For you lefty trolls out there, here’s some red meat to go with your scrambled eggs and coffee this morning.
And for my conservative friends who enjoy a little introspection on a lazy summer Saturday, here’s a piece that will will give you something to think about while you’re on the golf course waiting for the idiots on the green to stop dicking around and putt already.
First, it appears that Chertoff’s “gut feeling” about an impending attack is being taken seriously by some people in the government. Or, if you’re inclined to wear the latest fashion in tin foil chapeaus (Reynolds Wrap Haute couture is all the rage this summer) it’s just more evidence of Administration tomfoolery with terror alerts:
Fearing a possible coded signal to attack, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials are studying an unusual pattern of words in the latest audiotape from al Qaeda’s No. 2 man, Ayman al Zawahri.On the tape, posted on the Internet Wednesday, Zawahri repeats one phrase three times at the end of his message.
Have I not conveyed? Oh God be my witness.
Have I not conveyed? Oh God be my witness.
Have I not conveyed? Oh God be my witness.
A new FBI analysis of al Qaeda messages, obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com, warns that “continued messages that convey their strategic intent to strike the U.S. homeland and U.S. interests worldwide should not be discounted as merely deceptive noise.”
A far cry from “John has a long mustache” or “Wounds my heart with a monotonous languor,” no?
Be that as it may, the FBI and Homeland Security seem to be taking this latest threat more seriously than some others lately. As for many on the left, not so much:
Let’s set aside for a moment the hollowness of the threat. Frankly the London and Glasgow plots were ill-conceived and miserably executed. It wouldn’t take much to “dwarf” them. Letting off a firecracker in a movie theater, for example.First, this smacks of more fear-mongering by the administration. Chertoff had a “gut feeling” we’re going to be attacked, and now you see the media dutifully stoke up the panic with crap stories like this. (Yeah, a Taliban leader threatened big attacks in the US. And the head coach of the Raiders vowed to take his team to the playoffs.) The administration has a history of tweaking with terror alerts and fantasy plots to influence politics. That’s worthy of both impeachment and a swift kick in the *ss.
Second, if this threat is real and imminent, and something actually happens—it’s not the shrapnel I’ll be worrying about, it’ll be the overreaction of the government. This a group of thugs that kidnaps, tortures, and spies on its own people in times of safety. Think what they’ll do when the sh*t flies. Not to mention their track record against your standard-issue emergencies like, say, hurricanes.
I do not want these people in power in a time of emergency.
Well, whether you want them or not, they’re it and it does little good to fantasize about a Pelosi regime doing anything different.
Which brings me to the point of today’s ramblings; the respective views on terrorism and terrorist threats by the two sides and why, because of the viciousness and polarization of our politics, each side sees the other as a bigger threat than the terrorists.
One of the more thoughtful people blogging today is Matthew Yglesias:
Rick Santorum, appearing on the Hugh Hewitt show, predicts “some unfortunate events, that like we’re seeing unfold in the UK” over the next eighteen months or so that are going to lead people to have a “very different view” of the war in Iraq and the vital importance of “confronting Iran in the Middle East.” Avedon Carol wonders if it shouldn’t “concern us that Republicans are constantly talking about how people will all wise up when the next terrorist attack at home comes?” After all, they seem to really be “looking forward to it, and they take great delight in the thought that, by God, people will see things differently when it happens.”There’s really, even, a larger structural issue here. Namely that while clearly on some level the conservative movement would like to make the country safer from terrorism, on another level everyone knows that mass fear of foreign threats to Americans’ physical security are a boon to the conservative movement’s fortune. On the one hand, this creates systematic incentives to overstate the extent and nature of the real threats facing America. On the other hand, it creates systematic incentives to ensure that such threats as do exist are never ameliorated. In particular, it gives everyone a very strong self-interest in not understanding the extent to which overreacting can be counterproductive since both the overreaction itself and the counterproductive blowback may serve the interests of the Republican Party.
On a superficial level, conservatives must plead guilty as charged. There is a belief by conservatives (not a “wish” or “desire”) that another terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 would expose the liberal narrative on the War on Terror for what it is; an extraordinary myopic and paranoid view of the threat facing us and of the government charged with protecting us. This narrative is fairly consistent in downplaying the abilities of the enemy, complaining about false or faked terror alerts, ridiculing conservatives for reporting on successful or failed terrorist attacks, and generally positing the notion that the entire War on Terror is a manufactured political sideshow put on by the Bush Administration to jack up fear so that they can tear up the Constitution and set up a dictatorship.
Variations of that narrative exist depending on the reasonableness and thoughtfulness of the liberal writing about it. Some, like Yglesias, take the threat seriously but have huge problems (as many conservatives do) with the Bush Administration’s prosecution of the wider war. Others who are not quite as reasonable or thoughtful have a different perspective:
Democrat John Edwards Wednesday repudiated the notion that there is a “global war on terror,” calling it an ideological doctrine advanced by the Bush administration that has strained American military resources and emboldened terrorists.
In a defense policy speech he planned to deliver at the Council on Foreign Relations, Edwards called the war on terror a “bumper sticker” slogan Bush had used to justify everything from abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison to the invasion of Iraq.“We need a post-Bush, post-9/11, post-Iraq military that is mission focused on protecting Americans from 21st century threats, not misused for discredited ideological purposes,” Edwards said in remarks prepared for delivery. “By framing this as a war, we have walked right into the trap the terrorists have set—that we are engaged in some kind of clash of civilizations and a war on Islam.”
The mass of Muslims who believe we are attacking all of Islam and not the radical minority are beholden to that idea not because we’ve framed the issue as a war but because of al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic propaganda – something Edwards himself has apparently fallen for. A couple of statements by ignorant American officials (including the President’s incredibly dumb “crusade” remark) that have been played up in Islamic countries do not reflect the policy of the US government in any way. If Edwards wants to criticize our own propaganda efforts, that would be a legitimate criticism. But his adherence to The Narrative in talking about the war as an ideological exercise by the Administration serves to proves my point.
But getting back to Yglesias and his thesis; that while “the conservative movement would like to make the country safer from terrorism, on another level everyone knows that mass fear of foreign threats to Americans’ physical security are a boon to the conservative movement’s fortune…”
The unwritten companion to that idea that Yglesias leaves out is that the reason conservative “fortunes” soar as a result of threats to the homeland is because of the perceived (and in my opinion, rightly so) weakness of the left on security issues. This is not an issue of smoke and mirrors but rather a decades long retreat from the left’s belief in an assertive American foreign policy and funding a military machine to back it up. The modern left never met a weapons system they didn’t try to kill at some point nor has there been an assertive move to protect American interests in the last several decades that they have supported. The American people have taken note of this and voted accordingly.
But what of the notion that this political advantage by conservatives is deliberately fostered by overstating the threat facing us and that this leads to creating “systematic incentives” to make sure the war continues ad infinitum?
The two issues should have been separated by Yglesias because they deal with two different assumptions. 1) Conservatives want to win elections, and 2) The only way the right sees itself as succeeding in this is to make the War on Terror a generational conflict so that a constant state of fear is used as a club to beat the left over the head on security issues.
As for the first part, Yglesias has a point. I think there is a psychological desire on the part of the right to see the country unified behind its point of view on terrorism. And I think this desire at some level includes the notion that the best thing that could happen as far as unifying the country (and making the left’s views on terrorism an irrelevancy) is for a terrorist attack to occur on American soil. I don’t see any “great delight” being exhibited by conservatives in anticipation of such an attack – an attack that every living expert on terrorism has warned is a virtual certainty – nor do I see conservatives “looking forward to it” as Avedon Carol so generously states. But to see the outcome of another 9/11 in superficial political terms, then I think Yglesias has a good point.
Of course, this throws up all sorts of questions about the leadership of President Bush, Republicans in Congress, and conservative intellectuals who have failed miserably in making the case for this wider war on terrorism to the American people. There are other, less destructive ways to unify the country without having an American city reduced to rubble.
But as with the War in Iraq, President Bush has failed to sustain any coherent defense of his policies. This has allowed his political opponents free reign to color his actions in the worst possible light. And while some intellectuals of the right such as Norman Podhoretz and Donald Kagan have defended the Administration’s policies in Iraq and the wider War on Terror, the intellectual underpinnings that should be girding our efforts in the war of ideas against Islamic radicalism as well as offering a rationale for our actions to those willing to listen overseas has been sorely lacking.
As for the second assumption made by Yglesias – that this desire by the right to extend the life of the war by creating “systematic incentives to ensure that such threats as do exist are never ameliorated…” I believe him to be on much shakier ground.
Matthew places that statement in the context of what he terms “over-reacting” to both the threat of terrorism and terrorist incidents themselves. From another Yglesias post following the London/Glasgow incidents:
I’m pretty sure I haven’t been “ignoring” the bomb attempt, but I’ve certainly said less about it than, say, the NBA draft. That said, I find there to be two curious presumptions built into the question. One is that “you’re paying less attention than you should to failed bombings in a foreign country!” is framed as some kind of cutting accusation. Second, is that it’s taken as a given that hyping-up the threat of terrorism is something conservatives will want to do whereas downplaying it is something liberals will want to do.It’s interesting because on another level if a liberal wants to make the case that Bush has been a horrible president implementing horrible policies, probably the most natural response is to say “look, some of what you say is true, but at the end of the day there haven’t been any more attacks since 9/11.” At that point, it falls to the liberal to point to all this international data indicating a substantial surge in Islamist violence during the Bush years as evidence of the administration’s failures.
Again, on one level, Yglesias has a point. But rather than “over reacting” to gin up fear in the country, I would describe the right’s focus on such attacks – failed or otherwise – as a psychological need to validate their views on terrorism as a genuine threat. (“See? The world is a dangerous place even if liberals downplay these attacks!”) Since part of The Narrative is that there is no such thing as a War on Terror and that even if attacks occur, the jihadis are a bunch of ignorant, 15th century goat herders so there’s no reason for all this fuss, conservatives feel compelled by politics and self-image to play up every incident of terror as part of the larger war against Islamism – a war they feel should engage the continuing interest of the American people to the exclusion of other, more mundane considerations like the economy or health care.
Yglesias points up the political danger of this exercise by the right; that even though no terrorist attacks have occurred here since 9/11, there is little doubt that Administration strategy has created more terrorists than there were prior to that date and that the threat has not been reduced in the nearly 6 years since. I might add there is also a danger for conservatives in that the absence of an attack on our soil since 2001 has brought those “mundane” issues to the fore in 2008, giving Democrats a distinct advantage in domestic policy. Focusing on terrorism as the major concern of the American people is rapidly becoming bad politics – unless we are hit again. Then the question of those increased numbers of jihadis will become a political nuclear weapon with each side tossing screaming allegations back and forth in the aftermath.
I have wrestled with this question of our creating more terrorists by confronting them in several posts over the last year. The reason the question is relevant is because there seems to be a consensus on the left that if only we hadn’t gone into Iraq, the terrorist threat wouldn’t be what it is today.
I find little evidence that our Iraq adventure alone is responsible for the increase in jihadi recruitment. One need only look at the reaction by Pakistanis to our invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan has become the most anti-American nation on earth not because of our invasion of Iraq but because of what we did to the Taliban.
But the real question remains: Would not confronting the terrorists after 9/11 have made us safer? If we had lobbed a few cruise missiles at Bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan rather than going for regime change, would there be Muslim doctors trying to blow up airports? It’s an interesting thought experiment but one I have never seen tried anywhere on the left. They have simply accepted the notion that the War in Iraq is singularly responsible for the surge in terrorist numbers.
And even if there were no terrorists in Iraq prior to the invasion (a still debatable point given the curiously unpublicized revelations contained in the Saddam papers) there’s no doubt there are many in Iraq now. If killing them only creates more of them which in turn makes us less safe, logic would dictate that we basically surrender to the idea that from time to time we are going to be attacked and that the best we can do is work with our allies to mitigate that possibility as much as possible by smashing their cells whenever we find them. Is this the basis of the left’s strategy for dealing with terrorism? It would seem to me and to many conservatives that this forms the basis for a “fear-free” War on Terror that appears to be embraced by many on the left.
Perhaps they don’t like the idea that such a strategy would put them at a distinct electoral disadvantage against Republicans so why not rage against perceived “fear mongering” by the right on the issue. In that context, there’s not much conservatives can do except embrace the left’s strategy for dealing with Islamism which would also include changing our foreign policy so we don’t experience any more “blowback” as a result of our standing with Israel or confronting that other threat in the Middle East Iran.
I’m not sure Yglesias would go as far as that but there’s little doubt that sympathy for the Palestinian cause and a general aversion to confronting the theocrats in Tehran is a part of the left’s solution to Bush’s “failed” policies in the War on Terror. What that would mean as far as our safety and security is concerned is another question – one the American people will have to decide next year. But one thing both left and right better start thinking very hard about if we are attacked again is that the solution to security will eventually have to be found in unity and not in these tiresome partisan dust ups where the motives of both sides are questioned and the War on Terror becomes a weapon to be used by one side or the other for political gain.
UPDATE
Right on cue, Ron Paul shows why unity in the War on Terror is an impossibility at the moment:
Presidential candidate Ron Paul says the U.S. is in “great danger” of a staged terror attack or a Gulf of Tonkin style provocation while also warning that a major collapse of the American economy is on the horizon and could be precipitated by the bombing of Iran and the closure of the Persian Gulf.
Speaking to The Alex Jones Show, the Texas Congressman was asked his opinion on Cindy Sheehan’s recent comments that the U.S. is in danger of a staged terror attack or a Gulf of Tonkin style provocation that will validate the Neo-Con agenda and lead to the implementation of the infrastructure of martial law that Bush recently signed into law via executive order, as well as public pronouncements from prominent officials that the West needs terrorism to save a doomed foreign policy.
“I think we’re in great danger of it,” responded the Congressman, “We’re in danger in many ways, the attack on our civil liberties here at home, the foreign policy that’s in shambles and our obligations overseas and commitment which endangers our troops and our national defense.”
Ooookay, Ron. You can go back to the barbecue now. And next time make sure they don’t grill your brain instead of the steak.
HT for the image: SondraK
10:37 am
“But one thing both left and right better start thinking very hard about if we are attacked again is that the solution to security will eventually have to be found in unity and not in these tiresome partisan dust ups where the motives of both sides are questioned and the War on Terror becomes a weapon to be used by one side or the other for political gain.â€
There is so much bad blood between the two sides that I think Osama will politically tear part the country with another attack, and he knows it. As one of the detested moderates that has been trying on left and right websites to get some civility back into political discourse I have no hope that the two sides will step back and take a breath before letting rip. Some body will make some charged comment and the other side will take up the “well you did it first†childish response and we will be off to the races. Add to the fact we are in the middle of a Presidential campaign where a lot of political capitol can be had for bashing the other side and our ability to find any common ground is dead and buried. One thing I try to point out to both sides is that you will never convince the other side of the rightness of you views, so why do you bother with “them� In order to win elections and advance your agenda you need the middle on you side, the other side does not matter. And what is the best way to get your point across to the middle? I will give you a clue, polarized partisan diatribes against the other side does not get the point across no matter how right you are. Not that it will happen, Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh have the big megaphones, not the centrists. OK, you can now respond and call me a moron, idiot, whatever, and no I’m not interested at all in what the other side did first.
11:20 am
I don’t think leftists are the enemy – I just think they’re exceedingly infantile in their views concerning national security, taxation, etc. They are the ones who look at people like me – upper middle class white Protestant males – and see everything that’s wrong with America.
Given the fact that they and their ilk have many more allies in the MSM than we do, it stands to reason that they should bear the lion’s share of the responsibility for perpetuating the notion that half the country is the “enemy” of the other half. I know they hate me and those who share my views, and they’re welcome to continue claiming I’m the antithesis of everything good and noble in America. But if they or anyone else expect that such insolence will be met with anything but a curse, they’re woefully mistaken.
12:17 pm
Great article. I think we’d be smarter if (God forbid) another attack were to happen. Unless there were incontrovertible evidence that another country was behind it I think you’d see scant support for a military reaction.
3:22 pm
What is a real concern is that for all the fact that the Republicans as a party are more trusted on National Security, they have done an awful job of actually doing anything on that front. Heading into six years after 9/11 and we find that Middle Eastern human trafficking rings have been operating out of Latin America utilizing methods to get into the Nation and just disappear into the flow of illegals from the rest of Latin America. The presence of Hezbollah, Hamas and al Qaeda in the Tri-Border Area, a concern for over a decade, has not even been hinted at, for all the fact the area is now utilized as a trading center for exchanging Middle Eastern heroin for Latin American cocain to be exported to Europe, North America and Africa. We also have the Caribbean basin that has slowly, for nearly 15 years, been seeing a change of the local Islamic communities being radicalized by an influx of Saudi cash and radical imams sent from KSA and other places where they have gained a fooothold. That is compounded by the source of much east coast LNG coming from the Islands, especially Trinidad.
This doesn’t even begin to hit the lack of a cargo inspection system for freighters, especially the large shipping container vessels. Of course that has only been on the drawingboard for 5 years. The same goes with air cargo. Actually inspecting all of that might just slow down trade… something that appears to be poison ivy to the Republicans and the Right. And a verifiable point to point tracking and verification system with anti-tamper seals on them might just hit some of the lucrative business with organizations willing to pay a bit more to get their cargo to a third-nation destination, for all that it would have a stop-over in the US. Have we ever tracked down the shipping vessels and aircraft that al Qaeda was rumored to own via front companies?
For all the problems of the Left and Democrats going to the Transnational Left and wanting to sing Kumbayah with folks interested in slitting our throats, I am not enamored of the Right willing to trade National Sovereignty for trade and increased business liquidity and cheap, unaccountable labor.
I do not want another 9/11, but I don’t see how either party, either ‘side’ in this is doing a thing to address the fact that the US has a sign on its chest saying ‘hit me, please’. You do not play the game of trying to make terrorists, like the Muslim Brotherhood, who have sponsored organizations like Hamas, the coup in Sudan, and multiple terrorist organizations on a global basis like a ‘legitimate political party’.... just don’t mind the red stained hands and the messiness when you go to shake them. Nor do you just throw up your hands on the global ‘small arms market’ (a wonderful idea from an arms merchant was that ‘small arms’ includes anything of 81mm or below) and just say ‘we can’t do anything about it’. We can and have laws on the books for such: that is why We the People gave Congress the High Seas and foreign commerce regularization powers. Of course that would have to be funded ahead of ‘pork’ projects. Or just funded, period.
That is, apparently, beyond both parties in Congress and the Left and the Right in general.
No, I do not ‘want’ another 9/11 or worse.
Yes, I fully expect that such will happen. And it is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’ and ‘how often’?
And, IMHO, Iraq was and is a necessary thing to do not only to get a genocidal, mass murderer with a penchant for supplying and training all sorts of terrorists, out of the picture, but for also, finally, trying to get something a bit more just in the way of a Nation State into the Middle Eastern mindset. Before this lovely era of installed Kings and self-installed Dictators, Tyrants and Ayatollahs, the region knew Empires. ‘Nation State’ has only been batted around for a couple of centuries, and those came and went until after WWI… and we messed up on that in a way that has delivered us with our current memes that now lock us into our current stasis. We cannot create justice, but we can teach folks what it means to be accountable and responsible and understand simple things like cause and effect.
The grimly humorous part is as we teach that in Iraq, we are nearly out of it in our political elite. Our politics lives in a fantasyland of the 20th century and it will get us killed if we refuse to deal with our own liberty and freedom and what it means to hold those as a universal value. History is not inevitable. We had best remember that before we become a part of history for having done nothing to secure our own liberty and to practice as we preach upon it.
3:23 pm
There is nothing new in a large part of the public being apathetic, passive, head-in-sand, fearful, anti-war, self-centered, pleasure-seeking, busy making a living, raising kids, and sitting stateside being quite xenophobic. Many women fit that description by their very nature, since they are the nurturing ones. Add the real and not-so-real intellectuals, and wannabe leftists to the pot, stir with socialistic pepper and MSM bias sauce, and you get liberal stew.
First of all, liberals seem to have slipped the bonds of religion, or at least have begun to listen to Hitchins or the like. Second, they hope, fearfully, that being kind and nice and turning the other cheek will reduce Islamic terrorists to blubbering recidivists. Third, they appear to want a social revolution in the US to redistribute the wealth of the nation across all of us, turning a stratified wealth system into a poverty-driven, socialistic nothingness. Fourth, they want to stock up on goodies, such as free college, free health care and medicine, free vacations, free housing, and subsidized food and gasoline. They want to reeducate our children into the dream of utopia on earth, and in that they seem to be winning. Fifth, they lovingly support movements to install a World Government with its own army and its own ability to tax the nations. If you believe I am exaggerating, go Google and read the Humanist Manifestos I, II, and III, and then find out how many of our intellectuals, legislators, judges, democrats and bureaucrats have signed up as members in good standing of the secular humanist (SH) movement. There is a lot more to the credo of the Humanist movement, but these few elements will do to show what Christian, conservative and common-sense people are up against. Finally, to bring this into focus on the thread, they are violently opposed to war, believe in massive reductions in our military, and definitely want us to stop fighting right now—no matter what.
I submit that these Humanists are practicing their own religion, and to accede to common-sense or, radical conservative ideas is a violation of their deepest beliefs.
On the other hand, conservatives have their strong belief system also, which amounts to an adjunct to their mostly Christian belief system, and will not give their beliefs up willingly. (I will not list here the elements of conservatism, as on this site they are well known.)
The conclusion I seem to be reaching for is that the SH crowd will not react patriotically to further attacks on America, and would welcome the further chaos and deconstruction of our present society in favor of creating out of the rubble a new Utopian day where they are the masters, or the puppet-masters at least. (If this sounds like Marx, you are well up on your reading.)
Thus, I see a direct conflict of immense proportions being conducted, largely in the shadows, but increasingly in the open,between those who follow SH to the letter, and those who are dedicated American Conservatives, Republicans, and Christians who are trying to hold the traditional line.
May God help us.
3:32 pm
“there seems to be a consensus on the left that if only we hadn’t gone into Iraq, the terrorist threat wouldn’t be what it is today.”
Oh no, it’s only because we went into Iraq that it isn’t worse, rather than the same.
Anyhew, the response to Cherthoff is the function of credibility. ‘We’re fighting them over there, so we don’t have to fight them here”
The Boy Who Cried Wolf, comes to mind.
Who’s fault is that?
5:46 pm
From the background picture I paint in #5 above, I believe that conservatives are quite frustrated. At least I know that I am! The question posed in this thread is a valid one: many of us conservatives have had the thought that the next bombing (or whatever!) would reflexively turn liberals to the right on defense.
I wish it were so! Give the liberals a few days to absorb the shock and extent of the next disaster, and their information machine will find the way to co opt the event, and absorb it into their system of thought—something like: “it is our fault, our administration’s fault, and we shouldn’t blame the agents of our downfall.” We should pull back to Fortress America, and change our policies, our government, and our attitude of aggressive defense. This makes perfect sense to them, and then they will open the doors to further immigration from the lands of our enemies.
No conservative that I know wants an attack on the US, but many see such an event as perhaps the only way to polarize the nation towards a sound defense. I may be wrong, but I think we are at considerable risk of losing even that chance to sort ourselves out after 2008, if the liberals are at the controls everywhere then.
5:47 pm
Rick Moran said:
” Of course, this throws up all sorts of questions about the leadership of President Bush, Republicans in Congress, and conservative intellectuals who have failed miserably in making the case for this wider war on terrorism to the American people.”
Perhaps President Bush and the others listed made the mistake of believing the American people would resent the slaughter of 3,000 innocent members of the Republic and at the same time, perhaps they misjudged the American peoples’ ability to recognize an enemy’s arming approaching.
Just never pays to assume and unfortunately, it does feed into the Leftist model that the American people are sheep who are defenseless without a Tax. Spend and Surrender Shepard.
6:15 pm
Rick, I think you are missing the point. Most critics of the way the administration has pursued the War on Terror think the invasion of Afghanistan was the right thing to do, but the invasion of Iraq was completely the wrong thing to do. Accept for a few bat shit crazy crackpots (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurie_Mylroie), no one believes that Iraq had any significant role in al Qaeda or related terrorist groups. Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia are believed to be much more involved in terrorism. Note that it is not important whether Saddam had some secret connection to al Qaeda. If he did, he also did such a good job of hiding it that nobody knows about it even today. Therefore, no one believes that the Iraq invasion had anything to do with terrorism. That leads most people to look for some other motive, which is why the Iraq invasion, at least initially, was such a plus for al Qaeda.
7:23 pm
Rick Moran,
do you see any POLITICAL way to stop the surge of violent Islamism in the Muslim
world?
You know what the myth of the Hydra means: You cut off one head of her only to make her grow two new ones.
How to fight a Hydra-like enemy?
9:02 pm
If we had lobbed a few cruise missiles at Bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan rather than going for regime change, would there be Muslim doctors trying to blow up airports?
AQ in Afghanistan was basically paying rent to the Taliban. It was also clear that 9/11 was a signature AQ attack (or a conspiracy designed to look like one, but that way lay madness.)
Regime change was a reasonable option even for non-absolute pacifists. Some of the other alternatives were:
(a) cruise missile strikes
(a.2) nothing. (Not an option.)
(b) a targeted operation (airborne?) on the camps. (very risky)
(c) negotiations with the Taliban. (Hah. These were the guys who blew up the stone Buddhas.)
(c.2) Serious negotiations with the Taliban with regime change as a clear threat. (This was plausible at least.)
The major issue with regime change was follow-through. The pacifist side of my family was dismayed when it became clear that the reconstruction side of the follow-through wasn’t being taken seriously – the mocking dismissal of the “Afghan winter” issue and the minuscule and botched food drops were bad signs to them that the US government wasn’t particularly interested in reconstruction. The escape of important parts of the AQ membership to Pakistan was another early bad sign.
Directly answering your question, no, probably no Moslem doctors trying to blow up airports, with “explosives” that were ridiculously amateurish. However, there would have been more well-organized, well-executed attacks originating from Afghanistan, and probably more well-executed attacks by franchisees.
2:20 am
Hypocrisy All Around…
Long trodden upon lines of propriety have been crossed once again in the media’s most recent Larry Flynt-sponsored rush to expose a Republican caught engaging in acts beyond the bounds of his marriage. Rick Moran examines the recklessness of ignoring….
8:47 am
Rick Moran wrote:
“If killing them only creates more of them which in turn makes us less safe, logic would dictate that we basically surrender to the idea that from time to time we are going to be attacked and that the best we can do is work with our allies to mitigate that possibility as much as possible by smashing their cells whenever we find them. Is this the basis of the left’s strategy for dealing with terrorism?”
Our answer is not: to stop killing them. The counterproductive side of our strategy is that on one hand we legitimately fight them, on the other hand we provide them with ever more incentive and ressources to fight us, because we fail on the political side of the fight and give them political reasons to justify their fight, and THAT makes our killing them counterproductive.
(The other aspect of this is of course: socalled collateral killing can become too much, too, and create new enemies.)
There are political ways to deal with the problem.
1. Stop and reverse Israel’s land-grab – that would be very popular in the Muslim world, sideline the Islamist extremists and re-establish pro-Western sentiments.
2. Finish this absurd Iraq occupation and the (hidden, but obvious) attempt of an oil-grab there; diminish the negative effects of such a withdrawal in establishing cooperation among Iraq’s neighbours.
(To stir the hornets’ net Iraq was absolutely counterproductive for the fight against Islamist terrorism.)
3. Detente in relation to Iran and Syria.
As a matter of fact, the Arab and, to some degree, the whole Muslim world believes to face a Western crusade in Palestine (landgrab), in Iraq (oilgrab), in Lebanon and in Afghanistan, as well as against Iran. They are convinced that we see Islam to be their enemy. And the proof they see is in our violent activity wherever confident Islam and a strictly Muslim way of life establish resistence to Western intrusion.
The more we fight with firepower, the more Muslims get convinced that this (partly wrong) interpretation of a Western crusade is reality – as long as we continue landgrab in Palestine, occupation in Iraq and warmongering against Iran!
I think – I suppose: different to you, Rick Moran – that it is mainly (not only, but mainly) this our MidEastern politics what gave and still gives violent Islamism its powerful appeal.
So here is ONE root of the surge of violent Islamism, and so we have to change our politics – IN ADDITION to using firepower and tracking perpetrators down – to get to this ONE of the root causes.
I suppose you do not think that such a change of political course might be the right answer. Although I see some reflection in that direction in your post. Please explain further!
And please adress my question in post Nr. 10:
How to fight a Hydra? What strategy does apply in such a type of fight?
I’d really like to hear of a conservative concept for such a type of fight.
9:36 am
Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup…
And a Happy Sunday to all! It is yet another great day to be alive here in America, and that never gets old. This pinup is by Harry Ekman, with a tiny addition by me.
What is happening out on ye olde feedreader?
A Lovely Infidel is one…
9:55 am
Outrage: Nutroots assert that Conservatives WANT a…
A new message by Ayman al-Zawahiri (who may be in command of Al Qaeda if Bin Laden is dead) is causing a lot of alarm—there is broad speculation that this is a command to carry out the next attack on America. Rick Moran comments on the “collective y….
4:55 pm
The comments section here is almost as interesting as the article.
Look conservatives, hate to break it to you, but another 9/11 in America is not going to make liberals more reflexively pro-right on the War on Terror. Instead, we lefties will feel that the attack validates our view that the Iraq war has NOT, repeat NOT, made us safer from terrorism, but actually more vulnerable.
Most of us liberals went along with Afghanistan because that’s where Osama was, and we asked the Taliban to give him to us but they said no. Fine.
Then, just as we placed our trust in Bush and figured he was serious about that “dead or alive” talk, he lets Osama go and starts a whole NEW war elsewhere, where we knew Osama wasn’t.
So we pissed off the Muslims even more, and the Iraq war served as a convenient rallying cry for Al Qaeda to recruit even more jihadis to the still-free Osama’s banner.
And it hasn’t escaped our liberal attentions either that several of those failed terrorism plotters in the UK were Iraqi. Gee, you think that the invasion of their country might, in some way, have been, I dunno, a motivating factor for them?! Nah.
You people must think us total idiots if you honestly believe we want to sing Kumbaya with the terrorists, or if you think our tiny lizard brains can’t grasp the fact that some of those people really, truly want to kill as many of us as possible, whether we’re on the left or the right. We get it, OK?
But this is why we are angry: BUSH’S POLICIES ARE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE TO WINNING THE WAR ON TERROR.
I want all you fundies to post that on your refridgerator and read it every time you go to get a Bud Light. COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.
We should have stayed on Osama’s ass until we caught or killed him. We should have sent special forces after his henchmen and killed them WITHOUT invading a WHOLE OTHER COUNTRY that had NOTHING to do with 9/11 instead! That would have been in this nation’s best interests, and believe me, we lefties would have supported it.
You guys just don’t get it.
6:34 am
Submitted 07/18/2007…
The watcher’s council has submitted its articles for this weeks’ voting. Leading off this week’s lineup is Pangloss by Done with Mirrors. He refutes the argument that there’s no reason to fear terrorism because it is so rare. He argues that we ough…
2:46 pm
Jimbo, I get it.
I’ve also spoken to Gen. DeLong who led the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns and I know that invasion of Iraq wasn’t done at the exclusion of fighting al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Fair point if you actually had the facts to back it up.
10:28 pm
The Council Has Spoken!...
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Harry Potter and Ostrich Syndrome …
2:35 am
Council speak 07/20/07…
The Council has spoken and chosen Bookworm Room’s Harry Potter and the Ostrich Syndrome – reflection on everyone’s favorite boy wizard and how the symbolism of his struggle relates to today’s news, as the winning council post. The winning non-counci…
9:52 am
[...] There’s another American Thinker connection for one of the three posts tied for second place post at the Watcher’s Council: Right Wing Nut House’s Are Conservatives Really Hoping for Another 9/11. It’s a marvelous rumination about the charge that Conservatives are praying for another 9/11 so that they can consolidate political power. Instead of just brushing that charge off, because it’s an exceptionally mean-spirited one, Rick Moran examines it closely and decides that conservatives (a) want political power (of course); (b) that another attack on Americans probably benefit the conservatives because Americans understand that they are better on defense; but© that conservatives, while recognize the benefits of an attack, don’t want one — instead, they fear that, because of liberal attitudes, we’re going to get one regardless, and we’d better be prepared. Oh, I mentioned the American Thinker connection, right? Rick Moran is now associate editor there. Congratulations! [...]
11:34 am
Watcher’s Council results…
And now… the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Harry Potter and Ostrich Syndrome by Bookworm Room, and Myths and Realities of the George Bush Presidency by TCS Daily. Thanks to everyone for all the…...
3:55 am
“Jimbo, I get it.
I’ve also spoken to Gen. DeLong who led the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns and I know that invasion of Iraq wasn’t done at the exclusion of fighting al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Fair point if you actually had the facts to back it up.”
Oh bullshit, Mark E.
I don’t need to talk to some general to understand basic facts: we have a finite number of soldiers and if a big bunch of them are doing triple tours in Iraq, they can’t be in Afghanistan at the same time.
If we hadn’t invaded Iraq, we would have significantly more resources on hand to chase and corner Osama in the Hindu Kush, or wherever he is now.
That’s just common sense. And if you’re doing mental contortions in order not to own up to that, shame on you.
5:01 pm
I have shares in a company that is developing a drug that will eradicate leprosy. Do I wish that the company fail? After all, if it succeeds then in a short while my investment will be lost becauses there will be no more leprosy! And the profits I make in the meantime will not compensate me for the lifetime of profits I could make were leprosy not eradicated completely. Also, am I not hoping that the world sees a GIGANTIC growth in the instances of leprosy just as my drug hits the market? Better yet, would I not wish that all the world (except me) get leprosy, thereby maximising both my profits and my altruism (people will be happy to give me their money and will bless me when I cure them!)
Perhaps this little adventure into the heart of schadenfraude will convince you of the absolute EVIL of the argument that Conservatives desire an even more horrific disaster than 9/11 just in order to prove to Liberals that they (Liberals) are blind and i order to be able to say “I told you so!”
It’s an EVIL argument; don’t spread it about!
12:32 pm
Watcher’s Council Results…
The winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Harry Potter and Ostrich Syndrome by Bookworm Room, and Myths and Realities of the George Bush Presidency by TCS Daily. Here are the full tallies of all votes…...
8:49 pm
Here is a good and related article on whether another 9/11 would help America
http://garlinggauge.com/2007/08/11/another-911-helps-us/
9:50 pm
News for many of you from an old lefty that opened his eyes on September 11. Conservative are not crying wolf..get out there and see the world..talk with people from other countries and listen very carefully, because time is running out.
There are real threats. If you continue playing these little head games, stamping you feet about the big bad BUSH, and carrying on with these phony arguments, you will guarantee loosing everything. No one ever asked you to take hook, line, and sinker on what the “establishment” has presented. Let’s grow up here, stop the whining, stop the divisiveness, and use some street smarts. Yes, there are evil people, truth is not relative, people can not always be trusted, all conflicts can not always be solved with diplomacy or deals. You know this in your own lives whether your left or right leaning…consider that you may not have all the story….look past all the bullshit people on the left and as well as the right at times spew out for personal gain. Try to get as much information as possible about these subjects before you become your local expert..believe me I have heard a lot of propaganda in my fifty years..the trick is to try to be fair minded and listen carefullly to both sides…if I you don’t really know fully about a subject, research it before you open your mouth; be careful what you hear in the news media and from ex administration types. We are living in times that require some sober thinking, a deeper understanding of our past history,and a gretaer amount of humility.