They have NO idea of what they are messing with

[rrpjr]

Good to make the distinction between Muslim culture and Islamic radicalism, whose intent is to obliterate culture. Quite literal obliteration -- as in the destruction of Buddhist statues -- and death by formal censorship. Cairo was once a world center of education, science, research and inter-religious exchange. No more. We've seen there, as elsewhere, the slow anti-intellectual corrosiveness of the Caliphate dream. Sha'ria law, as radically envisioned, is nothing but the legalization of censorship, the last rites of liberal culture. All those wonderful things cited here -- the scientific search for truth, art, music, literature, all basic liberal notions of egalitarian freedom -- not only have no institutional defense among Islamics but are despised by them. As Salman Rushdie the fine Egyptian writer said in a speech a few weeks ago in New York -- what is it about this total assault on liberalness that liberals cannot understand? Why, he asked with a certain dry anguish, was he forced to be in a position to sympathize with George Bush?

[Lothar]

We've debated the use of our military around the world. Let's try this one more time.

The cost of our military depends on what type of military we need. If we have no need for operations beyond US borders, then we need a much different set of forces compared to a military that will be deployed around the world.

How should the US have responded to 9/11? How should we respond to terrorists that want to strike inside the U.S. when they do much of their preparation abroad?

What threats do we need to keep in focus in the post cold-war era?

I'm curious to hear some ideas.

[JSDSKI]

Originally posted by rrpjr
what is it about this total assault on liberalness that liberals cannot understand? Why, he asked with a certain dry anguish, was he forced to be in a position to sympathize with George Bush?

It seems odd to point out something so obvious, but don't mistake criticism of the current adminstration's goals and strategy for approval of radical Islam.

[JSDSKI]

Originally posted by Lothar
How should the US have responded to 9/11? How should we respond to terrorists that want to strike inside the U.S. when they do much of their preparation abroad? What threats do we need to keep in focus in the post cold-war era? I'm curious to hear some ideas.

Aside from our own self-aggrandizement and hubris which, as the Greeks pointed out, is always the real threat?

The main threat is the coupled disintigration of nationalism and reintroduction of tribal identity. It is an outgrowth of the digital revolution in communication. Individuals with like interests can communicate around the world and inhabit virtual nations, or identities, with no real geographic contraints. By tribal, I also mean those that identify so much with corporate interests (their "tribe") that those interests supercede national goals as well as the traditional use of tribal. This leads to multiple variations of needed response to local situations - we can no longer rely upon a couple of superpowers, their allies, and surrogates, to manage conflict. So we need many different kinds of military forces - as if all are special ops - because they must include cultural and other facts into military strategy. Colonization and occupations are dead ends. Only regional alliances and connections will survive. Our military will reflect that condition.

The Afghan operation followed this model and was successful. It should have been our only overt response to 9/11. We should have completed that mission with the capture and trial of al-queda operatives, rather than invading Iraq.

Our real response to 9/11 should have remained covert. Instead, we have treated this tiny (relative to total numbers of Muslims in the world) group of lunatics as if they were a rival nation state. Something that granted them status and leverage beyond their number.

[on-ramp]

[rrpjr]

Originally posted by JSDSKI
It seems odd to point out something so obvious, but don't mistake criticism of the current adminstration's goals and strategy for approval of radical Islam.

But it is not obvious. At least to those to whom it should be. That was Rushdie's point. Only a handful of liberal intellectuals -- Christopher Hitchens, Ron Rosenbaum, Nick Cohen, a few others -- have even acknowledged the hideous anti-liberal nature of radical Islam. And there is no confusion here between criticism and collusion. But sometimes the absence of criticism can be the evidence of a kind of collusion, even if only accidental. There has always been an unspoken solidarity between the radical Left and any movement that takes on American. I leave it to others to explain why we hear nothing or very little from liberal intelligenstia about the persecution of artists and rising censorship in Europe, or the growing influence of the Muslim Student Union across American college campuses (Nonie Darwesh recently shouted down at Brown University, Daniel Pipes shouted down last week at UC Irvine).

George Bush doesn't begin to get this. He issues a groveling apology for the Danish cartoons when he should have invited the editors to the White House. This war is -- or I shoud say will prove to be in the end -- only military in a minor way. Crushing the *****bag vermin in Iraq is certainly important, but it is only a fraction of the struggle. We will not win it on a battlefield. Or rather, the field of battle will be our collective will. The will not to permit "taqiyya" -- the Islamic term for the insinuation of values into a foreign land through political intimidation and the emotional extortion -- to carry the day, anywhere, anytime.

When those wanna-be beheaders at the University of California, Irvine stood up and started slinging their vicious filth at an academic guest, the college should have kicked them off campus and told the world this will not stand. But it didn't. It was afraid of even "issuing a statement." That's "tolerance." And that's one lost battle in a great war. Look it up, listen to the lovely chants of the junior Jihadists. That is your war, and it is not thousands of miles away but in your own backyard.

[JSDSKI]

Originally posted by rrpjr
But it is not obvious. At least to those to whom it should be. That was Rushdie's point. Only a handful of liberal intellectuals -- Christopher Hitchens, Ron Rosenbaum, Nick Cohen, a few others -- have even acknowledged the hideous anti-liberal nature of radical Islam. And there is no confusion here between criticism and collusion. But the absence of the former can indeed mean the presence of the latter, even if only accidental. There has been for generations a kind of solidarity between the radical Left and any movement that strikes itself as anti-American.

This kind of knee jerk language underlines my point. Your position is incapable of any separation between fact and ideology: "confusion between criticism and collusion"; "the presence of the latter (meaning collusion)"; "solidarity between radical Left and ... anti-American", easily could have been written by McCarthy or appeared in a Birch Society pamphlet. Aside from the fact that no one posting around here strikes me as a "radical Leftist" (whatever that means these days), everyone has ridiculed fascist nature of Islamic theocracy - it's too much like Pat Robertson and his ilk. Your postion gives comfort to the terrorists, tho, because it means there is still support for failed policies that energized and expanded their base. Maybe they've been reading Atwater and Rove on the benefits and ways to divide America.

[fintstone]

We needed to (and still do) start weeding out terrorists and the regimes that sponsor them. After toppling the Taliban, Iraq was as good a place to start as any. It was one of the few countries in the middle east that we could take on where only a nut-case or the craziest anti-American would even attempt to make the case that it was somehow illegal.

[rrpjr]

I'm not refering to anybody in this forum. And there is a radical left.

But I wonder where terrorists find greater comfort -- from those who demand civility and free exchange on a college campus or those who acquiesce to intimidation and censorship in the name a false tolerance. In any case, I know where I stand.

But I didn't mean to equate silence with anti-Americianism, and I may have been unclear there.

My intent was to question why more leading American liberals don't denounce Islamic theocracy, why more do not make it the cause of their work. For in fact nothing could be more opposed to liberal principles than Islamic theocracy. (Leading liberal writers around the world killed or injured or exiled by Islamic theocrats: Farag Fouda asassinated, Naguib Mahfouz (Nobel Prize winner) stabbed, Nasser Abu Zeid (death threats), Wafa Sultan (death threats), Salman Rushdie (death threats).

I'd be more than willing to get an answer, or to see how I am wrong in asserting that few do.

As to the strange alliance between the hard Left and Islam, this is pretty fascinating I think. al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizbollah, Hamas and that Iranian chap with the unpronounceable name (who, by the way, seems to be striking an interesting friendship with Hugo Chavez) appear to represent to the Left a new and attractive wave of anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist energy. This is also where the real "ideology" argument comes into play -- that is, the shared, cross-cultural affinity for "ideological purity." This was apparent in the documentary a few years ago on suicide bombers that the NY Times loved so much, and again in the closing shots of the movie "Syriana" -- the awe at the act of suicide, the extreme and "deep" sense of alienation from the ugly, capitalist world this exemplifies. Wow, man.

But this is subject for another thread, let's say on a knee-jerk Bircher's view the world.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by JSDSKI
"solidarity between radical Left and ... anti-American", easily could have been written by McCarthy or appeared in a Birch Society pamphlet.

The John Birch Society has opposed the Bush'ist foreign policy, including the invasion of Iraq, before any guns were fired. Not only that, recently the inestimable Sean Hannity called the John Birch Society a pack of liberal sympathizers for their position as outlined above.

That's the upsidedown world of the Neo-conservatives.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by fintstone
We needed to (and still do) start weeding out terrorists and the regimes that sponsor them. After toppling the Taliban, Iraq was as good a place to start as any.

Really? How many known terrorists were in Iraq prior to the illegal invasion staged by the Bush'ists?

It was one of the few countries in the middle east that we could take on where only a nut-case or the craziest anti-American would even attempt to make the case that it was somehow illegal.

Translation, fintstone, et al, picked a weak country that would, they thought, fold quickly so they could move on to the next target in less than six months.

They didn't count on the Iraqi Freedom Fighters doing such a heroic job thwarting their war crime plans.

It's as if the Netherlands had bogged down the German plans for invading France by three and a half years. Too damn bad.

[RoninLB]

There is a ceiling of discourse that can't be breached around here. Approaching or surpassing that level of intelligence triggers tension in the critic, etc. Unfortunately the critic's methods eventually work in capping the topic..

[fastpat]

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
-H. L. Mencken

[Rearden]

Originally posted by fastpat
Iraqi Freedom Fighters

Hahaha. That's cute.

[stuartj]

Originally posted by Victor
Yes. And yet, with some basic flight training and a couple of box cutters they manage to bring us down.

And what do we do in response to this? What - spend 500 million liberating a bunch of sandmonkeys who don't appreciate our good will.

Victor
Since the war statred by the COW, the Iraqis may be living under occupation. They may be in the grip of civil war. 500,000 of their countrymen may be dead. Their mortuaries may be overflowing, their hospitals may be ruined, the elctricrty, water and sanitation are worse than before the invasion. The infant moraility rate is thru the roof, and their secular socirty stands poised on the brink of religous fundamenatlism.

But please dont refer to the Iraqis in those terms, its rude and disrespectful.

You know better than using the "i" factor here, you towelhead.

Stuart

[Lothar]

I too have a problem with calling a bunch of thugs who kill innocent Iraqi women and children, "freedom fighters".

What virtuous freedom fighters kill innocent civilians who are burying their dead shortly after the last terrorist attack.

Reports from Anbar province, including the Devlin Report indicate that Al Qaeda is the dominant influence in that area:

"…Devlin reports that there are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has become the province’s most significant political force, said the Army officer, who has read the report. Another person familiar with the report said it describes Anbar as beyond repair; a third said it concludes that the United States has lost in Anbar."

Iraqi civilians are dying at a faster rate than US troops, not as a result of US or Iraqi government forces, but due to the terrorist acts of Pat's "freedom fighters".

Pat, if your country had been invaded by a fascist government, would you go plant a bomb at a church, grocery store or shopping mall to kill hundreds of your own fellow citizens in order to expel the invaders?

[stuartj]

Originally posted by Lothar
I too have a problem with heaping such praise on a bunch of thugs who kill innocent Iraqi women and children by calling them "freedom fighters".

Often, these thugs proudly call themselves the United States Military.

[Lothar]

More moral relativism from Stuart.

Stuart, why don't you answer my questions, since your so damned smart.

[stuartj]

Originally posted by Lothar
More moral relativism from Stuart.

Stuart, why don't you answer my questions, since your so damned smart.

Because your question was addressed to FastPat.

Moral relativism.
Go on, explain how the various atrocities- and I sure I can dig up some recent examples if you persist with this line- commited by the OCCUPYING COTW are "morally relative. "

[snowman]

Pat has no words or thoughts of his own, so he cuts and pastes garage that he does not understand. If he did understand much of what he posts he would know that he is a communist, not any kind of conservative. He would also understand that by expressing his "freedom fighter" points that he is also a traitor. I sincerely doubt he ever served in our military, I think he is an imposter, a spy or a total nut case.
Pats expressions are truly offensive to any American.

Bush, like him or not, is a sincere liberal politician of the old democratic party. Most of the so called "democrats" of today are basically communists, socialists and people of the same ilk, trying to perpetuate failed ideas.

True conservatives want the same things that the liberals state that they want. The big difference is that conservatives are more mature and know what works and what doesn’t. Why else are most 18 year olds liberal and 45 year olds conservative? They have matured. That simple.

Back to this thread. Our military is only as big as it need be, a piddling 3-4% of the GNP. But it could become 35-40% of the GNP, overnight as demonstrated in WW II. Those who are trying to destroy us and putting up 100% of their capability trying to accomplish their goals. Lets think about this for one second, 3-4% vs 100% and we are winning. Just think about what would happen to them if we responded with 30%!! That is what they do not seem to comprehend. They need to, because they endanger most of their own people by bugging us. At some point we will get really annoyed and respond, actually respond and kill all of them. And it will be liberals leading the way.