August 17, 2005
300 Bombs Explode in Bangladesh
Islamist terrorists prove once and for all that they are not primarily motivated by legitimate grievances against "Western imperialism" or any other such nonsense. It takes nothing, nothing at all, to whip these bastards into murderous rage against even their own fellow Muslims.
At least two people have been killed and 50 others injured in a series of small bomb blasts across Bangladesh.I'm sorry to say I told you so, but I told you so.Officials say more than 300 explosions took place simultaneously in 50 cities and towns across the country including the capital Dhaka.
An outlawed Islamic group, Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh, says it carried out the attacks.
Police say that more than 50 people have been arrested in connection with the blasts.
Prime Minister Khaleda Zia condemned the attacks as "cowardly".
"The attackers are enemies of the country, people, peace, humanity and democracy," she said.
I don't know about you, but I am pretty sure Israel had something to do with it. Somebody get Sy Hersh on the case.
Posted by: Mike#3or4 at August 17, 2005 10:56 AMAt this point that Pape guy exits stage left.
Posted by: spaniard at August 17, 2005 10:59 AMSee, this just proves that what we need to do is get our troops out of Iraq, and Israel out of Palestine, and that will put a stop to terrorism.
Posted by: TallDave at August 17, 2005 11:09 AMUnfortunately, it prolly won't be "once and for all" -- but if not, it's idiots like Pape who won't change their view just because of inconvenient facts.
Thanks for noting them, and their relevance.
Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at August 17, 2005 11:17 AMI didn't know these acts of terrorism were being committed in Iraq before the invasion of Iraq and the present US occupation of Iraq.
Posted by: royoiko at August 17, 2005 11:37 AMroyoiko,
9/11 was committed before "Iraq". Bet you didn't know that.
Posted by: spaniard at August 17, 2005 11:41 AMyes, i did. i also know that the invasion of iraq by Bush Jr. had nothing to do with 911.
Posted by: royoiko at August 17, 2005 11:44 AMi also know that the invasion of iraq by Bush Jr. had nothing to do with 911.
But everything to do wth preventing the next 9/11.
Posted by: TallDave at August 17, 2005 11:48 AMroyoiko,
but if terrorism was a constant before Iraq, then why do you cite Iraq as causation?
Posted by: spaniard at August 17, 2005 11:50 AMoh yeah, i see, all the death and destruction in Iraq is helping prevent another 911. talk about wishful thinking.
Posted by: royoiko at August 17, 2005 11:54 AMActually, all the bodies in those mass graves lead me to believe a fair amount of terror was felt in Iraq pre-invasion.
I'm sure that was all because of the sanctions though, so rest assured royoiko, you can still blame it on the U.S. (and even a Bush, for that matter....)
Posted by: Mark Poling at August 17, 2005 11:56 AMspaniard:
It's simple, really. All terrorism post-Iraqi-liberation are the fault of the Iraq war (and the elections, and the new freedoms, etc.). All terrorism pre-Iraq is the fault of... um... the Crusades or something.
Also, Don Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand 20 years ago means everything Saddam did is America's fault.
Posted by: TallDave at August 17, 2005 11:56 AMall the death and destruction in Iraq is helping prevent another 911. talk about wishful thinking.
Posted by: TallDave at August 17, 2005 11:59 AMroyoiko, personally I believe promoting democracy does make another 9/11 less likely, but I could be mistaken, or there might be a more efficient way of approaching the job. I'd be more than willing to listen to other risk-reduction strategies, because this one takes long term commitment and investment in blood and treasure.
Got an alternative?
Posted by: Mark Poling at August 17, 2005 12:00 PMNope.
Ask Cindy Sheehan. Get the U.S. out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and this wouldn't have happened.
And don't just ask her.
Ask David Duke, Justin Raimondo, Juan Cole, Robert Pape, Pat Buchanan, Ken Livingstone, and Michael Scheuer.
Just don't ask Michael Moore, because, according to him, there is no terrorist threat at all.
Posted by: SoCalJustice at August 17, 2005 12:01 PMMJT: I'm sorry to say I told you so, but I told you so.
So who disagreed with you?
The point of jihadist terror is to effect regime change in MidEast nations, and to gain recruits among the politically disaffected. Pakistan, as I've said repeatedly, is probably the most dangerous nation in the region right now, as the nation, the military, the intelligence service, and the government are riddled with bin Laden fans. And five minutes after Musharraf is shot, they'll have nukes.
Posted by: double-plus-ungood at August 17, 2005 12:04 PMActually, Pape did not argue that terrorism is "caused by" America, or the invasion or Iraq, or anything like that.
What Pape wrote was that suicide terrorists have as their goal to end an occupation by a democracy.
Do you see the difference between a goal and a cause, or between all terrorists and a subset of those terrorists?
Osama bin Laden and his ilk appear to be motivated by a combination of religious extremism and desire for political power. People like him will never give up, regardless of what the US does, because of their fanaticism.
Many people have noticed that bin Laden and other leaders of these movements never actually put themselves in harm's way. Instead, they recruit young men (and sometimes women) and send them off to die. I'm in the middle of Jessica Stern's Terror in the Name of God, in which she interviews a number of terrorist leaders who consider themselves too important to go off and die (they're fighting their wars through words and recruiting others and blah blah blah). She also interviews a number of recruits, usually confused young people who find meaning and identity through these groups. Most telling, she reports on a Hamas leader who describes the ideal suicide bomber as being a youth who has courage, but few other skills. Hamas doesn't waste its time training these people; they pressure them into attacking, strap a bomb to them, and send them off. They're canon fodder.
So, imagine for a moment that Pape was not in fact saying what your strawman said, but rather what he actually wrote: that most suicide bombers have as their goal an end of an occupation by a democracy. Perhaps bin Laden was able to recruit the September 11 hijackers with arguments about the US presence in Saudi Arabia. Perhaps Hamas would have more difficulty recruiting young people if there were no Israeli troops in Gaza or the West Bank.
There would always be, of course, bin Laden. But bin Laden doesn't risk his own neck. Instead, he sends canon fodder. What if he couldn't recruits so many, or hardly any at all? Would it be worth it then to at least pursue ways of mitigating the reasons why he is able to recruit? Would it be worth it to reconsider certain policies, including our presence in Iraq?
I know it seems counterproductive...how can we kill jihadis if we leave Iraq? But what if, by leaving Iraq, there were fewer jihadis in the first place? Fewer enough that it would make fighting those left even easier, or diminishing their numbers so much that their ability to threaten us would decrease sharply? Would it be worth it then to at least consider this?
Posted by: The Commenter at August 17, 2005 12:09 PMWhat Pape wrote was that suicide terrorists have as their goal to end an occupation by a democracy.
I didnt' know Bangladesh was occupied by a democracy. I hope it is.
Posted by: spaniard at August 17, 2005 12:15 PMSpaniard,
I asked:
Do you see the difference between...all terrorists and a subset of those terrorists?"
I just checked the BBC story to which Michael linked. The terrorist attacks do not appear to be suicide attacks, based on this article at least.
I guess your answer to that question is "no".
Posted by: The Commenter at August 17, 2005 12:20 PMWould it be worth it then to at least pursue ways of mitigating the reasons why he is able to recruit? Would it be worth it to reconsider certain policies, including our presence in Iraq?
Sure. And if we want to totally end the threat, we can all convert his sect of Islam.
I was all for the idea. But I asked my girlfriend, and she said she is SO not wearing a burka just because us menfolk are too weak-willed to fight a few terrorists. So I guess that's out.
Seriously, it's a bad idea to start asking questions like "What can can we do to make the terrorists less angry at us?"
Posted by: TallDave at August 17, 2005 12:23 PMAgain, perhaps I didn't make myself entirely clear.
This has nothing to do with making terrorists less mad at us.
If we could stop doing something, at little cost to ourselves, that meant fewer people hated us and wanted to fly planes into our buildings, would it be worth doing?
Posted by: The Commenter at August 17, 2005 12:26 PMTo be absolutely clear: I was, and am, only talking about new recruits. That's why I kept talking about new recruits. Just like Pape, when he was talking about suicide terrorists, kept talking about suicide terrorists. I assume when he talked about suicide terrorists, he only meant suicide terrorists.
Posted by: The Commenter at August 17, 2005 12:28 PMI guess they're trying for an Islamic coup?
Posted by: Patricia at August 17, 2005 12:30 PMThe terrorist attacks do not appear to be suicide attacks,
Commenter,
my answer is indeed 'no' because it's irrelevant to me whether a terrorist dies with his own bomb or not. The foiled London bombs weren't suiciders. The first attack on the twin towers weren't suiciders either.
Speaking of "occupied", I've made this point before, I'll make it again. A British-born muslim isn't setting off bombs because his country is "occupied."
Re "new recruits", all wars make new recruits. Yet even those wars have to be fought. Just like all wars kill innocent civilians, and still those wars have to be fought. I'm so tired of slapping down simplistic Leftist red herrings.
Posted by: spaniard at August 17, 2005 12:36 PMIf we could stop doing something, at little cost to ourselves, that meant fewer people hated us and wanted to fly planes into our buildings, would it be worth doing?
Of course it would. That's why we send billions in foreign aid to poor countries and make every effort to respect Islam and the Koran even as we fight Islamic terrorists.
But the thing that's really going to end new recruiting is freedom and democracy, not appeasement.
Posted by: TallDave at August 17, 2005 12:36 PMSo, Spaniard, why did you even bother to bring up Pape when he's clearly talking about something different from what you're saying?
Anyway, you're right, Britian isn't occupied by anyone. Then again, radical political Muslims aren't arguing that, either. They're arguing that Britain has troops in Iraq, and that they don't like it.
Anyone else want to play the Semantics Game?
Posted by: The Commenter at August 17, 2005 12:45 PMPerhaps bin Laden was able to recruit the September 11 hijackers with arguments about the US presence in Saudi Arabia.
The US wasn't occupying Saudi Arabia. US troops were there at the request of the Saudi government.
If the US was occupying Saudi Arabia, then the US is also occupying Germany, Britain, Italy, South Korea - we have over 200,000 troops stationed in 144 countries and territories. We also have 20,000 sailors and Marines on Navy ships.
If we were to follow Pape's thesis, all of those troops would be capable of spontaneously generating suicide terrorism and all should be removed. What do you think would happen to South Korea then?
The main fault with Pape's thesis is that he assumes that the only way to deal with suicide terrorism is to run away from it. He sees it as an unstoppable weapon. Just the possibility of suicide terrorism is a pants-wetting event for Pape.
Suicide terrorism is just an update of earlier terrors, like the biplane bomber was in the 1930's. According to the Belmont ClubThe destructive capacity ascribed to the biplane bombers of the day approached that later attributed to nuclear weapons during the Cold War and so terrified politicians that it fueled the policy of appeasementWe know now that this was the wrong reponse. We should deal with the tactic of suicide bombing by working to develop effective counterattacks. That's how you win a war. Appeasement is how you lose it.
Posted by: mary at August 17, 2005 12:46 PM
Commenter asks:
"If we could stop doing something, at little cost to ourselves, that meant fewer people hated us and wanted to fly planes into our buildings, would it be worth doing?"
Sure, if that thing exists, but what is that thing? It sounds like you are heading down an isolationist road to me. You mention the fact that our troops in Saudi Arabia provided recruiting fodder for Osama. Probably, but those troops were there to prevent Saddam from running roughshod over the region. Should we have simply allowed Hussein (or whoever has the least scruples when it comes to using ruthlessness to get their way) run free? Do we simply withdraw from the world in a Buchanan-esque manner?
Also, I think the distinction you are trying to apply to Pape's writing is irrelevant. I mean maybe it would matter if our only goal was stopping sucide bombers, but we really want to stop all bombers. It doesn't matter much to me if I am annihilated by a bomb strapped to a guy's chest or one that he left in a backpack before exiting the train.
Posted by: Paul at August 17, 2005 12:47 PM"But what if, by leaving Iraq, there were fewer jihadis in the first place? Fewer enough that it would make fighting those left even easier, or diminishing their numbers so much that their ability to threaten us would decrease sharply?"
That's a nice "what if", but hardly less speculative than the Bush Doctrine, and if anything less well supported by the data. After all, Jihadi recruitment seemed to be going well prior to Iraq, and obviously prior to 9/11.
And of course, the linkage between Bangladesh and Iraq is crystal clear only in the minds of the people with an itch to blow people up.
One way, I suppose, to indirectly guesstimate if Jihadi fervor was incited by the War in Iraq would be to somehow get enrollment trends for foreigners in the madrasses of Pakistan prior to the recent expulsion. (This assumes some correlation, of course, between number of students enrolled and number of terrorists graduated. And yes, I know not every madrass student becomes a terrorist, but a lot of terrorist do seem to have treated the madrasses as finishing schools.)
Posted by: Mark Poling at August 17, 2005 12:50 PMMary, you wrote
"The main fault with Pape's thesis is that he assumes that the only way to deal with suicide terrorism is to run away from it."
Actually, no. What Pape wrote was: the majority of suicide terrorists have as their goal ending an occupation by a democracy.
This is descriptive, not prescriptive.
What he did was, and this is very simple, but he took lots of data from lots of suicide attacks, and looked for patterns. And then he described those patterns.
Pape's argument does have strategic implications, in that a large number of the terrorist "foot soldiers" fighting us in Iraq (and elsewhere) might not be doing so if we didn't have troops in Iraq.
I don't think Pape is advocating a withdrawal. Hell, I don't even advocate a withdrawal. But rather than deal with the data Pape has produced, you'd rather create a strawman and then reject the strawman. A lot of the discussion about Pape says more about you guys than it does about Pape.
Posted by: The Commenter at August 17, 2005 12:55 PMSo, Spaniard, why did you even bother to bring up Pape when he's clearly talking about something different from what you're saying?
Because Pape's distinction is illusory and irrelevant, as the foiled bombings in London illustrate. Pape's thesis is that suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective-- to compel western democracies to withdraw from muslim territory.
Who is occupying Bangladesh?
Posted by: spaniard at August 17, 2005 12:57 PMCommenter: I don't think Pape is advocating a withdrawal.
Yes, he is. Read my article. Follow the link to Pat Buchanan's filthy magazine where Pape is interviewed. He wants us to withdraw from the region completey and "secure our interests in oil" from a distance.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 17, 2005 01:04 PMNobody is occupying Bangladesh.
The explains, according to Pape, why there were no suicide attacks.
It also helps explain why, according to reports, most of the bombs were filled with saw dust rather than nails.
Spaniard,
I'm confused as to why you keep asking these questions.
Pape very clearly focused only on suicide attacks, and drew his conclusions from that specific data set. Since the attacks in Bangladesh were not suicide attacks, they are outside his data set.
You understand this, right?
Posted by: The Commenter at August 17, 2005 01:26 PMIt also helps explain why, according to reports, most of the bombs were filled with saw dust rather than nails.
Proof that it's a religion of peace?
Posted by: spaniard at August 17, 2005 01:29 PMYou understand this, right?
I understand that it doesn't make a lick of difference, just like it didn't make a lick of difference that the attack on 9/11 used suiciders but the attack in '93 didn't. It's just a "tactic", remember?
Posted by: spaniard at August 17, 2005 01:33 PMCommenter: Since the attacks in Bangladesh were not suicide attacks, they are outside his data set.
That's part of my critique of him. His data set is too small. Did you read my article?
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 17, 2005 01:39 PMPape's article is a bunch of hooey. Suicide terror is a false category. How can you equate Tamil Tigers and the 9/11 hijackers? Because they both use suicide terror? How perfectly idiotic. Their objectives are completely unrelated. Pape arrived at his conclusion of appeasement a priori, and then went looking for statistical patterns to support it.
This is a perfect example of what Lee Harris talks about in his book. We can only explain Al Quaida's motives with respect to ourselves. If only we stop doing whatever it is they don't like, they'll leave us alone. This is like saying if we only do what the serial killer tells us to do, he'll let us go free. Lee put forth a different motive for Al Quaida - to create a heroic mythology for themselves that will allow them to live with their vast inferiority vis-a-vis the west.
The Tamil Tigers are a national liberation movement. Al Quaida is not. Al Quaida, like Nazi Germany, is based on a nutcase, metaphysical ideology which can never fulfill itself, and will therefore wreak death and destruction before it is finally hunted down and destroyed. You cannot appease it.
I wouldn't say that Spaniard.
But the Bangladesh attacks do appear to suggest that either the bombers were highly incompetant in their efforts to kill their fellow countrymen (only two people died in 120 bombings) or that their intent was not to kill people (which does not fit the Al Qaeda m.o.)
My guess is that this is something of a copy-cat attack by homegrown terrorists with political agenda, who have been emboldened by world events and wish to show solidarity with similar movements in nearby Pakistan and beyond, without alienating too many people in Bangladesh, which is primarily Muslim and peaceful.
Actually, no. What Pape wrote was: the majority of suicide terrorists have as their goal ending an occupation by a democracy.
Surely that's wrong? What he actually studied was suicide bombings, not suicide terrorism, with the interesting but essentially misleading result that most such bombings were part of a war of occupation.
This is similar to studying the use of plastic explosive, finding out that most of it is used in quarries, and so concluding quarrying, not terrorism, is the real problem.
soru
Posted by: soru at August 17, 2005 04:05 PMScot: "My guess is that this is something of a copy-cat attack by homegrown terrorists with political agenda, who have been emboldened by world events and wish to show solidarity with similar movements in nearby Pakistan and beyond, without alienating too many people in Bangladesh, which is primarily Muslim and peaceful."
I think the situation in Bangladesh has been proceeding quietly under the radar for quite some time. I'm no expert on Bangladesh by any stretch (But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night - har har. Yeah, OK, last time I'll use that joke I promise) but I did read some alarming articles at faithfreedom.org a while back (the site has apparently been down all day) and in the meantime I did find:
systematic persecution of religious minorities in Bangladesh and
the destruction of Buddhism and hinduism in Bangladesh
As a poster on a previous thread pointed out to me - a little googling can be a dangerous thing and it's a point well taken. But pardon me for pointing out that this appears to be a common pattern wherever large numbers of Muslims congregate. Whenever people point out that X and X country is "largely Muslim and peaceful" - say, e.g. Turkey (98% Muslim if I recall) - pardon me if I laugh. Of course it's "largely" peaceful if the vast majority are Muslims. Islam means "peace" afterall (heh) - just don't inquire about how the place GOT TO BE majority Muslim or how peaceful things are for that shrinking minority of non-Muslims surrounded by the majority.
This is what bothers me so much about Pape. The global jihad marches relentlessly onwards and has for centuries. As others have pointed about, who the hell gives a crap about SUICIDE terrorism? The only thing that distinguishes suicide terrorism from other forms of aggression against infidels in the global jihad (including 'infidel' Muslims deemed insufficiently Islamic) is that the homicidal maniac also goes up in smoke. Good. More of these murderers ought to have the common decency to eliminate themselves. But what does that have to do with anything? Does Pape want to claim that the global Islamic jihad is strictly and everywhere manifested in response to occupation by democracies? Cause obviously it isn't. This has been going on for 1300 years. There were no liberal democracies until a short time ago. So if that's not the cause of the global Islamic jihad - what does the perpetrator's death have to do with the price of eggs in China? I don't get it.
Posted by: Caroline at August 17, 2005 04:33 PMCaroline,
I mostly agree. But do try to remember that Muslims were attacked today, and they aren't happy about it. The jihad is directed against them, too. Where "large numbers of Muslims congregate," as you put it, only a minority of them are jihadis. The rest are potential or actual victims, and that means they are potential or actual friends and allies of ours.
If these sort of attacks keep up long enough we may find that the places where "large numbers of Muslims congregate" are more pro-American than places where large numbers of Westerners congregate. Laugh if you want, but there's nothing quite like being terrorized by Islamists to make people re-think anti-Americanism.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 17, 2005 05:05 PMMJT: Where "large numbers of Muslims congregate," as you put it, only a minority of them are jihadis. The rest are potential or actual victims, and that means they are potential or actual friends and allies of ours.
Michael - you persist in thinking that a small number of Muslims are jihadis. If that is the case, then how do you explain from an historical and geographical perspective, that there ARE so many places where large numbers of Muslims congregate?
It's really that simple. Think about it. I know that we live in the 21st century and that it is incredibly difficult to step back and view ourselves as so insignificant, as though we've stepped BEYOND history in a sense, because we're so incredibly sophisticated and because of all the particularities that make up our individual stories - our incredible capacity to write everything down and tell our stories about the nice people we meet along the way and so on, but if you simply take the bird's eye view of things, from the point of view of our complete and utter individual lack of significance in the face of thoussands of years of human history - then you will be forced to recognize that there is a global jihad against non-Muslims. The fact that some Muslims are incidental casualties along the way does not alter that central fact. Those imperfect Muslims may make temporary alliances with infidels but I don't think you can possibly entertain the idea that they have any intention of resisting the global jihad the way infidels would be motivated to do. Because if that were the case - if they thought like you do - then the global jihad couldn't possibly have converted so many people to Islam across the globe and over the centuries and still be continuing today at such a ferocious pace.
Posted by: Caroline at August 17, 2005 05:34 PMMJT,
You say that only a small number of Muslims are jihadis. That is true, but that ignores the fact that a significant minority of Muslims support/agree with that small number of jihadists.
Okay, this just about makes me want to cry...
Go to cnn.com and try to find information on this. It isn't even on their main page.
Go to nytimes.com and do the same. All you'll find is a small headline under the international section with the words "dozens of small bombs" in it.
No need to devote any attention to this, I guess. The leaflets found at all the blast scenes read, "There should not be any other laws except Allah's...it's a pity that Allah's rules are not implemented," but that's got nothing to do with America, right?
WILL WE NEVER FUCKING LEARN?!
Posted by: Grant McEntire at August 17, 2005 05:49 PMAnd what is it here with people always trying to turn every subject into a polemic on the merits of Islam?! Seriously!
Who the hell cares. This isn't a fucking holy war we're trying to fight. It's a war against totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is the enemy. Islam is just the excuse. And you know what? Even if a majority of Muslims do ideologically agree with the enemy, I very much doubt they like being terrorized and blown up on a daily basis.
Most the arguments you guys get into here make me want to pull my hair out. Liberalism is under assult. Religious fundamentalism is the culprit. It's not that goddamned complicated.
Posted by: Grant McEntire at August 17, 2005 06:01 PMbut that's got nothing to do with America, right?
ah, no, it doesn't have anything to do with America.
Posted by: spaniard at August 17, 2005 06:02 PMHi Michael,
Ok so slowly repeat after me:
They are not angry, they are not mad (in an emotional sense), they are not in a rage.
Repeat over and over please....
People who pursue bombings like this believe that they are following a superior philosophy. They need to be dealt with generally the way you want to deal with them, but its not emotional (for them).
People who ask "Why are they mad at us or others?" are asking an irrelevant question.
Repeat again. They are not mad, they are not angry, they are not in a rage.
James Becker
Posted by: James at August 17, 2005 06:07 PMLiberalism is under assult.
Then start acting like it.
Posted by: spaniard at August 17, 2005 06:08 PMexhelodrvr: "You say that only a small number of Muslims are jihadis. That is true, but that ignores the fact that a significant minority of Muslims support/agree with that small number of jihadists."
It is a basic miconception to separate out the 2. The passive Muslims are also jihadis. They're just not actively violent. But they believe in the goal of spreading Islam. Jihad is a fundamental Muslim tenet. SPREAD ISLAM. Sure, maybe only a few are actively violentat times but others convert people through Da'wa (using a whole lot of taqiyyah about what Islam is really about, and then see what happens to you when you figure it out and try to get out!), or by outpopulating the non-Muslims (demographic jihad, as is happening in Europe right now). Eventually, when their demographic numbers are sufficient, they will presumably use democratic elections to advance the jihad. But it is certainly fool-hardy to imagine that once the infidels are in the minority, a bunch of Muslims will come and lay their lives on the line to defend them against violence. Sorry, but it ain't gonna happen. It takes a hell of a lot of courage to do something like that. Didn't you see Hotel Rwanda? Remember how the main character's Hutu co-worker sold him out? Hell, half the non-Muslims in the world right now are already prepared to sell out the Jews. It's so easy to focus on every one of their transgressions while ignoring the larger picture of the jihad which is determined to wipe them out. No - there's not a whole lot of courage in the world, and if you expect that courage to come in the form of Muslims defending minority infidels against the jihad, then you're gonna get a rude awakening. It's simple human nature. I'm not even sure we can blame the Muslims. They know what they believe in after all. I am inclined to think that more of the blame should rest with ourselves and our own self-delusions and cowardice. Hell - this isn't even polite conversation. It's rude to discuss. That's how pathetic we are.
Posted by: Caroline at August 17, 2005 06:10 PMIt's got everything to do with America, Spaniard. The goal of the jihadists is to implement totalitarian Islamic law. Everywhere. In Bangladesh. In Boston.
Though I thought 9/11 made it perfectly clear, let me spell it out for you: We're on their hitlist, too.
Posted by: Grant McEntire at August 17, 2005 06:11 PMSpaniard...
Fine. I'll do my best to convince my fellow liberals we're under assult. You do your best to convince your fellow conservatives that:
a) "Christianizing" them is not the answer.
and
b) Promoting democracy in alot of these places at the expense of liberal rights and freedoms is probably not the best idea.
...and we'll call it even.
Posted by: Grant McEntire at August 17, 2005 06:17 PMIt's got everything to do with America, Spaniard. The goal of the jihadists is to implement totalitarian Islamic law. Everywhere. In Bangladesh. In Boston.
you got no argument from me. Now go tell your buddies that.
But I'm not sure what you mean by "christianizing" them, though I bet that would actually help.
Posted by: spaniard at August 17, 2005 06:36 PMCaroline: The passive Muslims are also jihadis.
Oh, please.
Is Omar at the "Iraq the Model" blog a jihadi? Give me a break!
Some liberals have a hard time knowing an enemy when they see one. Some conservatives have a hard time knowing a friend when they see one.
Christ, I don't know why I even bother sometimes.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 17, 2005 07:09 PMI didn't know these acts of terrorism were being committed in Iraq before the invasion of Iraq and the present US occupation of Iraq.
Posted by royoiko at August 17, 2005 11:37 AM
************************************************
Well DUH! of COURSE not, that is where they had a training camp, complete with jet airliner to practice hijacking. We took that, and some other nice toys away from them, only natural they should be a little peeved that their sanctuary got invaded.
oh yeah, i see, all the death and destruction in Iraq is helping prevent another 911. talk about wishful thinking.
Posted by royoiko at August 17, 2005 11:54 AM
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Removing sanctuaries and training facilities will not "prevent" terrorism, just makes it harder, instead of making it easier like some seem to want. Too bad your side is getting kicked around.
Every society produces its Carolines. Them that wish to generalize their enemy list in the broadest terms. Thats how you end up with people who feel solemnly justified in murdering innocents. Thats how so many of the worlds great outrages and tradgedies get committed. They're all guilty, them blacks, them jews, them muslims, them infidels etc. etc. And you wimps who try to separate them out, you are pathetic.
Profoundly revolting, in the deepest sense.
Posted by: Observer at August 17, 2005 07:31 PMBut what if, by leaving Iraq, there were fewer jihadis in the first place? Fewer enough that it would make fighting those left even easier, or diminishing their numbers so much that their ability to threaten us would decrease sharply? Would it be worth it then to at least consider this?
Posted by The Commenter at August 17, 2005 12:09 PM
*************************************************
They want all infidels out of the Waqf Al Andalus too, think we should accomadate them?
Michael - of course the Fadhil brothers are not jihadis. And if we all put our heads together, no doubt we could collectively come up with another million names. But it's not enough. If Iraq descends into civil war, I will lend my support in any way I can to bringing them here - to the U.S. - some of the other Iraqi bloggers too, who have so courageously risked their lives in support of our efforts to bring liberal democracy to Iraq.
"Christ, I don't know why I even bother sometimes."
I know the feeling. But at least you get to come off as the good guy while I get to come off as a total piece of shit. What - you think I enjoy it?. You know you can show me the door anytime you like. And don't think I haven't been tempted to walk out of it voluntarily anyway and spare you the hassle, not because of you obviously, but because this whole fucking thing totally sucks and I cannot help myself from pointing out that there is a very strong possibility that Islam itself is the problem. And who the hell wants to honestly confront that possibility or deal with the hostile reactions of other people when the topic is even broached. Noone. Death by politeness. I predict that's how the west will go down in the end.
Posted by: Caroline at August 17, 2005 07:38 PMYou people haven't linked this to Bush yet?
C'mon!
It's like your heart isn't in it anymore.
Cue Capt. Kirk:
"RRRRROOOOOOOOOVE!!!!"
Never mind. After reading Observer's comment I'll just let myself out the fucking door.
Posted by: Caroline at August 17, 2005 07:54 PMMichael, I think Caroline's point is there aren't enough Omars.
What is "beyond the pale" for a culture, I think, is important. Our culture puts things like driving over crosses labeled with dead soldiers' names beyond the pale, and I guess that's a good thing.
When Al Jezera et. al. (fer god's sake, the Beeb) start treating the "insurgents" who bomb Mosques as beyond the pale, I'll believe we're making progress. Until then, I think Caroline's doubts are healthy, all-in-all.
Posted by: Mark Poling at August 17, 2005 08:07 PMAnd when did fundamentalist Islamists first murder Muslims who were not sufficiently "correct" in their interpretation or practice of Islam? According to the New York Times of yesterday, fundamentalist North African (Berber) Muslims sacked Medina Azahara in CE 1010 because Cordovan Islam was too "modern." Leif Ericson had just found America and in 450 or so years Columbus would re-find it. Over 300 years after that the United States became a nation. Maybe the radical Berbers were REALLY PRESCIENT and already hated what they knew would be a future "pro-Zionist" United States policy supported by a Christian Spain.
Posted by: Tom Roland at August 17, 2005 08:21 PMCaroline: Michael - of course the Fadhil brothers are not jihadis. And if we all put our heads together, no doubt we could collectively come up with another million names. But it's not enough.
Like I've said before, go visit a Muslim country sometime. You'll find plenty of Omars and proto-Omars with ease, just as it was easy to find anti-Communists inside the Soviet Union. This is especially true in Kurdistan and Iran. I'll bet it's true today in Bangladesh, too.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 17, 2005 08:42 PMThey're just not actively violent. But they believe in the goal of spreading Islam.
Caroline,
but a jihadi is violent, that's the difference. And folks are welcome to try and spread their religion through peaceful means because it's a free country. It's the marketplace of ideas, remember? That's the American way (or at least until the ACLU decided to hijack the marketplace of ideas through the court system).
Posted by: spaniard at August 17, 2005 08:49 PMTotten writes: "It takes nothing, nothing at all, to whip these bastards into murderous rage against even their own fellow Muslims."
Actually, it was a lot more than nothing. There was incitement, and I think we should feel encouraged by the nature of the incitement.
Bangladesh has been quietly turning into yet another inspiring textbook case of a mostly-muslim nation traversing the rocky territory from typical corrupt developing-country rule to something like reason, moderation and relatively secular government. Another 95%+ Islamic nation, Indonesia, has been doing much the same, if not quite as quietly (if anything, dangerously overstating its successes), and I take encouragement in this. The largest single mostly-muslim country is also one of the world's largest liberal democracies, even if it's not a liberal democracy that's functioning very well yet, one that may well stumble and backslide in its climb. It's the kind of good news that doesn't travel very fast, especially in America, where the average citizen probably isn't too sure of the difference between Indonesia and India, and who might read story Totten notes, and wonder if Bangledesh isn't somewhere in sub-Sahara Africa.
"Nothing at all"? To diehard ultraconservative Islamists, the ongoing liberalization and modernization of Bangladesh IS an incitement. 300 bombs going off almost simultaneously is, at best, proof only that somebody in Bangladesh is pretty well organized. It is NOT proof that this act will have much political traction with devout muslim Bangladeshis on the street, however. I predict that Bangladeshis -- even the more devout among them -- will react to it with revulsion, and that any aboveground radical Islamist political tendencies in Bangladesh will have trouble recovering full political standing no matter how many public denunciations of these attacks they issue.
As for how Pape's analysis applies to this incident: as others have already pointed out, it doesn't. This wasn't suicide bombing. It was hardly even a serious bombing (two killed out of 300 explosions, one of the hapless victims being a boy who picked up one of the tiny improvised devices, none of which had much firepower). Before you go off half-cocked with a "See? SEE? Pape is wrong!", make sure you you know what Pape actually said. For his theory of terrorism, he's saying something very specific. He's also drawing a distinct foreign policy conclusion from (1) his specific theory, and (2) the supposed desideratum of reducing America's profile as a target of suicidal terror. You can draw a different conclusion if you assume that absorbing the occasional suicidal terror attack is simply the price of what you regard as a more positive, engaged policy, without disagreeing at all with Pape's theory of suicide bombing. (That's an alternative position I might respect as courageous and principled, even if I think it might also fall down on practical grounds in specific political circumstances.) If you say "Pape is wrong because his reactionary, cynical, paleoconservative-leaning foreign policy recommendation is wrong," you're missing the excellent theory which forms only one of two bases for his policy conclusion.
Caroline writes: "The only thing that distinguishes suicide terrorism from other forms of aggression against infidels in the global jihad (including 'infidel' Muslims deemed insufficiently Islamic) is that the homicidal maniac also goes up in smoke. Good. More of these murderers ought to have the common decency to eliminate themselves."
Must beg to differ. We'd all be better off if suicide bomber terrorism ended -- except, of course, those behind the movements that rely on it so heavily.
There are at least two huge differences between bombing and living to see the smoke versus going up in your own smoke. One is the propaganda value for those who might sympathize with the cause. Who can doubt the sincerity of the "homicidal maniac"? (Actually, sometimes a meek young female college student who, until the minute of her death, seemed indistinguishable from any of their fellow students, as in the case of Palestinian who blew herself up in Christian Arab Israeli restaurant popular with Jewish Israelis, last year in Tel Aviv.)
The other point of propaganda value in suicide bombing is what might be called "group auto-demonization". If a seemingly normal person of another identifiable grouping could literally be the transport system for a bomb, you look at that kind of person quite differently -- especially if you are standing next to him or her. It's almost impossible not to. (I felt essentially no fear of Arabs until after 9/11, and it's taken me quite a while to get back to what I think of as normal.) Alien-human-as-bomb tends to decrease sympathy (if there is any in the first place) for the alien group, on the part of those who have been targeted. However, for the political groups who employ suicide bombing as a strategy, that decrease in sympathy works. After all, the more Israeli Jews who come to fear muslim Arabs, the worse for all Arabs in Israel, and the more Arab Israelis will feel that the Palestinian cause might be the more just one after all. Likewise, Tamils who might have lived peaceably in the southern areas of Sri Lanka will abreact (understandably) to phobic treatment of them by other Ceylonese citizens, might finally emigrate north, and/or might become Tamil nationalist/Marxist bomb-fodder themselves.
These Bangladesh bombings have been called "cowardly". That, they most definitely were. However, no suicide bomber is a coward. Depraved? Maniacal? Evil? Yeah, well, whatever. At some point, however, piling on the epithets transgresses reason, and when we transgress reason, we start to resemble what we most fear. Whatever you might think of suicide bombing, you have to admit: it still takes courage to do something like that. And convictions. And that courage and those convictions are going to inspire some admiration among those who might be predisposed to the cause, and will also inspire greater fear among those in the target group. To political movements using suicide bombers, these two reactions are of a piece, they work together synergistically toward the same political end.
If you can't work all this out for yourself, if you continue to respond phobically to it all, then ... well, guess what? You're part of the problem. You're part of the reaction that the terror sponsors have calculated works FOR their purposes. And why would you want to be led down THAT road?
Here's a little quiz question for you all. You're in a crowd of people in some Mideast nation. Too late to do anything about it, you see a teenager next to you open his jacket to reveal explosives packed into a vest and start to pull the cord that will send him up in smoke and turn everyone within yards around him (including you) into hamburger. Do you (1) frantically struggle to put as many other living human bodies between you and the explosion as you can, or do you (2) throw yourself on top of the suicide bomber in hopes of sparing as many innocent lives as you can, even it it vastly increases the chance that your body will account for about half the human hamburger?
I don't think it's given to everyone to realistically answer with #2. In the moment, who knows how God really divides us up? Maybe many who would honestly answer with #1 are really in category #2, and many who would boldly put themselves in category #2 are really answer #1 types. This is why my own answer is, "I couldn't honestly say."
But let's say your answer is #2. Or even that you THINK you might have it in you to react that way.
Now ask yourself this: are you really absolutely sure that if you'd grown up as that teenager had grown up, if you had been subjected to the same influences, that you yourself wouldn't be very susceptible to being recruited into wearing that very same explosive vest? Are you sure that your relatively greater willingness to sacrifice your own life couldn't have been perverted by the kinds of causes to which suicide bombers are recruited? If you are the kind of more-inherently altruistic person who would sacrifice his or her own life for the benefit of people you don't even know, what makes you so sure that your distinct, innate tendencies toward hatred couldn't also be stoked to make you suicidal bomb-fodder as well?
With questions like these, I'm with the truly Christian point of view. "Hate the sin, love the sinner." To which I might add, "There, but for the grace of God, go I." To take any other point of view is, I think, to choose other stances that ultimately dehumanize suicide bombers and those in sympathy with their chosen causes, and to make those choices in a way that actually works, politically, for the sponsors of the terror. And why would ANYONE want to go down THAT road?
Posted by: Truly Mindless Moron at August 17, 2005 09:32 PMNow ask yourself this: are you really absolutely sure that if you'd grown up as that teenager had grown up, if you had been subjected to the same influences, that you yourself wouldn't be very susceptible to being recruited into wearing that very same explosive vest?
omg. This is parody, right? PLEASE tell me this is parody. Somebody, clue me in here before I go bananas.
Posted by: spaniard at August 17, 2005 10:05 PMI knew Commenter would figure a way to blame it on the Jews.
Spaniard, it's beyond parody, especially the part where the guy describes suicide bombers as "altruistic". Then again, he did sign himself as "Truly Mindless Moron".
Posted by: Gary Rosen at August 18, 2005 12:26 AMSpaniard,
You have already gone bananas, a long time ago.
The only way you are going to convince some people that we cannot appease our way out of this would be to give in to the basic demands, i.e. Iraq, Afghanistan, Jews into the sea, which some people can somehow rationalize as reasonable, and then wait for the other shoes to drop. Especially when they demand something that is a cherished Left wing cause like: return East Timor to Indonesia.
Women's and Gay rights will not cut it unless they are referring to those rights in the USA - then you might get a little concern.
Posted by: Aaron at August 18, 2005 02:35 AMTM Moron (really Commenter?) is at least correct in this: suicide killers are not cowards. Willingness to die for one's belief is usually the strongest evidence of conviction; and so many people have so many doubts about so many things that conviction, and sincerity, are prized and respected. (George Burns on acting: "If you can fake sincerity, you've got it made.")
Your nation-state; your religion; your Great Leader -- what is worth dying for? And there is a big difference between "risking death", like so many US torpedo planes at Midway (4 of 30 survivors in one group?) (or Luke Skywalkers' fellow rebels against the Death Star), and seeking death like the Japanese Kamikaze. There's a big difference in Christian oriented Western Civilization. But perhaps not so much in Japan; nor in Islam.
Michael, I'm pretty sure there were a LOT of S. Vietnamese type Omars, until the US left and let the N. Viet commies murder them. By the thousands and hundreds of thousands; and Pol Pot decided anybody who had ever talked to any foreigner might be one, so ... 2 million murders.
How many Tutsi "Omars" were there, before they were murdered?
Observer, you say: "Profoundly revolting, in the deepest sense." about, and against, good Americans who generalize. Implying you would be against demonizing the N. Vietnamese, and thereby fighting to win ... implying you support the US leaving, and the commies winning, and their genocide and their murders.
What's revolting is not looking more honestly at the likely alternative policies, and their likely outcomes.
(Caroline, don't go!)
Demonizing might well be unfair. But the question should be, does it increase or decrease the murders? (or just the deaths? Are 2 thousand soldiers fighting and dying less bad than 2 thousand unarmed civilians being murdered by the non-Christian local totalitarians?)
Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at August 18, 2005 04:58 AMSpaniard, You have already gone bananas, a long time ago.
Because you people have driven me bananas, and the truly mindless moron is perfect example. Moron, if that wasn't parody then you're f-ing nuts. I knew reading your post that after all the "terrorists aren't cowards" bit, we'd get to your real point-- we have to "understand" the terrorists. boo hoo hoo!!!! Moron.
In answer to your question, who gives a flying f-ck if I, or you, or joe blow would become a suicide bomber too if "subjected to the same influences". The day I get recruited to be a suicide bomber is the day I hope some rational warmonger puts six bullets in my head and puts me out of everybody's misery. If instead I get some blubbering panty waste Liberal like you trying to "understand me" I hope I'll have the good sense to give you a big fat hug of gratitude just before I pull the chord and make hamburger of both of you.
Posted by: spaniard at August 18, 2005 05:14 AMSo far, by people commenting on this blog, I've been accused of being an Iranian, of being Double Plus Ungood, I think of being the squirrel guy, and now TM Moron.
Who is he? I don't know! Is that him over there? He could be anywhere! Or anyone! The Commenter, Master of Disguise...
Posted by: The Commenter at August 18, 2005 05:35 AMHey, you know how it is: you all look alike...
(Except for the fuzzy-tailed guy...)
Posted by: Mark Poling at August 18, 2005 06:41 AMIt occurred to me that the reason the Bangladesh bombs were filled with dust is that they were a rehearsal for the real event. Where will the real event occur?
I agree somewhat with Caroline that large numbers of people are in sympathy with jihad, but I think the fervor has reached its crest. Reminded me of a story I heard: a WWII soldier tells of being friends with the Japanese shopkeepers in Manila before the war. One day the shopkeepers were chatting as normal; the next day they showed up in uniforms with rifles and bayonets to turn against their "friends." They were swept away by ideology.
If nothing else, this war brings out the jihadis' true nature. Jihad, or fighting for a divine emperor, sounds exciting on paper but gets awfully bloody once it begins. Winning in Iraq, and consensual government, will destroy the movement.
Posted by: Patricia at August 18, 2005 08:14 AMIf you are the kind of more-inherently altruistic person who would sacrifice his or her own life for the benefit of people you don't even know, what makes you so sure that your distinct, innate tendencies toward hatred couldn't also be stoked to make you suicidal bomb-fodder as well?
Do you remember where the phrase "going postal" came from? Middle-class losers would walk into an office fully armed, they'd murder a few of their unarmed co-workers and then they'd blow their own brains out. Some of these homicidal morons worked for the post office, so post office workers were forever tarred by the association.
Why didn't the Left join together to sing the praises of these brave martyrs? Why didn't Bill Maher tell us that they were more courageous than American soliders? Why aren't you telling us to respect, nay, love these sinners, because they're oh, so courageous.
Oh, now I remember. People who went postal weren't anti-Bush. They were pretty apolitical. But if they were anti-Bush, they would have been Leftist heroes. If flesh eating viruses were anti-Bush, they'd be Leftist heroes.
Islamist terrorists share a lot in common with the 'gone postal' type - they're middle class losers who hate themselves and want to die. Like the 'gone postal' types, they're not motivated by altruism, they're motivated by hate.
Here's a fun fact that might surprise you - all murderers are motivated by rage and hate. Homicide is not a form of altrusim.
If this fact surprises you, then I can understand why you call yourself a moron. But I can't figure out how you've reached the point where you can read and write. Is your nurse typing this out for you?
In any case, the only difference betwen the two groups is that the Islamists are trained and supported by millions of dollars in Saudi and Iranian oil money. These supporters are the weakest link in the terrorist chain, and they would be our easiest targets, if we were fighting terrrorism.
Posted by: mary at August 18, 2005 08:41 AMI dont find your points convincing Mary. First off, hate for what you percieve as your enemy is not inconsistent with performing altruistic acts.
Perhaps the word altruism is used in different contexts. My own experience with the word comes from the world of sociobiology, and human and animal behavior. It refers to acts done for the benefit of others with no immediate benefit for the actor, or even negative consequences for the actor. The "others" - those who benefit, does not equate to "all mankind", or every other living creature. In fact, the overwhelming majority of cases of altruistic behavior are done for the benefit of ones genetic kin, ones family, or ones social group - ones tribe. Given that most of life is competitive, advancing the intersts of ones tribe is often to the detriment of other tribes, or other groups with which your group is competing.
Hate is a pretty broad category. The term is often used in our political discussions when referring to social deviants who hate broad groups of people, and do nasty things, or oppress them for what we observers would consider no good reason. But on an individual level, people have hate-feelings all the time, and many of those feelings are not surprising or remarkable. If you are a soldier, even an American soldier, out in the field, fighting a canny and viscous enemy, you might feel hatred to those enemies. Along with many other feelings. Nothing remarkable or wrong about that. It doesnt delegitamize the cause you are fighting for. Or legitimize it either.
The terrorist might feel hate, but to insist that that is all they are about is to underestimate ones enemy - and that is never a very smart thing to do. All of the evidence that we have makes it very clear, I think, that there is a hell of a lot more going on with these people then some simple blind hatred. They have what they see as a positive agenda. You cant go on and on about their ambitions regarding a global caliphate and the imposition of their sacred law, and then pretend that nothing motivates them except hate. That is absurd.
And also dangerous. The manner in which you concieve of your enemy is pretty determinate of how you will go about fighting them. An enemy that is defined in starkly simplistic terms, as a hater, pure and simple, leads to a strategy of simply killing as many of them as possible. What else can one do? How do you cure pure hatred?
Fortunatly, wiser heads, who try to "understand" the world they live in, can see pretty clearly the ideological and religous principles that are motivating the terrorist, and can thus address the real problem. People can learn and adopt new ideologies, and be set on a better course - happens all the time. We have hundreds of millions of people raised on a commie ideology in China who are now becoming our fiercest captialist competitors. We have millions of people in our own country who were raised to see the world in a racist paradigm who now have let that go and embraced real equality. The real battle is not over the binLadens of the world - the leaders - they should be simply eliminated. The real struggle is over the masses of people who could get sucked up in his worldview, or in ours. If you intend to kill those people, they and their kin will end up in his camp.
Based on experience, I better repeat that point. The terrorist leaders wont be persuaded - they need to be fought and killed. Their potential recruits however need to be our recruits. And some of them may be hating us right now, but that doesnt mean that hatred is what they are all about.
I dont know what comes first with you, or people who think like you. The sincere belief that the enemy are cartoon figure haters - with the strategy of kiling them all being deduced from that. Or a visceral urge to kill them all comes first and the definition of their motivation being trotted out as a justification.
(Maybe thats unfair to you personally Mary, one tends, in these discussions to address a general sense coming from a certain direction - I cant recall exactly what positions you have taken on all these issues).
Posted by: Observer at August 18, 2005 09:37 AM... until the US left and let the N. Viet commies murder them. By the thousands and hundreds of thousands; and Pol Pot decided anybody who had ever talked to any foreigner might be one, so ... 2 million murders.
Where to start.
First of all, reports of mass killings in Vietnam after the war are simply not true. You are referring to Cambodia. Pol Pot was not Vietnamese, he was Cambodian.
They're all Commies right? Yes, and the Vietnamese were so tight with their Commie brother to the west, the first thing they did after the U.S. pullout was to invade Cambodia and go after the China-backed Pol Pot. And it wasn't for a pat on the back.
Also, Pol Pot's rise to power came largely as a result of Western colonialism and the mass recruits he gained after the U.S. bombing campaign in Cambodia.
And what about China, Vietnam's so-called Communist brothers to the north? They seized on the U.S. pullout and invaded Vietnam.
So much for the Red Horde.
My point is that this kind of "clumping" of disparate groups into one coordinated mass may sound sexy-scary. And it's good for getting people worked up, selling weapons and launching wars.
But it also leads to blindness, paranoia and ultimately failure.
Observer - you seem to be very angry with me for "underestimating" the altruistic goals of mass murderers.
Why don't you tell me how you think we can placate this enemy. Do you believe that terrorists are equivalent to American soldiers? Who are the bombers trying to help? What American policies make them so homicidal (in a perfectly altruistic way, of course)?
Posted by: mary at August 18, 2005 09:51 AMThe essential difference is not religion, but state tolerance of religious fascism. For instance, we routinely get ant-religious lyrics like this in popular music, mostly to yawns:
So Lord I see you grinnin
Must be grand always winnin
How proud are you being able
To gather faith from fable
Meanwhile, religious nuts in Iran issue fatwas calling for Salman Rushdie's murder. If a church anywhere in the West did that, they'd be charged with incitement to murder.
This is why freedom and democracy are so important: there are religious nuts in every faith. But a free and democratic gov't will tend to restrain them. Tyrannies like Saudi Arabia and Iraq tend to buy them off or use them against other states instead; in the case of the Taliban and Iran, the religious nuts are the gov't.
Posted by: TallDave at August 18, 2005 10:38 AMThe sincere belief that the enemy are cartoon figure haters
Is there some proof they aren't?
Jesus Christ, these people are sawing off heads and massacring civilians with the goal of creating a worldwide religious fasist regime. How much more evil do they have to be cartoonishly evil?
Posted by: TallDave at August 18, 2005 10:43 AMHeavily waxed handlebar mustaches, TD. Also, it would help if they were of Scottish/Irish or German descent, and spoke with Appalachian accents.
Posted by: Mark Poling at August 18, 2005 10:59 AMFirst of all, reports of mass killings in Vietnam after the war are simply not true.
Actually they are true. But the number of innocents genocided was rather modest for an atheistic Leftist government-- only 1.7 million.
http://www.vietpage.com/archive_news/politics/2002/Feb/15/0060.html
Posted by: spaniard at August 18, 2005 11:09 AMSpaniard,
When I wrote the words "after the war" I was referring to the period of time after the war.
According to your link the number of people killed in Vietnam in that "after the war" period was "perhaps 95,000 dead".
Perhaps maybe. Perhaps not.
Most reasonable accounts put the number of dead in this period at around 10,000 which doesn't exactly qualify as genocide. Unless you conflate that number with the 2 million Cambodians killed by Vietnam's enemy, Pol Pot.
But why cook the statistics?
Jesus Christ, these people are sawing off heads and massacring civilians with the goal of creating a worldwide religious fasist regime. How much more evil do they have to be cartoonishly evil?
TallDave,
First off, I am not jesus christ.
Will there ever come a time when you become interested in having a grown up conversation, as opposed to just slinging propaganda jibes?
I was not discussing evil. I was not calling the representations of them as "cartoonishly evil", as opposed to real-live evil. I said that some people here were representing them as cartoonish in the sense of being single-dimensioned characters whose only motivation is pure hatred.
Even you seem to recognize that they have a goal - to create a worldwide religous order. Clearly they have other motivations beside hate. In fact, hate is clearly rather derivative. Like many people who passionatly desire some outcome, they hate those who stand in the way of its realization. They are not single-dimension haters. That doesnt make them any less evil.
Is this too complicated for you?
Spaniard,
How many non-combatant Vietnamese did the US kill?
Scot,
my numbers are less cooked than your claim that stories of mass murder in Vietnam aren't true.
AFTER the war "only" 653,000 were genocided by the commies:
Vietnamese concentration camps, called "re-education camps," left perhaps 95,000 people dead. Deportations to "new economic zones" left some 48,000 people dead. The number of people simply rounded up and shot for whatever reason has been estimated at 100,000, with much higher estimates coming from various sources.
Perhaps the best way to gauge the true nature of the murderous peace in Vietnam is the vast number of people who, having tolerated decades of war, risked their lives to flee the unmitigated brutality of communist rule. The "boat people," refugees who attempted to escape by sea, numbered in the millions. An estimated 500,000 of these people drowned trying to escape.
I dare you to try to minimize that after all the bullcrap we've endured from the Left about innocent casualties in Iraq-- a TRIFLE in comparison.
Posted by: spaniard at August 18, 2005 12:06 PMHow many non-combatant Vietnamese did the US kill?
After the war? ZERO
Posted by: spaniard at August 18, 2005 12:11 PMZERO
duh.
How about during the war? Or does that not count? Killing innocent people is OK if it takes place place in the context of a larger political struggle. Oh wait, they were in a larger political struggle too. Maybe it just doesnt count if WE were doing it, eh?
Bottom line. Our little noble adventure there caused the death of two or three MILLION people who would not have died otherwise.
Posted by: at August 18, 2005 12:31 PMand Scot, I wasn't trying to cook the numbers, or else I wouldn't have given you my link. I was just careless, like you were in your comment about no mass murder after the war.
Posted by: spaniard at August 18, 2005 12:47 PMHow about during the war? Or does that not count?
Actually, no. It doesn't count.
Posted by: spaniard at August 18, 2005 12:50 PMSpaniard,
You are still missing my point.
By "cooked" I was referring to the conflation of Vietnamese killed by North Vietnam after the Vietnam War with the number of Cambodians killed by Pol Pot in the Cambodian civil war.
The number taken from this conflation is a statistic which is often cited by American conservatives as a consequence of the U.S. pullout.
However, as the U.S. was not in Cambodia (officially) it could not have stopped the slaughter of innocents at the hands of Pol Pot. So to blame the 2 million dead in the Killing Fields as a consequence of the U.S. withdrawl in southern Vietnam is simply misleading.
Mind you, this statitical conflation is a separate point from the number of after-war Vietnamese killed that you have cited (or plucked from the internet)which in itself is highly debatable.
About certain reactions to my recent post, Observer writes: "Perhaps the word altruism is used in different contexts. My own experience with the word comes from the world of sociobiology, and human and animal behavior. It refers to acts done for the benefit of others with no immediate benefit for the actor, or even negative consequences for the actor."
Even sharper, and more to the point:
"The "others" - those who benefit, does not equate to "all mankind", or every other living creature. In fact, the overwhelming majority of cases of altruistic behavior are done for the benefit of ones genetic kin, ones family, or ones social group - ones tribe. Given that most of life is competitive, advancing the intersts of ones tribe is often to the detriment of other tribes, or other groups with which your group is competing."
Observer gets the sense in which I was using the word altruistic EXACTLY RIGHT. Yow. My faith in the intelligence of human beings is starting to register a pulse again.
Hypothetical scenario: you're a PT boat captain in the Pacific theater. One day in the 1925, your CO gathers hundreds of PT boat captains you together and makes the following announcement.
"Our government has developed a secret bomb that can destroy entire cities. Unfortunately, their attempts to reduce its size to the point where it can be carried by a bomber aircraft have failed, sharply reducing the range of application and general efectiveness. We are falling back on our earlier plan -- to continue the regular firebombing of Japanese cities using convential incendiaries, while delivering this particular bomb by boat into the harbors of coastal cities, where we hope it will do at least a significant fraction of the job. The problem is, unfortunately, that if you undertake this mission, you won't make it back. Do I have any volunteers?"
[Historical note: this was a contingency that was actually planned out at one point in WW II.]
Did you mentally raise your hand? Well, congratulations -- you've got what it takes to be a suicide bomber terrorist.
You're devoted to your cause, you are certain that it's right, you're willing to take the lives of noncombatants not just incidentally ("collateral damage") but as the primary targets, and you're capable of facing the prospect of certain death. That's the kind of altruistic person you are.
There's no point in spluttering something about how WW II was a "just war", that the Japanese were in the wrong, they sneak-attacked Pearl Harbor, raped Nanjing, blah blah blah. None of the Japanese children that got roasted in napalm in the firebombings against Japan (of which the atomic bombings were only a natural continuation) were responsible for bombing Pearl Harbor or raping Nanjing. Terror bombing of Japan was the accepted warfighting policy at that point, and if it had turned out that the A-bombs could only have been delivered in a suicide mission, we'd be honoring the inevitable volunteers today, as heroes, for their altruism, for their willingness to snuff out their own young lives in the name of some greater good. But also, of course, for their willingness to snuff out other young lives, from those still in the womb on up to those just below Japanese Army draft age. Among other noncombatants. Many others, as it turned out. Hundreds of thousands of them in fact.
If you mentally raised you hand in answer to my trick question, you're not a monster. If you didn't, you're not necessarily a saint. Either way, you're just a human being.
Posted by: Truly Mindless Moron at August 18, 2005 01:46 PMHeavily waxed handlebar mustaches, TD---MP
LOL. What a great image that would be on the newshour. Osama or some other of the assorted nutbars twirling the ends vacantly as he explained how all infidels must die.
Snidely Bin Laden, your time has come.
Posted by: dougf at August 18, 2005 02:20 PMMary, in a post dripping with hatred, writes of my viewpoint: "Here's a fun fact that might surprise you - all murderers are motivated by rage and hate. Homicide is not a form of altrusim."
If a kidnapper raped and mutilated my wife before my eyes, and I took several lethal gunshot wounds in the process of charging at him and wresting a gun away from him so that I could blow his brains out before I bled to death, my homicide (a defensible one, I think, in this case) would be motivated by rage and hatred -- but it would also have been made possible by altruism, in the particularly extreme form of a willingness to sacrifice even my own life for only the possibility of improving the lot of others with whom I sympathize. This feature is not available in all species, please note. Probably not found in scorpions, for example, who eat their own young when they're feeling a bit peckish.
"If this fact surprises you, then I can understand why you call yourself a moron."
If you are unable to see that the motivations involved are not mutually exclusive, pardon me for entertaining certain doubts about your own intelligence.
"But I can't figure out how you've reached the point where you can read and write. Is your nurse typing this out for you?"
Actually, I'm this old Marvel Comics character, Doctor Doom, and I have perfected an apparatus making it possible for me to force my minions to type telepathically-communicated messages into blog comment sections, after I've gained total control over their central nervous systems. Whether it was, in this particular case, my nurse, is a question I can only answer by telepathically commanding my system administrator to check the Doctor Doom MindServer log files; last I checked, the IP addresses are dynamically assigned. Was it my nurse? Let me get back to you on that one.
In the meantime, Mary, you might concern yourself with how to penetrate my citadel with a bomb, to be hand-detonated, by you, in front of me, after much witty repartee, ending with my laughing in a truly evil manner ("BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA--*blam*"). Of course, in the process, you'd be taking out quite a few of my citadel-staff mindslaves, all of whom were very nice people -- real medical doctors, in some cases -- before the tentacles of the Doctor Doom MindServer wormed their evil way into their cerebellums. C'est la guerre, the greater good, and all that.
Posted by: Truly Mindless Moron at August 18, 2005 02:24 PMOne commenter: "Perhaps bin Laden was able to recruit the September 11 hijackers with arguments about the US presence in Saudi Arabia."
Another: "The US wasn't occupying Saudi Arabia. US troops were there at the request of the Saudi government."
To a group convinced that the Saudi government is a corrupt, illegitimate government propped up only by American support for it, and more specifically, to a group convinced that the Saudi royal families adherence to an extreme form of Islam is competition with their own extreme form of Islam which they see as the rightful heir to the Muslim Holy land, the distinction would seem academic. Saudi princes stroll hand-in-hand with George W. Bush, while framing policy together. End of story, as far as they are concerned.
Really, I would have thought this would be obvious. But the quality of postings on this forum has me wondering just what IS obvious, anyway? Here's a little quiz for you all, to help me get a handle on that.
First, read the following sentence from the Pape interview.
"[S]uicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland."
Read it over several times. Commit it to memory as much as possible. OK, now answer the following question, WITHOUT looking at what you just read. Don't peek, now!
Question: "Which of the following answers is closest Pape's theory of suicide terrorism?"
Choose one of the following answers.
A. Suicide bombing is a tactic used by movements seeking to compel democracies to withdraw military forces from territories that the movements claim.
B. Terrorist bombing is caused by military forces in territories that are, um, ... what was the question again?
C. That's not the point!
D. I don't give a flying fistfuck at the moon whether it's suicide bomber terrorism or regular terrorist bombings because hairsplitting distinctions like these don't make any difference to my personal skin when it's getting raked by bomb shrapnel.
Please e-mail your answer to me personally. Thanks for taking the time.
Posted by: Truly Mindless Moron at August 18, 2005 02:48 PMCommenter: I don't think Pape is advocating a withdrawal.
Totten: Yes, he is. Read my article. Follow the link to Pat Buchanan's filthy magazine where Pape is interviewed. He wants us to withdraw from the region completey and "secure our interests in oil" from a distance.
Me: NO HE DOESN'T. READ THE FRIGGIN' INTERVIEW ALREADY. Pape is actually opposed to a complete withdrawal from the region. (The word "distance" does not even appear in the article.) Pape thinks (and I suspect he's wrong) that having bases near the region (for easing logistics and making local petrostates feel safer), and having a large naval presence IN the region, could revive the "offshore balancing" formula that seemed to serve U.S. interests so well for decades. Here is the relevant passage, verbatim.
"For us, victory means not sacrificing any of our vital interests while also not having Americans vulnerable to suicide-terrorist attacks. In the case of the Persian Gulf, that means we should pursue a strategy that secures our interest in oil but does not encourage the rise of a new generation of suicide terrorists.
"In the 1970s and the 1980s, the United States secured its interest in oil without stationing a single combat soldier on the Arabian Peninsula. Instead, we formed an alliance with Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which we can now do again. We relied on numerous aircraft carriers off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and naval air power now is more effective not less. We also built numerous military bases so that we could move large numbers of ground forces to the region quickly if a crisis emerged.
"That strategy, called “offshore balancing,” worked splendidly against Saddam Hussein in 1990 and is again our best strategy to secure our interest in oil while preventing the rise of more suicide terrorists."
Now, you might tell us why this "offshore balancing" strategy wouldn't work now, or why it never really worked, merely bought us some time in a region that was headed south no matter what. Or you might argue that merely securing vital national interests is a morally bankrupt position in today's world, and tolerating some terror attacks for the duration is a reasonable price to pay for spreading liberal democracy so globally that the terrorists' causes no longer have any appeal -- i.e., your definition of "victory" is different from Pape's. Well, whatever.
But if you want to have a reasoned debate about Pape's arguments, misrepresenting his theory and his policy position is a really poor place to start. It leaves you open to being criticized as intellectually lazy, at best, and to being prone to intentional distortions, at worst.
Really. I wonder why I bother.
Posted by: Truly Mindless Moron at August 18, 2005 03:18 PMThe Commenter writes: "So far, by people commenting on this blog, I've been accused of being an Iranian, of being Double Plus Ungood, I think of being the squirrel guy, and now TM Moron."
I found that last comparison vaguely insulting, Commenter. I don't make nearly as many typographical errors as you do, for one thing. What could these people be thinking?
By the way, I left a message for you at your Commentariat e-mail address. No reply yet. Drop me a line.
Posted by: Mindless Moron AKA Doctor Doom at August 18, 2005 03:35 PM"The Tamil Tigers are a national liberation movement. Al Quaida is not."
Actually, bin Laden has been quite clear that toppling the Saudi regime is his primary objective. He wouldn't mind getting the rest of the peninsula and Egypt in the bargain, and even establishing a New Caliphate (though it's unclear how many of these vaulting ambitions are simply internal propaganda for stirring his own base). However, there is no document I've run across suggesting that his ambitions extend beyond the muslim world. (Just plenty of clueless people repeating that theory, even after he himself went public last year saying if we just leave the muslim world alone, they'll leave US alone.) Would he like to extend the muslim world? Probably. Evangelical Christians want to extend the Christian world, nothing new (or unique) there.
You might ask, what does 9/11 have to do with these relatively limited al Qaeda ambitions? If they want Saudi Arabia, why attack us? Well, here we are, in Iraq. Where, as Pape points out, the non-Iraqi Jihadis flocking to the fray are primarily Saudi subjects. Thus his army builds, ever closer to the cherished, coveted homeland. 9/11 timing: perfect. 9/11 targeting perfect. Reaction by the U.S. to 9/11: as good as it gets for al Qaeda's strategy.
It's not time for them to go after Saudi Arabia, though -- that'll take either a mass uprising they can join and steer, or more liberal democracy there, exposing more soft white underbelly (you know, like freedom from indefinite detention, freedom of speech and assembly, fair trials, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, maybe even a nominally nonviolent party in the legislature, fronting for his violent movement, a la Sinn Fein -- in short, all those weaknesses that make liberal democracies such vulnerable targets for suicidal terror attacks?) The problem with going up against police states is that they are so well policed, after all. Better to wait, the way Saudi Arabia is now. Time is on their side anyway.
Doesn't it make you feel like your hatred is being ever-so-slightly used by the very enemy you hate so much? Well, no, it doesn't. Because you reject out of hand any reasonable premises that would suggest that you have been duped by al Qaeda into exactly the popular reaction that works for them. You think these people don't understand how liberal democracy works, including where it's weak? The relevant weakness being, in this case, that the Voice of the People, when those people are panicked and fearing for their lives, is usually the Voice of Average People with Little Attention Span, Education or Native Intelligence, Easily Manipulated by Opportunistic Politicians, Inexpert Media, and Flaming Demagogues. You think they don't understand that? They do. They aren't stupid. Though they might find it convenient for you to think so, at times.
Posted by: Mindless Moron AKA Doctor Doom at August 18, 2005 04:02 PMmindless moron -
can you tell me why you use such a dismissive tone while commenting here?
I assume that you consider yourself to be more educated and intelligent than this assumed-to-be conservative crowd.
Fair enough. If you're smarter than us, prove it. Since you seem to think that you understand suicide bombers more than we do, you must have done extensive research on their history, the philosophy that motivates them, and their organizations.
Do you think suicide bombers are influenced more by their tendency to classify us as najis, or by Qutub's theories concerning jahiliyya? Which group has more influence over them, Hizb Al-Ikhwan, Hizb ut Tahrir or the Muwahhidun? Are they Unitarians, or are they financed by Unitarians?
All Islamist suicide bombers are motivated by their committment to Shariah laws. Can you tell me the difference between Hudud, Qisas and Ta'zir offenses? Which ones are divine?
I'm willing to bet that you can't answer these questions without looking stuff up, and I'll bet "expert" Pape couldn't either. Which means that your and his ideas about what motivates suicide bombers are based on projection and guesses, nothing more.
You've told me a lot about what would motivate you to blow up a bunch of schoolchildren, but you've told me nothing about your average Islamist suicide bomber. Hate isn't just the philosophy that motivates them, it's their law.
Posted by: mary at August 18, 2005 06:19 PMWhy should we give a crap what motivates suicide bombers. It's an exercise in intellectual masturbation, and Pape is the chief masturbator. It's your classic Lefty red herring rabbit trail.
If we find out "it's our fault", are we going to change for them? Of course not, that's ridiculous. If we decide to change our ways/policies, we'll do it for our own reasons, not theirs.
Similarly, if Liberals discover that supporting the social radical agenda here at home is losing them elections, are they going to ditch the gay lobby just to please conservative voters? Of course not. It's the same thing. You follow your principles and you see them through to the end. If we have to kill terrorists in the process then that's what we'll do.
That's what gets me about the whole "terrorists hate us because of Israel" red herring. Who cares? f-ck em. If we change our Israel policies we'll do it for our own reasons, not Osama's.
Posted by: spaniard at August 18, 2005 06:59 PMmary writes: "can you tell me why you use such a dismissive tone while commenting here?"
THIS, from the person who asked ME if my nurse was typing my comments for me?
"You've told me nothing about your average Islamist suicide bomber."
Since I pretty much align with Pape's theory, the fact that a suicide bomber is Islamist isn't of much more relevance to me (from the point of view of trying to understand the phenomenon) than the bomber being a Marxist, or a Chechen nationalist for whom being a Muslim is secondary to being free of Russian dominance. (Caveat: Pape addresses how religious differences can make a difference -- see the original article.) The point for me is, they have a True Believer cause associated with turf that they feel is dominated by a power that, being a liberal democracy and not a police state, is that much more vulnerable to suicide bombing.
We can talk about whether Qutb's commentaries on the Koran are relevant -- commentaries that, curiously, seem to be an even greater inspiration for the studiously NON-violent Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, commentaries that writers like Paul Berman have quoted at some length but never persuasively tied to any endorsement of suicidal violence (most likely for the simple reason that Qutb never endorsed any such thing.) By all means, let's talk about that. But only AFTER you've demonstrated pretty solidly that Pape's theory of how almost ALL suicide bomber terrorism works is fundamentally flawed.
Until then, you might also explain to me why, if it's all about Islamism, and only Islamism, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, al-Zarqawi, can issue a manifesto openly declaring war on Shi'a Islam, and foment terrorist attacks against Shi'ites, with no protest of that statement emanating from al Qaeda Central? It's not just Islamists against peace-loving muslims -- now it's Islamist vs. Islamist. I assume it's because the al Qaeda goal is really political: Saudi Arabia state capture, with perhaps others to follow. And because, if a war within Islam (really, a renewal of an old religious war that split Islam in the first place) happens to work for that political goal, then al Qaeda is all for it. Even if it means fighting other Islamists the way they used to fight Marxists in Afghanistan. Whatever gets them there. And brewing chaos definitely is getting them there.
"You've told me a lot about what would motivate you to blow up a bunch of schoolchildren ...."
Actually, I've said only that I couldn't honestly say how I'd answer that question, if I were a PT boat captain in a meeting calling for volunteers to take a nuclear-armed boat into Hiroshima or Nagasaki harbor on a suicide mission. Again, you feel you have to distort my position, and apparently only because you can't tell me why my thinking is wrong.
"Hate isn't just the philosophy that motivates them, it's their law."
Hate isn't a philosophy, it's just an emotion. If it's their law, can you quote me chapter and verse, please? I suppose it's in the Koran somewhere, eh? (Probably in some section inspired by the Old Testament, itself full of incitements to hate thine enemy, IIRC.)
After all, the "law" of all total warfare is: hate thine enemy. If I were that hypothetical PT boat captain, and if I were full to the brim with the racist propaganda against "the Japs" being peddled to Americans during that war, hatred further stoked by having lost buddies in combat, my concern about nuking schools in Hiroshima or Nagasaki with classes in session might have been considerably eclipsed, even nonexistent. I might have come to regard even the enemy's children as subhuman creatures motivated only by hate, hate not just as their "philosophy," but as their "law."
If so, I'd hardly be thinking straight, would I? But that's war, and war is madness. A necessary madness at times, but madness all the same.
A few manage to stay above the madness -- Henry Stimson, among others, held out for some demonstration of the power of the atom bomb, not for its use against civilians. He has also been found, from recently declassified documents, to be have been rather scornful of and disappointed in the American public for condoning the firebombings of Japanese civilians (of which, as I've pointed out, the nuclear bombings were only an extension.) I suppose as a relatively intelligent and educated American, Stimson should have taken into account how powerful a dose of hate-speech propaganda against the Japanese had already been administered to Americans by the very government he served. Certain kinds of propaganda campaigns under certain conflict conditions can make vicious genocidal maniacs out of otherwise ordinary, relatively civilized people. [Scholarly reference to support this statement: much of the history of warfare in the 20th century.]
I'd like to think that if I were in the hypothetical PT boat about to nuke a Japanese city, I'd be off in a corner of the ship, praying for my own soul, the souls of my shipmates, AND the souls of the Japanese human beings I was about to send to the afterlife to be judged by their Creator as He saw fit. (That's assuming I'd even volunteer for such duty, and I'm not sure I would have.)
But I'm only human, and maybe I would have been cracking a bottle of champagne with my fellow sailors, and crowing about all the "Japs" we were about to ... well, to toast? (Heh. Pun not intended, it just came out that way.)
And maybe Mohammed Atta, in the cockpit of that airliner nearing the Twin Towers, took a toke off a proffered hash pipe, praised Allah, thought of the virgins waiting for him in Paradise, but ALSO consoled himself, as his heart pounded more fiercely and his palms sweated on the stick, that his death would be part of creating a better world. Did he screw a lot of prostitutes and drink a lot of booze in the months prior? I'm sure he did. Just as I'm sure a lot of U.S. GIs on the psychological track toward volunteering for suicide missions in WW II did much the same, even if they had been good, chaste, churchgoing teetotalers back home.
Posted by: Mindless Moron AKA Doctor Doom at August 18, 2005 07:21 PMMM - Yes, lots of projection. You should do a film about your visions of evil warmongering propaganda-spewing Americans and the poor, poor Japanese who were victimized by yankee paranoia. Maybe you could end it with a typical American cowboy, riding the nuke that will ultimately destroy those poor, poor victims, screaming yee-ha.
Oh wait, that's been done.
So, you know zilch about Shariah and you get most of your info from CNN. No surprises there.
..and you don't follow links. If you'd read the article that Michael linked to about the bombings in Bangladesh, you'd have seen this paragraph:
Leaflets from the Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh have appeared at the site of some of the blasts.
"It is time to implement Islamic law in Bangladesh" and "Bush and Blair be warned and get out of Muslim countries", the leaflets say.
Shariah is the Islamic Sacred Law that they're talking about. These aren't religious text, they're the current laws that are applied everyday in nations Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, and the Sudan.
All Islamist terrorists have the implementation of Shariah as their goal. That's what they're fighting and dying for.
The basics of the Shariah laws, which are on the books in Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, etc. are:
1. Offensive, military jihad against non-Muslims is a communal, religious obligation;
2. A person who is ignorant about Islamic legal opinion must follow the legal opinion of a scholar;
3. The penalty for a Muslim apostate (someone who no longer believes in or no longer follows the tenets of Islam) is death;
4. When slaughtering animals for food, a knife must be used to cut the windpipe and gullet;
5. A woman is only eligible to receive half the inheritance of a man;
6. Marriage may be forced on virgins by their father or father’s father;
7. A non-Arab man may not marry an Arab woman;
8. A woman must seek permission from her husband to leave the house;
9. A Muslim man cannot marry a woman who is a Zoroastrian, an idol worshipper, an apostate from Islam or a woman with one parent who is Jewish or Christian, with the other being Zoroastrian; a Muslim woman cannot marry anyone but a Muslim;
10. A free Muslim man may marry up to four women;
11. Retaliation is obligatory in most cases when someone is deliberately murdered except when a Muslim kills a non-Muslim, a Jew or a Christian kills a Muslim apostate or a father or mother kill their offspring;
12. Non-Muslim subjects (Ahl al-Dhimma) of a Muslim state are subject to a series of discriminatory laws – “dhimmitude”;
13. The penalty for fornication or sodomy is being stoned to death;
14. The penalty for an initial theft is amputation of the right hand. Subsequent thefts are penalized by further amputations of feet and hand;
15. A non-Muslim cannot testify against a Muslim in court; a person who is “without respectability” cannot give legal testimony; a woman’s legal testimony is only given half the legal weight of a man’s (and is only acceptable in cases involving property); to legally prove fornication or sodomy requires 4 male witnesses who actually saw the act;
16. The establishment and continuation of the Islamic Caliphate (by force, if necessary) is a communal obligation;
17. Sodomites and Lesbians must be killed;
18. Laughing too much is forbidden;
19. Musical instruments are unlawful;
20. Creating pictures of animate life is forbidden;
21. Female circumcision, which includes the excision of the clitoris, is obligatory;
22. Slavery is permitted;
23. People may be bribed to convert to Islam;
24. Beating a rebellious wife is permissible; and,
25. Lying is permissible in a time of war (or jihad).
These laws are the basis for an apartheid system of government. They are also the justification for the current genocide in the Sudan, and for the global jihad. If an organization promotes Sharia laws, (civil and hudud) they are an Islamist organization.
So, tell me, which force do you think is more dangerous to 'world peace'
1. a nuclear-armed America operating without the "restraint" provided by the international community
2. Islamist terrorists
Posted by: mary at August 18, 2005 08:02 PMagd pralki lodówki euro agd euro rtv agd sprzęt agd zmywarki depilator depilatory rtv agd garnki sklep agd okapy odkurzacze pralka okapy kuchenne krajalnice zmywarka odtwarzacze mp3 ipod Trekstor agd pralki lodówki rtv agd garnki sklep agd okapy odkurzacze pralka okapy kuchenne zmywarka kino domowe aparaty fotograficzne odtwarzacze mp3 telewizory głośniki telewizory lcd odtwarzacze dvd telewizory plazmowe amplituner
Posted by: tkaczuk at August 19, 2005 03:23 AMI just heard a deputy assistant Secretary of Defence speak, and do you know what he said?
He said that the more difficult task than simply killing terrorists was understanding their motivations, but that this was far more important than simply killing them. He said that we need to understand their political, religious, and philosophical motivations.
He later said that we must understand their ideologies, because if we do not we cannot counter their ideologies, and if we cannot counter their ideologies, we have no hope of undercutting the legitimacy they have in their societies, when their goal is perceived to be so important that it justifies the use of terrorism as a tactic.
When will the Department of Defense knock off this touchy-feely "we have to understand the terrorists" bullshit? When will the government of the United States of America stop appeasing terrorists?!?!?!?!
Posted by: The Commenter at August 19, 2005 10:10 AMAnd Mary, are you suggesting that the US didn't use racist propaganda against the Japenese, or that no innocent people were victimized by American racism?
Posted by: The Commenter at August 19, 2005 10:24 AMCommenter,
there's a difference between understanding terrorists for the purposes of defeating them or better killing them VS "understanding" terrorists for the purposes of indicting America (or Israel). Stop pretending Lefties aren't all about the latter.
Posted by: spaniard at August 19, 2005 11:47 AMStop pretending Lefties aren't all about the latter
I.e. Stop messin' with my little head or I'm gonna go bananas. They gave me this nice little script to believe and you're just confusing things.....
Posted by: at August 19, 2005 12:11 PMthe "script" comes from the Left itself:
"Let's mourn, let's grieve, and when it's appropriate let's examine our own contribution to the unsafe world we live in."
~~Michael Moore, just after 9/11
Posted by: spaniard at August 19, 2005 12:31 PM"No one should doubt that hatred for the United States likewise draws, in some degree, on real-life terrible things that America has done to the Muslim world."
Paul Berman,
Terror and Liberalism
Mary writes of me: "You should do a film about your visions of evil warmongering propaganda-spewing Americans and the poor, poor Japanese who were victimized by yankee paranoia."
Hey, Mary, I already wrote that I might have volunteered to deliver a nuclear bomb on a suicide mission in Japan in WW II, if given the choice. Even if NOT brainwashed by the racist propaganda purveyed by my government at the time. Maybe it would have been the right thing to do, regardless of that propaganda. Believe it or not, Mary, I was not being facetious there. Maybe those A-bombs did help end the war, did help save lives in the end, did help bring about a better world, and if a suicide mission had been the only way to deliver those bombs ... well, Mary, tell me this: would YOU have volunteered under similar circumstances?
"So, you know zilch about Shariah and you get most of your info from CNN."
I actually don't watch CNN. Also, I do know slightly more than zilch about Shariah. I had long discussions with my Michael Phillips (quite the neo-con, always a Republican, and an ardent defender of Israel) while he was in Tokyo earlier this summer, and at my suggestion, he blogged about Shariah's prohibition against charging interest. You can find it here:
phillips.blogs.com/goc/2005/06/
Thanks for the long list of Shariah laws. As it turns out, the only one I hadn't heard about was the one prohibiting a muslim Arab from marrying a non-Arab. Could you find this one for me? I've looked pretty hard now. This, of course, is your only possible basis for asserting that Shariah is a recipe for anything like an apartheid-style state. As far as I know, Shariah is not race-specific about anything. But feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
I've also heard that clitoridectomy is dictated by Shariah. I don't believe this is the case however, and not very many people looking into that assertion believe it either:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/fem_cirm1.htm
Female genital mutilation is practiced in quite a few Christian African countries. Is it far from routine practice in Pakistan, a formal Shariah state:
http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics%3B102/1/153http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics%3B102/1/153
No form of female genital mutiliation is required under Sharia, as far as I can tell. The worst (if you want to call it that) is one cleric's expressed preference for "removal of the prepuce of the clitoris" AKA clitorodotomy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shariah#Circumcision
I'm not sure whether it was this particular Shariah cleric's intent, but there are fans even in the West for this practice, they consider themselves quite sexually avant-garde, they do NOT consider it FGM, and their reason for promoting the practice is that it's thought to improve the prospects of orgasm for women who have trouble reaching it.
www.geocities.com/hoodectomy/hoodectomy.html
If the above-cited cleric is hoping the clitorodotomy will keep his daughters from becoming sex maniacs, I guess he's got a surprise coming. (Or maybe he's one of those closet liberals found even among islamic legal scholars, like the ones in Bahrain (?) who wearily ruled that stoning a woman to death for adultery truly was, after all, the Koranic way, but that any conviction for adultery required four adult male eyewitnesses measuring at least one inch of vaginal penetration. There hasn't been an execution under this law, as far as I know. And as far as I know, there hadn't been any executions for breaking that law in a very long time anyway.)
Well, what a refreshing little foray we've had today, into yet another interesting aspect of Shariah law. Unfortunately, I had to do it all on my own -- Mary told me nothing about Shariah I didn't already know, and a couple of other things about it that appear to be wrong. About par, I'd say.
Posted by: Doctor Doom AKA Mindless Moron at August 19, 2005 02:45 PMA probably-futile postscript: Mary will probably now accuse me of being a proponent of Shariah, given the above. To be utterly clear: Shariah, while not racist, is to me unacceptably sexist, unacceptable in its treatment of other religions, blah blah blah. I'm firmly in favor of a seperation between Church and State in any case -- if I thought I belonged to the perfect religion, I still wouldn't promote it as the basis of government.
Returning to somewhere near the original point: I know of nothing in Shariah that condones suicide bomber terrorism, or terrorism at all, or suicide at all (which, as in Christianity, is a sin in Islam.) Somehow, Mary's long list of laws didn't turn one any such requirement. And I have no doubt that a quick Google search would turn up more than a few Shariah clerics telling us all why it's not permitted under Shariah.
As for the relevance of Shariah to this discussion -- well, if the question is whether Pape is wrong, then you have to show how there's something specific to Shariah that promotes the use of suicide bombing, irrespective of the conditions Pape described for adoption of the practice. Why did suicide bombing as a strategy spread not from Middle East to Sri Lankan Tamils, but rather from Sri Lankan Tamils to the Middle East? If there's something Shariah-specific to suicide bomber terrorism, why didn't Shariah-adhering Islamists invent it first? Why did Tamil Marxists (who, as good Marxists, don't even believe in an afterlife, much less some prize bootie in the form of virgins in Paradise) first take up the practice routinely?
C'mon, kids, put yer thinkin' caps on! You can do it! I know you can!
Posted by: Doctor Doom wearies of your ilk at August 19, 2005 03:01 PM"No one should doubt that hatred for the United States likewise draws, in some degree, on real-life terrible things that America has done to the Muslim world."
List them.
(here comes the obligatory "mossadeq")
Posted by: spaniard at August 19, 2005 03:38 PMIt would be presumptuous for me to speak for Berman. Perhaps you could venture a guess.
Posted by: Scot at August 19, 2005 04:11 PM"As for the relevance of Shariah to this discussion -- well, if the question is whether Pape is wrong, then you have to show how there's something specific to Shariah that promotes the use of suicide bombing, irrespective of the conditions Pape described for adoption of the practice."
Truly Mindless Moron - please explain to me why we should care about suicide bombing per se - as Pape and obviously you yourself - appear to be so obsessed with, rather than the much larger issue that concerns us all - which is folks who are working very hard, in whatever their capacity, to spread Sharia law. Personally - I must admit - I don't care about "suicide bombing". Frankly, I woud rather go up in smoke than live my life under Sharia law. It's the ultimate aims to impose Islam and Sharia law and dhimmitude and everything that goes along with this complete totalitarian system aimed at subjugating us all that bothers me more than this one particular METHOD that the Islamists have adopted in recent times, namely suicide bombing, to work towards those larger aims. Again - it's the bombings in the service of beating everyone down and forcing them to capitulate to Islamic dominance that bother me - not "suicide bombing". Actually - to tell the truth - the suicide part is totally fine with me. Apparently you're into the psychology of these folks. If you could tell me how we could convince them to just commit suicide - on a fast track to heaven - I'd be more than happy. A whole lot of folks would be, I assure you.
Posted by: Caroline at August 19, 2005 04:34 PM"No one should doubt that hatred for the United States likewise draws, in some degree, on real-life terrible things that America has done to the Muslim world."
To which Spaniard rejoins: "List them."
How about its long-standing support of the venal, corrupt, torturing Saudi regime, for starters?
And the U.S. didn't do the muslim world much of a favor when it sheltered and sponsored Saddam Hussein when he was a young Ba'athist would-be assassin in the 50s. (That episode hardly being the end of support he got from us over the years.)
Bin Laden claims, as partial inspiration for his obviously-false claims of higher moral ground, the distinctly cowardly practice of U.S. gunboats standing off from the Lebanese coast, and shelling civilian areas inland. (The consequent suicide bombing that killed about 200 Marines, prompting the withdrawal of U.S. ground forces from Lebanon, was described by Reagan as a "cowardly" attack, IIRC. Gee, what's more cowardly, pummeling small towns from a great distance, and pulling out when the kitchen gets a little hot? Or personally driving a truck right into an enemy compound on a suicide mission?) Not exactly our finest hour, morally.
Or take Afghanistan. Please! William Casey, as head of CIA, just lo-o-oved muslims, so much so that he commissioned a shipment of Korans t