As the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate and public support for the war effort dwindles, the chief cheerleaders of the Iraq invasion are desperately looking for someone else to blame. Bill Kristol has already pointed his finger squarely at Donald Rumsfeld and has accused the Bush administration of not waging the war with sufficient "moral seriousness." GOP shills like Brit Hume, Fred Barnes, and Laura Ingraham are busy pointing their fingers at the media, accusing news organizations of poisoning public opinion with a constant barrage of bad news.
But the award for pure chutzpah has to go to Mark Steyn. His column in the Chicago Sun Times is so astoundingly dumb that it sets the new gold standard for conservative idiocy on Iraq (which is no small feat!).
Before I get to the heart of Steyn's argument, I want to take one paragraph from his column totally out of context (for reasons which will become apparent). Toward the middle of the column, Steyn writes:
To win a war, you don't spin a war. Millions of ordinary citizens are not going to stick with a "long war" (as the administration now calls it) if they feel they're being dissembled to about its nature. One reason we regard Churchill as a great man is that his speeches about the nature of the enemy don't require unspinning or detriangulating.
That sounds like something I might write. After all, this war has been "spun" from the very beginning. The American people were told that Saddam posed a grave and gathering threat; that he was in league with Al Qaeda and six months away from getting his hands on nuclear weapons. They were told the war would be quick and easy and would pay for itself. They've been treated to a string of premature declarations of victory and assured repeatedly that everything is going swimmingly when their own eyes tell them that it's not. It's no wonder they're a little disillusioned at this point.
Sadly, however, Steyn wasn't referring to any of these things I just mentioned. No, Steyn thinks the problem is that President Bush and Tony Blair have not made it sufficiently clear to the American and British people that this is really a war against Islam. Yes, you read that correctly. Steyn attributes the plummeting support for the Iraq War to, of all things, political correctness gone awry. He writes:
The line here is "respect." Everybody's busy professing their "respect": We all "respect" Islam; presidents and prime ministers and foreign ministers, lapsing so routinely into the deep-respect-for-the-religion-of-peace routine they forget that cumulatively it begins to sound less like "Let's roll!" and too often like "Let's roll over!"
Referring to a respectful statement about Islam by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Steyn writes:
At a basic level the foreign secretary's rhetoric does not match reality. Government leaders are essentially telling their citizens: Who ya gonna believe -- my platitudinous speechwriters or your lyin' eyes?
Steyn concludes his column with this:
My worry is that the official platitudes in this new war are the equivalent of the Cold War chit-chat in its 1970s detente phase --when Willy Brandt and Pierre Trudeau and Jimmy Carter pretended the enemy was not what it was. Then came Ronald Reagan: It wasn't just the evil-empire stuff, his jokes were on the money, too. In their own depraved way, the Islamists are a lot goofier than the commies and a few gags wouldn't come amiss. If this is a "long war," it needs a rhetoric that can go the
distance. And the present line fails that test.
For Steyn, the problem is simple: our rhetoric is not sufficiently inflammatory and jingoistic. The key to winning the war in Iraq and the overall war on terror is, apparently, to declare ourselves at war with Islam, and to make fun of Muslims.
Cluelessness of this magnitude is staggering to behold. Don't get me wrong, I'm a strong believer in free speech and will defend anyone's right to express an opinion, even an inflammatory one. But to suggest, as a normative proposition, that the way to win this war of ideas is to attack and ridicule Islam itself is pure insanity. That approach will do wonders for our effort to win over hearts and minds.
And it's even more ridiculous to suggest--as Steyn does--that the current dwindling support for the Iraq War is due to the overly-respectful way in which our leaders discuss Islam. Yeah, if only Bush would start framing this conflict as a holy war against Islam, everyone would suddenly be back onboard.
Does Steyn really think that the American people don't know the nature of the enemy we face, that they're unaware that the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 were militant Islamists? That's ridiculous. If anything, one of the reasons people have soured on the war in Iraq is because an increasing number of them have realized that Saddam's regime had little, if anything, to do with the enemy that attacked us on 9/11 and that this ill-advised and disastrously-executed war appears to have made the situation infinitely worse.
Or perhaps people have grown a little disillusioned because columnists like Steyn told them things like this almost three years ago:
This war is over. The only question now is whether a new provisional government is installed before the BBC and The New York Times have finished running their exhaustive series on What Went Wrong with the Pentagon's Failed War Plan. . . .
[T]hese are the death throes: the regime was decapitated two weeks ago, and what we've witnessed is the last random thrashing of the snake's body. . . .
[F]or everyone other than media naysayers, it's the Anglo-Aussie-American side who are the geniuses. Rumsfeld's view that one shouldn't do it with once-a-decade force, but with a lighter, faster touch has been vindicated, with interesting implications for other members of the axis of evil and its reserve league.
You would think that someone who was so massively wrong about Iraq might be humbled by the experience and opt for a less condescending and cocksure tone when discussing the war. Not Steyn. His train of idiocy rolls onward, undetered. And remarkably, his influence among conservatives continues to grow. Steyn's Sunday column was quoted at length (and approvingly) by Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds who encouraged his readers to "[r]ead the whole thing, especially the last paragraph." Peter Robinson at The Corner also quotes the column at length, noting that "Mark Steyn is at his zestful, gorgeous, truthful best."
Sigh.
Hmmm -- I wonder if the spin is changing again -- the Iraq war is just one little wee battle in the must greater and more meaningful war against Islam and so really there is nothing lost, NOTHING, and its just unpatriotic to imply that anything is going wrong . . .
ReplyDeleteIs it wrong for me to actually feel pity for these individuals?
ReplyDeletea logical argument will not supplant a belief that was instilled exclusively by emotion.
ReplyDeleteyou're using a hammer to make your point because that's the tool that's worked before, but the GOPers aren't nails.
just because you're indisputably right doesn't mean that this argument will sway anyone who doesn't already agree.
just because you're indisputably right doesn't mean that this argument will sway anyone who doesn't already agree.
ReplyDeleteIve been seeing many comments like these lately - people saying that it's not enough to make rational arguments, to show the other sides' contradictions, that it's dumb to point out inconsistencies and logical flaws in what they are saying, etc.
This is just stupid. What you suggest? Going out in the streets and pump our fists and wave Che Guevera signs and call Bush a fascist and demand revolucion? Woo boy - that'll feel good. And accomplishing nothing
Arguments like this work slowly, incrementally. THey wear down the other side's veneer. And it's the only option.
Over at The Corner, Andy McCarthy approvingly quotes a piece in the WSJ which says this, my emphasis:
ReplyDeleteThe Bush administration would be wise not to postpone any longer what it should have already undertaken -- securing Baghdad. This will be an enormously difficult task: Both Sunnis and Shiites will have to be confronted, but Sunni insurgents and brigands must be dealt with first to ensure America doesn't lose the Shiite majority and the government doesn't completely fall apart. Pacifying Baghdad will be politically convulsive and provide horrific film footage and skyrocketing body counts. But Iraq cannot heal itself so long as Baghdad remains a deadly place.
McCarthy says Bush must make the case for this. I can't believe it; or I can, but it is sickening. Where are the mea culpas about how wrong he was?
that the way to win this war of ideas is to attack and ridicule Islam itself is pure insanity.
ReplyDeleteThat's not how I understand the thrust of Steyn's article, hyperbole aside. Steyn is contrasting Australia's rhetoric with ours, and finds the latter wanting. He wants, as do I, a firmer response to the pathetic victimization culture rampant in the Arab world. When the Arab world becomes inflamed in a petulant rage, say, over the cartoons, or over a mistreated Koran, or over an insult to the "Prophet," we should not indulge them.
We should not go out of our way to insult Islam, but I'm certainly sick and tired of hearing that Islam is a religion of peace. At the very least, we should stop with that nonsense. No religion is really entirely peaceful. And Islam, in today's incarnation, is the worst of them. Clearly, Islam, and the people making up the culture of Islam, has got some major problems with peace, tolerance, respect for others, not to mention anger management issues.
Apparently Mark lives in some alternative world, joining both of his friends in endless opium-den inspired opining.
ReplyDeleteMark does seem to excel in one area. Republicans, desperate to bolster their world constructs that apparently have little to do with modern Earth, are turning to a latter day Baghdad Bob under the moniker of Mark Steyn.
Morrison J said...
ReplyDelete*snip*
Way to argue with epithets and strawmen, ass.
I never said anything about Che Guevara. I never said, "don't do it". And I definitely didn't say anything about taking to the streets.
What I said is that it's not effective in the way its imagined that it is.
It's not the only option - it's just the only option you have thought of so far. Please, lay off the knee-jerk comments, it doesn't suit you.
Clearly, Islam, and the people making up the culture of Islam, has got some major problems with peace, tolerance, respect for others, not to mention anger management issues.
ReplyDeleteBut you have to make up your mind. If the point of the Iraq War - as we are endlessly told - is to win the hearts and minds of the Muslims - if that's really the goal - then lecturing the Islamic world about the evils of Islam is pretty much the absolute dumbest and most counter-productive thing that can be done.
All of this shows the central and original inanity of the whole project - that we are going to make the Muslim world love us by invading their countries, dropping bombs all over the place, and changing their leaders.
That, more than anything, is the reason this war has failed. It has no coherent purpose, nor clear goal. One minute we are supposed to celeberate when good things happen to Muslims. The next minute, we're supposed to hate people like Jill Carroll who want to work with and embrace Muslims, or, according to Mark Steyn, we're supposed to say mean things about their religion.
The whole thing doesn't make sense because it's dishonest. Many people supported this war because they see it in religious terms - many Christians and Jews want to invade Muslim countries and change their culture because they see Islam as the enemy. Steyn's column, in that regard, is refreshingly honest. THe problem is that this motivation, embraced by a substantial portion of the pro-war contingent, is fundamentally at odds with the rhetoric and principles that are supposedly driving what we are doing over there. It's a hodgepodge of conflicting rationalizations and ever shifting justifications - everything works at cross-purposes- and that's why, among other reasons, the whole thing is an absurd mess.
What I said is that it's not effective in the way its imagined that it is.
ReplyDeleteIt's not the only option - it's just the only option you have thought of so far. Please, lay off the knee-jerk comments, it doesn't suit you.
Telling people who are trying to accopmlishing things that what they are doing isn't effective- while offering no alternatives yourself - is a pretty selfish, stupid and worthless form of behavior. It just makes you a whiny nay-sayer.
David: We should not go out of our way to insult Islam, but I'm certainly sick and tired of hearing that Islam is a religion of peace. At the very least, we should stop with that nonsense. No religion is really entirely peaceful. And Islam, in today's incarnation, is the worst of them.
ReplyDeleteI love it when people make blanket statements like this. First, it is a Xtian-loving nation, the US, that enforced sanctions on Iraq which, by some estimates, killed hundreds of thousands of people. This nation also has carried out a "war" against a nation that posed no threat to it, based on deceptive assertions. And it is this nation that is led by a President who has made little secret of his Xtian beliefs, not to mention his dispensationalist sentiments.
Second, Islam is such a large target that to brand IT with such easy generalizations amounts to inanity. Two of the countries with the largest Muslim population--Malaysia and Indonesia--have moderate, if not somewhat liberalized governments. Indeed, even Condi Rice suggested that all Moslem nations should model their governments on Indonesia's example.
Third, the assertion that Islam is a religion of war simply exhibits cultural and historical ignorance. As Juan Cole has shown with Koranic verses, the ideal of Islam is indeed one of peace and peaceful cohabitation with others and other religions.
The way that some interpretations of original religious messages is a question that has received some important research and commentary. The reasons are diverse, often involving the use of that message for political agendas. To say that Islam is any worse in this regard than Xtianity, Hinduism, or Judaism, however, is intellectually vacuous.
hypatia mentions the Andy McCarthy comment at the corner. The most sickening part of McCarthy's comment was part of his rational as to why Americans won't have the "stomach" to follow through on this war:
ReplyDeletethe American people have understandably come to view Iraqis as not nearly grateful enough for all we have sacrificed on their behalf.
Not nearly grateful enough...
But you have to make up your mind. If the point of the Iraq War - as we are endlessly told - is to win the hearts and minds of the Muslims - if that's really the goal - then lecturing the Islamic world about the evils of Islam is pretty much the absolute dumbest and most counter-productive thing that can be done.
ReplyDeleteI'm not talking about lecturing the Islamic world about the evils of Islam, or making a point of insulting Islam. I'm talking about treating them like adults. As Bush once said about racism in the U.S., we in the West treat Islam and Arabs with the "soft bigotry of low expectations." Behavior that is so flagrantly unacceptable gets a pass from our media and government, either due to misguided notions of multi-culturalism or just soft, lazy and cowardly thinking. The longer we treat the Arabs like petutlant children with whom we are afraid to confront lest they scream even louder in the shopping mall, the worse the situation will get. This idea that we have to constantly add to our statements that "Islam is a religion of peace," is preposterous.
The point of the Iraq war is an endless topic of discussion and varies according to each person, even within the Administration. So I can only speak to what makes sense to me. I never understood the goal of the Iraq war as the winning of their hearts and minds. It was regime change. Then it morphed into other things, unfortunately. The decisive event, which hardly anyone ever talks about, was after the fall of Baghdad, when the U.N. wanted to come in and administer, and we told them to F-off. That, more than anything else, was the stupidest move this Administration made.
the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 were militant Islamists?
ReplyDeleteA minor point here, I remember a number of articles about Atta & some of the other hijckers going to strip clubs and gambling cruises, drinking alcohol and watching porn. Here's one - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/10/04/MN102970.DTL
I thought militant Islamists were diametrically opposed to these things. Am I missing something?
Steyn seemed to be making two points:
ReplyDeletean esthetic point: he likes plain-spoken Aussies better than nuanced Brits.
a substantive point: he thinks we should be at war with Muslims
Neither point is really worth column space, unless the esthetics of foreign policy is important to you.
Militarily, McCarthy and Steyn are simply out to lunch. Politically, they are worse.
A story: my sister in law drinks a lot of Kool Aid, and was talking one day about how great it is that we're bringing freedom to Iraqis. I responded that when you kill someone's relative, they actually take it personally, and don't much give a damn about your motives. All they know is that you killed their uncle, and he was a good guy.
Not only do you not make friends with bullets, you make a lot of enemies, every day.
From David at 1:20PM:
ReplyDelete"I never understood the goal of the Iraq war as the winning of their hearts and minds. It was regime change."
Getting the Iraqi people on our side (hence 'hearts and minds') is a common sense part of any sort of 'regime change'. The alternative is the imposition of another strongman/autocracy that governs by fear and repression.
In other words, more of the same, which is likely where all this will lead in a few more years of civil war and sectarian violence.
Thanks, Mr. President.
I received another of Steyn’s fear-mongering ditties awhile back via one of my father’s conservative e-mail buddies. It had all the “Wake up, America!”subtlety of the parody right-wing radio commentator, Earle Pitts – American.
ReplyDeleteSteyn was arguing that “ground pounding” the Muslims wouldn’t prevent the fall of the Christian west. We suffer from an alarming birthrate gap vis a vis the Muslim world, Steyn warned, and the Christian world risks being eventually be overrun. To plagiarize a quote from a review of one of eco-alarmist Jonathan Schell’s old books, “I shudder to think how I’ve failed. I shudder for Mark Steyn, for all the time he’s spent banging away at his typewriter instead of banging away elsewhere.”
A.L.,
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is appropriate to make a distinction between Islam and Arabs in general, and the terrorists we are fighting. Although, it's not clear to me that the terrorists are distorters of Islam, so much as emphasizing existing threads of mainstream Islam and tapping into a consciousness that is deeper and much wider felt than we in the West admit. Nonetheless, my criticism is limited to when we indulge the Arab rage-fests and culture of victimhood, and when we fail to confront them like adults.
Re Hypatia's quote from the WSJ--first thing that leapt to mind was that old Rob't McNamara quote:
ReplyDelete"General, you don't have a war plan! All you have is a kind of horrible spasm!"
undercover blue: We suffer from an alarming birthrate gap vis a vis the Muslim world, Steyn warned, and the Christian world risks being eventually be overrun.
ReplyDeleteThis is a pernicious view in and of itself. It has received support not only from the likes of Pat Robertson but also the Pope and the Catholic hierarchy. One of the important proponents of this view is Michael Ledeen and an anonymous blogger at asia Times who calls himself Spengler.
I have written about the insidious aspects of these ideas from a distinctly cynic viewpoint.
Steyn was arguing that “ground pounding” the Muslims wouldn’t prevent the fall of the Christian west. We suffer from an alarming birthrate gap vis a vis the Muslim world, Steyn warned, and the Christian world risks being eventually be overrun.
ReplyDelete---
Turgidson:
Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Strangelove:
Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
I'm hoping one of our hosts or guest hosts is planning a post on the SCOTUS decision not to hear Padilla...
ReplyDeleteGetting the Iraqi people on our side (hence 'hearts and minds') is a common sense part of any sort of 'regime change'. The alternative is the imposition of another strongman/autocracy that governs by fear and repression.
ReplyDeleteRegime change ended with the capture of Saddam and the killing of his two sons. We could have then handed it to the U.N., pulled back to Kuwait, maintained a low profile, but still exert some influence in trying to help Iraq develop in a more open way. We didn't need to take on the full responsibility and voluntarily take on the heavy pressure of remaking Iraq into a democracy. Setting that very high standard, set us up for a political failure. But it was unnecessary to set such a high standard.
Quoting David: "The point of the Iraq war is an endless topic of discussion and varies according to each person, even within the Administration. So I can only speak to what makes sense to me. I never understood the goal of the Iraq war as the winning of their hearts and minds. It was regime change. Then it morphed into other things, unfortunately."
ReplyDeleteActually, first it was "self-defense"(sic) against Hussein's WMD, which were nonexistent. Regime change, pursuant to "liberating the Iraqis"(sic) and "bringing democracy"(sic) to Iraq were the fallback excuses when the WMD thing didn't pan out. Too bad it wasn't true and isn't a legal basis to wage war in any case, (that "regime-change-bring-democracy" thing, I mean).
This is old-time imperialism wrapped in neoconservative religio-poltical rationales of...well, it amounts to a rephrasing of the old idea of "manifest destiny," another bogus justification for murder, rape, and pillaging in the cause of amassing land and resources.
The morphing of reasons for our attacking Iraq into "other things" has entirely to do with whatever lie sounds halfway credible at the moment, or which it is believed will go down well with our media and citizenry.
They're running out of rhetoric.
With all due respect to cynic librarian and Juan Cole, it doesn’t matter what crimes and bloodshed Xians and Jews have historically unleashed. The Crusades and Inquisition are over; Western religionists have largely been tamed by secular, Enlightenment values.
ReplyDeleteThat has not, for the most part, happened in Islam, certainly not in the ME. One blog I’ve read for several years is Iraq the Model, written by two (at one time three) Iraqi brothers in Baghdad. I was extremely happy for them when they celebrated the end of Saddam’s reign and the democratic elections; these men desperately want a liberal, secular, civil society in Iraq and hoped it was in the offing.
But the reality is, classical liberals like the brothers who write that blog are not in a majority and do not constitute a force large enough to counter the crazy Muslim theocrats. That isn’t just my opinion, it can be gleaned in the latest (long) post at ItM:
The chances to see a solution are fluctuating up and down reflecting the daily map of events and the intra and inter partisan disputes and right now I see that chances split 50-50 between solution and a confrontation.
…the hardliner clerics in these parties have a different vision based on the dream of building a religious state or dying doing so. Of course this sounds insane for the guys in suits but for the turbans this represents the choice of the holy ancestors; either victory or death. They do not care about this life and they seek to satisfy God thinking that this is the only right path as they conclude from their confused reading of a confused history.
This vision will push them to fight fiercely to build their version of the 'kingdom of God'.
…I think the coming days will show a stiffer attitude on the end of the religious hardliners and this includes both Sunni and Shia and we will also be hearing more tense and inflammatory statements that will focus more on rejecting the American presence, not only in the form of the calls to deport or replace the ambassador like the ones we heard during Friday prayers but I'm afraid some clerics are preparing to declare Jihad as the American presence represent the major obstacle facing their dreams of a religious state.
Such declaration will no doubt find support from regional powers that are interested in seeing Iraq and America fail especially that America's failure in presenting a good example in Iraq will make America think a thousand time before trying to repeat the experiment anywhere else in the region.
Some of those fanatics think this is the best time for them to seize the ground and move to next step of action and those do not put defeat in their considerations as death too is part of victory and there are more than a few verses in the Quran that makes them think this applies to them and that death or 'martyrdom' is another form of victory. Anyway, the white bearded old cleric will not feel anything for the death of the young he misleads, on the contrary, it is they who should be grateful for him for showing them the path to heaven.
Clerics are gathering and charging their followers with hatred to prepare them for a war; hatred towards anything that does not belong to their old school and this may also include provoking these followers against moderate politicians ...cowards and betrayers of the faith.
Naturally most politicians do not want this land to be their grave but it won't be easy for them to resist the pressure or stay away from the fire. I really think that clerics are leading us to a real disaster and it is time for Iraqis with brains and influence to put an end for this madness of the clerics...
I so sympathize with the author of that, but those with his enlightened views are not numerous enough in his country, and cannot stop the bloodshed and calls to jihad coming from the clerics. It is this demographic reality that the Bush Adminstration, tho it was warned of it, failed to account or plan for.
Finally, I certainly agree w/ Glenn’s point about the absurdly contradictory expectations and pronouncements of some of the war supporters. Reading about Muslims at LGF one would believe they are nearly all inhuman death cultists who should be wiped from the face of the Earth. That, from people who ardently support a war to liberate them and give them democracy. How are crazy religious fanatics – which is what you’d think 99% of Muslims are reading LGF -- supposed to establish and run a liberal democracy?
Actually, first it was "self-defense"(sic) against Hussein's WMD, which were nonexistent. Regime change, pursuant to "liberating the Iraqis"(sic) and "bringing democracy"(sic) to Iraq were the fallback excuses when the WMD thing didn't pan out. Too bad it wasn't true and isn't a legal basis to wage war in any case, (that "regime-change-bring-democracy" thing, I mean).
ReplyDeleteSelf-defense and the WMD argument was the legal basis set forth by the Administration to the U.N. and the world to win their vote and approval. I was referring to our actual goal and purpose, which in my estimation, was to demonstrate strength by decisively finishing off the long unfinished war with Saddam. If THAT was the goal, and I believe it is, then the Administration got off track with the democratiziation effort. And I think this happened because the Administration needed something to hang its hat on after the failure to find WMD.
" ... people have soured on the war in Iraq is because an increasing number of them have realized that Saddam's regime had little, if anything, to do with the enemy that attacked us on 9/11 and that this ill-advised and disastrously-executed war appears to have made the situation infinitely worse."
ReplyDeleteThe Dems don't seem to get this. They keep whining about how afraid they are that they'll be considered soft on defense/terrorism, and meanwhile people daily become more aware that the Bush administration has utterly screwed the pooch.
hypatia: With all due respect to cynic librarian and Juan Cole, it doesn’t matter what crimes and bloodshed Xians and Jews have historically unleashed.
ReplyDeleteYou either didn't read my comment or consciously refuse to understand it. I said that there are contemporary examples of a moderate and peace-loving Islam--eg, Indonesia.
I also asserted that most current Moslem extremists contradict the Koran for political reasons--a view held not only by Cole but also Islamic scholars like Rahman.
You seem to have also missed my point that the Xtian-based ideology of the current US administration is guilty of killing numerous innocent men women and children.
You don't have to go back too far to see that in the mideast, at least, it was the Xtian religion that was held up to Moslems as the true religion. If you refuse to acknowledge the histroical roots of a situation you'll be mired in a knee-jerk and limited understanding of true solutions to age-old conflicts.
Hypatia wrote: "Western religionists have largely been tamed by secular, Enlightenment values."
ReplyDeleteThe Schiavo debacle, aided and abbetted by the President and the Senate Majority Leader, would seem to present evidence to the contrary. The underlying issue common to all of this is a literalist belief in religious dogma. I think it should be no surprise that the anti-constituionalist/pro-fascist Leader and his minions should be inclined to fan the flames of religious irrationalism. They thereby reap the benefits of allegiance from faith, rather than reasoned approval.
Hello glenn & AL,
ReplyDelete...about the reasons for failure -- did anyone see Tony Zinni (former CENTCOM Commander) ask for the resignation of Rumsfield on Meet the Press yesterday -- for, "at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility: at worst, lying, incompetence, and corruption"?
Can I get a witness?
David,
ReplyDeleteWhether what you say it true or not--as we can all see the "WMD threat" was just rhetoric meant to justify other motives--our actions were illegal. Unless we had evidence that Hussein was just about to attack us, in other words, unless our invasion was truly in the cause of self-defense, any other rationales were invalid.
Steyn's column is neither point nor counterpoint. He is simply stoking the fire, goading the majority-Christian United States toward hatred of Islam. If you want to trouble your mind about him, figure out what it is that he is trying to achieve, and on whose behalf. To argue with his points is to give them legitimacy that they haven't earned.
ReplyDeleteHe is not making a case or arguing a point. He is throwing lighted matches at some distance from the tinder, hoping that something will catch fire. Your response is one tiny flame. Steyn is not out in the vanguard, leading the new crusade, nor is he sweating among its grunts. He's the Signifying Monkey, planning to be well out of range when it all hits the fan.
You don't fight this kind of fire with fire. You piss on it while it's small enough to put out.
the assertion that Islam is a religion of war simply exhibits cultural and historical ignorance. As Juan Cole has shown with Koranic verses, the ideal of Islam is indeed one of peace and peaceful cohabitation with others and other religions.
ReplyDeleteI did not assert that Islam is a religion of war historically or that it is by nature, a religion of war. Rather I said that Islam -- in its current incarnation -- is not peaceful. The savage acts done in the name of Islam are hardly ever refuted or confronted by "moderate" mullahs. On the contrary, they most often gain the stamp of approval and legitimacy from the clergy.
And, I think it's foolish to speak of "Islam" as a religion separate and apart from the people. There is no independent Arab secular culture. It is wholly informed by Islam. The delusions of the Jihadis were shared by the Pan-Arabists before them, even though they were ostensibly secular. There is no daylight between Islam and normative secular life in the Arab world. For anyone watching with their eyes open, the Jihadis are expressing something that has deep resonance in the Arab/Islamic culture of today.
I was referring to our actual goal and purpose, which in my estimation, was to demonstrate strength by decisively finishing off the long unfinished war with Saddam. If THAT was the goal, and I believe it is, then the Administration got off track with the democratiziation effort.
ReplyDeleteIf that was the goal--and I believe it was partly what the PNACers had in mind anyway--then the Administration has done an absolutely impeccable job of proving the exact opposite.
All hail Dear Leader, Worst President Ever.
Robert,
ReplyDeleteThat is simply not true. If international law is your concern, then you could hang your hat on Saddam's human rights abuses or his violation of the cease-fire terms of the first Gulf War.
drbb,
ReplyDeleteSpoken like a true Kissingerian. I totally agree.
anon @ 2:14pm: He is simply stoking the fire, goading the majority-Christian United States toward hatred of Islam. If you want to trouble your mind about him, figure out what it is that he is trying to achieve, and on whose behalf. To argue with his points is to give them legitimacy that they haven't earned.
ReplyDeleteThe point is, he's playing to a growing Islamophobic trend in the US, as rcent polls show. If there's one thing the Right can hang their hats on, it's getting Americans to hate other people different from us.
David,
ReplyDeleteAs for his Hussein's human rights abuses, which I do not dispute, they alone are invalid as legal basis to invade another country...unless that is the case made before the UN and the UN Security Council agrees to intervention for humanitarian purposes. We cannot just decide we're going to rush in like the Lone Ranger and do in the bad man...that's vigilantism on an international scale. It's particularly invalid to claim that as a rationale if we've already cloaked our actions in other excuses.
And, if we're so concerned with humanitarian matters such that we're ready to commit our resources to military action, why didn't we step in to stop the Rwandan genocide? Why haven't we stepped in or marshalled international unity to step into Darfur? Most simply put, we are not interested in the well-being of suffering people around the world, but simply use such suffering as convenient justifications where we decide to invade a country for other purposes.
Please be more specific as to what "cease-fire violations" you refer to.
Congrats and a big phat Good On Ya for your Koufax win as Best New Blog !!!
ReplyDeletevery well deserved
cynic librarian writes: I also asserted that most current Moslem extremists contradict the Koran for political reasons--a view held not only by Cole but also Islamic scholars like Rahman.
ReplyDeleteDefine "political" reasons. The impulse beind deadly fatwas on Salman Rushdie and the murders of several of his translators; the murder of Theo van Gogh and threats against Ayaan Hrsi Ali; the fact that the pro-feminist, pro-gay film Hrsi Ali she is making within the context of a critique of Islam must be done in secret locations and with high security; the fact that the "Cartoonists" had to go into hiding with their families after myriad death threats...that is all the stuff of Torquemada, which could also be characterized as a "political" response. These are pre-Enlightenment behaviors not remotely comparable to the Schiavo debacle (as another commenter suggested), and neither are they comparable to a western democracy going to war -- Saddam deserved to be deposed, but that should have been done competently or not at all.
Some of what Hrsi Ali has said about Islam would, if uttered by me or any white Westener, bring resounding cries of racism and bigotry. But the woman had her genitals mutilated by an Islamic culture in which they also tried to force her into an arranged marriage, and she lives under death threats for insisting that Islamic intolerance of women's rights, free speech, gays and non-Muslims is evil. Nothing like that happens in the U.S. or any Western democracy, or if it does, we prosecute them -- even execute them, like the lunatics who shoot abortionists. Even Ashcroft, and the FBI under Bush and the Bush DoJ, go after the murderers in the "Army of God."
There is a severe pathology in large swaths of Islam, and it is not equivalent in degree or kind to the religious populism of the Bush GOP. I have my own strong criticisms of the latter, but these things are not the same. I don't like the Intelligent Design freaks, but as between them and religionists who send brave women like Hrsi Ali(along with novelsits like Rushdie and his translators) into a life of secluded hiding under armed guard, I know who is more terrifying and more dangerous to classically liberal values.
Hypatia said...
ReplyDeleteI so sympathize with the author of that, but those with his enlightened views are not numerous enough in his country, and cannot stop the bloodshed and calls to jihad coming from the clerics. It is this demographic reality that the Bush Adminstration, tho it was warned of it, failed to account or plan for.
Not only might "those with these enlightened views" have lacked in numbers when we ram-rodded our way in there but since "victory" was declared by BushCo there has been a concerted effort on the part of the sectarian militias, both Sunni and Shiia as far as I have read, to intellectually cleanse the country. I am not sure if anyone remembers or even caught it when it was happening but there was a time period there where many of what would be considered the more well educated, liberal secular segment of Iraqi society was being systematically killed off by these sectarian militias. They were, and perhaps still are, making a concerted effort to "cleanse" their country of all those that might advocate for a secular government.
Anyone remember reading about this? There was a petition being circulated online, authored by some Iraqi University professors, begging folks to take notice of the wanton murder of their colleagues.
I found the link. It isn't for the actual petition but it speaks to the crisis. Hypatia is going to hate where the link takes you...lol. If I find the actual petition I will post it.
Link
Here is the actual petition.
ReplyDeletePetition
rh: Anyone remember reading about this? There was a petition being circulated online, authored by some Iraqi University professors, begging folks to take notice of the wanton murder of their colleagues.
ReplyDeleteSee my posting on this issue, with background information, along with a link to the petition.
Huh..well I just read that first article I linked to and the interpretations or guesses as to who might be doing the cleansing found there-in don't seem to make much sense. But perhaps I was mistaken from the outset. I know I read somewhere an article referencing the Sunni and Shiia militias as those to be blamed for the murders. More research is needed obviously. For anyone that takes the time to read that article or perhaps already has a more complete knowledge of the subject and has any thoughts I would be interested.
ReplyDeleteMANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism
ReplyDeleteAfter having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.
We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.
Rest here.
BTW, signatories are:
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq
Anonymous Liberal,
ReplyDeletejust so ya know, I am going to go back to read and digest this post but need to say all I ever needed to know about Steyn was no more than Hugh 'On The Fronlines' Hewitt calling Steyn "our greatest living columnist" on Larry King
And, if we're so concerned with humanitarian matters such that we're ready to commit our resources to military action, why didn't we step in to stop the Rwandan genocide? Why haven't we stepped in or marshalled international unity to step into Darfur? Most simply put, we are not interested in the well-being of suffering people around the world, but simply use such suffering as convenient justifications where we decide to invade a country for other purposes.
ReplyDeletePrecisely. I find it moronic for some to suggest that our mission in Iraq is humanitarian. There are far worse attrocities being committed in places where it would far easier to effect change, but there is no geo-political and economic interests for us.
Ironically, Clinton went after the warlords in Somalia for purely humanitarian reasons (or am I being naive? I can't find a more cynical reason.), and he was crucified for it.
His handling of Rwanda, however, was inexcusable (and the reason I would never shake his hand).
Neither party can claim humanitary principles unless they stand up to genocide. Our nation has failed to do so.
the cynic librarian said...@ 2:52PM
ReplyDeleteThank you...I am checking it out.
Man you left out the best quote from that telegraph column:
ReplyDeleteIt takes two to quagmire. In Vietnam, America had an enemy that enjoyed significant popular support and effective supply lines. Neither is true in Iraq. Isolated atrocities will continue to happen in the days ahead, as dwindling numbers of the more depraved Ba'athists confront the totality of their irrelevance.
the many, many, many, many days ahead I guess.
Hypatia said...@ 2:57PM
ReplyDeleteYeah well that wasn't the one I was referring to but it appears worth reading none the less.
Hypatia: As far as politics and religion and how they're exploited for political aims by Islamic extremists, see the Paksitani Marxist, Eqbal Ahmad.
ReplyDeleteAs far as your other comments, certainly there's a lot of parochialism and tribalism exhibited by Arabic Moslems. Yet, even that statement must be fenced, because there are Moslem countries in the Mideast which are distinctly "enlightened," at least as you might understand that term. They include Turkey, Syria, Egypt, and Morocco.
In fact, Hussein's Iraq was much more western than most countries in the mideast. I believe that women formed about 50 percent of the workforce. Needless to say, those days are gone and will most likely not return, at least for the near future.
There's indeed much room for secularizing influences and Enlightenment-inspired changes in Arabic Islam. It's interesting to note, however, that the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghansitan (RAWA) opposed the US invasion of that country, even though they had suffered immense outrages to themselves and other women. Their reasons were that they felt that the tribalistic Islam of the country could only be fought from inside the culture rather than imposed from without.
On the whole, I do not think that any program of state engineering or nation building will solve the problems you note. I do believe that American-style consumerism and culture will.
Whether for ill or good, I think that this Americansim will level and destroy that outrageous medievalism that is so characteristic of the US' closest ally, Saudi Arabia for example, than any lecturing and pounding of the Enlightenment pulpit, an Enlightenment project whose dilemmas and failures have undergone intense scrutiny by both modernists and post-modernists.
We should not go out of our way to insult Islam, but I'm certainly sick and tired of hearing that Islam is a religion of peace. At the very least, we should stop with that nonsense. No religion is really entirely peaceful. And Islam, in today's incarnation, is the worst of them. Clearly, Islam, and the people making up the culture of Islam, has got some major problems with peace, tolerance, respect for others, not to mention anger management issues.
ReplyDeleteAs I read this statement, I thought: You can substitute Christian Conservatism for Islam in this sentence and make more sense.
I'm sure many of you read with interest, Kevin Phillips' piece on Sunday in the WP: GOP, God's Own Party. Phillips has nailed this whole phenomenon.
To wit: Zinni was on Washington Journal, C-Span this morning. Great analysis of the problems in Iraq, great suggestions (unfortunately impossible of performance by the Bushies because his suggestions depend upon diplomacy and Bush doesn't do diplomacy.) The callers who supported Bush sound like nothing so much as a cult as Glenn has pointed out repeatedly. So here's the Bush supporter meme as I'm hearing it:
1. If you vote Republican then you believe in God.
2. If you believe in God and vote Republican you believe in Bush because Bush has been personally saved, speaks to God, and is moving us toward Armegeddon and the second coming of Christ.
3. Since Bush has been saved, he can do nothing wrong. If anything goes wrong it is because a) Democrats/liberals did it, b) the media did it, c) terrorists/Islamist did it, or d) Bush did state his position loudly or long enough.
Point is, he's playing to a growing Islamophobic trend in the US, as rcent polls show. If there's one thing the Right can hang their hats on, it's getting Americans to hate other people different from us.
Sorry that's not quite true. God's Own Party not only hates people different from Americans, they hate Americans who dare to question the right hand of God: George W. Bush.
cynic librarian writes: On the whole, I do not think that any program of state engineering or nation building will solve the problems you note. I do believe that American-style consumerism and culture will.
ReplyDeleteI agree with that. Unfortunately I couldn't find the link, but some time back another ME blogger, Big Pharoah in Egypt, wrote that much as he detested Mubarek, as a secular liberal he knows that democrtic elections right now would be a disaster for his country. He felt the Muslim Brotherhood would gain control of the country, which would be worse than Mubarek.
Nation-building can work, it seems to have done in post-WWII Japan. But it should not be the reason for going to war, rather only something that may have to be done, where feasible (and it just isn't always or probably even usually), in the aftermath.
Celo said: I find it moronic for some to suggest that our mission in Iraq is humanitarian.
ReplyDeleteThis is the Neoconservative fall back position under international law which has been discussed in various postings above and at length at Afterdowningstreetmemo.com.
As I understand it, international law (promoted and promulgate primarily by the US in earlier, less militaristic days) provides three (3) justifications for one country to invade another: 1) If the country in question has attacked the invading nation; 2) For humanitarian purposes; i.e. Clinton through NATO actions in Kosevo and Bosnia; and 3) With approval of the UN or some other international body. Note: None of the justifications above cover the US invasion of Iraq and they will not cover a subsequent invasion/bombing of Iran if or when Bush and Blair decide to bomb the hell out of that country.
One blog I’ve read for several years is Iraq the Model, written by two (at one time three) Iraqi brothers in Baghdad.
ReplyDeleteIraq the Model makes Glenn Reynolds, Hugh Hewlitt, and Mark Steyn look like Aristotle, Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin.
It is such an obvious "plant", a paid tool in the Bushco disinformation highly funded campaign, that I doubt anyone who gravitates to this site because his thinking echoes the essential thrust of Glenn's and AL's ideas, would fail to see that in days, not weeks, months or years.
The leit motif of that site is a complete endorsement of the present US Government's neocon plan for global domination via setting up, through war, "democratic regime changes", and a submission that Iraq is an ideal "model" of this neocon agenda.
I read that site the way I do Little Green Footballs and Redstate, to see what the "other side", which in my case is all who are guided by truth last, lunatic agenda fir$t, is doing.
CONGRATULATIONS TO GLENN FOR WINNING BEST NEW BLOG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI just saw that news!!! Never was there a more clear expression of an award voted on merit.
It is enormously heartening to see that a person who appears on the scene armed with nothing but his dazzling capacity to use reason can still succeed.
Does anyone have a link where that story is carried?
Congratulations again, Glenn. This is a wonderful tribute to both your mind and your integrity.
BTW, I just went to Amazon, where your book is already listed, and pre-ordered a bunch of copies to give to all my friends and I encourage everyone to do the same so Glenn's book is featured on that site when it comes out.
I also ordered some other books with similar themes some of which were featured on the same page where your book was listed, as I know that is one way they decide which books to promote on their site.
I don't have a contribution to make concerning Mark Steyn's editorial...AL and many others here have offered critiques that pretty much cover my point of view.
ReplyDeleteBut as I read the comments I find myself unable to refrain from asking a couple of questions:
Many of you seem to take it for granted that it's completely just, right and moral for the US to decide how other people's societies should be structured, what form of government they ought to have and how the citizens of those countries should be permitted to interact. So the debate you have is merely about tactics and strategy...how do we force the rest of the world to be the way we want them to be? Not, is it right...but will it work?
How did we get to skip past the part where the US was anointed to perform this service? On what moral basis can you all conclude that it's any of our business? (Just so you know, I'm not going to accept any "if we don't do this they might do that answers. This is not an argument against self-defense. But, I suspect most would agree that because the guy down the street wears a turban and engages in practices I don't understand, I'm not permitted the moral wiggle room to burn his house down because of what I think he might do.)
Further, at the risk of sounding like a guy that Karl Rove would delight in teeing off on, isn't there just the slightest chance that this sort of attitude ("we'll turn the world into what we want") has an effect on the state of mind of the people we just love to demonize?
Yeah, yeah, I know. We do it for their own good. What was I thinking?
Steyn starts out his column by ridiculing the “anti-war” lefties for their lack of numbers at their recent protests. (He doesn’t mention the total lack of “pro-war” protest that we once saw.)
ReplyDeleteHe accuses those “lefties” of urging on “failure” in Iraq. Then he says, “there's a potentially far larger group to their right that's increasingly wary of the official conception of the war. The latter don't want America to lose, they want to win -- decisively.”
Really? Where are these people in all the polls? Larger than those who oppose the war? Where are they? Where are their pro-war protests?
And what the heck does “win decisively” mean? What would that “decisive” win look like? Do we measure it in Muslims killed? How do we know when we’ve won decisively?
What Steyn does is set up a straw-man, which is also what John Howard did by his comment about the religious fanatics calling for Jihad, "There is really not much point in pretending it doesn't exist."
So just who is pretending that there is no such thing as radical religious nuts calling for Jihad?
Can someone name a prominent anti-war “leftie” who insists that there are not religious radicals waging a “holy war” against the west? Just who doesn’t believe in the existence of Osama and Al Qaeda? Anyone? Name someone. Who believes Osama is a fantasy?
I suspect they are in hiding with those liberals who don’t want us to monitor phone calls from Osama. In short, this is a straw-man argument constructed to make Steyn and his worshippers feel macho, feel tougher and more manly than the “lefties.”
Even Steyn seems to acknowledge that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful because he asks, “What proportion of Western Muslims is hot for jihad? Five percent? Ten, 12 percent?”
So, let’s be generous and give Al Qaeda much more influence than it actually has and say 5% support Jihad. This still means that 95% of Muslims don’t accept this “jihad” rhetoric.
“If this is a ‘long war’,” writes Steyn, then “ it needs a rhetoric that can go the distance. And the present line fails that test.” Okay, what sort of rhetoric should we use against that “5%” that doesn’t outrage the other 95%?
Steyn doesn’t have a clue. This is about using our own rhetoric of a “holy war” against Islam (Christians like General Boykin called it a “crusade”) and Steyn knows it. Should we be openly calling for genocide? Is that the kind of rhetoric we need?
These people are grasping at straws to drum of support for a failed war, and all they can come up with is strawmen. Pathetic.
I'd long thought that the "War on Terror," in which Iraq is a massive and self-inflicted defeat, was a way for those who discovered their manhoods in the days of the Reagan droolfest and economic flameout to distract themselves from their own flagging powers of, well, everything.
ReplyDeleteCommunism changes into Islamofacism, whatever that means. The killing, jingoistic erections, and (above all) spending can resume! Yay!
Black welfare mothers driving Cadillacs change into Arabs. Harnessing the racism of the trailer park in support of massive public money-laundering to the rich can resume! Yay!
This way, the childish little pushbroom mustaches of the 80's never have to grow up, which is what all the silly little foot-stomping of the Reagan years was all about.
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There is a severe pathology in large swaths of Islam, and it is not equivalent in degree or kind to the religious populism of the Bush GOP. I have my own strong criticisms of the latter, but these things are not the same.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, when it comes to votes in the UN, they vote the same.
Like blowing up buildings in blue states, Islamic terrorists get to do things that redstate theocrats barely dare dream about. Same with their attitudes toward women.
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Christian extremists are held in check by our democracy. What do you think would happen were these checks to be removed?
ReplyDeleteWhat do I thing would happen if the check on Christian extremist you called democracy were to be removed? Gitmo.
Rothbard,
ReplyDeleteIt all depends on whether you view the globe as Hobbesian or European Unionesque. If you think we live in a world where all countries share the same values and will abide by accepted norms, then yes, we should focus on what "right" we have to act the way we do internationally. But if you think the world is essentially Hobbesian, then there are no rules; there is only survival.
Suppose, hypothetically, that Iraq really did have WMD, but was hiding them. As we saw, the U.N. Security Council did not sanction the invasion. Would Israel, or the U.S., or Kuwait, or Saudi Arabia, or Iran -- all enemies of Saddam with whom he already warred, or was about to go to war against -- would these countries have had the right to invade? Legally? Morally?
What about Iran? Given Iran's policies and stated intentions, and support for terror, does Israel have the legal or moral right to attack Iran? If not now, then when? Or ever? If it waits too long, it'll be too late. If it attacks now, it will do so without int'l cover. It will be illegal.
Was Israel's attack on the Osirak reactor legal? No. Was it morally justified? I can't see how anyone could say no.
You can go on believing that the world works like the European Union. But you do so at your own peril.
mo:
ReplyDelete"What do I thing would happen if the check on Christian extremist you called democracy were to be removed? Gitmo."
Yeah, Gitmo for the souls "worth saving." Stoning to death for the Truly Evil people, like the ACLU.
And what the heck does “win decisively” mean? What would that “decisive” win look like? Do we measure it in Muslims killed? How do we know when we’ve won decisively?
ReplyDeleteAh, the irony. Does winning decisively in Iraq mean killing all Muslims in Iraq? Who would be left to enjoy the "benefits of democracy"? Does winning decisively mean converting the entire region to Christianity? Will that include the Jews in Israel?
Or does winning decisively mean displacing a million plus people, killing hundreds of thousands, destroying billions in property and infrastructure, and wounding and maiming hundreds of thousands more? So have we already won decisively?
Great question you raise.
Suppose, hypothetically, that Iraq really did have WMD, but was hiding them. As we saw, the U.N. Security Council did not sanction the invasion. Would Israel, or the U.S., or Kuwait, or Saudi Arabia, or Iran -- all enemies of Saddam with whom he already warred, or was about to go to war against -- would these countries have had the right to invade? Legally? Morally?
What about Iran? Given Iran's policies and stated intentions, and support for terror, does Israel have the legal or moral right to attack Iran? If not now, then when? Or ever? If it waits too long, it'll be too late. If it attacks now, it will do so without int'l cover. It will be illegal.
Back in the good old pre-911 days international law as in post-911 days, recognized no justification for one country to invade another based on a perceived "threat". Boogymen didn't cut it back then, the rule of law applied.
I received a similar email. The article is It's the Demography, Stupid.
ReplyDeleteDo you dispute Steyn's contention that most European countries have birthrates at below-replacement levels?
Do you also dispute the fact that the Muslim populations within countries such as Great Britain, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and Spain (among others) are breeding at rates that far exceed that of their host populations?
If you do the math on this, what do you think is going to happen within one or two generations in these countries? Steyn makes the unassailable point that the future of these nations as secular, liberal, welfare-state democracies is certainly in doubt if Muslims breed themselves into majority status within the next 20-30 years.
It is high time the left took its head out of the sand and started paying attention to the stark demographic realities looming large across the entire landscape of Western Europe.
You can go on believing that the world works like the European Union. But you do so at your own peril.
ReplyDeleteIs that as opposed to the world free of peril that we presently occupy? Please provide the empirical evidence that a "minding our own business" policy would be more dangerous than what we're living through.
I'd also like similar evidence that it's not possible for people of differing values and different views of what are "accepted norms" (accepted, as in we all agreed that the US gets to unilaterally determine who plays in the nuclear arms game) to coexist without killing each other. (Unfortunately, to honestly respond to that question you'll have to acknowledge the real reasons governments declare war on one another.
But thanks for the response. (Although I note that you didn't address any possible contribution your interventionist wet dream has had on our current state of affairs.) It confirms what I've been thinking...that a lot of you think morality is relative and the smart (better to be smart than moral) money is on "the end justifies the means."
Further evidence that for many, war and an imperialistic foreign policy are cool, and you only get pissed if you think you're not getting your fair share of the credit and/or political plunder.
As you were.
"There is a severe pathology in large swaths of Islam, and it is not equivalent in degree or kind to the religious populism of the Bush GOP. I have my own strong criticisms of the latter, but these things are not the same."
ReplyDeleteCertainly the literalist fundamentalists aren't equivalent in degree. But they are equivalent in kind:
Wildmon, Timothy McVeigh, Christian White Identity, Roy Moore, Eric Rudolph (assisted substantially by his correligionist neighbors), are all examples of religious extremism that differs not at all from Islamic or Hindu or even Hebrew fanatics.
There is no doubt that there are many things badly wrong with the societies that produce the truly awful number of Islamic fanatics. It could be that the accelleration in the 20th century of formerly primitive nomadic societies into complex have/have-not oil empires without a long contemplation of Enlightenment values lit the match on explosive religious rage. But fundamentally, the psychological source of that rage, blind allegiance to religious dogma, is present in most large religions, including modern American fundamentalist Christianity. We should be relieved that the 'degree' of murderous religious fanatics is so small in our society, but we should be careful before we simply assert they are another 'kind'. This assertion of a sort of Christian exceptionalism is as just as implausible as the now defunct fantasy of American exceptionalism,
tortured to death in Abu Ghraib.
morlock writes: This assertion of a sort of Christian exceptionalism is as just as implausible as the now defunct fantasy of American exceptionalism,
ReplyDeletetortured to death in Abu Ghraib.
My point did not constitute a claim of "Christian exceptionalism." Xians have murdered and tortured millions in the name of religion, and otherwise made life hell for political, religious and lifestyle "deviants." But the heday of that viciousness -- in the Western world -- is past.
If Bush critics run around claiming that because of Eric Rudolph and Timothy McVeigh, this means George Bush and Xian evangelicals are not mcuh different than the Taliban, people will tune you it. It isn't so, and everybody going about their daily lives unafraid to blaspheme while wearing a bikini or Speedo at the beach, then renting The Last Temptation of Christ from the video store unmolested, and afterwards tuning in to Will and Grace to no harm, before finally going off to a Planned Parenthood meeting, knows these comaparisons are insane.
If you do the math on this, what do you think is going to happen within one or two generations in these countries? Steyn makes the unassailable point that the future of these nations as secular, liberal, welfare-state democracies is certainly in doubt if Muslims breed themselves into majority status within the next 20-30 years.
ReplyDeleteIt is high time the left took its head out of the sand and started paying attention to the stark demographic realities looming large across the entire landscape of Western Europe.
My God! You're right. Someday brown/red/black/yellow people might outnumber white people. Oh wait.
I have a friend who truly believes that right-wingers are "pro-life" (what a catch phrase) because they want to breed soldiers.
Mo writes: My God! You're right. Someday brown/red/black/yellow people might outnumber white people. Oh wait.
ReplyDeleteIf Christian Reconstructionists were, say, 20% of the U.S. population, and most of their families had 4-8 children, and most secularists had 1.4 per family, would those demographics not concern you? Would the color of the Reconstructionists' skin matter?
Iraq Dispatch
ReplyDeleteI get a call the other night. They've found four more bodies in western Baghdad. Three of them are in a car. They're bound, hands and feet. They're blindfolded. They've been shot in the head. Their bodies bear wounds from beatings, electrical burns, and someone has used a drill on their flesh. The fourth is the same, the only difference being that his body was tossed onto a sidewalk. That's just one phone call. I get a few more. Every night, it seems, dozens of bodies turn up, often killed in the same fashion, both Shi'ite and Sunni.
We spoke with a journalist recently for a piece we're doing. He works for an Iraqi television station. For the last nine days he's been sleeping at the office. He's been threatened with death because of his work, and he doesn't want to bring the danger home to his parents and six sisters. He told the Ministry of the Interior about the threat, they told him to get a gun.
"Death is the simplest thing now in Iraq. A bullet in the head is nothing, especially against journalists. So crying and sadness are the norm," he said to us. Later, he added, "I have been in love for the last 4 years but my conditions don't allow me to marry, not because of money but because of how things are going on. There is no stability and you never know when a civil war will breakout."
People here are more terrified than I have ever seen them.
Neighborhoods are self-segregating as one either Shi'ites or Sunnis flee out of fear for their lives. Neighbors are getting together and forming their own militias, vowing to fight the death squads that slaughter people here nightly.
A friend of mine tells me today he's bought weapons for his family, and is teaching his wife, who hates to even hold a knife, to fire a gun.
He has a daughter around two. In his neighborhood he saw a few families pack up and leave. Why? They are poor Shi'ites, usually from the south, or Sadr city, who moved to his neighborhood to work as housekeepers. The day before yesterday Sunni insugents burst into one family's home. They were a young couple, maybe 24 or 25. The husband was killed, and then they set his body on fire. They didn't bother killing the wife and four children first. They burned them alive.
My friend tells me this story and says, "I can understand someone who gets killed. I can understand beheadings. I can't understand burning someone alive." I find myself stunned. Both by his story and by the fact that killings and beheadings are understandable. Burning people alive apparently goes violates some behavioral norm that says chopping people's heads off is okay.
It is becoming very clear to me that war can shatter a society and what it becomes as it puts itself back together can become a warped malefic grotesquerie. A social organism that eagerly eats itself alive.
At a press conference the other day an American General said he thinks that Iraqis feel more secure. I think that most of the Iraqis I've spoken with since I've been here might have a slightly different perspective.
In other news, an elementary school has a new coat of paint. Let's all smell the fumes...
If Christian Reconstructionists were, say, 20% of the U.S. population, and most of their families had 4-8 children, and most secularists had 1.4 per family, would those demographics not concern you? Would the color of the Reconstructionists' skin matter?
ReplyDeleteNo. See Mormons in Utah. They have lots more children than their secular counterparts and both groups are overwhelmingly white.
This is what matters about Christian Conservatism (or Reconstructionists as Hypathia calls them) in its current "waiting for the rapture" mode:
The potential interaction between the end-times electorate, inept pursuit of Persian Gulf oil, Washington's multiple deceptions and the financial crisis that could follow a substantial liquidation by foreign holders of U.S. bonds is the stuff of nightmares. Kevin Phillips
Now, that is cause for worry. And these are the white folks.
My God! You're right. Someday brown/red/black/yellow people might outnumber white people. Oh wait.
ReplyDeleteThis has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with skin color, you nitwit. This has to do with whether the Muslims within Germany, are going to institute laws to make homosexuality a felony, for one small example, when they achieve majority status. A recent survey of British citizens who are Muslim reveals that 60 per cent would like to see sharia adopted as the legal code of the nation!
Are you so closed-minded as to not see the threat that looms over much of Western Europe by the demographic Sword of Damocles that we see inching closer and closer to its exposed neck? Unless Christian Europeans start to have babies, and start to have them in large numbers, they will be subsumed completely within majority Muslim populations within the lifetimes of children being born today. If you do not believe that will have truly profound implications for the fragile notion of individual rights and the rule of law within those nations you are either willfully ignorant or completely insane.
This has to do with whether the Muslims within Germany, are going to institute laws to make homosexuality a felony, for one small example, when they achieve majority status. A recent survey of British citizens who are Muslim reveals that 60 per cent would like to see sharia adopted as the legal code of the nation!
ReplyDeleteAre you so closed-minded as to not see the threat that looms over much of Western Europe by the demographic Sword of Damocles that we see inching closer and closer to its exposed neck?
Since we are already at the mercy of drooling superstitious freaks right here in America, we can hardly be unaware of the religious right's mirror-image in sharia.
That said, this kind of cultivated ignorance has never survived in modern urban contexts in the west. We're wearing them down in America and they're going native in Europe.
Like their birth rates, these things can only be projected into the future indefinitely if you're punking the idiot right. Only they are dumb enough to fall for it ... again.
.
You would think that someone who was so massively wrong about Iraq might be humbled by the experience and opt for a less condescending and cocksure tone when discussing the war.
ReplyDeleteWell, yeah, you would, wouldn't you? But by now we have to admit that external reality is not really a concern of the chickenhawk "patriots". For at least three years now, these guys have been displaying the cognitive agility of any true-believing Bolshevik.
-- sglover
This is hardly the first time Steyn has written on this topic, and it’s really quite common in right blogistan as anyone who has ventured into the swamps of LGF, Nice Doggie, Luciane and many other sites where calls for killing all Muslims are quite common.
ReplyDeleteThis straw man of the weak, wimp leftists who refuse to face radical Islam is a popular theme these days.
Alexandra at “all things beautiful” says about Steyn:
I admire his courage in voicing what seems to be slowly becoming a taboo subject of Islam, whispered rather than said, ignored rather than faced, and above all pandering to the politically correct, who seem to be under the impression that defending yourself is somehow very distasteful. Better to simply lay down and die quietly in the corner somewhere, whispering apologies, and hoping the crocodile of Islam will eat you last, or should I say burn you last.
But just who is whispering? Who is afraid to talk about this? Who thinks defending yourself is distasteful? Who the heck are these people talking about?
She then links approvingly to Daniel Pipes:
“Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers.”
This is what I have dubbed the Sudden Jihad Syndrome, whereby normal-appearing Muslims abruptly become violent. It has the awful but legitimate consequence of casting suspicion on all Muslims. Who knows whence the next jihadi? How can one be confident a law-abiding Muslim will not suddenly erupt in a homicidal rage? Yes, of course, their numbers are very small, but they are disproportionately much higher than among non-Muslims.
So, you never know folks. That nice friendly cab driver who is driving you to O’Hare could abruptly become a violent homicidal murderer at the drop of a hat. Beware.
(Yes, and we recently had a nice, white, upscale Christian who went berserk in a wealthy Chicago neighborhood and tried to kill his cab driver. Now that did happen. Yes, their numbers are very small, but rich, white Christians can suddenly become homicidal maniacs.)
The difference, of course, of course is we don’t use that incident to smear and indict all rich white Christians. However, that’s pretty much what Steyn, Alexandra and Pipes do concerning Muslims.
And when they do so it’s called “courage” on the right. I think A. L. had the right term. Idiocy.
It's strange how Steyn really seems to slip under people's rader -- he did under mine for a long time -- but he's really just Ann Coulter with a far better prose style.
ReplyDelete(I don't mean to blogwhore but I worked pretty hard during the holidays to catalog Steyn's most egregious posts.)
I think we'll see a lot more of Steyn's sort of blow up, though, because it's inevitable among war cheerleaders who completely buy the clash of civilizations line. As their war goes awry and support ebbs among the americna populace, they'll become more enraged that people aren't listening to them, that this is a crusade against a monolithic enemy that will last for decades, and why on earth dont americans have the spines to stick it out?
which will be nice in that they'll further alienate people sick of their warmongering crappola.
zack:
ReplyDelete“Can someone name a ... “leftie” who insists that there are not religious radicals waging a “holy war” against the west? Just who doesn’t believe in the existence of Osama and Al Qaeda? Anyone? Name someone. Who believes Osama is a fantasy?”
zack meet rothbard
“But, I suspect most would agree that because the guy down the street wears a turban and engages in practices I don't understand, [like flying airplanes into the Pentagon] I'm not permitted the moral wiggle room to burn his house down because of what I think he might do.”
"The key to winning the war in Iraq and the overall war on terror is, apparently, to declare ourselves at war with Islam, and to make fun of Muslims."
ReplyDeleteWell, gee, who WOULDN'T want to declare war on 1.2 billion human beings?
You have to keep reminding yourself that these lunatics WANT to start World War IV. In fact they're panting for it.
Which definitely does put them in the same company as a famous World War II leader -- but it ain't Churchill.
zack meet rothbard
ReplyDelete“But, I suspect most would agree that because the guy down the street wears a turban and engages in practices I don't understand, [like flying airplanes into the Pentagon] I'm not permitted the moral wiggle room to burn his house down because of what I think he might do.”
Nice work notherbob. I suppose if I'd been around here a little longer I'd have realized what a flaming pile of dog crap I was stepping into when I engaged you in conversation. It wasn't enough that you couldn't intelligently respond to the questions I posed yesterday, today you have to actually change what I wrote in a pathetic attempt to make a point.
What is the point by the way?
I'm gratified that you find yourself so over-matched that you have to resort to such pathetic grandstanding. I expect your three fans here are incredibly entertained.
retardo montalban:
ReplyDeleteThat is truly an excellent “catalog” of all things Steyn. Very well done. Thanks for the link.
Mo writes: This is what matters about Christian Conservatism (or Reconstructionists as Hypathia calls them) in its current "waiting for the rapture" mode:
ReplyDeleteNo, no. I do not mean Xian Conservatives, who I find annoying and worth some political and legal attention, but not deeply dangerous.
I mean the Reconstructionists/Dominionists. These people are a distinct and small sub-set of the religious right, that used to be entirely marginalized, but with some increasing influence in "respectable" religious right circles in the last decade or so.
They literally reject the Bill of Rights, and would replace it with Levitcal Law: stoning active male homosexuals, adulterers, and imprisoning blasphemers and any non-Xians who proselytized. They would allow free speech only for religiously "correct" speech.
These are not like Mormons or your average Xian evangelical. They are like Muslim theocrats.
So I ask again: If Reconstructionists made up 20% of the U.S. population, and were reproducing at the rate of 4-8 children per family, while the more secular reaminder had only 1.4 children (that isn't replacement level)per family, would those demographics not concern you?
From anonymous at 6:08PM:
ReplyDelete"Are you so closed-minded as to not see the threat that looms over much of Western Europe by the demographic Sword of Damocles that we see inching closer and closer to its exposed neck? Unless Christian Europeans start to have babies, and start to have them in large numbers, they will be subsumed completely within majority Muslim populations within the lifetimes of children being born today."
This of course presumes birth rates will remain stable on both sides. No guarantees there.
Our third favorite contrarian continues:
"If you do not believe that will have truly profound implications for the fragile notion of individual rights and the rule of law within those nations you are either willfully ignorant or completely insane."
Or we're simply viewing matters with a bit more objectivity and less knee-jerk back-handed xenophobia than your comment shows you capable of.
You provide no reason to fear a world where a thin majority are adherents to one of the many branches of Islam, particularly given the greatest concentrations are in the Middle East and Central Asia (hardly major centers of economic or technological power these days or into the future).
And *please* don't go waving the red herring of 'Islamofascism' about. That rubber chicken is overplayed as it is. I'd say we should be far more worried about the Christian Reconstructionists doing or prompting something truly horrifying (like another Crusade) in *this* country.
But then most of us here live in the real world.
The person I first heard say that the war on Iraq was a war on Islam was Don Imus. At the time I thought he was incorrect. Now, I am sure that he is right.
ReplyDeleteThe reason is that the detainees and those under the rendition program are Muslim.
This is tied to the whole story. It has been neatly separated from the war by the Bush Administration.
The Administration has tied the "enemy combatants" to the "War on Terror" in a different way than they have framed the Iraq War.
We are dealing with liars who are getting caught.
I think that the most important thing to do is wait for the investigative reporters to find the evidence that Bush lied about why the US invaded Iraq. It is then that constitutional remedy can occur.
It is vital that this president be held to account. Evidence that will hold up in a court of law is needed.
To rectify the wrongs, it is imperitive that those who commited the wrongs are charged and tried.
As for Mark Steyn and the others who try to defend the war policy, they are scattering blame like leaves in the wind.
Denial only lasts so long.
Glenn is right in his pursuit of the facts and writing them in a public forum.
In this case, information is power.
We are getting close to the time when the administration will no longer be able to refute the facts.
The Worm At the Heart of America:
ReplyDeleteAuthorities have foiled a "domestic terrorism" plan, recovering a cache of weapons and bomb-making equipment, the Rice County Sheriff's Office said today.
Rice County public officials and buildings were the presumed targets.
The multi-unit South Central Drug Investigation Unit said Allen Weatherford, 44, was arrested Friday on charges of attempted first-degree arson, possession of explosive devices and for being a felon in possession of firearms.
We have our own terrorists, it seems.
From hypatia at 1:51PM:
ReplyDelete"With all due respect to cynic librarian and Juan Cole, it doesn’t matter what crimes and bloodshed Xians and Jews have historically unleashed. The Crusades and Inquisition are over; Western religionists have largely been tamed by secular, Enlightenment values."
From The Carpetbagger Report today:
"Parsley compared the struggle against the "war on Christians" to the civil rights movement, defiantly shouting that "We [are] not going to the back of the bus … My Father owns the bus line. I will sit where I please!" He promised "freedom at any cost" — "If you think 2004 was something, we have not reached critical mass! We are the largest special interest group! … We're building order from chaos! We're fighting the sword with the word! We're fighting savagery with hope!" Swelling with the force of his own metaphors, he shouted at the crowd, "I came to incite a riot! Man your battle stations! Ready your weapons! Lock and load!"" - Rod Parsely, Pastor of Wood Harvest Megacurch, speaking at this weekend's 'War on Christians' conference.
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7038.html
With respect to hypatia and others, this is the voice that President Bush listens to.
While the historical Crusades are indeed over, and certainly the current brands of Islamic fundamentalism are more prone to violence towards the West than its counterparts within Christianity, you can't simply dismiss the danger they pose to both our country and government.
ESPECIALLY when you consider exactly who it is the President and his Administration are taking their cues from.
Congratulations, Glenn, on winning the Koufax award for "Best New Blog"
ReplyDeleteThe absurdity keeps coming. The lack of perspective is astonishing. The idea that we are at war with Islam strikes me as frighteningly delusional. But it's delusion with a familiar right-wing flavor. I often suspected that the Cold Warriors who used to have us diving under our desks in school were people who would be rudderless had they no enemy to dedicate their lives to fighting. I used to wonder what they would do if we ever found ourselves victorious in the Cold War. With the end of the USSR we found out the truth. The Cold Warriors went into a few years of aimless hollering at hated liberals and evil Democrats, but felt rather lost without commies to blame for our failure to live fully actualized lives.
ReplyDeleteOsama to the Rescue
These same people now have a new enemy to focus their beings on, and they jump up and down, their fists balled and arms and legs waving angrily as the country fails to properly hate the new enemy. It must be frustrating to have come so close to eternal warfare, only to find that Americans won't happily furnish the sons and daughters eternally necessary as fodder for the war machine. So we get this kind of claptrap from Steyn.
None of this was necessary. Al-Quaida presented us with a new kind of enemy, but not one on the scale of the USSR. So they had to hype the threat to achieve the level of acquiescence necessary to get the masses on board with a war against Iraq. Facts had to be fixed around the objective. Fears stoked and vision obscured. But what we really needed to keep us safe wasn't a war in Iraq, but an overhaul of our security at home. Wars bring revenues in the form of govt contracts--real security brings actual costs to those who have to pony up the due. Bush and the boys know where their bread is buttered. Real security can wait. There's gold in them thar oilfields. We can make a lot more money pretending to fight terror in Iraq than we get from govt contracts to tighten up the ports and batten down the chemical and nuclear plants. Security is chicken-feed compared to war hardware.
What a colossal con-job. A handful of extremists managed to make themselves look far bigger than they actually were, and a sane response would have kept that perspective. 9/11 was horrible, but in this world 19 guys can make a spectacle of themselves far beyond their real capability. 9/11 looked like war, but it wasn't. It was a single act of terror such that, had we responded with the proper measures, the chances of duplicating anything on the scale of it could have been nil.
I try to imagine myself explaining to a person who'd gone through London during the Blitz how people like Bart say we are at war, and have to live that way. Rights must be sacrificed, and the govt must have all the power it needs to keep us safe. When they ask where we go when we hear the air-raid sirens, I'd have explain its not that kind of war. When they ask when the last attack was, and I tell them, "five years ago," what kind of look would I get? When they tell me how bravely they carried on under a constant bombardment, how embarrasseed would I be?
Richard Clarke had a handle on things as soon as he heard what happened on 9/11, but Bush and the Neocons had the Pearl Harbor they'd been praying for, and Richard Clarke was not going to be allowed to deny them the response they'd been preparing for years. They scared us all to death with spooky stories about mushroom clouds and played on our barely-under-the-surface racism and voila, we're now at war with 1.2 billion people. And will be forever. Good job guys.
What started out as a fringe movement of Muslim extremists has grown into a world-wide hatred of America thanks to our belligerent response to 9/11. After 9/11 the whole world sympathized, and would have backed any rational action to deal with Al-Quaida and Osama Bin-Laden. The Arab world at that time still feared our awesome military, and would never have dared deny us the justice we had coming to us. Saudi Arabia would have gone along with anything Bush asked of them, and Osama would have had nowhere to turn. A sane and measured response would have made it very difficult for Bin-Laden to recruit new Jihadis as rabid as those who took out the WTC. Even if he had been able to find a few more, multiple billions spent on true security would have made any replications of 9/11 virtually impossible.
But we didn't do those things. Instead we got the most bumbling crew of dolts since the Keystone Kops running the show. No longer does the USA have the capacity to accomplish Great Things, like the Marshall Plan and D-Day. We can't even secure the road to the airport in a country we now "control." What would the men who carried out WW2 say to the idiots in charge now? If Eisenhower came back, and I told him about Viet Nam, and how we won the first Gulf war because we learned the lessons of Viet Nam (and went in with overwhelming force and a clear goal and an exit strategy etc etc--the Powell Doctrine) what would he say when i tried to explain that a few years later we had another war where we didn't do any of those things and it turned out quite a bit like Viet Nam? What would he say about those in charge?
Now we really do have almost the entire Muslim World out to kill us. We've killed enough truly innocent bystanders, mostly women and children, to ensure an endless supply of people mad enough to kill themselves to get back at us. The Arab world is no longer in fear of our military, as the myth created by our phenomenal success in the first Gulf War has been exposed by Rumsfeld's failed attempt to try it "on the cheap." An aside here--did anyone else hear Rumsfeld a few weeks ago say America had a--what were the words he used--something to the effect that we have an analog military in a digital world--meaning we have to upgrade our military in order to succeed in the 21st century? I immediately thought it must have been a quote from back in 2000. But noooo, it was Rumsfled now, after being in charge of the military for a full term, and a good part of a second, complaining that our military isn't up to snuff, as if it was somebody else's doing, and if he were in charge, boy would things be different. Mind. Fucking. Boggling.
Anyhoo, I'm tired of hearing that I don't properly fear terrorism if I get mad because Bush wants me to give up my rights to privacy so he can eavesdrop on anybody he wants. I get tired of right-wing diatribes about how we don't have the guts to fight the war on a scale big enough to win. Don't tell me we can't afford to secure the ports and the chemical plants and the nuclear facilities because that would cost billions, and we don't have billions for things like that. Then especially don't ask for another 60 billion for Iraq on the way to a trillion in total cost, right after telling me the tax cuts should be made permanent, right after telling me we have to sell off national Forest to raise the 800 million we need for schools out west--800 million we just can't scrape together, what with the war on and all.
Thank God bart and notherbob represent a small and ever-dwindling faction. Those Who Still Think Bush Isn't the Worst POTUS in History. All i can say to them is, give it time. Then again, notherbob might be too far gone.
Hypatia: ... as a secular liberal he knows that democrtic elections right now would be a disaster for his country. He felt the Muslim Brotherhood would gain control of the country, which would be worse than Mubarek.
ReplyDeleteThe Muslim Brotherhood of Sayid Qutb is far from the group of today. I see no reason why democratic processes shouldn't be allowed to go the way they will--whether for or against so-called fundamentalist groups.
Your argument is the same one used by Israel and the US to starve a democratically elected Hamas out of power. That is dishonest and ultimately self-defeating because of the resentment and anger caused by blocking these groups from political activity.
As the Iranian example shows, a moderate Islamic and generally non-fundamentalist ethos can develop in countries ruled by strict fundamentalists.
The same applies to a country like India, where through democratic elections an elected Hindu-fundamentalist government is replaced by a more secular-oriented government.
That's the great thing about a democratic system--thoswe who get in in one election are ousted in another. The rpoblem with the current US policy in the Mideast is that it does not want this process to even begin. Instead, it wants totalitarian regimes like Saudi Arabia that will back US interests in the area.
Telling people who are trying to accopmlishing things that what they are doing isn't effective- while offering no alternatives yourself - is a pretty selfish, stupid and worthless form of behavior. It just makes you a whiny nay-sayer.
ReplyDeleteDoes it? You mean I have to have a good replacement solution for everything I think is being done wrong?
So, if I said in the 1800's that slavery is wrong, I have to come up with an alternative business model for cotton plantations?
If I say that air polution is wrong, I have to have a design for, among 100 other things, a zero-emission car?
Really, I can't just say "this isn't working" and let someone else figure out a better way?
Perhaps I would agree more with your assertion if it were directed to a society's leadership. But I do firmly believe that individual members of a democracy have every right to say "this sucks" and not have to say "and here's how I'd fix it."
Glenn,
ReplyDeletewhen idiots get adventurous, you never know where they will take you.. but when it comes to the fetid, stinking bottom lines of racist thugs, they all look similar --
take Dr. Pipes' latest and greatest on the recent elections in Israel, Israel Shuns Victory that originally appeared in the NY Sun, in which he complains that
"not one of the leading parties offers the option of winning the war against the Palestinian Arabs."
Haaretz has pertinent commentary, by the way.
cynic librarian writes: The Muslim Brotherhood of Sayid Qutb is far from the group of today. I see no reason why democratic processes shouldn't be allowed to go the way they will--whether for or against so-called fundamentalist groups.
ReplyDeleteYour argument is the same one used by Israel and the US to starve a democratically elected Hamas out of power. That is dishonest and ultimately self-defeating because of the resentment and anger caused by blocking these groups from political activity.
I totally disagree with that. Democracy is no magic elixir; majorities can be as vicious and tyrannical as any single despot, if they are not bounded by an enlightened rule of law that respects the rights of the individual. If Big Pharaoh is correct about the Muslim Brotherhood, if life with them ruling would be even more horrible vis-a-vis the rights of women, gays, and intellectuals, I'd rather have Mubarek as semi-enlightened despot than an elected majority of theocrats who might make sure they can never be voted out.
If the U.S. were not governed by a Constitution that includes a counter-majoritarian Bill of Rights -- and if the public did not accede to the legitimacy of our courts when they uphold these protections -- we would have devolved into tyranny by now. Whether written or not, a liberal democracy must adhere to a counter-majoritarian constitution, or liberty will die.
hypatia says:
ReplyDelete"They would allow free speech only for religiously "correct" speech."
Which segment of our society is putting speech codes in on campuses?
Armagednoutahere said...@ 8:07PM
ReplyDeleteGreat post. Thank you for that one.
hepatya is right about democracy. We should not kid ourselves, like the GOP would like us to, to think that a Democracy results in a system of government that is necessarily not tyrannical and despotic. A democratic system is one necessary, but not sufficient characteristic of a successful government. The creation of institutions that defend a set of rights even if a majority opposes them is even more fundamental, as she (?) said.
ReplyDeleteCreating a good government is extremely hard in light of the interest of players who desire more power and wealth. We were lucky in that the creation of the US, while driven by people who desired power and wealth, saw their biggest obstacle a tyrannical monarchy and not the power of the people. Ironically, their populist message, something that is shunned by the leading countries today, is what allowed our government to flourish.
vWhen the Arab world becomes inflamed in a petulant rage, say, over the cartoons, or over a mistreated Koran, or over an insult to the "Prophet," we should not indulge them.
ReplyDeleteBut when Red America becomes inflamed in a petulant rage, say, over what the Dixie Chicks think of President Bush, their own Prophet of God (literally, if we recall some of the things being suggested about his relationship to the Almighty), we should understand that mocking our leader during wartime is beyond the pale and should not be surprised when they have to install metal detectors at their concerts to deal with the death threats.
And people wonder why we moved to Canada. At least extremist Muslims are honest about their intolerance and love of violence.
I read your post and decided to write Steyn's bosses at the Sun-Times.
ReplyDeleteHere is my letter to the Sun-Times:
Dear Misters Cruikshank, Barron, Hayner, Huntley and Ebert:
On May 4, 2003 (almost 3 years ago) Mark Steyn wrote, and I quote, "The war is over" in a column titled: The War? That Was All Over Two Weeks Ago. (source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2003/04/05/do0503.xml)
In today's column titled: Don't Deny That Some Muslims Are Hot For Jihad Mr. Steyn, that prescient (The war is over) writer, reveals himself as someone not worthy of carrying the average Chicagoan's lunchpail.
Chicago, and the thousands of average Joes and Janes our fair city has sent to battle for the last 100 years, deserves better than to have this load of crap to be published in our newspaper.
What exactly is Mr. Steyn's proposal for success in Iraq?
Less respect for people of the Islamic faith (1 billion people and counting?) and better jokes?
Jokes? This is his solution?
And I quote: "In their own depraved way, the Islamists are a lot goofier than the commies and a few gags wouldn't come amiss."
Jokes. To date 91 men and women from Illinois gave their lives in this war (source: http://icasualties.org/oif/Statecity.aspx) only to be told that a better solution would be to make fun of Muslims as a way of showing them less respect.
And this belongs in the pages of the Chicago Sun-Times?
How many eager journalists are waiting in the wings for a shot a writing for one of America's premier papers while you, the people with the power to decide who writes and what column will be published, allowed this piece of crap to run?
Is there such a dearth of talent in Chicago that you can't find someone who can put together a column any better than this?
You can't find anyone whose vision is better than someone who publicly proclaimed in May of 2003 that the war is over? And now in April of 2006 proposes that more humor and disrespect is a solution?
Good God people, do you even read your own paper anymore?
(My Name Witheld)
P.S. I am cc'ing Roger Ebert this email because maybe he has the clout (nice Chicago word) to shame you into hiring someone with talent and vision, someone who didn't write 3 years ago that the war was over.
Are you so closed-minded as to not see the threat that looms over much of Western Europe by the demographic Sword of Damocles that we see inching closer and closer to its exposed neck? Unless Christian Europeans start to have babies, and start to have them in large numbers, they will be subsumed completely within majority Muslim populations within the lifetimes of children being born today. If you do not believe that will have truly profound implications for the fragile notion of individual rights and the rule of law within those nations you are either willfully ignorant or completely insane.
ReplyDeleteFrom an old civics/government teacher before the law ensnared me: Within ten years of the founding of the Puritan colony in Massachusetts, a movement arose calling itselv: The "nilhilist". They were against newcomers to their ranks. The name referenced indicated they believed in nothing yet in truth, they believed in segregating themselves.
In the years following the Irish famine and influx of people to America from that country, signs arose stating: The Irish Need Not Apply.
Point: There will always be those among us who fear not only change but an influx of those who are "different". Some enterprising student should make it a project for research. It seems prevalent among those who would wish to remain in their caves and talk a good game as opposed to those who go out as the hunters and gatherers and actually do the hard work (to include soldiers).
Let me make myself even clearer. My spouse and I have two unmarried children. Given a choice between a tolerant red/yellow/black/brown and a white, rightwing racist, we would assert, mo' color, mo' better. Might have better looking grandkids too.
Guys, I am quite convinced, in part by all these comments, that Mr. Steyn is an asshole, but there is something fundamental about this that is bothering me -
ReplyDeletethe terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 were militant Islamists? Would anyone care to comment? Is this an appropriate comment for this thread? (continue repost)
A minor point here, I remember a number of articles about Atta & some of the other hijackers going to strip clubs and gambling cruises, drinking alcohol and watching porn. Here's one - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/10/04/MN102970.DTL
I thought militant Islamists were diametrically opposed to these things. Am I missing something?
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteGuys, I am quite convinced, in part by all these comments, that Mr. Steyn is an asshole, but there is something fundamental about this that is bothering me -
the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 were militant Islamists? Would anyone care to comment? Is this an appropriate comment for this thread? (continue repost)
A minor point here, I remember a number of articles about Atta & some of the other hijackers going to strip clubs and gambling cruises, drinking alcohol and watching porn. Here's one - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/10/04/MN102970.DTL
I thought militant Islamists were diametrically opposed to these things. Am I missing something?
Yes. You did miss something. The people you describe have the funds to indulge themselves beyond what ordinary people would even consider reasonable/appropriate.
Think of the way BushCo talks about radical "Islam" then makes deals with Dubai elitist. They operate under different standards of conduct and religiousity has nothing to do with the latter.
Point: There will always be those among us who fear not only change but an influx of those who are "different".
ReplyDeleteThe change coming in Europe if demographic trends are not reversed will strike the kind of fear into your heart and the hearts of your children that you cannot even imagine.
Are you ready for Sharia? You know, under Sharia, abortion is a felony, adultery (if you're a woman) and homosexuality (if you're a man) are both punishable by death. Oh, and birth control is illegal. Do you think these things are unlikely to occur in Europe under a Muslim majority? If you do, you're very naive. Is this the "change" you're seeking?
Are you so feeble-minded that you actually believe that a Muslim majority in Europe will preserve the decades of social "progress" that the left touts as among its greatest achievements? If you do, you are not only hopelessly stupid, but doomed...a suicidal idiot sleepwalking into an oblivion of his own making.
Given a choice between a tolerant red/yellow/black/brown and a white, rightwing racist, we would assert, mo' color, mo' better. Might have better looking grandkids too.
Has the word "inane" ever been more clearly illustrated in a post or comment on the Internet?
Hypatia said: "Xians have murdered and tortured millions in the name of religion, and otherwise made life hell for political, religious and lifestyle "deviants." But the heday of that viciousness -- in the Western world -- is past."
ReplyDeleteI really don't mean to pick on someone with whom I agree with on so many things. For instance, the drug war post was without flaw, hence no comment.
Yet there is a historical blindness here that amounts to an appeal to Christian exceptionalism/end-of-history immunity to the ageless tendency to theocratic authoritarian fascism. A subset of the data that contradicts the above honest wish are the names of two recent effective dictators: Franco and Pinochet. More are available. The wish is not fact.
Has the word "inane" ever been more clearly illustrated in a post or comment on the Internet?
ReplyDeleteOh, that's rich.
I've known plenty of Muslims in my time; they're not all a pack of bodysnatched, backward Sharia-supporters, you know. Just because "they" are "breeding faster" (a rather dehumanising term for the situation, to my mind) does not mean that Islamic fundamentalists are going to take over Europe.
Morlock writes: Yet there is a historical blindness here that amounts to an appeal to Christian exceptionalism/end-of-history immunity to the ageless tendency to theocratic authoritarian fascism. A subset of the data that contradicts the above honest wish are the names of two recent effective dictators: Franco and Pinochet. More are available. The wish is not fact.
ReplyDeleteNo wish. Fact. Franco and Pinochet are long gone. With the exception of the U.S., the West is in a post-Xian age. Certainly that is so in Europe.
The theocratic threat to the West now, is from Islam.
"No wish. Fact. Franco and Pinochet are long gone."
ReplyDeleteWhy 16 years is nothing, eh?. Rumsfeld was best friends with Saddamn Hussein then.
This is getting ridiculous.
Hypatia: I doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood could enforce a rule of total control as you or your Egyptian friend imagine. Egyptians have experienced the tatse of liberalized freedoms for too long to imagine that possibility. Perhaps the best model one can imagine for a role played by them is analogous to the extremist elements within Israel or Indonesia or Iran.
ReplyDeleteBe that as it may, you or your friend are probably only a few who'd call the repressive and ruthless Mubarak "enlightened." I doubt that gays are as freely accepted as you might think they are in liberal and enlightened modern-day Egypt.
On the other hand, let me pose an alternative picture of the horrors of modern secularized societies. Egypt is certainly not considered a society free of corruption at the top, as well as exploitation of those at the bottom. Perhaps you'd agree that democracy does entail some form of justice for all in a society, not just those in power.
The picture you paint of a society that would sacrifice the happiness and freedom of the vast majority for the freedoms of a small minority such as gays or any other minority seems vastly unjust.
I do like your approach here, though. If democracy is not a magic panacea for all ills, then what do we do with the cherished Enlightenment project? Your picture works with different criteria by which to judge whether a society is politically viable or not. The Enlightenment principles of freedom, equality and brotherhood seem to have given to other, perhaps more important ones.
Hypatia: PS You might find the following from the Rootless Cosmopolitan interesting:
ReplyDeleteThat distinction was highlighted, recently, when Zawahiri devoted one of his televised sermons to demanding that Hamas not compromise and continue to wage war on Israel. The rant was remarkable for the sense that it conveyed of the Qaeda leadership getting more and more anxious over the decision by Islamist movements to enter the mainstream: He had previously ranted against Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood engaging in peaceful demonstrations and entering parliamentary elections. And like the Brotherhood, which ignored his advice, Hamas publicly slapped down Zawahiri and said the Palestinians did not need al-Qaeda’s advice. [my emphasis]
This dynamic may be one of the most important indicators out there, even though it’s being largely ignored by the Bush administration. That much is clear from the experience of Alistair Crooke and Mark Perry, who lead a team of retired U.S. and British intelligence professionals in a series of exploratory talks with leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Brotherhood recently in Beirut. They gained important insights into the nature and concerns of these movements and the prospects for achieving peace and political solutions to the conflicts in which they are engaged. Yet, even though the group was composed of longtime trusted intel operatives from their own side and allies, the U.S. government did not even accept the group’s offer of a debriefing, offering the rather infantile excuse that this would “legitimize talks with terrorists,” clinging instead to the feelgood but unhelpful insistence that such groups disarm and renounce violence before anyone can engage with them. (Where have the grownups gone, I sometimes wonder, watching the Bush administration’s conduct of national security policy.) Perry and Crooke respond:
every third person in america is infected by islamophobia. And this wasn't true, three months after 9/11. It's taken years for popular society to organize itself, for foolish leaders to grind our national pride into dust again. At least when President Bush was invading Iraq, the bigots attempted to imitate his humanist sounding language. Now, in the wake of a failed presidency, they're back to combing the woodwork, looking for someone to blame. And there are no shortage, sadly, of real-world examples of hateful and intolerant Muslim fanatics to feed their hunger for more material.
ReplyDeleteThe clash of civilizations is a train wreck, but on both sides, as always, there are always people who would rather run the whole world off the tracks then step off the accelerator for as much as ten seconds.
Folks, many muslims have reactionary social customs by western standards, and a lot of them are angry at america, for some good reasons. We're also angry at them, for some good reasons. Get over it. Start acting like adults. Stop beating me over the head with how blind I am to the 'threat', because I don't endorse invading their countries, killing their leaders, and converting them to Christianity. I see the threat just fine. If you're trying to educate me on how vicious and hateful and fanatical Islam is, then you're part of the threat. You're trying to railroad my country into self-destructive acts. There will never be enough declarations of the dangers of militant Islam for you: all you do is stand in the way of people trying to lead militant islam away from militancy.
From anonymous at 12:09AM:
ReplyDelete"Are you ready for Sharia? You know, under Sharia, abortion is a felony, adultery (if you're a woman) and homosexuality (if you're a man) are both punishable by death. Oh, and birth control is illegal."
You do realize that you've just described the state of Europe and its environs barely 300 years ago, yes? And look where we are today.
Anonymous continues:
"Do you think these things are unlikely to occur in Europe under a Muslim majority? If you do, you're very naive."
Actually there's no telling what Europe would be like with a thin (and lets be honest, that's all we're seeing projected) majority who practice one of the many branches of Islam rather than one of the many branches of Christianity or Judaism. Certainly certain branches hold a more ridgid interpretation of Sharia than others, but no worse than some of the pronouncements coming from the Vatican these days or from the SBLC.
Projecting future trends based on current viewpoints and events may seem 'safe', but it also overlooks societies and viewpoints are constantly adapting and evolving with circumstances. Unless of course you simply prefer to hold knee-jerk, back-handed xenophobic viewpoints and want to ignore history.
Anonymous continues:
"Are you so feeble-minded that you actually believe that a Muslim majority in Europe will preserve the decades of social "progress" that the left touts as among its greatest achievements? If you do, you are not only hopelessly stupid, but doomed...a suicidal idiot sleepwalking into an oblivion of his own making."
That might be true...*if* Europe were in danger of being overrun by Whabbist adherents tomorrow. As it is, we aren't likely to see an actual Muslim 'majority' in Europe for at least a few more generations. Who knows what will happen by then; mayhap another Enlightenment, or a resurgence of Black Death. You and I and everyone here have no idea what the future holds.
The money quote from anonymous:
"Has the word "inane" ever been more clearly illustrated in a post or comment on the Internet?"
You manage it very nicely with each comment you post, actually, although lately you've drifted into 'overwrought'. Thanks for the comedic interlude all the same.
You do realize that you've just described the state of Europe and its environs barely 300 years ago, yes? And look where we are today.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. The fact that this does not cause you alarm is troubling. Europe is poised to regress into a pre-enlightenment social state, and all the left seems capable of doing is muttering multicultural platitudes or dismissing the danger with a wave of the hand. To wit:
Projecting future trends based on current viewpoints and events may seem 'safe', but it also overlooks societies and viewpoints are constantly adapting and evolving with circumstances.
Like most leftists, you are in a Hegelian fog, believing that “progress” is a motive force in history that will overcome its enemies by the sheer force of its momentum. You seem incapable of perceiving a world in which the “current viewpoints and events,” as alarming as they are, will somehow be mitigated by “constantly adapting,” whatever that means. Well, societies and viewpoints may indeed “constantly adapt,” but they do not always “progress.” They also regress, shifting backward, and move in the opposite direction that “progressives” naively believe is inevitable. The secularization of Europe, which was initiated in 1789, may now be poised to reverse itself with as much violence and disruption as took place at its birth, and the consequences for the leftist experiment largely defines the social order of Europe may well be catastrophic.
Who knows what will happen by then…
No one knows. But there is ample evidence to suggest that unless Christian Europe reverses its low-birthrate/high abortion practices, there will be too few of them around to stop a majority Muslim population from exercising its political will with impunity. And if you believe that this poses no danger to the social order of Europe, you are worse than naïve.
anon@11:01am: Your basic assumption, of course, goes unquestioned. Therefore, your argument begs the question. It is also something of a strawman.
ReplyDeleteWhile it's true that European Moslems will change European self-identity (duh), you assume without question that Europe will not change Islam. You assume the worst possible image of Islam (the slavering fanatical extremist) and project that onto your picture of an enervated European biomass.
Given that everything is equally possible here, you might at least entertain the possibility that Islam will undergo a critical analysis similar to what happened to Xtianity in the various Searches for the Historical Jesus.
For a review of some of these questions, see my posting on the New Islam.
From anonymous at 11:01AM:
ReplyDelete"No one knows. But there is ample evidence to suggest that unless Christian Europe reverses its low-birthrate/high abortion practices, there will be too few of them around to stop a majority Muslim population from exercising its political will with impunity."
There is equally ample evidence that little gray humanoids from Reticula B are busy abducting humans and mutilating cattle, but that doesn't prove anything.
You speak as if this projected Muslim majority were some manner of invading army when, in fact, they are native-born to Europe and will be exposed from birth to its culture, mores, and history. Hence my calmer, more measured attitude towards the issue.
"And if you believe that this poses no danger to the social order of Europe, you are worse than naïve."
A matter of perspective. The secularization of Europe could, conceivably, be reversed (as we're seeing in this country presently), but I would bet long odds against it.
You, by contrast, state:
"You seem incapable of perceiving a world in which the “current viewpoints and events,” as alarming as they are, will somehow be mitigated by “constantly adapting,” whatever that means."
You actually affirm my point, unless you were trying to say 'current viewpoints and events' will persist across generations without change or evolution. That I would maintain is the sign of an ossified and dying culture, not one that poses a long-term threat to the world.
Again, we've no idea what will happen in the future. I believe future generations of Europe-born Muslims will embrace their native (secularized, capitalist, pro-Enlightenment European) culture over that of their 'rural' cousins in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Is this certain? Of course not. After all, the adherents of Aum Shinryko came from middle class families across Japan and constituted some of their best and brightest minds. Who's to say Whabbism won't gain as great of traction in developed Europe as it has in underdeveloped Saudi Arabia? Our ongoing experiences here in the States give ample reason to worry.
But worry is no excuse for mindless fear.
Try again. Maybe you'll find an argument that actually works.
No one knows. But there is ample evidence to suggest that unless Christian Europe reverses its low-birthrate/high abortion practices, there will be too few of them around to stop a majority Muslim population from exercising its political will with impunity. And if you believe that this poses no danger to the social order of Europe, you are worse than naïve.
ReplyDeleteAnd the boogeyman cometh.
I'm confused. I thought all you rightwing xenophobes were counting on the second coming to avert all these disasters. Hasn't Tim LaHaye made millions figuring all this out for you?
Rothbard, there is a point. What is wrong with most of the left is that they are involved in building castles in the air instead of concentrating on doing what needs to be done in the real world. Not really castles, but involved, intricate scenarios carefully worked out to project that their base assumptions would work in a world that does not [and never will, which is a key point] yet exist. An un-named Bush official was quoted as saying [not being into the castle-building mode, I don’t keep the actual quote to thrust upon others] that the Bush administration would act and the left would spend its time analyzing and expostulating about that action and the Administration would then act again and the left would analyze that. In other words, the left are good analyzers. Acting? Not so much.
ReplyDeleteI have no doubt that, if you cared to do so, you could “answer” any comment I might make, adding another layer to the castle if necessary. This whole thread is full of such castles. It should be noted that they are not the same castle.
America is not [yet] a debating society. The left is currently such a society. The only thing they seem able to agree on is that they don’t like Bush. Perhaps that is because he acts instead of debating endlessly until forced to act by others. Jimmy Carter, where are you when the left needs you.
Of course, like most Americans [if certain polls are to be believed] I don't much like many of the actions the Bush administration has taken. I do like it that they act and I am looking for similar fortitude from the Democrats and will certainly support it when it appears. Senator Feingold is acting [good] but only in a negative manner [bad]. I don't like the Feingold plan for getting OBL and protecting us from terrorists [what plan?].
Am I the only lost at what notherbob2 here is trying to say here?
ReplyDeleteyankee: I think notherbob is trying to say he's more realistic than the rest of humanity. Of course, he mixes up actuality with possibility, not realizing how they interpenetrate.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post about commenters because it reads very like complaints made here about other-than-liberal commenters. However, there is a [or maybe more than one] twist. A thought-stimulator. Save your time if your mind is closed; it was recommended by Instapundit.
ReplyDeletenotherbob: Read the article you linked to. I understand the sentiment. I don't understand how you see that article reflecting most of the comments here.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, I have seen you make points, others respond substantively, and you simply negating their points without really thinking through their arguments--at least that is how it seems to me.
I don’t keep the actual quote to thrust upon others] that the Bush administration would act and the left would spend its time analyzing and expostulating about that action and the Administration would then act again and the left would analyze that. In other words, the left are good analyzers. Acting? Not so much.
ReplyDeleteNotherbob2's reference here is to Suskind's book wherein an unnamed WH operative stated that Bushie's create their own reality and then moved on to create new realities. Talk about sand castles!
And the reference to "action" without thought is interesting. This sounds more like a movie, some fictional reality, or some video game mentality. Duggeons and Dragons if you will.
I read last week that many of the young men who are being returned to Iraq for third and fourth tours are experiencing deep depression. The Pentagon's answer to this is of course anti-depressant medications but also the young soldiers are being encouraged to play video games and regard the "enemy" in Iraq and video gaming characters. Shoot 'em up John Wayne style. And finally.....
Notherbob2's reliance on decisiveness and swagger as a measure of leadership; his admiration for the leader of the free world's tendency to do something even if wrong and ask questions later is not only juvenile and purile, it appears he is projecting these same qualities onto himself.
Now, I know how frustrating all this boring, liberal analysis is so let's wind this up. Notherbob, your penis is bigger.
Notherbob2,
ReplyDeleteIn your last post, you describe the left as being into "building castles in the air" while the Bush adminsitration is a team committed to action.
I hope you appreciate the irony of this given General Anthony Zinni's recent comments, such as:
In the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw, at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence, and corruption. False rationales, presented as a justification; a flawed strategy; lack of planning; the unnecessary alienation of our allies; the underestimation of the task; the unnecessary distraction from real threats; and the unbearable strain dumped on our overstretched military.
In other words, the planning the Bush team did bordered on delusional.
We only wish they had spent a little more time and effort being introspective.
Am I the only lost at what notherbob2 here is trying to say here?
ReplyDeleteyankeependragon...let me give it a shot....
notherbob: "Most Americans are like me and find that one of the best cures for erectile dysfunction is action. If there's people to hate and some killing thrown in, so much the better. My definition of a real man is someone who foregoes discussion and reflection in favor of any kind of action, preferably violence. Any mistaken action or wrongfully deceased individuals that result are a small price to pay for the benefits accrued to me...and besides I'm capable of talking in rhetorical circles for so long that you'll never be able to prove there were any mistakes any\way."
I am all for holding people responsible for this fraudulent war, treason, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
ReplyDeleteI do get disappointed when people play "their game" and "debate" the competency and judgement of these people -- THEY ARE NOT OUR PROBLEM. IT'S THE PEOPLE BEHIND THESE DECISIOS. IT'S THE BILLIONS AND BILLIIONS THAT THEY "STEAL" AS THEY SCAM THE COUNTRY CONDUCTING THIS WAR!
Its all about the military-industrial complex. Greg Palast sumes it up best:
BUSH DIDN'T BUNGLE IRAQ, YOU FOOLS THE MISSION WAS INDEED ACCOMPLISHED
Get off it. All the carping, belly-aching and complaining about George Bush's incompetence in Iraq, from both the Left and now the Right, is just dead wrong.
On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq's border, most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush are beginning to doubt if his mission was accomplished.
**********
Palast returns to the pages of the Guardian today with this column. Catch his commentaries weekly at CommentIsFree.Guardian.co.uk
**********
But don't kid yourself -- Bush and his co-conspirator, Dick Cheney, accomplished exactly what they set out to do. In case you've forgotten what their real mission was, let me remind you of White House spokesman Ari Fleisher's original announcement, three years ago, launching of what he called,
"Operation
Iraqi
Liberation."
O.I.L. How droll of them, how cute. Then, Karl Rove made the giggling boys in the White House change it to "OIF" -- Operation Iraqi Freedom. But the 101st Airborne wasn't sent to Basra to get its hands on Iraq's OIF.
"It's about oil," Robert Ebel told me. Who is Ebel? Formerly the CIA's top oil analyst, he was sent by the Pentagon, about a month before the invasion, to a secret confab in London with Saddam's former oil minister to finalize the plans for "liberating" Iraq's oil industry. In London, Bush's emissary Ebel also instructed Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, the man the Pentagon would choose as post-OIF oil minister for Iraq, on the correct method of disposing Iraq's crude.
And what did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq's oil? The answer will surprise many of you: and it is uglier, more twisted, devilish and devious than anything imagined by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger. The answer can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq's oil secretly drafted by the State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn't matter. The key thing is what's inside this thick Bush diktat: a directive to Iraqis to maintain a state oil company that will "enhance its relationship with OPEC."
Enhance its relationship with OPEC??? How strange: the government of the United States ordering Iraq to support the very OPEC oil cartel which is strangling our nation with outrageously high prices for crude.
Specifically, the system ordered up by the Bush cabal would keep a lid on Iraq's oil production -- limiting Iraq's oil pumping to the tight quota set by Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel.
There you have it. Yes, Bush went in for the oil -- not to get more of Iraq's oil, but to prevent Iraq producing too much of it.
You must keep in mind who paid for George's ranch and Dick's bunker: Big Oil. And Big Oil -- and their buck-buddies, the Saudis -- don't make money from pumping more oil, but from pumping less of it. The lower the supply, the higher the price.
It's Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC, and what economists call an "oligopoly" -- a tiny handful of operators who make more money when there's less oil, not more of it. So, every time the "insurgents" blow up a pipeline in Basra, every time Mad Mahmoud in Tehran threatens to cut supply, the price of oil leaps. And Dick and George just love it.
Dick and George didn't want more oil from Iraq, they wanted less. I know some of you, no matter what I write, insist that our President and his Veep are on the hunt for more crude so you can cheaply fill your family Hummer; that somehow, these two oil-patch babies are concerned that the price of gas in the USA is bumping up to $3 a gallon.
Not so, gentle souls. Three bucks a gallon in the States (and a quid a litre in Britain) means colossal profits for Big Oil, and that makes Dick's ticker go pitty-pat with joy. The top oily-gopolists, the five largest oil companies, pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 -- compared to a piddly $34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi Liberation. In other words, it's been a good war for Big Oil.
As per Plan Bush, Bahr Al-Ulum became Iraq's occupation oil minister; the conquered nation "enhanced its relationship with OPEC;" and the price of oil, from Clinton peace-time to Bush war-time, shot up 317%.
In other words, on the third anniversary of invasion, we can say the attack and occupation is, indeed, a Mission Accomplished. However, it wasn't America's mission, nor the Iraqis'. It was a Mission Accomplished for OPEC and Big Oil.
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=483&row=0
While we discuss EVERY OTHER ISSUE THAT CAN BE IMAGINED, THE CRIMES GO ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AN ON...
There is equally ample evidence that little gray humanoids from Reticula B are busy abducting humans and mutilating cattle, but that doesn't prove anything.
ReplyDeleteIf you believe that the demograpic trends highlighted by Mark Steyn and many others have the same credibility as those who make alien abduction claims, then you are delusional, and there isn't any point in discussing it. I thought you were one of those who acknowledged that current trends look grim, but we shouldn't extrapolate those trends outward in time.
So which is it? Do you believe the claims baseless, or do you believe they are true, but capable of being reversed before Muslims reach a majority status within the next 20-30 years?
You speak as if this projected Muslim majority were some manner of invading army when, in fact, they are native-born to Europe and will be exposed from birth to its culture, mores, and history.
Steyn quotes British polls showing a 60% majority of British-born Muslims who favor the adoption of Sharia as the law of the land. Doesn’t this fact obviate your claim that being “native-born” will mitigate the extreme elements in its midst?
I believe future generations of Europe-born Muslims will embrace their native (secularized, capitalist, pro-Enlightenment European) culture over that of their 'rural' cousins in the Middle East and Central Asia.
You have no basis for this belief other than wishful thinking. OTOH, there is plenty of evidence to make rational the fears of Steyn and others that the demographic trends portend grave consequences for the liberal social order now currently in vogue in Western Europe. In fact, given the realities of Islamic life everywhere it predominates numerically, the chances are excellent that the freedoms now enjoyed throughout most of Western Europe will be quaint relics of the past as soon as Muslims achieve numerical superiority in those countries where they are having children at four to five times the rate of their Christian neighbors.
But worry is no excuse for mindless fear.
I see far more “mindless fear” being exercised in this blog regarding George Bush’s supposed usurpation of absolute power than I do in the writings of Mark Steyn. In my view, Steyn’s concerns are far from “mindless.” They are rational and logicial deductions derived from observing facts, i.e., the demographic trends on display right before our eyes in Western Europe and Russia. It is true there is no excuse for mindless fear. However, it is just as true that there is no excuse for denying objective reality when it stares you in the face.
And while we natter, Bushco disposes. Hitting Iran now on the front burner. Hold on to your hats.
ReplyDeleteanon: Steyn quotes British polls showing a 60% majority of British-born Muslims who favor the adoption of Sharia as the law of the land. Doesn’t this fact obviate your claim that being “native-born” will mitigate the extreme elements in its midst?
ReplyDeleteAccording to the News Telegraph:
"Four out of 10 British Muslims want sharia law introduced into parts of the country, a survey reveals today.
The ICM opinion poll also indicates that a fifth have sympathy with the "feelings and motives" of the suicide bombers who attacked London last July 7, killing 52 people, although 99 per cent thought the bombers were wrong to carry out the atrocity.
I'm not a statistician, but it seems that your Mr. Steyn likes to lie above and beyond the "lies, damned lies, and statistics" nostrum.
Overall, the findings depict a Muslim community becoming more radical and feeling more alienated from mainstream society, even though 91 per cent still say they feel loyal to Britain." [my emphases]
Of course, these numbers track with percentages in the US who'd like to see the Bible replace parts of the Constitution. And the huge numbers who think that killing innocent Iraqis for what some extremists did is okay, etc.
"I don't understand how you see that article reflecting most of the comments here."
ReplyDeleteI wasn't grinding an axe. I just thought that the site being what it was created some good food for thought. Reading the same stuff on other sites [thrugh our well-developed prisms] makes it harder for us to ... ugh...disregard the source and focus on the ideas. I don't read a lot of gay conservative stuff, so I don't have much of a prism there and can just read the stuff. Still, I must admit, my conservative prism kept creeping in. Oh well.
anonymous:
ReplyDeleteThey are rational and logicial deductions derived from observing facts
Unlike your assertion that 'more Muslims = Sharia in Paris'.
I'm not a statistician, but it seems that your Mr. Steyn likes to lie above and beyond the "lies, damned lies, and statistics" nostrum.
ReplyDeleteI quoted from Steyn's January, 2006 article in the New Criterion, "It's the Demography Stupid." In it he says the following:
According to a poll taken in 2004, over 60 percent of British Muslims want to live under sharia—in the United Kingdom.
You don't believe Steyn made this up, do you?
Of course, these numbers track with percentages in the US who'd like to see the Bible replace parts of the Constitution.
No they don't. Please point to a poll showing that 60% (or even 40%) of respondents favor replacing parts of our constitution with Biblical law.
Anon: The poll I quoted is more recent than Steyn's. How come he uses old data? Also, how come he misses the other points that I emphasized in the poll I linked to? Such as: it's only in part of the country that these respondents feel that Sharia should apply; that 90 percent disagree with terrorism; and over 90 percent are loyal to Britain?
ReplyDeleteI've lost links to polls indicating how many Xtians think the Bible should replace the Constitution. Be that as it may, this simply belies the accepted fact (as they see it) by many evangelical Xtians that the Constitution itself has a biblical basis.
So, most evangelical Xtians believe that's what's wrong with America is that the courts have diluted the biblical foundations of the Constitution. Following these preconceptions, they therefore assert that the solution to America's problems is to return to the biblically based Constitution.
From anonymous at 2:02PM:
ReplyDelete"You don't believe Steyn made this up, do you?"
Are you sure you want a serious answer to this? Isn't it you or Bart who frequently point to the weakness of any polling data? Or does that only apply to polls that disagree with your preconceptions?
Again, while we should be worried what current events and attitudes portend for the future (moreso in this country than the more quilt-crazy landscape of Europe), there is no reason to think it inevitable a Muslim majority in Europe will be any more destructive or radical than the Christian majority we presently have here in the States.
Come to that, your comments thus far suggest 'Europe' is some manner of single super-state that will embrace a single code of law or possesses some continent-wide legislature. Talk about reality-challenged! The French and Germans are still at odds over the 100 Years War, never mind WWII for pitys sake.
Or are you proposing some insidious Muslim conspiracy to simultaneously seize power in over 20 different states by sheer force of demographics?
From anonymous at 1:39PM:
"So which is it? Do you believe the claims baseless, or do you believe they are true, but capable of being reversed before Muslims reach a majority status within the next 20-30 years?"
The 'claims' are based on (a)demographic projections that presume constant birth and death rates and that births do not cross ethnicities and (b) conflates "Muslim" with "Islam". (a mistake I only just realized I myself was making up to now).
Assumption (a) can be derailed by anything from a pandemic to war to gods know what, and assumption (b) betrays a gross, possibly deliberate conflation of a religion and an ethnicity.
In other words, Steyn's analysis is a nice intellectual exercise that gives plenty of red meat to the knee-jerk xenophobe, but falters under closer, more common sense analysis.
Is there likely (bettern than even odds) to be a majority of Muslim/Middle Eastern population spread across Europe within the next generation or two? If current trends remain stable (a very, very, very big IF), then yes, that may well be the case.
Does this automatically sound the death-knell for the post-Enlightenment culture of Europe? Very, very, very long odds against that happening in my view.
Guess we'll see in the future.
From cynic librarian at 2:30PM:
ReplyDelete"Also, how come he misses the other points that I emphasized in the poll I linked to?"
I suspect it isn't that he doesn't read or understand them, Cynic.
I am however too polite to voice the other, more likely possibility.
spark writes: So long as there are proposed Constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage, states that want to effectively ban abortions, and IDiocy rampant in academia I'm afraid Islam is categorically NOT the only theocratic threat to the West.
ReplyDeleteNone of that, even if realized, would constitute theocracy. This nation used to criminally sanction blasphemy, but we were not then a theocracy. Britain prosecuted and convicted a gay publication for blaspheming Jesus in the late 70s; Britain is not a theocracy. Blasphemy laws should be considered violataive of free speech rights, but when we and other Western nations have held otherwise, we were not in the throes of theocracy.
People whose religious views inform their political beliefs are free to try to enact them, as long as they stay within the bounds of our secular Constitution.
Abortion was criminal in varying degrees in the U.S. from the mid-19th century forward, until Roe. I submit to you that Roe did not end theocracy, because such never existed in the history of the republic.
As for ID, it is inane. But efforts to push it into the public schools have failed; even if successful, however, that would not mean theocracy was upon us.
Wow. Greg Pallast thinks it was a war for oil.
ReplyDeleteWhat a surprise. Maybe Greg can explain why we had a war with Iraq before and liberated Kuwait yet we didn't take over the countries and steal their precious oil.
If it was just about oil we would attack Anwar.
Pallast is a waste of skin.
From anonymous at 2:49PM:
ReplyDelete"Pallast is a waste of skin."
How droll.
Cynic librarian writes: Be that as it may, this simply belies the accepted fact (as they see it) by many evangelical Xtians that the Constitution itself has a biblical basis.
ReplyDeleteThere is absolutely nothing wrong with, or scary about that, not with your garden variety evangelical. Their biblical beliefs meld into a very conventional American civil religion that has existed and evolved since before the Founding, and it is compatible with – indeed, has sustained -- our constitutional order.
American religionists vis-a-vis our civil religion has been a dynamic topic of study among sociologists for many decades, primarily beginning with Robert Bellah’s Habits of the Heart in ’67:
Bellah's definition of American civil religion is that it is "an institutionalized collection of sacred beliefs about the American nation," which he sees symbolically expressed in America's founding documents and presidential inaugural addresses. It includes a belief in the existence of a transcendent being called "God," an idea that the American nation is subject to God's laws, and an assurance that God will guide and protect the United States. Bellah sees these beliefs in the values of liberty, justice, charity, and personal virtue and concretized in, for example, the words In God We Trust on both national emblems and on the currency used in daily economic transactions. Although American civil religion shares much with the religion of Judeo-Christian denominations, Bellah claims that it is distinct from denominational religion. Crucial to Bellah's Durkheimian emphasis is the claim that civil religion is definitionally an "objective social fact."… Another analysis of these data shows that civil religious beliefs do not conflict with the principle of church and state separation (Wimberley and Christenson 1980).
Overstating dangers from evangelicals is, to my mind, a bad political ploy. Bush has cobbled together a populist movement exploiting them, but they themselves are not the problem.
[T]here is no reason to think it inevitable a Muslim majority in Europe will be any more destructive or radical than the Christian majority we presently have here in the States.
ReplyDeleteThere are many reasons why we should be so worried, many of them detailed in Steyn's essay It's The Demography Stupid. Please read the piece and let me know if you are able to remain as sanguine as you are now regarding the prospect of Muslim majorities arising across the whole of Western Europe.
The French and Germans are still at odds over the 100 Years War, never mind WWII for pitys sake.
Do you really expect Muslim majorities in those nations to carry on disputes rooted in their respective Christian heritages? This is silly beyond reason.
Does this automatically sound the death-knell for the post-Enlightenment culture of Europe? Very, very, very long odds against that happening in my view.
Guess we'll see in the future.
On this, at least, we certainly agree.
Cathy Young over at Reason writes about Xian complaints and political activity in contemporary America, and she almost exactly mirrors my own views.
ReplyDeleteFrom hypatia at 3:19PM:
ReplyDelete"Overstating dangers from evangelicals is, to my mind, a bad political ploy. Bush has cobbled together a populist movement exploiting them, but they themselves are not the problem."
Well said. And you're right, overstating the influence and danger of evangelicals doesn't make for either good policy or politics.
I would caution against dismissing them out of hand however. However overblown their rhetoric or regressive their politics, they do provide the only solid support the Administration has left, and I certainly wouldn't put it past this lot to give the country a final 'eff you' by seeking to enact some of the more outrageous agenda items on the menu.
I can't believe people are really engaging this person who claims Muslims will overrun Europe some day soon. Even if they do, how exactly does it reflect left/right political differences? Is the claim that Europe should have had redneck attitudes toward immigration all these years? This would have been a more typically right-wing approach? What about globalization and the desire for cheap labor on the part of corporate Europe? Haven't right-wing politics had a lot to do with the fact that European nations opened their doors to immigrants? It isn't just left-wing liberal ideals that have driven the open-door policies in the West. George Bush and his buddies are still working to ensure a large pool of cheap labor will remain available here in the US. If latin Americans outbreed whites here in America it will be as much the responsibility of righties as lefties, if not moreso.
ReplyDeleteRush Limbaugh was one of the ones who I first heard say liberals can't be worked with and have to be DEFEATED! Ever since there's been a desire among righties to portray the ongoing political differences in America as a cultral and political "war." That's why we see so many books about liberal 'disease" and how to talk to liberals "if you have to" etc etc. This has taught a whole generation of right-wingers to do what anonymous is trying to do here--force a template of left/right debate over something that doesn't lend itself natuarally to such a breakdown. Sociological trends are powerful forces, and deserve our attention, but to try to win points for your side in a sociological discussion is a stretch at best. At worst it confuses the issue to the point where real undersatnding becomes very difficult. I'm amazed anon has been able to get so many here to engage him/her over this.
I agree with Mooser--breed like minks and guarantee a white world as far as the eye can see. Then start wars of conquest like the good old days and stuff booty into the pockets of the troops. Let them send the loot home to mom and pop and we'll get white families so anxious to breed soldiers that the Muslims won't be able to keep up. Right-wing, left-wing, as long as there white Americans it won't matter who they voted for. Finally we'll be able to put our differences aside and take over the world together, as brothers.
Peace, Love, and USA!
hapatia: Their biblical beliefs meld into a very conventional American civil religion that has existed and evolved since before the Founding, and it is compatible with – indeed, has sustained -- our constitutional order.
ReplyDeleteIf you consider taking over school boards, stealth candidates, anti-gay amendments, outlawing education in evolution, attacks on abortion clinics and doctors, carrying out foreign policy according to end-time mythologies "civil," then I guess you are right. (For other civil religionist activities, see this web site)
I have many evangelical friends, acquaintances, and relatives. They mean well, and their concerns are real, but the way they give in to their leaders' proclivities for asserting an extremist version of Xtendom is very troubling.
hypatia: PS You might consider the comments of former Pres. Jimmy Carter, himself an evangelical Christian: Even personal courtesies, which had been especially cherished in the U.S. Senate, are no longer considered to be sacrosanct. This deterioration in harmony, cooperation, and collegiality in the Congress is, at least in part, a result of the rise of fundamentalist tendencies and their religious and political impact.
ReplyDeleteFrom anonymous at 3:41PM:
ReplyDelete"There are many reasons why we should be so worried, many of them detailed in Steyn's essay"
I read it when it first came out. The argument would be far more persuasive if he minimized the self-important bolivation and actually quoted his sources for birthrates, deathrates, the "Hot One Hundred" top breeders (his phrase), etc..
All I saw then and all I see now is a lot of hot air, dire predictions, and not a shred of evidence or single citation to suggest all this isn't just in his own head.
In other words: same old same old at the WSJ and New Criterion (but what was one expecting, eh?).
Cynic librarian writes: If you consider taking over school boards, stealth candidates, anti-gay amendments, outlawing education in evolution, attacks on abortion clinics and doctors, carrying out foreign policy according to end-time mythologies "civil," then I guess you are right.
ReplyDeleteThose things are not all the same. There is nothing theocratic about a cohort working to take over a school board or any other political entity. Conservative Xians did that in Dover, PA; the results were displeasing to the community and the creationists were then all voted out. That’s called democracy.
No one has attempted to outlaw teaching evolution (in public schools) in half a decade. (But when it was illegal – which was the issue in the Scopes trial -- we did not have a dangerous theocracy upon us.) Doing so was ruled to be unconstitutional by SCOTUS (I want to say in ’68, but that could be wrong), and ever since then, some religionists have been trying to craft competing “scientific” models to be taught alongside. These models have so far all been rejected by the courts. I find these creationists risible, but not dangerous.
Violent attacks on abortion clinics and abortionists are criminal acts, and are prosecuted; the Bush DoJ locks these people up. They are a tiny minority of the Xian right, and many of them are Reconstructionists, not your average evangelical.
As for ,anti-gay amendments. Anti-sodomy laws were in place since the dawn of the nation. Jefferson drafted a statute for the State of Virginia making it a crime, although not a capital one – that was progress then. While I vehemently oppose all efforts to prevent legislation permitting same-sex marriage, the effort to do so is not a harbinger of theocracy, unless we were such at the nation’s Founding.
(Jefferson would have merely castrated gay men, per his model legislation: “ Whosoever shall be guilty of Rape, Polygamy, or Sodomy with man or woman shall be punished, if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro' the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least." He didn’t prevail -- the law that was passed held: ”That if any do commit the detestable and abominable vice of Buggery, with man or beast, he or she so offending, shall be adjudged a felon, and shall suffer death, in the case of felony, without the benefit of Clergy.”)
Finally, foreign policy, this end-times stuff vis-Ã -vis Israel has been around for many decades. Hal Lindsey has been spewing out new versions of The Late, Great Planet Earth since the late 60s or early 70s, and lots of people believe that crap. Oh well. A lot also think Jews are running the world.
Shargash writes: For example, I don't think it is possible to untangle Bush's Iraq policy from Christian apocalyptic eschatology. His opposition to global warming is clearly religious. Even his policy on oil dependency is influenced by it, because the religious right doesn't accept that oil comes from plant matter acted on by natural processes over millions of years. Secularists in America have consistently underestimated both the fanaticism and the wackiness of the religious right.
ReplyDeleteMyriad secular individuals, including Ron Bailey at Reason, and the libertarians at the Cato Institute, are skeptical of many global warming claims. The Senate during the Clinton Admin opposed the Kytoto Accords by a majority of 95. Secularists have supported Bush’s Iraq policy and most Democrats voted for that war at its inception. I am aware of no evidence that Bush’s similar views are entirely or even partly driven by his theological positions, and even if they are, so what? There is also a secular basis for these positions, unless John Kerry had a spasm of end-times enthusiasm when he supported the war in Iraq.
You continue:
The US was founded as the crowning political achievement of the Enlightenment. The religious right believes that the Enlightenment is where mankind went wrong. They are attempting to bring about a dis-Englightenment, a return to a pre-Enlightenment medieval view of the world. It is explicitly anti-science, anti-democracy, anti-secular. In the case of one branch of the Evangelicals, the so-called Reconstructionists, it is explicitly the imposition of a theocracy as in Biblical times.
That is a very broad statement. Other than the Reconstructionists, I see little evidence for it. What much of the religious right seeks to do is return us to some imagined Golden Age when gays were closeted and abortion illegal. While that age was hardly golden, it did exist in America; but it wasn’t theocratic, and was not anti-Enlightenment.
They are conservatives; they are looking backward, but not to medieval times; 1950 would suit them just fine.
hypatia:
ReplyDeleteTaking over school boards is a tactical move in a much larger strategy among the evangelicals. So far, they have succeeded. They ban books, restrict the teaching of evolution through intimidation, and generally limit curricula.
While you are correct that evolution has not officially been banned, efforts in state legislatures and at the school level continue to attak evolution. As you ar no doubt aware, a majority of Xtians believe in the Biblical account of creation versus evolution; this view is shared by a large majority of the US population per se. While Dover PA was an important victory, it has in no way deterred anti-evolutionists from pursuing their agenda, bolstered no doubt by the very polls I just mentioned.
The Bush admin. may indeed convict the abortion doctor killers--but do they aggressively counter the propaganda and terror campaigns mounted by the anti-abortion extremists? The reason that there have been no bombings, etc. is because the terror program against the docs and clinics has succeeded in shutting down or driving these farther underground.
Again, Bush is notorious for his exploitation of anti-gay sentiments. The cynical appeal to this came to the fore in the '04 campaign. Some experts consider the exploitation of this sentiment as perhaps the most important factor in Bush's victory.
But these isolated facts do not--even given their veracity--add up to theocracy, as you well note. What would indicate this? I suggest that one way to do this is to look at voting records and alleginaces proclaimed by leaders. For an attempt at this quantitative approach, see Theocracywtach.org.
Of course, you also have anecdotal data provided by an insider of the Republican Party like Kevin Phillips. One can also plausibly accept the comments and observations of self-proclaimed evangelicals like former Pres. Jimmy Carter (see my previous comment posted above).
The question, as I see it, is not what a theocracy is or whether a certain wing of evangelicals hope to accomplish this--the question now is, how do we counter the increase in their hold on power in the US.
To view our “democracy” at work, take a look at the Texas GOP Party Platform of 2004
ReplyDelete“The Republican Party of Texas affirms that the United States of America is a Christian nation.”
“Our Party pledges to exert its influence to restore the original intent of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and dispel the myth of the separation of Church and State.”
Nothing to see here, folks, just move along. Just evangelicals innocently trying to incorporate their religious values into legislation. Gee, what could be wrong with that?
They are conservatives; they are looking backward, but not to medieval times; 1950 would suit them just fine.
ReplyDeleteI think most conservatives would be quite content with the state of things on January 21, 1973.
Of course, you also have anecdotal data provided by an insider of the Republican Party like Kevin Phillips.
ReplyDeleteKevin Phillips hasn't been an "insider" in the Republican Party for decades. Slate magazine (no right wing magazine, that) slams Phillips in a recent review by Jacob Weisberg.
Enjoy.
Tom Delay, off topic?
ReplyDeleteTom Delay is a fine man, filled with family values, and “..the reason Tom DeLay is in trouble with the courts, with the Democrats, with the media, is because he's a Christian.”
Tom Delay who?
ReplyDeleteCynic librarian writes: The question, as I see it, is not what a theocracy is or whether a certain wing of evangelicals hope to accomplish this--the question now is, how do we counter the increase in their hold on power in the US.
ReplyDeleteI have strong opinions about that, but I suspect most here would disagree. Anyway, here goes.
Rejoice if and when the SCOTUS reverses Roe. It is an intellectually and jurisprudentially unsound decision, that has done nothing but usher in the religious right as a force in national politics, and empower the Republicans. If South Dakota wants to criminalize abortion, let it. NY, CA and many other states won’t. Yes, poor women in SD will then have to travel out of state, but funds for that would make a fine feminist charity. In any event, remove the issue from national politics and much else that is good follows.
Promote school vouchers. If parents want to send their kids to fundamentalist schools where evolution is held to be Satan’s hoax, let them. And the rest of us can choose scientifically sound schools.All this anger about “forcing” evolution on kids, sex ed & etc flows from the public school monopoly, and ending it would go a long way toward resolving the constant curriculum controversies.
The religious right believes that leftist activists have illegitimately employed the courts to win victories on social issues, circumventing the democratic process. They are not entirely wrong about that. Stop doing it, and they might calm down.
The social consensus favoring gay marriage is growing, but is not at critical mass yet. Don’t try to impose it via the courts. In another 10-15 years the results in those horrid 11 referenda in the ’04 election would not happen. Organic social change is to peace and political harmony what yeast is to bread dough.
For a detailed analysis of the "War on Christians" conference recently held in Washington, which goes far beyond the story in the Washington Post, see this article:
ReplyDeleteTexas Senator John Cornyn was then introduced by Phillip Jauregui, the director of Vision America’s Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration and the former attorney for Justice Roy Moore. Cornyn basically delivered a stump speech about judicial activism and the importance of getting the “right kind” of judges on the bench. After saying he was pleased by Justice Alito’s confirmation in light of Alito’s views on religious “freedom,” Cornyn commenced an attack on the court system and various decisions about the separation of church and state such as prayer in public schools, the Ten Commandments, etc., for constitutionally “transforming” a policy of state “neutrality” toward religion into a policy of “hostility” toward religion. [my emphasis]
hapatia: You resort to piecemeal attack on particulars. You do not address the issue--which I remind you, you brought up--about whther a theocratic takeover is 1) in place or 2) underway.
ReplyDeleteAs my last comment showed, the Religious Right believes that it's underway--perhaps giving the impression that nothing's been done but in fact building on their extensive successes. Positioning themselves as the outsiders and blaming the news media, they wish to solidify their hold on the governing procedures.
Perhaps they are correct, however, in that their hold on power is so entwined with corruption and cronyism.
cynic librarian, from that article you linked to about the "War on Christians" conference:
ReplyDeleteAt the event, Perkins shared the stage with Watergate felon Charles Colson who warned that the idea of marriage equality was akin to “handing moral weapons of mass destruction to those who use America's decadence to recruit more snipers and hijackers and suicide bombers…. When [terrorists] see news coverage of same-sex couples being ‘married’ in U.S. towns, we make our kind of freedom abhorrent--the kind they see as a blot on Allah's creation. Preserving traditional marriage in order to protect children is a crucially important goal by itself. But it's also about protecting the United States from those who would use our depravity to destroy us."
Now when they say things like that, it is entirely fair to say they are no better than the Taliban. They are explicitly arguing that we deserve Islamic terrorism, because we are "wrongly" violating Muslim religious beliefs.
That Colson quote is so revolting, on so many levels. I'm just sure Osama is sitting around thinking that it's time to go after the Sears Tower because the Americans keep talking about gay marriage -- and we'd deserve it if he did. (eyes rolling)
But I really doubt the vast majority of evangelicals believe things like that.
PLAYBOY: "Has no religion, in your estimation, ever offered anything of constructive value to human life?"
ReplyDeleteRAND: "Qua religion, no—in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and conclusions of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason."
["Playboy's Interview with Ayn Rand," Playboy, March 1964. ]
"[F]aith and force. . . . are corollaries: every period of history dominated by mysticism, was a period of statism, of dictatorship, of tyranny."
["Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World," Philosophy: Who Needs It, 66.]
Well, you have a point. Maybe we should encourage the Christians to go ahead and give their children religious schooling in place of science. In fact, it may be the best way to marginalize fools. My kids will have a real education, science included, and they will get into a good school, earn a real degree and go into the working world prepared.
ReplyDeleteAnd their children will dig ditches and fix cars. Works for me!
Hypatia at 5:48
ReplyDeleteAmen
Oh my, Hypatia has done it again. There are so many things wrong with her “strong opinion” that I don’t know where to begin, and even then I’ll have to ignore most of it. I will, however, make just a couple of obvious points.
ReplyDeleteShe says that we should “rejoice” if Roe is overturned because it did nothing but usher in the religious right as a force in national politics. Roe was overturned in 1973, but in political terms, the religious right did not become a serious political force until the 1980’s when Ronald Reagan blessed them with legitimacy.
She suggests that overturning Roe will “remove the issue from national politics.” I find that totally absurd. It will put the issue front and center and invigorate those who don’t approve of abortion, but are not comfortable with criminalizing it, and going back to the day when women died in unsafe circumstances. This issue isn’t going away if that happens.
She also suggests that if “South Dakota wants to criminalize abortion, let it. NY, CA and many other states won’t. Yes, poor women in SD will then have to travel out of state, but funds for that would make a fine feminist charity.”
Again, this just ignores reality. How do poor rural teenagers know how to contact this magical feminist charity who will whisk them off for days without their parents knowing about it? Also, it is a crime in some states for anyone to transport them for this purpose. Moreover, Missouri has just passed a law that prevents women in Missouri from obtaining an abortion in Illinois which has different laws. These types of laws will, in effect, criminalize abortion in some states and no “charity” is going to make them safe.
She then goes on to say, “Promote school vouchers. If parents want to send their kids to fundamentalist schools where evolution is held to be Satan’s hoax, let them.”
But this misses the whole issue. The religious right is not satisfied with setting up their own fundamentalist schools, they want “their” religion formalized in public schools. They want to pray to “their” Jesus at the beginning of each class.
Now, no one has a problem doing that in religious schools. It’s when they forced those uppity little Jewish kids to stand out in the hall and be ostracized in public schools that this became an issue. Public vouchers don’t begin to appease the religious right.
Why is this not obvious?
Back to the dark ages Hypatia says! Christian schools the equivalent to Wahabi schools funded by your tax dollars she says!
ReplyDeleteGive the nakedly idiotic fringe super-minority their due she says - after all we have been cheating them for far too long!
The "Dark Ages" did not maximize freedom and choice. Almost no Xian schools in the U.S. are the equivalent of Wahhabi schools. Just becasue they believe inane things about evolution, and do not share your (or my) views on private morality, does not make them theocratic, unAmerican nutjobs. I have friends who are born again and don't believe in evolution; they would die for you or this nation, and are decent human beings with whom one can have a very interesting conversation. They would not dream of killing anyone who disagrees with them. They simply want to be free to teach their children as they please. That is their right, and if we are going to (1) make education mandatory, and (2) tax people to pay for it, then (3) the least coercive scheme to ameliorate conditions 1 and 2 is to give vouchers to parents to spend as they please, at the schools they please.(And also put a stop to never-ending controversies over everything from sex ed, to evolution, to what books will be in the library.)
Public schools in the U.S. arose partly conjunction with anti-Catholic sentiment. Those schools included heavy doses of distinctly Protestant theology, and drove the establishment of Catholic parochial schools, to keep Catholic kids Catholic. Indeed, the Klan engineered a law in Oregon in the 20s to prohibit Catholic schools and compel public school attendance (struck by the SCOTUS).
Today, public schools are run by a professional union of people who adhere to liberal social values. That is fine, but they do not conform with the views of many parents. Whether it is compulsory Protestantism or compulsory liberalism, neither should hold a monopoly on the education funds of our young. Let freedom ring.
This is largely true, but also largely irrelevant. The fact that some secular individuals oppose the conclusions of science on ideological grounds doesn't mean that the same opposition of a much larger and more influential group is not a problem.
ReplyDeleteNothing has been more corrupted by ideology than environmental and population sciences. Paul Ehrlich is a moron, who was wrong about nearly every jeremiad he imposed on the nation. And when I was coming of age in the 70s, the scientists were telling us pollution was about to cause a second ice age and we were going to freeze to death. I went through holes in the ozone layer, to nuclear winter, to famine by 1990, to depletion of all the most valuable minerals by 2000 and whatever the hell else.
All in the service of leftist, green ideology which demanded that Something Must be Done! (which somehow always involved attacks on capitalism). If some of the Xians adhere to beliefs that counter the irrational ideology of some of the enviros, good on them. The burden is on the greens now, and I'll believe global warming is the calamity they say it is, when some credible people start saying so, such as Ron Bailey.
Fool me once....
hypatia said...
ReplyDeleteNone of that, even if realized, would constitute theocracy. [...] People whose religious views inform their political beliefs are free to try to enact them, as long as they stay within the bounds of our secular Constitution.
Okay, so how much religiously-informed political legislation can be enacted before that little word "secular" becomes a hollow joke?
Rejoice if and when the SCOTUS reverses Roe. It is an intellectually and jurisprudentially unsound decision, that has done nothing but usher in the religious right as a force in national politics, and empower the Republicans. [...]In any event, remove the issue from national politics and much else that is good follows.
Promote school vouchers. If parents want to send their kids to fundamentalist schools where evolution is held to be Satan’s hoax, let them. And the rest of us can choose scientifically sound schools.
I completely disagree. First the bolded part: How as a women can you say that? You mean to say effectively eliminating all those dangerous back alley hack-jobs and coat-hanger abortions saving the lives of thousands, if not millions is nothing?
Second as an over-all point: Ignorance is an almost incomparably stronger force than enlightenment. The reason for it is simple; it is infinitely easier to be ignorant and, much more importantly, to be manipulated in a state of ignorance. It is not by mere accident there have been very few enlightened, industrialized societies over the course of history and pre-history.
Methinks you are a touch too Randian, hypatia.
sparks writes: You mean to say effectively eliminating all those dangerous back alley hack-jobs and coat-hanger abortions saving the lives of thousands, if not millions is nothing?
ReplyDeleteThat is a bunch of NARAL propaganda. At the time Roe came down, deaths from illegal abortions were at an all-time low of something like 150 per year. This was due to several things, including improved medical technology and that abortion was legal in several states. Return the issue to the states and many if not most will allow it to be legal in at least the first trimester -- and we get the issue out of national politics. (Also, abortion is already available by pill and/or injection, and that will increase; once that is pervasively so it will be almost impossible to effectively criminalize it in any state.)
As to the idea I'm a Randian, no. You have me confused with EWO, who has frequently cited Rand. I'm a libertarian who finds some of Rand's views interesting, but I'm not an Objectivist and do not despise all religious belief as "immoral," as Rand did. (I do not find Rand's attitudes to be entirely human.)
As for schools. Children, as the SCOTUS has noted, are not mere creatrues of the state. It is not your business, or mine, to compel taxation and education and then fund schools that teach only what you think is good and leads to enlightenment. If the folks next door do not want their children taught evolution, so be it. Let them send the tots to Jesus Loves You Elementary; mine would go to Liberally Educated R Us.
But many, many parochial schools do an outstanding job teaching children -- often in the inner cities where parents scrimp and scrape to send them there and keep them out of violent and academically awful public schools. Choice in education is the best gift we could give to the poor, and vouchers are a main component of choice.
Er... if this was even anywhere remotely close to the same thing I would have to agree but given that you are indulging in an apples and oranges argument, I must beg to differ. Especially since Notre Dame is not advocating for the abolition of the "theory of human evolution". Well, imagine that they even have a course in human evolution right there in their course catalog. My oh my how can the "many" good Christians support this institution?
ReplyDeleteNotre Dame -- last I knew -- does not allow gay rights groups to form on campus as an officially recognized group. It is a hotbed of anti-abortion activity.
Further, some Xian colleges whose students receive Pell Grants are hostile to evolution.
But even if that were not so, it would constitute religious discrimination in the dispersal of federal funds to refuse to give Pell Grants to students at schools that held religious objections to evolution.
In any event, if you will allow your tax $$ to go to students at Xian colleges in the form of Pell Grants, there is no reason not to let their parents have vouchers to send them to parochial grade schools. Whether those schools accept and teach evolution or not.
"As for schools. [...] Let them send the tots to Jesus Loves You Elementary; mine would go to Liberally Educated R Us."
ReplyDeleteThe Saudis, innovators and beacons of Liberty that they are, beat us to this concept. They're called "Madrassas". Seems like I remember somebody implicitly complaining about the collateral damage arising from poor Islamic government-funded educational outcomes, up thread.
Why yes, that's a cheap shot. It seems that science-illiterate lawyers understand little else. This ignorant sentiment--it is nothing else--is really frustrating.
The principle of separation of church and state was well thought through by the Founders. Why do the stove-piped specialists of today want us to relive all of those modes of failure that caused the Founders to think these things through so carefully, more than two centuries ago?
I guess I should know better than to make such a point in a forum where most everybody is in thrall to The Never Ceasing Wonders Of The State...and I expect I'll be ignored so that everyone can continue to argue how the state ought to force their agenda on everyone else.
ReplyDeleteBut if the government wasn't in the "education" business (yeah I know they do such an amazing job), then there wouldn't be any argument about how the money stolen to finance it is spent.
But of course then, no American would ever be educated again. Our Founding Fathers are perfect examples of the product that the horrors of non-state education turn out.
What was I thinking?
Ender writes: Yeah I don't have the numbers either but I would literally bet my life that, when the reality train returns to the station, your "many" translates to "very few" and not only that but further to a "very few ultra conservative white folk."
ReplyDeleteYou could not be more wrong.
African-Americans are very supportive of school vouchers; nation-wide, a premier mover and shaker in school choice has been WI legislator Polly Williams , a Jesse Jackson Democrat. And it is false that not many Americans, black or white, want vouchers; it is powerful teachers unions that don't. Read more about Williams' voucher program -- and the fierce opposition from the educrat lobby -- here:
In 1970, African-American parents first promoted the idea of vouchers for Milwaukee and proposed a $4 million voucher grant. The initiative failed because of fierce opposition from the teacher union and the NAACP, two groups that have continued to oppose vouchers to the present day.
If separate and unequal schools were bad, what African-Americans got in the 1980s because of a desegregation order was even worse: Forced busing. Under forced busing, the dropout rate for blacks increased, their test scores dropped, and their suspension rate skyrocketed. That's when Howard Fuller and state representative Polly Williams planted the seeds of citizen empowerment.
In 1988, some 18 years after blacks had first proposed the idea, Governor Tommy Thompson introduced his voucher bill, which met the same fate as the earlier one--immediate defeat at the hands of the teacher union. But Polly Williams brought the proposal up again and again, redefining it as a bottoms-up civil rights issue of "Choice plus Options." Many of the planning and strategy meetings during that period took place in the gym at Urban Day School.
Even with the voucher program now in place, it still is subject to attack from the teacher union and from People for the American Way, a group Holt describes as "the plantation overseers," who think they know what's best for African-Americans.
"The worst thing you can call a liberal Democrat is a racist," said Holt.
morlock writes:The principle of separation of church and state was well thought through by the Founders. Why do the stove-piped specialists of today want us to relive all of those modes of failure that caused the Founders to think these things through so carefully, more than two centuries ago?
ReplyDeleteWith all due respect, you are more legally and historically illiterate than I am illiterate in science. At the Founding and thereafter, in many states denominational schools were state-funded on a non-preferential basis. The movement for public schools was in large part driven by the motive to end this, so that Catholics could be cut out of the funds. Public schools then proceeded to teach Protestant theology, which pissed off the Catholics.
The idea that most parochial schools in the U.S. today are akin to a madrassas is offensive and false. A rejection of evolution does not a madrassas make. (Likening most Xians and their schools to jihadists is a political loser, and should be.) And virtually no Catholic schools do reject evolution.
Further, I understand -- quite well - why creationism is not science, and why it is a violation of the Establishment Clause to teach it in public schools. I closely followed the Dover, PA Kitzmiller case and read all the court papers. I am well educated in the definition(s) of science, and understand why its methodological materialism is necessary and efficacious -- and incompatible with creationism.
Michael Birk writes: Since you are a "lower-case 'L' libertarian", I assumed you had some respect for general scientific consensus. Guess not.
ReplyDeleteOh, I do. Except in fields corrupted by ideology, which environmentalism and population science simply have been. This is beyond reasonable dispute; in my lifetime the claims of some of their most high profile proponents have, over and over, been proven to be sheer bullshit.
Not being a scientist myself, and while I understand the scientific method, I am incompetent to judge the merits of any particular scientific claim. I defer to experts whose credibility I trust. I trust Ron Bailey. If it is his assessment that global warming is actual, that is persuasive to me.
Spark writes: Methinks you are a touch too Randian, hypatia.
ReplyDeleteI am glad hypatia cleared that up. If you understood Ayn Rand, you would never accuse hypatia of being Randian.
Objectivism is an internally consistent philosophy. You cannot suscribe to some of its central tenets and reject others and still be "Randian." That's the whole point of objectivism. It's black and white, no gray.
BTW, Ayn Rand did not support Ronald Reagan because of his courting of the Religious Right.
On the other hand, she voted for FDR almost exclusively because he was against Prohibition, although she herself did not drink.
That should tell you something about where she would come out re: today's theocratic totalitarianism, trashing of the Constitution, corrupt government officials and their flee from Reason toward their God of Disinformation.
Not to mention, she was totally against the initiation of force, by individuals or governments.
The Religious Right has always been her most hysterical defamer, of course. Mentioning her name in front of any of them is like waving garlic at a Vampire.
Throw in the leftist "collectivists" and you can appreciate what a very lonely road she walked.
Still, her books sold tens of millions of copies worldwide, because there will always be those individuals across the globe who value reason and do not want their lives controlled by tyrannical statist governments.
Ayn Rand wrote that "abortion is a moral right-which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved." ("Of Living Death," The Objectivist, Oct. 1968, 6) and
ReplyDelete"A piece of protoplasm has no rights-and no life in the human sense of the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months. To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable." ("A Last Survey," The Ayn Rand Letter, IV, 2, 3)
Ayn Rand wrote that "abortion is a moral right-which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved." ("Of Living Death," The Objectivist, Oct. 1968, 6) and
ReplyDelete"A piece of protoplasm has no rights-and no life in the human sense of the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months. To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable." ("A Last Survey," The Ayn Rand Letter, IV, 2, 3)
A piece of protoplasm has no rights-and no life in the human sense of the term.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was 8 mos pregnant w/ my first son, the doctor put an ultrasound stethoscope over my belly and I heard his heartbeat. A mere piece of protoplasm does not have its own heartbeat.
Whatever defenses of abortion may be valid, Rand's were question-begging assertions and absurd. The fetus is human and alive; it may not have rights that trump those of the mother, but mischaracterizing its nature and properties defies REASON.
I wrote: When I was 8 mos pregnant
ReplyDeleteCorrection. I meant to write "When I was 8 WEEKS pregnant."
Hypatia writes: "With all due respect, you are more legally and historically illiterate than I am illiterate in science."
ReplyDeleteQuite sensibly, with hindsight, looking back on my professional development, I am quite likely "legally", but not "historically" illiterate.
"At the Founding and thereafter, in many states denominational schools were state-funded on a non-preferential basis [...],[...] which pissed off the Catholics."
Why yes, that is all true, as far as my (nonprofessional) reading. (digression: I deeply explored homeschooling my child not for ideological reasons, but because so much of formalized 'school' seems counterproductive to learning and inefficent with respect to invested time. Like bart, having my income stream in from pipes connected to my basement enables such freedoms, even if it so sadly directed to what you "libertarians" consider Marxist ends)
But. There is a key issue you clearly do not appreciate. Only in the late 19th century, continued on in fits and spurts, accented by the Scopes Trial, and extending into the nuclear age, was general knowledge expanded to the point that it became generally known that scientific knowledge had evolved beyond literalist interpretations of the Abrahamic bible. The freedom of association or whatever principle you technologically-illiterate lawyers are using to justify avoidance of this truth is just a delaying tactic. There is nothing to be done ultimately about progress; it's not at all different than the greens with their head in the sand on GMO or the unabomber in his shack, as mathematically (but not technologically) literate as can be.
"The idea that most parochial schools in the U.S. today are akin to a madrassas is offensive and false"
I did not say today. I implied, but did not make explicit, what the outcome of several decades of government funded arbitrary "faith-based" schools would be. Do you think that, given what your proclivities up thread revealed, that government-funded Islamic indoctrination here on US territory would somehow be different in outcome from the Madrassas in Pakistan? There's a problem with this in Britain, you know. (I doubt they are gov. funded, but I don't know)
"A rejection of evolution does not a madrassas make. (Likening most Xians and their schools to jihadists is a political loser, and should be.) And virtually no Catholic schools do reject evolution."
Why yes, I do think kids who survive the pederast Jezzies are very well equipped to enter the larger world of society. I've read too much Pynchon to deny that...
Thanks for the response hypatia, but you didn't answer my first question.
ReplyDeleteI'll repeat, "How much religiously-informed political legislation can be enacted before the "secular" part in the Constitution becomes a hollow joke?"
As for abortion, I didn't know the death rate per year for botched abortions back in '73 but I'll believe your 150. All things being equal over 33 years thats 4950, or as I estimated, "thousands" (sure the "millions" is off-base, mea culpa). I still don't see how that is "nothing".
And as for the schools you say,
It is not your business, or mine, to compel taxation and education and then fund schools that teach only what you think is good and leads to enlightenment.
Well I must say I am apparently in disagreement with SCOTUS, because what you seem to support is a kind of moral relativism applied to education. Pardon me but I think the world has more than enough Ben Domenech's, thank you very much. There is in fact a good that can be taught that leads to capital "E" enlightenment. Y'know, the kind of enlightenment that spawned minor things like modern science and technology and the American Constitution and Bill of Rights. And such a good doesn't centrally involve faith I can tell you that much.
The reality is that ignorance is not some societal weakness that'll simply wither and die if you ignore it or consign it to those that "choose" it. It won't even play nice and keep to itself if left undisturbed and unmolested. Quite the opposite in fact. Ignorance is a strength and a force in society that if given an inch it'll take a mile. It didn't keep Europe "Dark" for over a millenia because of it's charm and good humour.
But then again, some say such things like "Dark Ages" are cyclical and unstoppable so why fight it.
Bring on the vouchers I guess.
As for your Randishness I realize EWO is a full-on Randian. You however seem to have not a small amount of afinity towards the inherent "good" of the market and at least by my reckoning some shadings of "enlightened self-interest" in what you write. If I'm mistaken I apologize but I don't think I'm wrong.
DrBB said...
ReplyDeleteRe Hypatia's quote from the WSJ--first thing that leapt to mind was that old Rob't McNamara quote:
"General, you don't have a war plan! All you have is a kind of horrible spasm!"
Robert McNamara didn't even have the decency to have a spasm.
When he finally dies I hope I'm still around. I want to visit his grave, dig him up and have a conversation with him through my a-hole after I've eaten 3lbs of fishheads and rice, and a pound of ex-lax.
Viet Nam 67-70
David said...
ReplyDeleteRegime change ended with the capture of Saddam and the killing of his two sons. We could have then handed it to the U.N., pulled back to Kuwait, maintained a low profile, but still exert some influence in trying to help Iraq develop in a more open way. We didn't need to take on the full responsibility and voluntarily take on the heavy pressure of remaking Iraq into a democracy. Setting that very high standard, set us up for a political failure. But it was unnecessary to set such a high standard.
If you will remember correctly the U.N. shut down because their building was bombed and they couldn't be guaranteed security.
We should never have done the regime change to begin with but after we did, all that leaving the U.N. in charge would have done was to have observers watch the Shia's clean house on the Sunni's, and then ally themselves with Iran. Which by the way is exactly what is going to happen anyway. If we had left we would have at least saved over 2300 American lives, and over 16,000 Americans with their lives forever altered by life changing debilitating physical and mental injuries.
This war was a guaranteed loser from the beginning but the political HIMFIC's never learned the lessons of the war we lost 31 years ago. Mabe because they all skated out and didn't participate.
David said...
ReplyDeleteSelf-defense and the WMD argument was the legal basis set forth by the Administration to the U.N. and the world to win their vote and approval. I was referring to our actual goal and purpose, which in my estimation, was to demonstrate strength by decisively finishing off the long unfinished war with Saddam. If THAT was the goal, and I believe it is, then the Administration got off track with the democratiziation effort. And I think this happened because the Administration needed something to hang its hat on after the failure to find WMD.
You are forgetting OIL. The only building that was guarded in the initial aftermath was the Oil Ministry.
By creating the 1000lb dragon in the room by building up China at our expense for the benefit of transnational corporations and their investors it was suddenly realized that we are going to have competition for the world's limited oil supplies. Competition from a nation that cares not who is in charge or what they do to their people. Iraq in addition to being Bush's evil nemesis floats above the second largest proven oil reserves in the world.
Bush and his neo-cons in their infinite wisdom (all sarcasm fully intentional) have not only gotten us into a losing war but have managed to alienate just about every other oil producing nation on earth.
It's really a shame that he can't be elected for a third term so that he could live with the results of decisions he has made for the rest of us.
As much of the discussion over the last 12+ hours here has been over 'theocracy' (and all that dovetails out of that), I think it might be helpful to define exaclty what a 'theocracy' is, if only so we can better appreciate the distinctions I believe hypatia and others are trying to draw.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the Wikipedia website defines a 'theocracy' as:
"commonly used to describe a form of government in which a religion or faith plays the dominant role. Properly speaking, it refers to a form of government in which the organs of the religious sphere replace or dominate the organs of the political sphere."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theocracy
I'd like to elaborate on this further and distinguish between what I'd call a 'hard' theocracy versus a 'soft' one.
A 'hard theocracy' is basically the sort defined above: church (more accurately a specific religious faith) and state are completely entwined, with the former essentially controlling the latter by formal declaration and direct administrative controls. The Papal States in Italy during the 1400 and 1500s and Iran just after the 1979 revolution would be prime examples of this. An argument (albeit an imperfect one) could be made Nazi Germany was likewise a theocratic government, although the more 'mystic' elements of the faith were likely more rhetorical and mythological than a genuine expression.
A 'soft theocracy' by contrast is more what we see today in the Middle East (Israel included) and here in the States. That is, the levers of government are secular in nature, but much of the key policymaking is informed, strongly influenced or otherwise prompted by some manner of religious coda or doctrine. Religion itself does not so much control as it colors or influences the work of government, doing so more strongly in some states than in others, but the faith itself is omnipresent.
Witness the recent "War on Christians" conference and the many members of the GOP leadership who were invited and attended, the continued influence of the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and the rhetoric surrounding the debates over everything from abortion to marriage to the phantom 'War on Terror'.
Hypatia notes that religious faith has been a strong prompt for both social and moral justice (eg the Civil Rights Movement), but it can equally prompt less inspired and more destructive policies (Prohibition and the attacks on OB-GYNs for example).
My point is one could make an argument we are already living in a theocracy, albeit a 'soft' one, but one that could conceivably be turned (at least attempted to be turned) into a 'hard' one.
Comments anyone?
I love how he takes politicians to task for not speaking bluntly, yet he lacks the stones to say what he really means, i.e. the WOT is an anti-Islam crusade.
ReplyDelete