves in for moral legitimacy? It's often enough Israel's last response to their own last terror attack. They may cite other provocations as well, but a cycle of violence doesn't preclude other interacting feedback loops. Just because it's a coolly calculated cycle on both sides, or because there are other factors feeding it, doesn't make it any less of a cycle.

A second point: Israel has not been "defending itself from a half century of eliminationist onslaught." The Arab world has never waged total war on Israel. If it had, Israel would be gone, and long ago. Anyone who thinks that the Arab regimes are out to eliminate Israel is taking the propaganda of those regimes at face value. Never take propaganda at face value.

As Yehoshafat Harkabi argued long ago, in his Arab Strategies and Israel's Response, the existence of Israel is far too convenient for Arab dictatorships. Israel supplies a convenient pretext for propaganda about external enemies, and distracts their subjects from the depredations of the regime itself (many of which are then easily justified in terms of controlling disruptive elements that have supposedly played into the hands of the Zionist Entity.)

Tyrannical Arab regimes don't want the Palestinians to win. They also don't want the Palestinians to lose. They want the game to go on forever.

Yehoshafat Harkabi, who was he anyway? Some weird amateur left-field thinker? Actually, he was a formerly in charge of military intelligence in Israel, one of very few in his generation of officers with a good command of Arabic and knowledge of Arab history and civilization at the level of a professional scholar in the area. He retired at the level of major general, and went on to work in defense think tanks in that country.

Exercise for the alert reader: find all the errors of logic in Daniel Pipes' review of Israel's Fateful Hour. There are quite a few. You might start where Pipes confused compassion for the victims of the Mideast conflict with morally equating the perpetrators of the violence to which they succumbed.

M. Turner, the (4?) wars through 67 & 73 against Israel were to end its existence, despite the truth that Arab dictators get a LOT of silver lining dictatorship abuse overlooking due to Israel.

The Palestinians can stop the violence, anytime. Just stop. Israel will, soon, stop retaliation; prolly within a week, almost certainly within a month (of no suicider killers NOR attempts).

Terrorists with nukes, and/or other WMDs, will be targeting Tel Aviv (or other Jewish cities). The press is gearing up to blame Israel. I'm having nightmares of Israeli responses, including first taking out Syria's Assad, and then the House of Saud. Actually, it's a soothing, nightmare...

The media did not tag Al-Qaida's 'avenge' and 'revenge' etc, with the usual scare quotes it tags Israeli justifications, or Bush's justifications. It simply passed on AQ's justification as fact.

Al Queda's weapon of choice is creating chaos. The media aids, purposefully or not, in providing ample coverage of Al Queda's effective weapon.

Constant images of our enemy bombing, beheading, kidnapping, and so forth, is leading the American people to question and doubt our motives and intentions whereby causing us to lose our will to fight.

The media fuels chaos.

I wonder how we would be feeling now towards the war if the media had also reported the good news that had occurred over the past year. We will never know since the media only reported bad news. They fueled a fire which I hope is not so large now that we will not be able to put this fire out.

Everytime the media fuels the fire with images of defeat, the enemy is able to fight this war on their terms.

We are winning, however, the media does not want us to know this reality.

Tom Grey writes, in response to my outrageous and idiotic denial that Arab regimes are out to exterminate Israel: "M. Turner, the (4?) wars through 67 & 73 against Israel were to end its existence, despite the truth that Arab dictators get a LOT of silver lining dictatorship abuse overlooking due to Israel."

Let's look at the first one, just to try this out. On May 30, King Hussein of Jordan announced: "The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel...to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation. This act will astound the world. Today they will know that the Arabs are arranged for battle, the critical hour has arrived. We have reached the stage of serious action and not declarations." Earlier, on May 18th, a media channel called Voice of the Arabs declared: "The sole method we shall apply against Israel is total war, which will result in the extermination of Zionist existence." Hafez Assad of Syria said they would "explode the Zionist presence ..."

Now, let's just focus on the frontline states for the moment. What were the able-bodied male populations of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon at that point? Just how much cannon fodder did they have? The total population of Egypt, the most populous, was approximately 30 million. With males being half the population, and able-bodied males between the ages of, say, 18-35 being perhaps 1/3rd that number, and let's say you need 50% of them in various support roles rather than under arms, you're talking about a potential 2.5 million men under arms to effect the utter and complete destruction of Israel, from Egypt alone.

And yet the total number from all frontline states, when all Arab troops were in position, was 1/10th that number.

Doesn't sound like real commitment to me, if the goal is to wipe Israel off the world map.

Now, how hard did the Arabs fight? We know that in 6 days, Israel lost 777 soldiers. Let's say they were superhuman and killed 20 Arabs for each of their own that fell in combat, worthy of any videogame hero. That's a walloping number of Arabs, isn't it? Or about ... 6% of that 250,000? Well, probably under 3%.

I believe it was the 6 Day War that gave rise to the IDF joke that Syrian tanks have 3 speeds in reverse.

Oh, those feverishly committed Arabs, so bent on a new Holocaust in the Middle East!

Deal with it. You're second-guessing Harkabi, a former military intelligence chief for Israel, a man with a very deep knowledge of the enemy, and probably the most influential strategic thinker Israel has ever had. Do you think you know better than he did?

Israel is far too convenient to Arab despots for them to just go and destroy it. A medieval feudal lord in Europe, ostensibly fomenting anti-semitism, would never be so stupid as to actual permit a pogrom to eliminate his treasured base of scapegoats. And Arab dictators aren't that stupid either.

Actually, some writer in "Commentary" (can't remember who) said much the same thing about Israel's useful role as a scapegoat for various Arab tyrants a good 20 years ago: the typical Arab ruler tells his potentially revolutionary opponents, "Go play with death on the borders of Israel -- and leave me alone." Whether this provides, by itself, adequate justification for the Arab governments to pull their punches is open to question: if you pull your punches too obviously, after all, your people will start developing suspicions about your sincerity in wishing to destroy the Zionists.

" the fact that Israelis are still defending themselves from a half-century-long eliminationist onslaught"

Sorry to be contorversial and very un-PC, but this is not a "fact". It is a strongly held opinion, an interpretation of fact that is common on our side of the dispute.

The Arabs, with equal justification, can and do claim (at least some of them do) that they have been engaged in a half-century long struggle against the invasion of their land by a sub-population of Europeans who the rest of the Europeans were only too glad to get rid of. And that the major Euro powers, in the time of colonialism, deciced to "gift" the land of the Arabs to this unwelcome minority.

As we all know, this type of debate - how to interpret the same set of facts, has been going on for a very long time.

THe question comes down to this. WHat do you expect of the news media? What is its proper role? Should it be an agent for the interpretation of world events from the American point of view? Or should it make a three-part presentation? The three parts being 1) as "clean" and objective a reporting of the basic facts as is possible 2) an explanation of how our government, and our people interpret those facts 3) an explanation of how the other side interprets those facts.

Personally, I think it crucial to have the media play that latter role. I do not want American media to be in the business of putting American spin on the events of the world. I can do that myself very well. What I think we all desparatly need is to understand how others interpret those same events. That doesnt mean we are going to adopt their interpretation. Even if we are going to end up fighting the other side, it is always better to understand your enemy - to know why they reach the conclusions that they do, to understand their assumptions, and their logic. You simply cant get that from a gung-ho, America-first media.

And of course, sometimes when you understand the other side, you find it easier to reach agreements with them because you can isolate and deal with the precise point of divergence.

And, by the way, the fact that the Islamic Fascists are a bunch of murderously vicious SOBs compared to secular democrats does NOT by itself prove that there is anything seriously misleading about the headline "Militants Avenge Abuse with Taped Beheading". The point is that said militants deliberately carried out that beheading as moralistic propaganda, portraying themselves to their hoped-for sympathetic audience as Righteous Armed Avengers of America's prison abuse. Had that prison abuse not occurred, they would not have felt it worth their while strategically to cut Berg's head off. If you doubt that one of the most disastrous consequences of Abu Ghraib is that it will inspire terrorists to carry out legions of such official "acts of vengeance" against westerners, for propaganda purposes, which would not have occurred otherwise, you can take it up with George Will.

syn writes:

Al Queda's weapon of choice is creating chaos. The media aids, purposefully or not, in providing ample coverage of Al Queda's effective weapon.

Constant images of our enemy bombing, beheading, kidnapping, and so forth, is leading the American people to question and doubt our motives and intentions whereby causing us to lose our will to fight.

Quite the contrary. The enemy's weapon of choice is creating passionate intensity in its targets. Images of Americans slaughtered like animals don't scare us - they shock us, then they enrage us. And the media aids in that only in doing what the media is supposed to do: by reporting the news that people want to hear. The old formula never dies: if it bleeds, it leads. And terrorists sure know what bleeds.

What can be done? How about press censorship, government press control, government press management? Wouldn't that be lovely? Al Qaeda would count it a victory, because that's another way that terrorism classically works: by provoking increasing attempts to control everything on the part of the government targeted. People would, of course, know that the government was controlling the media, and many would come to suspect the worst of their government. Undermining the legitimacy of the targeted government by provoking just such reactions from it is another way in which terrorism works in its classical application, and there's no reason to doubt that Al Qaeda is unaware of the political lexicon of terror.

We are winning, however, the media does not want us to know this reality.

With your much better sources, would you mind providing us with some calculated index of success?

The media fuels chaos.

Keep repeating that, get more people saying it, and the terrorists win. What fuels chaos is passionate intensity. The war against terror will be won with dispassionate intensity, or not at all.

Think it through. Crack a book, while you're at it. Terrorism is really a pretty well understood subject.

Or just go whimper for censorship, and suck your thumb. Who was it who said "Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither?" Some old fool named Benjamin Franklin, if I remember correctly.

Slightly off-topic here, but as long as the subject is media treatment of terrorist acts I'd just like everyone to recall the tone of mainstream media during the first months of the Bush administration, leading into the summer before 9/11.

The enemy does not understand us. They view our society through our media and entertainment organs. 9/11 was timed to exploit the panic of citizens cowering in their homes in fear of John Ashcroft. Our economy was being compared to the Great Depression. Every editorial, every pundit round table, was a lynch mob waving torches and pitch forks aimed at the president.

Look at the last three months of media coverage. Now, the economy has fallen off the radar since our growth is approaching record levels and jobs have begun to catch up, but other than that, Patriot Act has taken the place of the original Fundamentalist Purity Police howling, and we have a senior senator equating U.S. troops to Saddam's torturers. Polls show support for the war and the president at their lowest, and each and every negative number is promulgated through the web and other media with obvious glee...

Yeah, I think I'd attack again, too. Terror isn't aimed at defeating force. It is aimed at the will of the target.

They beat the Left about six weeks after 9/11.

Bruce Moomaw writes: "... if you [an Arab dictator] pull your punches too obviously, after all, your people will start developing suspicions about your sincerity in wishing to destroy the Zionists."

True enough, and a good reason to believe Israel's nuclear deterrent is probably a source of relief among the region's despots - it gives those dictators an excellent excuse for pulling punches. It also gives Arab governments a reason for funding more militancy in the occupied territories - it's way to spend money that generates the propaganda coups, to continuously frame Israel as the source of all evil, as well as to plausibly claim to be making tangible progress against the Zionist devils blah blah blah.

The "cycle of violence" is real, but the counterrotating cycle of avoiding even greater violence, of avoiding war efforts that might destabilize their own regimes, or that might result in the successful removal of the target of propaganda, is what drives the cycle of violence.

The biggest wheel of all, driving all this, is the developed world's continuing need for Middle East oil. Arab regime stability has been priority #1, for that reason.

To his credit, Bush made a statement sometime last year to the effect that we should never have gotten into that particular status quo, of tolerating and stabilizing despotic Arab regimes for the sake of the oill Still, if you don't like Texas Hold 'Em, knocking over the card table as if you were Jesus in the temple of the moneychangers isn't necessarily the wisest move you could pull. It threatens a free-for-all, people grabbing what they can in any resulting chaos. Real chaos? We're not there yet. I hope it doesn't go there. It won't be pretty if it does start to happen.

Bruce M--

Had that prison abuse not occurred, they would not have felt it worth their while strategically to cut Berg's head off.

This is a load of B.S. You are attempting to attach a motive to a beheading by a bunch of barbarian terrorists. Their actions, quite obviously defy reason: they don't need a rationale to kill.

Moreover, if your statement is true then why was Berg kidnapped before the release of the Abu Ghraib photos? Why was Daniel Pearl killed--an event that occurred before we invaded Iraq? Why were 3,000 people in New York killed for the crime of going to work one fine morning?

This supposed "revenge" is nothing of the sort. There is no causal link with our actions or Israel's for that matter. It is vile, unadulterated hate-induced murder.

The stupid events of Abu Ghraib are irrelevant to the larger picture, and to connect the two is either an exercise in absurd moral equivalence or meme escalation.

Over the past year, I have spend an enormous amount of time examining our American media and have not witness anything near 'gung-ho, America first' reporting.

If anything, the mainstream American media has done everything in it's power to beat-up America.

The Amercan media presents reports which reflect their view that America is the real enemy, not Islamic-fascism.

Actually, for the past twenty years American media failed to report on the rising tide of Islamic-fascism, their intention was to not enflame the Arab world. Even after the events of 9/11, the media still feels it necessary to protect the images and feelings of the Arab world while condeming the action taken by America.

It is difficult to see reality when only one side is continously presented. Case in point, since 1994, CNN had purposefully failed to report truthfully or if ever, the reality of Saddam's brutal regime for fear these reports might incite America to take action against Saddam whereby enflaming the Arab world.

Fear of enflaming the Arab world was one reason why the Western forces during Gulf War I stopped at the border of Kuwait and allowed for Saddam to continue his regime.

Of course, the American media has conveniently forgotten that Gulf War I did not end, it was a cease-fire.

When Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1991, the Saudis, the Jordanians, the Egyptians, the Syrians, and so forth, were scared shitless and needed protection. Now these same Arab nations are angry at America for removing Saddam. Go figure, we should all be concerned with the feelings of our Arab friends.

TmjUtah writes: "The enemy does not understand us. They view our society through our media and entertainment organs."

TmjUtah - do you remember what country the key 9/11 hijackers had been living in just before they attacked? Do you remember how long they'd been living in that country?

The issue isn't whether the enemy understands us. They understand us all too well. They know what they need for their purposes.

The issue is whether you understand the enemy.

I recommend some long conversations with an intelligent Israeli. Or anyone from a country that has been living with terrorism for a long time. Americans are babes in the woods by comparison. And the terrorists know that, too, and use it.

Bruce Moomaw writes: And, by the way, the fact that the Islamic Fascists are a bunch of murderously vicious SOBs compared to secular democrats does NOT by itself prove that there is anything seriously misleading about the headline "Militants Avenge Abuse with Taped Beheading".

Yeah, but Bruce, what would you know about a thing like that? What do you think you are, a professional journalist or something?

;-) ;-) ;-)

Michael Turner:

You are half the posts in this thread. Are you angling to be an even more verbose calibar?

"Terror isn't aimed at defeating force. It is aimed at the will of the target.

I think this statement is complete nonsense.

Breaking the will of the enemy is the goal of every party to every conflict. Terrorists share that goal, but that does not distinguish them from any other fighter to any other conflict. And it is not their primary goal either - just like it is not the primary goal of any other fighter. The primary goal is always, to win power.

What distinguishes terrorism from other forms of fighting is that it represents an adaptation to the reality of asymmetric force. If you are a relativly lonely naked force in front of a huge imposing fortress, what do you do? You slink around in the shadows, scoping out the place, and trying to find weak points. You search out the soft targets. You read the book on how the great power fights, and you do the opposite.

This is nothing new. Read the military history of the "liberation" movements of the 20th century. Read about how the maoists took over the largest country in the world, how the Vietnamese defeated the most powerful army in the world. The examples are many.

Another point along these lines that needs emphasis, is that the terrorists are not looking to "support" the weak and waffling potential leaders amongst their enemies. Quite the contrary. The terrorist tactic is to PROVOKE the great power. They want to see the Sharon-types rise to power. That is an inherint part of the strategy.
Maybe this is a silly analogy, but think of a troll at a website (a real troll, not just someone with a non-majoritarian perspective). The troll does not want a lazy, somewhat tolerant response. They dont want people to just say "yeah, whatever". They want to provoke an angry response, to bring forth the flamethrowers and to focus everyones attention on them.

The terrorist operates in an environment where they do not necessarily have the support of their own population - and winning that support is part of their agenda. THe last thing that a palestinian terrorist would want is for an Israeli government to respond to a terrorist attack by declaring "we will not let this divert us from the task of reaching a peace agreement with the responsible elements of Palestinian society". The terrorist wants to displace and sidline those responsible voices. They want a Sharon figure to drop everything and to come after them - in as heavy handed a way as possible. Then the average person, who sees the Israeli attacks, who feels the oppression, and is scared shitless, will turn to the terrorists as the only force with the balls to confront the oppressors. And so the terrorists gain "legitimacy".

What amazes me is that so many who seem to pride themselves on knowldege of military matters fails to understand this basic logic that has infected this world for a century (in its modern form).

Michael -

I spent two weeks in Jordan, back in the eighties.

Since their artillery practice happens from hardpads with known locations and aiming posts set in concrete, surveyors didn't have much to do. I ended up being the liasion NCO for our Host Officer. Nice guy, told us to call him Capt. Abby. He and his sergeant/bodyguard hosted us at the Amman/Baghdad truck terminal souk one evening. It was an excellent experience, and renewed my parents' lessons for me while growing up: you cannot hate people in groups.

See, after burying my best friend after Beirut, my intended goal for any liberty time in Jordan was to catch an Arab or two in any convenient alley and gut them like fish. I had a lot of hate back then, and Capt. Abby caught the vibe. Of course I was properly respectful for our guest (superior rank, royalty, host, and all that) but there's a difference between formal and agreeable.

Anyway, after listening to the truck driver's and sheepherder's songs and poems about life, dreams, family, and tribe over coffee (sloppy full cups) and the strongest tobacco I've ever smoked, I got the strangest feeling these boys could fit in at the Penwell Truck Terminal at the end of a long day...just they wouldn't be drinking any Coors.

Michael Turner, I believe that people are just people. Each man makes calls and every man is responsible for choosing his path. Without my experience driving that Jordanian around I would have been one of those people wanting to see the mideast east of Israel turned to glass

I also believe that the conflict before us is one that is unavoidable; we are not consciously committed to ending Islam but our very existence ensures the death of the religion because societies that embrace it cannot compete with western, capitalist societies. They are the ones who adopted jihad.

Anyway, that was many years ago. I have read the Koran three or four times by now...read commentaries, learned the timeline of the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the yeast tray explosion of that creed through the Arab mideast. We have a muslim center up in Salt Lake; I've spoken with imams there more than once since 9/11.

CAIR is the Sein Feinn of al Qaeda. No more, no less.

These days I'm just trying to keep up with the world and decide what to do with myself since I don't survey any more. Capt. Abby got promoted out of zone, and now runs Jordan as King Abdullah.

Don't tell me I need to know more about Arabs. Thanks.

Tom Grey, trotting out the old liberal-bias-of-the-media pony, writes: "I think if the media is biased against Bush, and I think it is, such a bias has to be called wrong."

Oh dear. Let me go back over my recent copies of the International Herald Tribune. Why, it's published out of France! There should be rich veins of bias, a gold mine I tell you!

Tuesday May 25th op-ed page:

Stanley Weiss, chairman of Business Executives for National Security. "Why Bush should go to Tehran." Not a single thing said against Bush, just a suggestion that he follow Nixon's lead in going to China.

Marwan Bishara, author of a book "Palestine/Israel: Peace or Apartheid". Gee with a title like that, how surprising it must be to some of you that in his piece, "Another Arab summit ends in words but no deeds," his main criticism of Bush is that he's not pushing hard enough for democratic reforms in the Arab world.

Excerpt from Christian Science Monitor - "Fostering a free press in Iraq", lightly criticizes: "The U.S. should have more faith that a fair and independent Iraqi media can help the country triumph over those determined to undermine the creation of a stable Iraq." Gee, sounds more like praising with faint damns than a bias against the Bush administration's ostensible agenda in Iraq.

Op-ed page 2: William Safire. 'Nuff said. Oh, but wait: Nicholas Kristoff: "It's unfair to single out Rumsfeld." Oh, I don't even need to read these.

Gosh, what bunch of unfair Bush-bashers.

Pulling another off the pile, we have the May 22-23 edition of the IHT.

The editors speak, in a opinion piece about Chalabi entitled "With friends like this." Is it "liberal bias of the media" to point out what a disastrous scheming crook Chalabi was, and is? That just seems like finally getting around to what they should have been saying all along (but mostly didn't.)

Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean of Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, goes out there with "America is failing to honor its own codes." The callout quote: "Anguished Americans insist 'this is not us', but the world judges us by our deeds." Is this unfair? Nope, this is just calling a spade a spade. Most of the article is about her despair in defending her own country and its system of government to friends in other countries, in the face of the failures of Abu Ghraib.

Next up: Uri Dromi, of Israel Democracy Institute, Jersulem. "Arabs, too, are losing patience with Arafat." No Bush-bashing there.

Next, William Pfaff, "Give Iraqis complete sovereignty," predictably anti-Bush, then Bob Herbet, "When war no longer makes sense", a defense of the conscience of an American soldier who says that, among other things, seeing the abuse at Abu Ghraib turned him against the war.

I could keep working my way through the pile, but it's much the same - either no Bush-bashing, or reasonable Bush support, or a mix of reasonable and valid criticisms with a few predictably biased commentators leaning systematically one way or another. It all ends up sounding pretty balanced to me.

I'm still working with how people come up with this "liberal bias of the media" formulation, but I just don't see it. Help me out here. What's the big picture I'm supposedly missing?

Tom Grey: "In fact, such a bias is more irresponsibly wrong, and dangerous, than the release of the Abu pictures."

I see. And what was going on at Abu Ghraib wouldn't pose any dangers at all, if the evidence had been suppressed longer? I guess you don't agree with John McCain when he says the best thing is to get everything out in the open, as quickly as possible, rather than die the death of a thousand cuts?

The biggest danger is that Americans will be seen by Iraqis, and the world, as a bunch of hypocrites. So far, the conviction (or pretense) of being so pure has just gotten us a humiliating roll in the mud. I've said it before. I'll say it again: the beginning of corruption is the belief that it can't happen to you.

So what's your solution, Tom? Government press controls? The terrorists really win in that scenario.

Really, Turner? When did Harkabi change his mind?

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9681

"For the fourth time since its creation, Israel is engaged in battle with the neighboring Arab world. It is a battle which is uneven in two respects. In the first place, if Israel wins, the Arab world will endure; if the Arabs win, Israel will cease to exist. Secondly, there is no equivalence in the forces engaged. Syria and Egypt have drawn on enormous forces, both of manpower and matériel.

[...]

The real issue today, as it was in 1967, is the determination by Egypt and Syria to destroy Israel.

Shlomo Avineri, Joseph Ben-David, Ernst Bergmann, Aryeh Dvoretzky, Samuel Eisenstadt, Saul Friedlander, Natan Goldblum, Jack Gross, Yeho-shafat Harkabi, Avraham Harman, Alex Keynan, Don Patinkin, Joshua Prawer, Michael Rabin, Nathan Rotenstreich, Gershom Scholem, Moshe Shilo, Garbriel Stein, Jacob Talmon, Ephraim Urbach, and David Weiss.

The above signatories are on the staff of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem."

I don't think I buy your representation of the position presented in a conveniently out-of-print book, Turner.

TmjUtah, speculating about al Qaeda strategy in the wake of a disastrous slump in the popularity of the Bush administration, writes: "Yeah, I think I'd attack again, too. Terror isn't aimed at defeating force. It is aimed at the will of the target."

No, no, terrorism's aim is precisely to enrage the target, to cloud the target's ability to think. Thanks for providing an excellent example.

Actually, I think Al Qaeda likes what Bush has done so far. How could they not? It's been precisely the provocation that works best for their long-term agenda. So the main immediate danger of this Bush slump for Americans is that Al Qaeda will attack again to bolster support for Bush at some critical moment. The best way would be for them to

(1) use apparent Iraqi WMD,
(2) make it seem like it was planned in Iraq
(3) make it seem like Saddam loyalists were in on it, and
(4) use a style of attack so clever that it would be little or no shame on Homeland Security for not stopping it in time. After all, if the goal is to help George get reelected, you don't want it to backfire, to be an embarrassment to the guy you're trying to support.

In short, hand George total vindication of his claims, and further enrage the American people, so that they go out and support George in doing something that will further enrage the various Muslim peoples of the world, who will in turn provide yet more terror-bombing cannon fodder for Al Qaeda.

It's really not that hard to be an effective terrorist. All you have to do is be very cold-blooded, and never forget how stupid and self-defeating people can be when they get emotional.

Stale Air writes of the killing of Nick Berg: "Their actions, quite obviously defy reason: they don't need a rationale to kill."

Sigh.

It seems we're hearing from a man who is scared shitless by the notion that a terrorist might actually be smarter than he is. Ruthlessly brutal enemies, those he can handle. Ruthlessly brutal enemies who actually know exactly what they are doing, now that really bugs him.

Yep. Score another victory for terrorism. This is another way terrorism works: underestimate of the terrorist by the easy equation of extreme brutality with total insanity.

Hey, chill. Go watch a Hannibal Lecter movie or something. Oh wait a minute, no, that'll just make my point disturbingly clear. OK, go watch some anime where the good little children win against the big, bad, evil, but ultimately stupider monsters. You'll feel much better.

"Moreover, if your statement is true then why was Berg kidnapped before the release of the Abu Ghraib photos?"

Oh, you're really having trouble with that? My, my.

"Hey, look, is that an American walking around Baghdad like he's in Times Square?"

"Sure looks like it."

"How bonus. Nab him."

"What do we do with him?"

"Waddya mean 'what do we do with him'? Have you forgotten what we learned at the training camp?"

"Oh yeah: 'capture all available Infidels as opportunities permit, but make optimal media-splash use of them, also as opportunities permit. Think of them as bullets. Don't waste them.' You mean that?"

"Ahmed, my boy: you're not as dumb as I thought you were. You'll make a fine freedom fighter yet, Allah willing."

Michael Turner--

I'm with Eric. Stop hogging the thread! Save some pixels for the rest of us

Language can be a bitch! Reading through these posts, I saw not facts, but "perceptions" of statements. Indeed, most of the statements quoted were not logical statements (in the true sense), since a Logical statement has one possible understanding (2+2=4 in Base 10). What we have here are what are sometimes called functional statements, they have more than one possible endpoint, similar to an algebraic function.

What determines the endpoint, seems to be, what the individual "thinks", "feels" and how much they "understand". Yet, somewhere in the neuro-linguistic nightmare of our brains, "I think", becomes "I know", "I feel" becomes "is" and realizing that one may not completely "understand" all the variables, leaves the assumption that they "Know" as opposed to "understand".

For instance, some on this board seem to read the news headline which MJT wrote about and 'know' that the media is spinning for the terrorists. Yet, they can't really "know" such a thing, unless they have the writers office bugged, or the writer makes clear Logical statements to the effect (a claer logical statement would be something like a journalist saying "It is every journalists responsibility to potray the worst of this War, in order to prevent its continuance (or in order to kick Bush out in November)." That statement has only one logical conclusion, the reporter is willing to disregard the good news, in order to bias the media.

On the flip side, some on the left look at the words and "know" that there is no spin, and the reporter is just trying to do his job. Does the person really 'know' or just 'think', 'believe' or 'assume'?

(My personal "thought" is that the media seems to spin news because contraversial, negative, bad news gets better ratings than cheerful, happy news. I'm not sure that they care as much about the perceptions of the news, as they do the hard cold cash they get from sponsers when the ratings are up.)

Count Alfred Korzybski believed that these sorts of linguistic misunderstandings were "noise" and that noise was the main basis for confrontation, contraversy and violence in human interactions. Perhaps he was worng, but the blog comments we usually see are indeed people arguing over the understanding of words. "This obviously means X" versus "No, it doesn't the Left is spinning the information to make you think it means X. I know that it is actually Y."

I'm not trying to start an argument (though a cordial discussion of the effect of how we understand words would be welcome, as opposed to arguing that "you don't spin"), I was reading some Korzybski and found the idea intriguing.

For a quick reference to one of his works (if you're unfamilar) http://208.56.173.213/library/ak-role.htm

Ratatosk, Squirrel of Discord

The enemy of Bush is my friend? It seems many journalists think that way.

Michael you have hit it on the nose. The media seems to be intentionally spinning the news to the benefit of the islamists. Since 90% of journalists in the US voted for Clinton, I suspect that if Clinton were president, the spin would be somewhat different.

So, the Arabs deliberately lost the Six Days War as part of a devious military strategy.

Well, that’s an interesting theory.

Is this the same Professor Harkabi who is criticized by scores of Israeli academics for his self professed ‘cultural relativism’?

Is this the relativism that, according to one academic “denies objective or universally valid standards by which to determine whether the way of life of one nation (or culture) is intrinsically superior to that of another. All nations are morally equal and should therefore dwell in mutual tolerance and peace.

"This relativism, which denies distinctions between good and bad regimes, permeates the mentality of multicultural democracies, especially its left-wing intellectuals. It leads to wishful thinking regarding the possibility of genuine and abiding peace between democracies and dictatorships. It needs to be borne in mind, however, that academics like Harkabi and Avineri have no counterparts in the Muslim world. Muslim academics are not relativists: they think in black and white terms, and for them Israel is utterly black”

If losing wars is a deliberate Arab Islamist strategy, I wonder why they didn’t deliberately lose their war against the blacks in the Sudan. Those Arabs just charged right in and started murdering and enslaving people. What happened to their wise and devious ways there?

Not that there's anything wrong with a culture that praises and legalizes slavery, bigotry and mass murder. Perish the thought!

Mary,

Why do you think that the Arabs failed to destroy Isreal at that time?

And I'm not sure what the professors `"cultural relativism" has to do with the Arabic attitue and plans toward Isreal. Could you expound on the relationship between the two?

Ratatosk

Yes, Michael Turner, please stop hogging the thread. Thanks.

Arabs lose wars because they are poor practitioners of military science. Read Victor Davis Hanson's "Carnage and Culture" to learn not why Arabs lose wars but why Western armies almost always win wars.

Tosk--

I'm not exactly clear what your points were earlier about "knowing." But if you mean to say that people should stop arguing about motives, I wholeheartedly agree. We would all be better served, right and left, by focusing on actions and outcomes rather than motives.

Unfortunately, many of those in the anti-war camp can't seem to let go of them since they are about the only basis they have for their argument.

MJT--

Right! Once, when asked what his secret to winning was, Moshe Dyan replied, "Fight Arabs."

Coming on the heels of MTot's recently announced trollspray policy and the subsequent accusations of Eric and Freshair, I've gotta chime in my $.02 that I'm very much enjoying Michael Turner's posts and don't find them remotely trollish.

I may not agree with them all, but he's got some thought-provoking viewpoints, and quite a few real insights, IMO.

But then I'm just not with the "blame the media" meme. Trying to get the american media to act as a censorious propaganda arm of our government by upping the happy talk and downplaying the bad news would be cancerous. I know that many or even most conservative hawks strongly disagree with this notion, bit I think they're wrong, and are wronger with each passing day into the future of imporoved communication. We're much better off just letting the media keep to their ratings-driven bias for decontextualized sensation, getting over it, and letting the chips fall where they may.

I don't rely on the media for a complete and contextualized picture, and neither should anyone else. Give me the bad news, i can take it. It's pretty clear to me that the stubbornly small decline in popular support for the war in the face of a host of unpleasant developments suggests that many Ameicans understand the stakes.

bk: Trying to get the american media to act as a censorious propaganda arm of our government by upping the happy talk and downplaying the bad news would be cancerous.

Well, I have to say I agree with that sentence.

Fresh Air,

I meant "Knowing" as it is often used "I know", "Everyone knows" and in the other related statements "It's obvious" or "Anyone with half a brain can plainly see". These statements are then usually followed by a statement of what the writer/speaker "thinks they know", as opposed to single undisputable fact. When this happens, ideas and thoughts (which tend to be biased by all of our other ideas and thoughts), are relayed as Fact. If someone disagrees, they see the 'fact' as incorrect, and replace it with what they "know".

At that point we have two people desperately trying to "prove" that they're right, despite the fact that they don't really know (in the logical sense) that they are, in fact, correct.

The democrats are guilty of this as are the republicans. It would seem beneficial for discussions to be as clearly stated as possible, instead of muddied with opinion masqurading as fact.

Would you agree?

Michael Turner and sigh Tano -

You are both deliberately mischaracterizing the objectives of terrorism. The strategic ones. The ones at the beginning of the book, under "What we want to achieve in the end".

The killing of innocents, coupled with the relentless search for the widest possible media attention, is not an end in itself. It's a tactic.

Their ultimate objective - what we would define as their "interest" if they were a conventional nation state - is to see their concept of virtue imposed on anyone who doesn't share it. End. Full stop.

Yes, there are other political factors in play. Yes, if Israel didn't exist, the failed Arab states would be forced to focus their jihad on some other westernized, successful, neighbor. The common thread tying together the current Islamist threat is wahabbism, and the agenda of that sect has been promulgated more thoroughly than Mein Kampf ever was...probably more so than Das Kapital, matter of fact. There's a lot more money behind the movement now than was ever enjoyed by any fascist philosophy that has come before.

I frankly do not understand you, Michael Turner. What makes you think I am not completely aware that the terrorist know exactly what they are doing? Of course they do. My beef is with the people on our side that don't, or more reprehensibly, WON'T acknowledge the end objective of the enemy and accept the fact negotiation or diplomacy is not an option.

The fight is here, and it is not of our choosing. What is of our choosing is whether we will win or lose.

Yes, I do believe that there exists wilful media bias on this point. There are many, many more people with access to much more information (both current and historical) and much more experience with the nations and philosophies engaged in fomenting or supporting Islamist terror than I am...and they cannot but know that the conflict transcends mere transitory domestic politics in any western nation. The threat must be addressed.

That this particular president has adopted a narrow focus in defining the enemy as 'terror, exclusive of an endemic cultural defect, and bet his political farm that the institutions we owe our freedom and prosperity to will make it possible for the enemy to be defeated without a war of annihalation seems to be the action of a visionary.

The only other nihilistic fascist warrior culture converted to civilized participants of the world community were the Japanese...and that only after they faced the immediate prospect of extinction.

That process took about twelve years...the first four being active combat. Our minority party kicked off our effort in Iraq by declaring defeat before the first shot was fired.

They appear (and yep, just my opinion) to see no further than their own partisan agenda when they consider the conduct of the war. They, like you, seem to concentrate on the image or tactic of the moment.

It makes it awfully easy to damn our efforts as abject failure for every second there is not undeniable, terminal, and final victory. The goal posts haven't been moved; they were never even allowed to be put up. Somehow, the status of Kosovo after eight years of U.N. occupation is never referenced at all...much less as an abject failure to perform on the part of the U.N., which it most certainly is.

Diffucult work takes time. We've been engaged in rebuilding Iraq for just over a year, after that country spent the last thirty years in the darkness of dictatorship and war. One year. How many years does it take to build one stretch of highway through a major city? How many years does it take to teach our kids what democracy is, even though that's the system they were born to? How unlivable can mere drug gangs make parts of LA, Dallas, or Chicago? One year? Who are these people, and just what will it take to change their priorities from party to survival?

What image does an Iraqi or any other middle eastern subject get when a supposed senior American statesman equates the U.S. with the second coming of Saddam Hussein?

I'll repeat myself: The enemy has no clue of who they are dealing with, or what force we are willing and capable to bring to bear. They read our papers, watch our political punditry, and think that CNN has some relevance in forming public opinion.

The enemy tell themselves that martydom is a noble result in the pursuit of their goals. There is a number - a large...an obscenely large number - of martyrs that will discredit that belief. The Iraqis really should consult the Japanese about this. Once a majority of the people of America accept that the threat is not controllable by merely pursuing and confronting actual shooters or regimes but instead requires the targeting of populations, that will happen.

Truly progressive thinkers would marshal around the current Bush Doctrine in an honest attempt to avoid that outcome. I'd like to think that, anyway. If we presented a united front and an unmistakable commitment to staying wholly engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan until the mechanisms of democracy had had chance to take root, half our fight would be won. The desperate straits of our political minority and their wilful accomplices in the media has generated a propaganda effort that could not have been more effectively designed by Iran or the Wahabbists or OBL.

Let them attack us, based on the perception that we will walk away. If that is what it will take to resolve this, just let them come. History has shown three previous examples of how this issue has been resolved. If we lack the unity of purpose or lack the will to stake our survival on changing their minds, then let us kill them now, by nations, in the interest of ENDING the killing on both sides.

Sherman was right. War is hell, and the only way to stop it is to make sure that the enemy experiences it to the extreme end of pain, misery, and death.

"We can't let ourselves believe our enemies are mad at us for our reason. They aren't. Some(Tiny fraction) of our soldiers failed to live up to our own standard of decency. Our standard is not Al Qaeda's. The day we believe otherwise is the day we believe Al Qaeda might have a point, that Al Qaeda might even be right."

Good stuff!

Agree that arab generals are incompetent military strategists. They would have obliterated Israel had they been able to.

$25000 was a huge amount of money to Palestinian parents, who have so many children they are willing to sacrifice many of them on the altar of their hatred. Take away that money, and the thought of having their houses obliterated sends them into paroxysms of pacifism.

Tosk - Genuine experts in military theory, like Hanson and The USNI disagree with Harkabi. I was wondering what in his background would inspire him to create this unique theory.

I know, if I was an open minded multiculturalist I wouldn’t care about Harkabi’s background or beliefs. It shouldn’t matter if he was an Israeli professor whose theories were dismissed by most of his colleagues.

If I was an open minded multiculturalist, I would believe that the Nazis had their reasons, that we and the Japanese were equally to blame for Pearl Harbor, that the cannibal tribesmen of Togo had a unique culture that was equally as valid as ours, and I’d believe that their traditional dish of long pig with roasted pineapple and fava beans is a culturally rich delicacy.

I’d believe that cannibal regimes and genocidal regimes are morally equivalent to a democracy that uses war as a military strategy, I’d believe that we should allow these nihilistic regimes to exist for the sake of ‘peace’ and I’d believe that fighting fascism, racism and hate is a mistake that creates a ‘cycle of violence’ But I’m not that open minded

BK--

Whether Michael Turner's comments were brilliant or not, he was posting too much for the health of the board. By the way, the host agrees.

Tosk--

Slight disagreement. We can't ever have a decent argument about something unless certain things are given to be facts (the Earth is round, Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, calibar is a fool, etc.).

The problem comes in when rhetorical sleight of hand is employed, and "We all know..." is followed up with a spurious or false statement. Republicans and Democrats are guilty of this. But more of the inferential falsehoods are currently coming from the anti-war camp insofar as intellectually lazy, motives-based arguments suit their purpose.

As you point out, we can never know what someone really believes or is thinks, and it's not only stupid, but disingenuous to claim we can.

mary -

I like your style.

MJT -

I've been gone for a few weeks. I will moderate the length of my posts from here on out.

Not the ideas behind them, of course.

Mr. Turner,
In 1967, Egypt put 7 divisions against Israel's 3. The ratio was similar on the other two fronts. These are good odds; it wouldn't appear to anyone they were going to take a dive. The poor quality of their generalship was proportional to the excellence of the Israelis, and they were defeated.

I may not agree with them all, but he's got some thought-provoking viewpoints, and quite a few real insights,

Mmmm, could that be, perhaps, beause you agree with those viewpoints? Anyway, whatever the validity of those viewpoints, his posts are verbose, pretentious, pompous, ponderous, and condescending, now he's added vituperative personal attacks down below. And, he's a thread hijacker/hogger.

Anyway, I've never understood this viewpoint that we should place as much scrutiny and skepticism as possible on the motivations and policies of our government but not on those of the media.

Fresh Air,

I agree that we must have some basis for discussion. So, some statements such as "Saddam killed Kurds with chemical weapons", are acceptable conversation because there is a logical conclusion to the statement, and hard evidence to base the statement on. This is very different from a statement like "The invasion of Iraq was clearly an attempt by GWB to avenge his father." One is a statement that has a logical conclusion, and is drawn from logical facts,the other is opinion, plain and simple.

"The problem comes in when rhetorical sleight of hand is employed, and "We all know..." is followed up with a spurious or false statement. Republicans and Democrats are guilty of this. But more of the inferential falsehoods are currently coming from the anti-war camp insofar as intellectually lazy, motives-based arguments suit their purpose."

I would tend to disagree, I think that this neureo-linguistic wire crossing is endemic of most people. I see examples of it (Left and right) pretty consistantly, even here on the blogs. I'm not accusing anyone of intentionally using misleading statements and foisting them off as facts. I think that most of the instances are unintentional and are the product of lazy thinking across our society (and the lack of education in such subjects in our schools). Most people I encounter seem to take the opinions that they have formed about a topic and discuss them as fact. Since they aren't actually factual, it leads to arguments. Someone with another opinion, believing it to be fact, can't accept the other person's 'fact'. I think that it could be extremely beneficial for all of the discussions here, if people chose to make a clear and honest distinction between ideas and facts.

But, I don't know that most people are willing to take the time to be more clear.

Tosk

TmjUtah: I've been gone for a few weeks. I will moderate the length of my posts from here on out.

Thanks, but that isn't necessary. You aren't a thread hog.

TmjUtah is exactly correct in making a point I have argued before (although I do not claim authorship of it by any means). What the Bush Administration is attempting to do is forestall a war of annihilation by the USA against Arabs. This is a noble and progressive goal. What is amazing is that our "Progressives" are so violently opposed to it.

In my humble opinion (yes, Tosk, I don't "know" this to be true in an epistimological sense), the Left is more interested in scoring partisan political points against GWB than in winning this war because they are afflicted with an astounding degree of ego-centrism. It appears that they could care less about the world's poor and downtrodden if it costs them their some of their prescription drug benefits. It's sad, really.

What would Occam say?

1. Our enemies are brilliant strategists who are thinking many moves ahead. 1/2 of Americans are dimwitted fools playing right into their hands by wanting to fight back.

or

2. Our enemies are religious fanatics driven by hatred and envy. When they kill it is done because they believe it is sanctioned by their religion, sates their bloodlust, and induces fear and appeasement among their enemies. 1/2 of Americans are weak enough to oblige.

Zymurgist: Our enemies are brilliant strategists who are thinking many moves ahead.

This would require them to be able to accurately predict our behavior. Osama said many times that we are a paper tiger, that we will run away from a fight, that we would be easier a super-power to defeat than the Soviet Union. There was a lot of historical evidence (Vietnam, Lebananon, Iran, Somalia) that he was correct.

He was not correct. And that pretty much sinks theory number one.

TmjUtah pushes the number two on his cell phone, and listens to "The Girl from Ipanema"....

Faster, please.

Ben, I'm not picking on you, but I'd really like to explore the idea of modified semantics creating a better platform for discourse.

"In my humble opinion ... the Left is more interested in scoring partisan political points against GWB than in winning this war because they are afflicted with an astounding degree of ego-centrism. It appears that they could care less about the world's poor and downtrodden if it costs them their some of their prescription drug benefits."

Ok, now from a discussion perspective, things start out well, but the 'taste' of the post seems to change to me when you state that "...the Left is more interested in...". There are 2 problems I see with this statement.

1. A single label is used to ascribe a mindset to a large diversified group, "The Left". As soon as someone who considers themselves 'left' reads this line, they assume you are including them, I'm am far more left than right leaning, and scoring points against Bush is not anywhere on my radar.

2. You use the word 'is'. 'Is' denotes fact. "GWB is President", "Michael Totten is the owner of this blog", "This discussion is about how we say things". Seems, appears, may be, could be, might be, are much less damning of an entire group, which may agree with the brunt of your post (partisan politics seem more important to some democrats than the War).

This line could be changed to be less inflamatory and better for group discussion if it said: "Many prominent members of the Democratic party, and other left leaning groups seem more interested in scoring partisan political points against GWB than in winning this war..."

That clears you from attributing blame to everyone on the Left (or at least providing a statement which could be construed that way), while making a statement that can easily be discussed, somewhat less passionately than the former. I doubt that you would find many honest Liberals who do not see partisan politics from Democratic Party Leaders,while those same leaders do little to support the war effort.

"... because they are afflicted with an astounding degree of ego-centrism. It appears that they could care less about the world's poor and downtrodden if it costs them their some of their prescription drug benefits."

I think that this set of statements would be much better attached to the modified first statement. However, it still provides extremely incindary statements, with no supporting discussion. I think that its hyperbole at the least, since many people on the left are decent human beings and would think no such thing.

How could this statement be re-worded to be less inflamatory and create a good platform for discussion?

Here's what I came up with:

"... because they seem to be afflicted with an astounding degree of ego-centrism. It would appear that they care less about the war on Terror than their prescription drug benefits."

This seems to me to be more concise, less inflamatory, less a statement of opinion and more a statement of how it appears (your choice of that word was great ;-) ) to be from your perspective.

If we want high quality comments and discussions, as opposed to trolls, shouting matches and fecal throwing, I would think that choosing our words and statements carefully, could do nothing but help.

Any thoughts, opinions, comments? I'd especially like to hear your thoughts Ben, since it was your comments I dissected. I meant no insult andam seriously interested in continuing this discussion.

Tosk

Tosk--
For pete's sake, Ben thoroughly qualified his statements as opinions and perceptions.

Phil,

Yes he did... however, I am not discussing simple qualification. I'm talking about semantic structure to encourage constructive debate.

I could say "In my opinion, it obvious that George Bush is a idiot prince who is unable to manage his administration. He is unwilling to listen to any voice other than his own, and those who agree with him. Anyone who votes for bush this fall, obviously is an idiot with the brain of a cabbage."

I clarified the statement by saying it was opinion, but it still would not generate healthty discussion, on the contrary it would likely generate a shitstorm.

I tried to make sure that I mentioned both the beginning and the use of 'appear' as positive points. I was merely discussing how we could reduce quibbling over semantics, and discuss issues rationally.

Does that make sense?

Tosk

"tosk,

While you make some good points, the sort of effort you describe can be quite onerous. And it's foreign to most. It's an effort I usually try to make, but am not always successful.

I do think that making effort to keep to the practice of qualifying statements keeps the heat down well. Notice that such onerous efforts can become less necessary over time if only the discussors can establish good will between each other. It's the sort of thing that helps keep a discussion from becoming an argument.

It's time and good will that allows us all to try to determine what someone else means instead of intricately parsing exactly what they say.

I tend to think that Ben threw in plenty of qualifiers, and that's helpful. BUt the larger point remains, that of the mass generalization.

Look, if I see someone say "the Right this" or "the Left that" I assume 2 things (which may or may not be true, but it's my instinctive reaction): (1) that person probably does not have the facts to back up their statement, since it's pretty much impossible to show (or know) that an entire diverse group like "the Right" or "the Left" is in accord on anything; and (2) that person is much more interested in scoring partisan points than in any kind of discussion.

So I tend to skip those comments, not because of any technicality of grammar, but because they add nothing to my understanding of, well, anything. I think that's what Ratatosk is really getting at (and Ratatosk, please correct me if I'm wrong).

"In short, hand George total vindication of his claims, and further enrage the American people, so that they go out and support George in doing something that will further enrage the various Muslim peoples of the world, who will in turn provide yet more terror-bombing cannon fodder for Al Qaeda."

So, by analogy, the goal of Madrid's 3/11 was to promote the re-election of Aznar?

"All you have to do is be very cold-blooded, and never forget how stupid and self-defeating people can be when they get emotional."

Like immediately withdrawing from Iraq.

BK,

Your points are extremely valid. Careful consideration of what we type can be an onerous task. However, I find that when I take the time to really consider what I'm writing, my posts seem more understandable and generate less negative comments. I also find myself re-thinking statements, or even entire posts when I take the time to consider the semantics of what I'm saying.

While time and good will are helpful, words are powerful. The pen, and the keyboard can cut more deeply than a sword, and in a forum where reasonable discussion is desirious, i think that it would be beneficial for posters to at least attempt to weigh their words carefully.

I think that a number of people on this board, don't really care for rational debate and would rather zing the opposition party and pat the backs of their party. If the rest of us, at least try to couch our words in acceptable discourse, perhaps it will be somewhat easier to identify discussion versus distraction.

Of course, I'm not such an elitest tobelieve that we all should remove every instance of misstated opinion, or all use of the word 'is'. I have been trying to clean up my linguistic hallucinations for a couple years and still futz it terribly. However, I think that the attempt is important, as much to my own thought processes (forcing me to rethink what I know) as to the discussion at hand.

Jeremy,

Your points are quite right. It is a problem with Labels. There's an essay written by a fictional character (Hagbard Celine) called "Never Whistle While You're Pissing". There are several copies on the net (google for it). It discusses the misuse of Labels in language and thought... while I consider the work to be a bit of NLP and Geurrilla Ontology, there are some very interesting points.

Ratatosk

Ratatosk,

My wife tells me these things, that I should say "I think" first in many cases. But I don't listen. She's wrong. Sorry, I mean, I think she's wrong.

H'mm. I wonder if MJT's troll cleaning is having a pendulum effect. This is starting to sound like chat from a "Miss Manners"
forum.

"This is starting to sound like chat from a "Miss Manners""

How is that in any way helpful to the discussion?

'Tosk

"I'll be back, when the day is new, and I'll have more ideas for you..."

Tosk:

1. In rewriting my sentence, you have preserved my meaning well enough. People can judge for themselves which version is better.

2. I believe that my comment was sufficiently qualified, and, in any event, I did not intend it to be an attack on any particular person. It is, however, intended to be an attack upon a particular mindset. I was intending to engage the idea rather than the person.

3. As with most people, I am usually pressed for time when commenting on blogs. I doubt very much that what I write in comments sections would ever be mistaken for Shakespeare. Within these limitations, I try to avoid being a troll.

4. All of that said, too much qualification can divest the statement of meaning. To some degree, you need to press on even though some people will be offended (because you will never make some people happy no matter how respectfully you disagree with them).

5. My policy is to attempt to be courteous in discussions such as this. If I think I cannot be courteous, I leave the discussion. This is not in response to Michael's policy; rather, it is because my mother taught me to have good manners. An unfortunate number of people apparently missed that lesson.

Jeremy --

You make a point that is not with some validity. In my defense, however, I used the term "the Left" as a short-hand way to refer to a certain type of person. I agree it is not precise or all-encompassing, but discussion grinds to a halt and/or becomes overly cumbersome if we get too bogged down in definitions. Note also that in capitalizing "Left", I was not referring to all persons to the left of center, but to a specific group of people.

TmjUtah sigh,
"You are both deliberately mischaracterizing the objectives of terrorism."

Now why would I want to waste my time doing th"at?

The killing of innocents, coupled with the relentless search for the widest possible media attention, is not an end in itself. It's a tactic."

Very good. I am glad you realize that.

"Their ultimate objective...is to see their concept of virtue imposed on anyone who doesn't share it. End. Full stop'

I disagree. End. Full stop.

"My beef is with the people on our side that don't, or more reprehensibly, WON'T acknowledge the end objective of the enemy and accept the fact negotiation or diplomacy is not an option."

And just who would that be? Could you point me toward the real, live, "leftist" who is out there pounding the pavement trying to get us to convene a peace conference with Osama?

"That this particular president has adopted a narrow focus in defining the enemy as 'terror..."

I think that that is hardly a narrow focus - quite the contrary, it is a totally broad, ambiguous label that could be applied, at will, by the president, to anyone he chooses, with the expectation that we will all fall immediatly in line and begin to hate whatever group or nation he so designates.

"The only other nihilistic fascist warrior culture converted to civilized participants of the world community were the Japanese..."

This is just namecalling. The Japanese were not nihilists. They certainly believed in something - the superiority of their culture, and their inherint right to rule the lesser mortals in their neighborhood,,,for a start. Beyond that, your assertion is belied by the entire history of just about any civilization. There has been innumerable groups of ruthless, violent outsiders carrying out attacks on settled communities, throughout history. Sometimes they win and become assimilated. Most times they lose, rarely through annihalation. The only difference now (and granted it is a significant difference) is the power of the weapons that may be available to the marauding herds.

" Our minority party kicked off our effort in Iraq by declaring defeat before the first shot was fired"

Once again, this is just silly namecalling, not serious discourse. Parts of our minority party were opposed to the Iraq war from the beginning. None declared defeat.
And dont think we havent noticed your little segue from the wahabiist jihadis to the war in Iraq. This is yet another example of profoundly dishonest debate.

"Who are these people, and just what will it take to change their priorities from party to survival?"

Your first question here I will take as an honest one. You truly seem not to understand half the people in the US. I dont have the time to explain this country to you, but I do think that honest study would reward your efforts. Your second question has a simple, but two-part answer. They are not concerned with party over country - that is yet another slander on your part. And they will start worrying about survival when they sense our survival is at stake. Perhaps they are not quite as freaked out as you are. That could be a bad thing, or a good thing.

"The enemy has no clue of who they are dealing with, or what force we are willing and capable to bring to bear"

I disagree. I think they are hoping that we will bring our forces out, in do it in a clumsy, mindless, emotional manner. That would follow the classic model of guerilla warfare.

" requires the targeting of populations, that will happen.

Truly progressive thinkers would marshal around the current Bush Doctrine in an honest attempt to avoid that outcome."

First off, you are hardly the one to give progressives advice on how to think progressivly. Secondly, this entire sentiment is not geostrategic analysis. It is political posturing. Frame the issue thusly - there are only three choices. Unrestricted war leading to annihalation of populations; supporting Bush; or perhaps, electing Noam Chomsky president. Sorry, but I reject the frame.

"Let them attack us, based on the perception that we will walk away. "

I doubt that that is their expectation. They might say things like that in their propaganda, to rally their troops, but I think that they have always understood our power. They want to defeat that power even though they have very little themselves. And they are following the classic strategy used by many others in history, to achieve that.

Just an aside discussion point in this ever-so-polite-pinkie-sticking-out discussion -- in most of the world, "Left" means "Socialist" in the economic/political spectrum. I notice that in the States, "Left" seems to be synonymous with "Liberal", or at least does not have much of a socialist connection.

My understanding of political philopsphy is that it has two axes - the economic philosophy one, with socialism on the left and capitalism on the right, and the amount of state authority axis running up and down, with dictatorship on the up part and no government on the down part.

That would make the four corners (starting at the top left and going clockwise) Stalinism, Fascism, Libertarianism, and Anarchism.

So when I see references to the Left on this blog's commentary, it seems to be directed at what: Democrats? Liberals? Commies? Anti-War types? Pro-government types? The "Right" seems to refer only to the Republicans. I think.

Bob: I wonder if MJT's troll cleaning is having a pendulum effect. This is starting to sound like chat from a "Miss Manners"
forum.

Heh, yeah I had the same thought. :)

Yes, double-stu-ungood, the vocabulary is a travesty. I used to think this was unimportant, just semantics, but lately I think the language is hamstrung by this running together of "left" and "liberal". Bush is importantly liberal, especially in the spectrum of human history. Most leftists are illiberal in very important ways. There are many other examples of the hamstringing (libertarians are liberals but hate socialism, etc.).

(I hope I'm not writing out of turn or offending anyone. And I could be wrong about everything I've said, so, sorry! Am I apologizing too much? Sorry!)

MJT, I agreed wholehearedly with your article. The media were quite happy to report AQ's justification for the murder of Nick Berg, because it allowed them to keep up the drumbeat of coverage on Abu Ghraib. When Berg's murder was first reported, I commented that I hoped CBS sold a lot of laundry detergent with their 60 Minutes II coverage, because that way at least some good came out of it. I realized afterwards that was the wrong take--had the Abu Ghraib story not broken, the killers would have found another reason for killing Berg.

I am amused at the confident discussions of whom the terrorists want to win the election. Michael Turner's convinced they like the hard-liners like Sharon (and, no doubt, Bush). Of course, by this logic, Hitler undeniably preferred Churchill to Chamberlain, no?

Jim: Am I apologizing too much?

Yes!

Sorry!

You're excused.

Actually, double-plus-ungood, I don't consider the four way graph you propose to be a valid picture of political thought. Seymour Martin Lipset proposed a table with six boxes, one each for moderate & extremist movements within the Left, the Center and the Right. Fascism (which employs trappings of socialism and is grounded in the middle class, not the upper class) is actually an extremist version of the Center. An extreme Right government would be more along the lines of that in control of Saudi Arabia. Lipset's forumlation looks something like this:

Extreme Left -- e.g., Communism, USSR
Extreme Center -- e.g., Fascism, Nazi Germany
Extreme Right -- e.g., Absolutist Monarchy

Moderate Left -- e.g., Social Democrat
Moderate Center -- e.g., Liberal Democracy
Moderate Right -- e.g., Constitutional Monarchy

Tosk, I understand the point you are making as well as converns about excessive formalism. Perhaps we can view this as an ideal we pursue according to the time given

Ben,

Interesting way to graph politics. I haven't seen it before. I wouldn't dismiss double-plusses as invalid, though. They're both valid, I think, because this is all pretty inexact anyway. It's not physics. Any model that improves on the reductionist left-right axis is helpful.

I still think of fascism as right-wing totalitarianism, as opposed to right-wing authoritarianism (like Pinochet's regime) and left-wing totalitarianism (like Stalinism). Still, bringing the poor/middle/upper class angle into it is food for thought.

Where would you put Saddam's Iraq in your graph? I would still put it at Extreme Right since the Baath Party was essentially one ethnic minority and tribe ruling the rest of the country rather than the poor (Extreme Left) or middle class (Extreme Center) ruling the rest of the country.

I agree this is not an exact science -- it's just a way to help conceptualize human behavior which, by its nature, is inexact. I just happen to like Lipsit's formulation better because I think it is closer to reality (but by no means exactly there).

I would place Saddam closer to Fascism (Extreme Center) than Absolutism (Extreme Right). I say this primarily because of Saddam's revolutionary rhetoric, upsetting the traditional social heirarchy, trappings of socialism, control of the means of production of Iraq's most significant industries, etc. At the risk of sounding flippant about a very serious subject, he was sort of a Hitler-Lite.

Incidently, the key issue relating to poor-middle-upper class is the audience to whom appeal and/or the group out of which the political movement springs. For example, Nazis were extreme centrist because their movement sought to overturn the social order of the Junkers and displace that elite with a new elite. By the time Hitler had been in power for a while, though, there is no doubt that his officials numbered among the "new" upper class. A critical part of this involves whether the movement in question is "revolutionary" or "reactionary."

Not to be a "thread hog," but part of the reason I prefer the Lipsit formulation, as a conservative, is that I am tired of being called a fascist. Almost everything about fascism -- means and ends -- goes against my grains. I am appalled by almost every aspect of Nazism -- from mass murder to the requirements for racial and ideological purity to nationalization of industry, etc.

As for authoritarianism, I can sympathize with some of its ends, if not its means. I tend to be moderate in temperment (I don't care if people disagree with me, and I think the world will probably survive if my ideas are not implemented in full), so I think authoritarian regimes are generally to be avoided. Nevertheless, I can at least sympathize with attempts to preserve tradition. (Of course, I would be the first to admit that not all tradition should be preserved).

Not to be a "thread hog," but part of the reason I prefer the Lipsit formulation, as a conservative, is that I am tired of being called a fascist.

I think that labelling people on the right (or the left, as occasionally happens) as fascist simply because one disagrees with them is pretty stupid, and certainly gives the impression that the name-caller doesn't know what they're talking about. While I think I'm on record as being extremely opposed to the Iraq War 2.0, I also cringe when some in the anti-war movement portrayal of Bush as Hitler, or of US troops as Nazis. That just does everyone a disservice, cheapens the analysis, and really dumbs down the conversation.

That being said, both sides of the political spectrum have their bad examples to deal with. Kim Il Sung, anyone? Enver Hoxha? Mao? Stalin?

From "Fresh Air": "This supposed 'revenge' is nothing of the sort. There is no causal link with our actions or Israel's for that matter. It is vile, unadulterated hate-induced murder."

There's no contradiction between the two, FA. I said -- explicitly -- that our extremist enemies themselves announced to the Arab world, as a propaganda statement, that they had beheaded Berg as "revenge" for our prison outrages. Had those prison outrages not occurred, they would have had no such excuse. Since they DID occur, there are a substantial number of suckers out there in the Moslem world who will indeed admire these guys for supposedly daring to take active revenge upon the West for its supposed oppression of Moslems. Which is why they did it.

"The stupid events of Abu Ghraib are irrelevant to the larger picture, and to connect the two is either an exercise in absurd moral equivalence or meme escalation."

Really? Tell it to George Will -- or to anyone else with elementary common sense. I always detested Henry Kissinger's cute little quip that such-and-such "was worse than a crime -- it was a mistake". But Abu Ghraib and our other prison outrages were both a crime AND a mistake --and the "mistake" part is likely to end up doing far more harm both to the US and to humanity in general than the "crime" part.

Bruce M.--

Geez, don't you think a terrorist could come up with a few other creative rationales in the event the U.S. Army didn't come through with those sensationalistic photos? Israel is always a handy excuse for a beheading, as is just about anything the Great Satan does. But why be so 20th-century about it when you've got grievances that predate the existence of the United States. Osama Bin Laden mentioned in one of his last, er, public appearances that he was still pissed about the Christians reconquering Granada in 1492. Talk about holding a grudge!

Now with a memory that long, I'm not sure the terrorists really need our minor 21st-century sins against their Muslim "brothers" as a rationale for whacking off another infidel noggin.

Lookit, we were all outraged by the conduct of some of our soldiers in Abu Ghraib. They did some cruel and stupid things. But what they did was not original, nor was it unheard of in the part of the world where it happened. Does that excuse them? No. They will be punished, as they should be. Was it a public relations setback? Yes, but it will be overcome. The Iraqis will forgive us. The terrorists, however, never cared one way or the other; they still want to destroy us all.

Frankly, Bruce, I don't even see what your point is. If you want to wallow in all this crap the rest of your life, be my guest. I'm moving on--gotta pack my survival kit for the summer.

There's a war on, in case you haven't heard.

Good comment, double-plus-ungood. I agree with your sentiments about debating and with your comment about each side having its bad guys. I disagree about the war, but respect your right to hold your opinion. I just wish that everyone on both our sides would approach the debate this way.

Regarding political models (straight line, four corners, the ring theory), each of them has its uses. The straight line theory is useful in discussing most of American politics because the number of people who are not located along the line here are a very small minority (libertarians and anarchists). The four corners theory can be useful in analyzing foreign politics. And the ring theory explains how a far right-winger like Pat Buchanan can end up on the same side of many issues as Lenora Fulani, a far left-winger.

On a lighter note, I've found the following political taxonomy useful:

From pirate dwarves to ninja elves...

Under that taxonomy, I'm a ninja dwarf.

I am hoping there is some corollary to Godwin's Law that says when you invoke ninja elves, the thread is over, and you need a drink. Badly.

Finally, a discussion in which I can call upon my personal expertise regarding ninjas and elves.

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