I’ve seen war from the inside. I’ve been under fire, and I’ve fired on others. I’ve been wounded – one of my wife’s early experiences after we married was to pick a piece of shrapnel out of my back as it finally worked its way out of my body – and I’ve inflicted my share of wounds. I’ve picked up the dead, and the pieces of the dead.
Those aren’t the worst aspects of violent conflict. To me, the worst is what it does to the human psyche. You become dehumanized. Your enemies are no longer people – they’re objects, things, targets. You aren’t shooting at John, whose mother is ill, and who’s missing his girlfriend terribly, and who wants to marry her as soon as he can get home to do so. You’re shooting at that enemy over there, the one who’ll surely ‘do unto you’ unless you ‘do unto him’ first. He’s not a human being. He’s a ‘gook’. He’s ‘the enemy’. He’s a thing rather than a person. It’s easier to shoot a thing than it is a person. So, right now, our boys are ‘in the sandbox’ shooting ‘ragheads’. Their boys – those in Paris yesterday – were ‘in the land of the infidels’. Those in this country on 9/11/2001 were ‘in the land of the Great Satan’. They were – and still are – killing ‘kaffirs’, unbelievers . . . not human beings.
You no longer think of civilians as such. They’re in enemy territory, or known to be sympathetic to the enemy: therefore, they’re ‘things’, suspects, never to be trusted, never to be treated objectively or with anything other than the forced, mandatory legal definition of ‘decency’ imposed by your superiors . . . and even that becomes flexible when those superiors aren’t around to monitor what you’re doing. You need something – a chicken or pig, perhaps, to make your rations more palatable? A blanket to keep you warm at night? A pot to cook your food? Money, to buy the beer that helps you relax? You take it. If asked, “it fell off a truck” or “we found it” or “they gave it to us”. All lies, of course, and everyone knows it . . . but no-one cares. All you need is a short-term-believable, hard-to-disprove fig-leaf. By the time anyone asks questions, you’ll be long gone.
That’s not the worst of it. Some people – thanks be to God (and I mean that very sincerely), never me – will take other things. They’ll take women. They’ll take children. She’s only five? Who cares? She’s a this, or a that, or the other. She’s ‘one of them’. She’s never a human being in her own right. To admit that would be to admit that you’re being inhuman . . . and that you can’t do. Ever. You’re never culpable. He/she/they were/are guilty. They ‘asked for it’. They ‘had it coming’.
All those attitudes were on display in the terror attacks in Paris last night. The perpetrators committed their crimes because they didn’t regard their victims as being human. They were guilty by virtue of not being Muslims, or (in some cases) being Muslims who lived in too close an association with non-Muslims, thereby making themselves targets as well. The victims were ‘guilty’ of being infidels, and paid the price for their ‘crime’. That’s the way it is, for the attackers. We’re justified in what we’re doing, because God as we understand him has authorized and encouraged us to do it.
The terrorists haven’t thought about it, I’m sure, but they’re going to produce a similar and even greater tragedy for their own people than they’ve inflicted on France. The reaction from ordinary people like you and I won’t be to truly think about the tragedy, to realize that the perpetrators were a very small minority of those who shared their faith, extremists who deserve the ultimate penalty as soon as it can be administered. No. The ordinary man and woman on the streets of France is going to wake up today hating all Muslims. He or she will blame them all for the actions of a few, and will react to all of them as if they were all equally guilty.
One can’t blame people for such attitudes. When one simply can’t tell whether or not an individual Muslim is also a terrorist fundamentalist, the only safety lies in treating all of them as if they presented that danger. That’s what the French people are going to do now. That’s what ordinary people all across Europe are going to do now, irrespective of whatever their politicians tell them. Their politicians are protected in secure premises by armed guards. They aren’t. Their survival is of more immediate concern; so they’re doing to do whatever they have to do to improve the odds in their favor. If that means ostracizing Muslims, ghettoizing them, even using preemptive violence against them to force them off the streets . . . they’re going to do it.
I’ve written before about how blaming all Muslims for the actions of a few is disingenuous and inexcusable. I still believe that . . . but events have overtaken rationality. People are going to start relating to ‘Muslims’ rather than to ‘human beings’, just as the extremists label all non-Muslims as ‘kaffirs’ or ‘kufars’ – unbelievers – rather than as human beings. For the average man in a European street, a Muslim will no longer be a ‘person’. He’s simply a Muslim, a label, a ‘thing’. He’s no longer French, or American, or British, no matter what his passport says. He’s an ‘other’. He’s ‘one of them’ . . . and because of that, he’s no longer ‘one of us’. He’s automatically defined – no, let’s rather say (because it’s easier to blame him) that he’s defined himself – as a potential threat, merely by the religion he espouses. He may have been born into it, and raised in a family and society and culture so saturated with it as to make it literally impossible, inconceivable, for him to be anything else . . . but that doesn’t matter. It’s his choice to be Muslim, therefore he must take the consequences. We’re going to treat him with the same suspicion and exaggerated caution that we would a live, possibly armed hand-grenade. He’s asked for it, so we’re going to give it to him.
That’s the bitter fruit that extremism always produces. It’s done so throughout history. There are innumerable examples of how enemies have become ‘things’. It’s Crusaders versus Saracens, Cavaliers versus Roundheads, Yankees versus Rebels, doughboys versus Krauts . . . us versus them, for varying values of ‘us’ and ‘them’.
It’s been that way since ancient times. We want that land? Then we’re going to invade it, and take it over, and kill or drive out anyone who isn’t ‘us’ (unless they’re good-looking, in which case we’ll forcibly incorporate them so they can bear our children, or unless they can work until they die, in which case we’ll enslave them). Later, we’ll claim in our histories and our sacred books that God (by whatever label we know him, her, it or them) told us to do so. That way, we can’t be blamed for what our ancestors did. They were acting under orders from God! Look – it says so, right here in our divinely inspired and inerrant book! How dare you question that section? Are you a heretic? You must be one of them – the enemies of our faith! To the stake with you! For what, you ask? For daring to question the truth!
It was that way for our fathers, too. Morality is left out of consideration almost entirely on every side. Is a city standing in the way of victory for Germany and/or her allies? Then let our Air Force bomb it into submission! And thus we had Guernica, and Warsaw, and Rotterdam. One side began the cycle . . . so the other side continued it. Was it wrong for Nazi Germany to bomb British cities, killing thousands of innocent civilians in the name of ‘total war’? Yes, of course it was, as Britain loudly proclaimed at the time – yet Britain went on to do the same thing, in vastly greater measure, bringing utter devastation to an entire nation. Later, America joined the effort. Those who questioned the morality of the bombing campaign were scorned, derided, even imprisoned. Are we morally wrong to do this? How dare you ask that? They did it first! We’re just “doing unto them” what they did to us! How dare you question our rightness? Are you some sort of enemy sympathizer – even a Fifth Columnist, perhaps? How dare you undermine our war effort?
And so, even after the worst and most destructive weapon ever devised by humanity was used, President Truman could still threaten: “If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.” How could that ruin possibly be greater, or worse, than the ruin already inflicted? The fire-bombings of Japanese cities killed far more people and devastated a far greater area than the atomic bombings. The latter were just ‘icing on the cake’, the ‘cherry on top’.
It’s been the same in the War on Terror. The attacks of 9/11 merited – required – a response. I have no problem with that at all. However, the response was not carefully planned, or thought out, or targeted. It’s proved to be almost completely ineffective in curbing fundamentalist Islamic terrorism, which was the enemy responsible for those attacks. Instead, tens of thousands of American lives have been lost, or ruined due to crippling injury; entire nations and regions have been destabilized; the forces of Islamic fundamentalism have been galvanized into renewed efforts that have taken on new faces and forms and engendered even more dangerous terrorists; and tens of thousands of innocent civilian lives have been lost, and the lives of literally millions of civilians have been disrupted and uprooted, without any lasting solution having been forthcoming.
The War on Terror could not and did not prevent Paris 2015. It cannot and will not deter similar attacks in future.
And in the end, the bodies lying in the ruins, and the blood dripping onto our streets, and the weeping of those who’ve lost loved ones . . . they’ll all be the same. History is full of them. When it comes to the crunch, there are no labels that can disguise human anguish. People will suffer in every land, in every community, in every faith . . . and they’ll turn to what they believe in to make sense of their suffering . . . and most of them will raise up the next generation to hate those whom they identify as the cause of their suffering . . . and the cycle will go on, for ever and ever, until the world ends.
We cannot ‘kill them all and let God sort them out‘ (and let it never be forgotten that those obscene, inhuman instructions were reportedly issued, not by a Muslim fundamentalist, but by an Abbot and Papal Legate of the Catholic Church). There are too many of ‘them’ to kill them all, just as ‘they’ can never kill all of ‘us’. We cannot kill our way out of terrorism. We cannot kill our way out of the dilemma of being human, with all the tragedy that entails.
May God have mercy on us all.
Peter
Peter,
You write from a truly enlightened perspective. I, however, do not see how to even defend against such attacks, let alone prevent them without being becoming the dispassionate otherers you warn against. Doing nothing will not stop this trajectory…..while it remains so here, robust personal self defense is not an available option in Europe at present. I expect severe curtailment of civil liberties across the West and to no avail.
How does this end?
Your memories are also my memories, and I wonder how much those memories have changed my present life. It's part of the human condition to de-humanize those we are in conflict with and it can be seen not only in war but in local, social events.
Like you, I grieve, and wonder where our future will take us.
Thank you for the thoughtful and informed comments. It's becoming more difficult to find levelheadedness on the Internet these days. No doubt, the pro-war-any-war crowd will demand more blood, which will create nothing but more resentment and retaliation.
And so it goes.
Timeless words of Wisdom.
What people forget is that most muslims think this is perfectly okay, even if they choose not to get involved personally. After all, Allah says so.
Thank you for posting this. Those insisting that "All Muslims are the enemy," seem not to realize that this is the same justification used by the Islamic extremists to justify their atrocities.
Words of wisdom Peter. Thank you for a rational look at what is going on.
This is a shining example of why you do not allow enclaves of foreigners in your country.
It gives the guilty a free space to work from among the innocent.
You have to insist that anyone who comes to live in your nation become a member of your culture and society. That they assimilate.
Refusal to demand this leads only to death and pain.
But when a handful out of thousands can kill hundreds, you need to DO something not just sit back and fret about the innocent portion of the enclave.
At some point you have to say that your own people are more important that even the innocent other. Or you will be lost.
Although only a handful were actively murdering, there are likely dozens or scores in the enclave giving them succor.
I definitely love my family MORE than anyone from the middle east and since we cannot know how many terrorists are hidden among the refugees, I say we accept zero refugees. Or if we must accept them, then entire groups become responsible for the parole of their members. Yes, that also means keeping a tight control on the movements of refugees. Once again I care more about the life of MY family than I do these people. Since I keep being lectured on their expansive rights once they are here, DON'T LET THEM BE HERE TO KILL MY FAMILY!
Because sooner or later, after the handfuls have killed scores and score, it will be the rational decision to kill everyone who even looks like the enemy, because this war is sure short on uniforms. And one side is already at war here. It's high time we admit that and be at war back at them.
Peter, it's noteworthy that you had go back 800 years to quote some obscure papal legate who lived during the time of the crusades.
But the whole screed begs the question:
What, exactly, would you have us do?
Unbridled immigration brought this on. A few Muslims are OK, but when the reach a certain number, they become trouble. Allowing Muslim immigration is nothing less than suicide.
If they want enclaves, and they do, send them home where the entire country is enclave. Islam is not compatible with western civilization.
Well said Peter. In old Navy terms – BRAVO ZULU!! Thank you.
Able Dog
Another anon.
Ethnic cleansing worked in Europe to bring a generation of peace after ww2. Multi-ethnic empires ended in Europe after ww1. The aftermath of ww2 pretty much finished the ethnic cleansing, with the exception of Yugoslavia. The same thing is happening in the Middle East with religion with Shia and Sunni in Syria and Iraq, and to a lesser extend with ethnicity (Kurds).
The American interest had an article discussing this.
The US is one of the few countries in the world where as John ringo in an essay/ rant put it, your identity as an American is based in your beliefs, not your ethnicity. We are so blessed. We have our issues, but compared to most other countries they are minor.
France tries so hard to ignore race and religion in their national identity, but seems to be failing with a large part of their Moslem population.
I disagree strongly with your moral equivalency in WW2. The question you need to ask is not what was done, but why. Why did Germany bomb London? To make them bow to the Third Reich. Why did Britain bomb German cities? To make them stop.
Would Hiroshima have been nuked if not for Pearl Harbor? No, because we wouldn't have devoted the resources we did to the Manhattan Project if we weren't involved in WW2, and we wouldn't have needed to force a Japanese surrender without Pearl Harbor.
I think we can kill our way out of this, but not in the sense that you mean. We can do it in the sense that if we can do enough damage to Islamic culture, it will change. That is what they are trying to do to us, after all; they are not invulnerable to it.
Whether we want to do that is a different story.
Agree with White Knight. We do not need to "kill them all". What we need to do, in my opinion, is to hobble, cripple, geld, spay, neuter the Islamic "religion" (actually it relates to Judaism and Christianity like the "cargo cult" in the South Pacific related to the airstrips and towers left behind after WW II).
The 21st century world has become so small, it's like we are all crammed inside a single elevator cab instead of having space to avoid each other. Some of the passengers are serial killers butchering the other passengers one by one with a knife, we need to decimate them (literally, kill one-tenth, though historically, much smaller percentages were likewise designated so) so that the survivors will lose the will to fight.
"War is all Hell". William Tecumseh Sherman
His response was to make it as much Hell as he could in order to shorten it.
We need to make "Moderate Muslims" join is to end this insanity.
And to do that, we need to give them Hell on earth.
Remind me… what did Thomas Jefferson do?
Sad but true.
I tried to write a comment here, but it got too long. It still comes down to what others have said, "so what are we to do"?
In general, I like what White Knight Leo has to say. I'm very wary of moral equivalencies across societies with completely different moral codes. I see you judging Islam by your Christian moral code. The fact that their system is very different says the problem can't be resolved that way.
I'd never claim expertise in Muslim philosophy, but everything I know says it's Satanic – if in no way other than it being the opposite of Christianity. Read the prophecies of the return of the 12th Imam and tell me that it doesn't sound like the book of Revelation told from the other side's point of view. That may be a minority view in Islam, but it seems to be widely held among jihadis.
It's nice to see this as a moral equivalency, but I can't see how given the Satanic influence. I'd dearly love to invite all these jihadis to Sunday School and lead them all to Christ, but all I'd be doing is committing the sin of suicide.
One of the most important abilities humans have is pattern recognition; I don't think we'd have survived a few hundred years without it. We see the pattern behind these attacks, and that leads to the "otherness" you fret over. Not recognizing the incompatibility of the societies, and trying to integrate Islam into Europe is suicidal.
Do you only advocate punching back? So you accept being shot first before you shoot back?
I feel obligated to point out that the decision to drop those two nukes on Japan was a truly live saving act.
The low estimate for an invasion of the Japanese home islands was half a million US and likely five million Japanese.
The alternative of simply blockading Japan and starving them out would have utterly destroyed them as a nation and caused most harm to the old, the young, and the least able to survive.
It quite literally took the destruction of two cities with one bomb each and the threat that we could and would continue to do so to convince the Emperor and his military leaders that unconditional surrender was their only option.
Just prior to the surrender there was an active effort in Japan to arm the populace with makeshift weapons ranging from crude firearms to suicide bombs to sharpened bamboo spears. And the exhortation from their leaders that the only honorable thing was to die in defense of their homeland.
As terrible as those nukes were, they were still a kindness as compared to the even more ugly alternatives.
I am of a faith that has learned, the hard way, not to play nice with others.
The purpose of terrorism is to frighten the other side into doing what you want them to. No one side has a monopoly on that. Anyone who thinks that what ISIL is doing is unique to Islam is either smoking crack or ignorant of history.
Respectfully disagree with parts of what you say. Yes, war is dehumanizing. BUT.
If they are not fully culturally assimilated, segregated without government subsidy of any sort, expelled, or killed, then western civilization will die. There are simply too many. Yersinia pestis may not mean to kill the host, but untreated it will all the same. If they are able to be civilized, let the masses of them do it in their own nation; but there is no magic soil that will transform an average IQ illiterate Algerian muslim into an average IQ French Catholic engineer. But statistically, that engineer will have 1.5 kids, and the immigrant will have 3. Do that math. It doesn't pencil out in the long run.
Limited legal and tightly regulated immigration? Fine. Let in people capable and willing to assimilate and adopt local culture – after all, it's local culture that created a place worth immigrating to, yes? But to allow unlimited numbers to come, subsidize them with welfare the taxpayers can't afford, and let them retain the same dysfunctional culture that created the hell-hole they fled from in the first place in to a democracy where once they have a majority they can simply vote you into oblivion is both cultural and biological suicide.
I didn't help build a nation just to tell my kids they'll be the last generation to see America as a free nation and world power.
With any luck, a few tens of thousand of the invaders will get killed, and that relatively small bloodletting will send a message to the others that even the dimmest border-crosser can understand, and they'll self-deport or get with the program. If there isn't a significant backlash, then I fear the final body-count will be far, far higher, and include a lot of politicians being strung up rather than simply losing elections, unless it's the total destruction of Europe as region of western culture.
This is an outstanding article!
Dealer calls the game and everyone who stays at the table plays by his rules. If he loses the game it is his fault for playing poorly, not the other player's for being better at his rules than him.
The Jahadis have called this game and we are going to play it to the end according to their rules come Hell or High Water.
@Roy: What would I have us do? I wish we could figure out a way to respond without demonizing and alienating every Muslim. Trouble is, to do so effectively would mean ruthlessly dealing with jihadists in a way that Western culture won't allow us to do. We could stop ISIS tomorrow if we moved in foot, horse and artillery, used the Kurds, Yazidis and others to interrogate everyone in those areas and hand over any ISIS members or sympathizers, and executed every last one of them. However, that wouldn't square with the values of our civilization.
It's an impossible problem that, right now, admits of no workable solution.
@Graybeard: "Do you only advocate punching back? So you accept being shot first before you shoot back?"
I can accept shooting first in self-defense if the threat is clear, and if those at whom I'm shooting have been clearly, unambiguously identified as enemies who are about to harm me. If I don't or can't do that, then I have no right to shoot at them – at least, not under the laws and moral codes of any Western civilization. If I did, anarchy would prevail. So, pre-emptive violence is acceptable, but only if precisely targeted and delivered without collateral damage. If I take one or more innocent lives in the process, am I not as guilty of murder as the terrorists I'm trying to stop?
(Yes, I'm using Christian morality here. I'm a retired Christian pastor. What else can anyone logically, rationally, reasonably expect from me? Their mileage may vary, of course.)
@Uncle Lar:
Read "Hell To Pay", by D.M. Giangreco. This covers what the Japanese were planning to do in response to our planned invasion. Makeshift weapons? Not needed, they had pre-positioned more than enough weaponry to do the job. An eye-opening book.
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Muslims of any sort should not be allowed to remain in any Western nation. That "religion" is more a political force, and should not be tolerated, as it is not compatible with any other world view. They will not tolerate us continuing to exist, so we must respond in a fashion that they understand. They must all be shipped back to their own countries. If they don't like things there, they are free to change things to suit them.
They do need to be contained to their own areas. Anything less is Western Civilization committing suicide.
I expect some deaths of European politicians, by their own citizens, will be required before they see the light regarding their Muslim invaders.
I don't expect our politicians to learn anything good about what is going to happen in Europe. Our Progressives are not capable of learning from history or experience. At some point, they will also have to be consigned to the dustbin. Hopefully it won't take too many attacks here, to get people riled up enough to remove those idiots. Unfortunately, I would not be surprised if their attacks here in The Great Satan include the loss of a city.
The stated goal of Islam by their own holy text is that all are to convert, submit, or die. That doesn't leave a lot of room for honest negotiation with any part of Western civilization. Their "moderates" are perfectly willing to let the jihadis do the ugly work for them. Offering them the same choice would be a perfect application of Do unto others as they would do unto you.
Not a pleasant choice, but fighting for survival never is.
Quote:
We could stop ISIS tomorrow if we moved in foot, horse and artillery, used the Kurds, Yazidis and others to interrogate everyone in those areas and hand over any ISIS members or sympathizers, and executed every last one of them. However, that wouldn't square with the values of our civilization.
Except it does, Peter. It's called a World War, and we've had two of them. We've only been able to rationalize the Second one, really, but that won't stop us from WW 3 if we could sign up enough allies. Get the US, Russia, and China (maybe Turkey) to agree to an even split of the region's petroleum, and the major opposition is gone. As a plus, all those burning cities will put ash high into the atmosphere, blocking sunlight and reversing global warming.
The "values" of a civilization are remarkably flexible when they need to be.
Antibubba
Rolf: Explain, then, how Iraq had a sizable and substantial Jewish population in 1948, one which had been there for thousands of years and numbered around 140,000. Clearly if what you say is true, every Jew in Iraq would have been forcibly converted to Islam or executed a thousand years prior…
The reality is that Islam as a crusading religion is long past, just as is true for Christianity. Nobody's been converted at swordpoint to Islam for much longer time than is true for Christianity (where a mere 500 years ago we had an entire Spanish Inquisition devoted to beheading anybody suspected of not properly converting to Christianity from their original Jewish or Muslim faith). Most Muslims today, as with most Christians, just want to live their daily lives in peace and tranquility. But of course Goering was right…
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
— Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
There are criminals and their supporters out there who need to be brought to justice, one way or another. There are not, however, 1.6 billion of them. There's probably not even a five-figure number of them. And while they may be Muslim, they don't speak for the other 1.5 billion Muslims. If they did, there would be no hope for Europe at all, because we haven't sufficient bombs and bullets in the entire world to prevent 1.6 billion people from marching into Europe. But of course that inconvenient truth cannot be used to lie people into wars, so it is not one we hear, instead we hear the lie that 1.6 billion people want us dead — something clearly and obviously false, since if they did, all bloody bajeezus would be taking place rather than terror attacks by small cells of dozens at most.
Peter, I take your words to heart. It seems to me that we don't have a good way to get this stopped.
I don't want this stuff to go on and on. I have more children and grandchildren, and I want them to live in peace.
http://habakkuk21.blogspot.com/2015/11/are-my-sons-only-weapons-i-have-against.html
Would Islam remain viable if Mecca and the stone were obliterated? No Hajj, no Hadji?
Anon,
Yes. Only this time you really would have 1.6 billion marching into Europe. It would be a bloodbath that neither group would survive.
You make the BRILLIANT statement :
"When one simply can't tell whether or not an individual Muslim is also a terrorist fundamentalist, the only safety lies in treating all of them as if they presented that danger."
Then you proceed to backtrack and spout liberal platitudes, for shame!
Islam is incompatible with western civilisation. All moslems need to be deported. We need to stay out of moslem lands and keep them out of ours.
It could work. While I don't think it's possible to eradicate Islam root and branch, total destruction of Mecca including the evil black stone sure would put a damper in their self-confidence. It would change their moral calculus. Right now they are feeling themselves on the upswing, due to rapidly increasing numbers while Europe ages and shrinks, billions and billions of oil money, and a "holy" book that justifies all manner of murder, rapine and pillaging. There have been centuries where they were much meeker, due to European assertiveness and will to use the superior firepower. (Even without the U.S., Europeans still boast superior firepower. But for how much longer? The window of opportunity may be closing.)
BadTux, you are misrepresenting Rolf's words. He did not claim that Islam forces everyone to convert at swordpoint. Instead, he wrote "The stated goal of Islam by their own holy text is that all are to convert, submit, or die." And in fact, the Jews (and Christians) of Baghdad had to pay the Koran-mandated "jizya" (poll tax). That is, they had to SUBMIT.
A radical muslim jihadi wants to kill you. A moderate muslim wants a radical muslim jihadi to kill you. If not so, where are the moderate muslims speaking out against the radical muslim jihadis? Other than a tiny handful of said moderate muslims, I mean………..Anyone?
The majority of Muslims are peaceful, want to live in peace and practice their religion. There is a minority that use Islam to justify their black desires. They have terrorized many of the peaceful Muslims, so that few can speak out. We need to stand against the fanatics and encourage the peaceful ones.
By the way France is a NATO country, so it will be interesting to see what happens.
And BYW SOS Kerry announced talks leading to a Cease-fire. Just what does that mean?
"We need to stand against the fanatics and encourage the peaceful ones."
Since when did it become incumbent upon people outside a particular faith to attempt to exert controlling influence on those inside? You don't actually think that the outside interference you champion is going to be acceptable, do you? Because last time I checked, having a bunch of nonbelievers sticking their noses into your religion and telling you how to run things only pisses people off and de-legitimizes the very changes you want to see happen, because they are championed by NON-believers.
We need to leave Muslims alone to clean their own houses, preferably far away and securely quarantined from everyone else. Let those concerned with influencing that barbaric faith become missionaries and martyrs over there, instead of allowing Muslim enclaves to spring up and produce terrorists in the midst of unarmed civilians in the First World.
Of course, for those who think that Muslims can't deal with their own issues by themselves, there is the "long march through the institutions" option, but it would take quite a few long-term stealth operatives to pull off.
I feel like I'm wasting my time responding to someone who has the handle of an animated idiot, but anyhow: Bart, when did moderate Muslims want to start exterminating non-Muslims? It had to be after 1948, because half of the population of Israel in 1949 was Jews who had been living in other Muslim countries for centuries. Clearly if Muslims wanted to exterminate non-Muslims, those Jews would not have been alive to help found the modern nation of Israel. Or are you saying that these Jews who lived in Muslim countries for centuries before being expelled to Israel as part of the massive population swap of Jews and Arabs in the former Palestinian mandate after the Israeli War of Independence didn't really come from Muslim countries, that they are Jewish liars? (That would be a twofer, bigotry against Muslims *and* Jews at the same time!)
I've also mentioned the Jews of Iraq, who had had been living there since before Islam existed. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, Jews were 1/3rd of Baghdad's population in 1915 and there were around 150,000 Jews in Iraq in 1948. So clearly the desire to exterminate non-Muslims was not common in the Muslim population at the time because surely they could have easily exterminated 150,000 Jews, I mean, Hitler managed to kill a whole lot more Jews, like 5,000,000 of them, right?
So when after 1948 did 1.6 billion Muslims suddenly convert to wanting to kill everyone who isn't Muslim? Was it in 1949? 1968? 1973? 1979? 1991? 2003? Just curious….
But wait, I forget, I'm talking actual facts and history, and nobody cares about that when there's bigotry and hate to spread against 1.6 billion people. Sorry to bother you. Carry on!
BadTux – you have part of the history, but you are missing a critical point. For a long time, the Christians and Jews in the region paid the jizya tax, and submitted as second-class dhimmis. They were literally paying their masters. It was quiet because they had submitted. But the Islamic masters of the region (including the Ottomans, etc) also regularly extracted a great deal of blood – see how the Janissaries were treated, and how the large-scale making / taking of the eunuch slave class by the Ottomans to manage their bureaucracy cost millions of lives and ended bloodlines.
But back to recent history: one of the agreements post WW II was to prohibit payment of the jizya tax. Suddenly the muslim's "free money" from the jews and christians was cut off. Their official protection then ended, too.
An nobody here is saying ALL muslims want to kill all infidels. It's "only" about 10%. So you can assume that at least 1% of immigrants from islamic majority nations are among that that want the infidels to convert, submit, or die.You want to let them in? Then any murders they commit are on your head just as much as it is theirs. Their basic teaching is incompatible with western freedoms and mores. You OK with 1% of millions wanting to kill you, tax you, or force you to convert at sword-point? I'm not.
You do realize that 10% of 1.5 billion is 150 million, right? Where, exactly, are these 150 million Muslims that you claim want to exterminate us? The most generous credible estimate of ISIS that I've seen is around 30,000 fighters and maybe 100,000 supporters, they managed to chew up the Iraqi Army because the Iraqi Army had been hollowed out by nepotism and incompetence, not because they outnumbered them. If there's 150 million radicals, why doesn't ISIS have a million soldiers? Plus there's plenty of evidence that ISIS wants to create an Islamic caliphate on top of a whole lot of Muslim bodies. They've pretty much stated the only reason they attacked France and Russia was in retaliation for French and Russian airstrikes against their army trying to create that caliphate, they haven't mentioned any desire to exterminate the rest of the world. They could be lying, of course, but (shrug). What can I say, I gotta go with what evidence actually exists, not bullshit pulled out of my ass. Just how I roll, yo.
As far as refugees, I haven't the foggiest notion what to do with the refugees. I suppose you could put them into refugee camps, like the surrounding Arab states did with the Palestinians after 1948. That didn't work out too well for those Arab states though in the end, in case you forget what happened as refugees in those camps became radicalized over the years by decades of being prisoners in all but name despite having committed no crime except that of fleeing violence… oh wait, I know! You could set up machine guns on the border and start shooting them! Yeah, that'd be a solution too. Except you seem to forget about why Nazi Germany set up gas chambers. Seems that they had a shortage of soldiers willing to murder unarmed civilians… and we're talking about Germans, who have a cultural history of obeying orders even when said orders are to commit atrocities. Even Germans had trouble with shooting unarmed civilians (though East Germany seemed to be able to find some who were willing to do so)… somehow I doubt that the Greeks, the Macedonians, the Czechs, the Hungarians, the Austrians will have any more stomach for murdering unarmed civilians.
But hey, I know, we can just drop nuclear weapons on the entire Middle East and kill everybody! You do realize that you're talking about killing more people than Hitler did, right? But hey, it's for a good cause, right? I mean, killing more people than Hitler, that's not what *I* would like to be remembered for, but hey, I'm just one of those squishy liberals who thinks the answer to criminals committing crimes is to find the criminals and either make sure they spend the rest of their lives being sodomized in the Euro equivalent of a Supermax, or make sure they're dead. Us squishy liberals and our aversion to genocide just isn't compatible with today's modern world, we need to resurrect Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, hell, even Hitler for a good spot'o genocide, it's the modern way, wot?
How's this for a plan — how about we exterminate ISIS, resolve the Syrian civil war, then send all the refugees home? You down with that? Just wonderin'. Seems more humane than genocide, but hey, what can I say, it's that whole squishy liberal thing y'know…
People, please keep your comments polite and civilized. I don't want to shut down this discussion, but I will if people can't remember their manners.
My apologies. I tend to suffer an excess of snark when people blithely suggest genocide as the answer. I suspect it's the coonass in me. (Yeah, I'm from Louisiana, why you axe?).
The tendency to dehumanize the opponent is as old as mankind.
The issue in the current conflict is simple….most religions and
belief structures will co exist with other religions and beliefs.
Maybe not perfectly or easily but at least their is an effort, a
fundamental creed that we should all 'just get along'. NOT SO WITH
ISLAM. Islam and it's adherents are commanded to kill, enslave or convert EVERYONE….EVERYWHERE. No exceptions. Any muslim not willing to go along with this command is an apostate…to be killed.
There simply can be NO compromise, no peace with Islam…by it's own
admission peace with Islam is not possible. That leaves only two
alternatives. We kill EVERY MUSLIM on the planet or THEY kill all of us. End of story. That's it.
And there are only TWO TYPES of muslims.
The fanatical ones who seek to kill us and
the moderate ones who want the fanatical ones
to kill us.
Any other type of 'muslim' is an apostate….to be
killed even before us kefirs'.
Another anon
Wahhabism has been feeding the current medievalist attitude that is reflected in Islam powered by the gulf funded madras (schools) and mosques around the world. And why has this only appeared in the last 40 years?
Oil wealth – exploded after 1973
Siege go the Karbala scared the Saudis so the funded more religious stuff.
Pakistan's Zia using Islam
Failure of Arab leadership
Social media
Perceived success in Afghanistan against soviets by jihadi forces
Use of Jews / israil as a scapegoat for government failures in Middlle set
Brainwashing of population through mass media in me, especially Palestine. Based on soviet learned model.
KGB anti israil / Jewish propaganda
Nazi anti semitism exported into Middle East
Exploring birth rate in Middle East
Conspiracy mindset in Middle East
Solution to allow radical Islam to burn itself out, and not us?
Allow a 30 years war style war between Shia and Sunni that is basically underway?
Boots on the ground?
Stop immigration?
Stricter scrutiny of me visas / immigrants?
Create new countries to fix Sykes-Picot map? Kurdistan, Druze, Kurdistan, north Sunni Iraq and Syria, coastal alewife?
Promote the break up of multi ethnic Iran?
Promote regime chsnge in Iran?
Partner with Russia in the Middle East?
Support democracy in turkey?
The us to identify radical Islam as an enemy?
Diplomad 2.0 has wriitten much on the ME mess. And the religion of peace.
Yeppers, Anon recommends genocide as the solution. Yessirree, genocide. You know who else recommended genocide as the solution? Adolph Hitler. Adolph Hitler recommended genocide as the solution. You know who else recommended genocide as the solution? Josef Stalin. Josef Stalin had a saying, "no people, no problem."
Yeppers, we should all rush right now to put ourselves on the same side as Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin. Because they were moral paragons who should be emulated, yessirree.
Meanwhile, observing that the rise of radical Islam seems to be connected to the rise in oil wealth after 1973 which in turn is connected to Wahhabism, a Saudi sect that appears to have about 5 million members total worldwide and which is the inspiration / core membership of ISIS, certainly *is* useful. Ironically, we appear to be paying at the pump for the same terrorism that we're supposedly fighting. Funny, that. Absolutely hilarious.
You yourself said you don't know what to do – but until you do have a viable solution to offer, don't be too quick to shout down other possible solutions, because the longer Europe waits, the worse any imposed solution will be.
*sigh* Please stop putting words in my mouth. I did NOT say that 10% are actively trying to kill us right now. I said about 10% want to, as in, they support the killing those that won't convert or submit.
See This Pew Study which says on page 53 that 8% of US muslims think that suicide bombings against civilian targets is often / sometimes OK, and it it much higher in other nations. A *LOT* of them support it. Most are not actively doing it, but helping fund it, offering moral support, and a steady supply of cannon fodder for feeding the front lines. A few from here, a few from there, and you have an unending stream.
Islam has a long and storied history of treating all non-muslims as "other", and many places actively promote genocide against Jews. (hopefully I don't need to cite sources on that – too many to list). The Hindu Kush is named that for the mountain of Hindu bones (~80 million) that the muslims stacked up there over a century during their original eastward push. They seem to be OK with genocide.
The mix of tribalism, polygamy, massive corruption and no real rule of law (beyond sharia) in most of the muslim world, Islam's view of fate and "Allah's will" that allows them to not feel any need to take personal responsibility for their actions, and "othering" of all non-mulsims, guarantees a constant stream of disaffected young men with no prospects for a job or wife, and therefore no need to put down roots or build a business or be a stable member of a household or society. jihad and dieing for islam is actually their best option – which says a lot about their culture. But their cultural problems does not impose any obligation to help on more productive cultures (such as ours).
The Palestinians in the camps were/are used as political pawns by the surrounding MUSLIM and (mostly) ARAB nations, and with UN funding based on number of children they were actively encouraged to breed like rabbits with the expectation of a "right of return," whereupon they could vote the Jews into the sea. It wasn't the West that made the camps hell-holes – it was the surround muslim and Arab culture that treated them as an "other" tribe to be used.
They do not generally respect western laws, rights, or work ethic. They do, however, respect strength. They see out acceptance of diversity as an unmitigated weakness that they can exploit.
Solutions: Do not allow ANY government subsidy of an immigrant. Ever. for things like SS if they have been here a while, they can never get more back than they paid in. If they seek opportunity, let them earn it. Deport any and all illegal alien criminals on a slow boat to the farthest port in their home nation; repeat offenders can be dropped off halfway back. Do not grant citizenship to anyone that ever entered the nation illegally or under false pretense, nor to their anchor-babies. Declare islam to not be a religion, but a prohibited totalitarian political party with religious trappings.
Exterminate ISIS? I'm down with that. But the only way that will happen is if we make it clear to their financial backers (Saudi, et al) that it will be downright dangerous for THEM to continue the support. Think Barbary pirates writ large. Killing the cannon fodder is a fine start, but misses the deeper root causes of an utterly dysfunctional "civilization." Wait until the Arab oil money runs out – then they will have generations of people used to living the high life, but with no skills, no money, no jobs, no industry, no resources, no farming, no water, no schools, and a hugely inflated sense of self-worth. THAT'S when the real storm hits.
Another anon
Us direct genocide is 99.99% a pipe dream. The changes in the us to allow it to happen would be massive. It would be a true mobilization of the us that has not happened since ww2. And when the us fights with a Jacksonian attitude, it's ugly. See Meade of American interest essay to explain Jacksonian.
It's an ideological struggle of the enlightenment vs a medieval attitude.
We defeated communism, another nasty ideology without genocide. And without direct war.
Unfortunately the us is Mia at best (islamaphobia) in the ideology war.
The Dutch are doing some interesting things to push their culture with Moslem immigrants.
Peter….
I recall you writing with a considerable degree of insight about the mentality of violent criminals. You wrote that every single one of the excused themselves in so e fashion, no matter how horrible their crime and how undeserving the victim.
It would be far more accurate – and I suggest, more honest – to accept that terrorists are evil people, just as were those violent criminals. As a pastor, you know only too well the human inclination toward evil and the desperate need that we have of both moral codes and the restraining work of the Holy Spirit.
I think that you should also be very careful lest you do a great many soldiers an injustice by attempting to excuse those evil men. Many of the men in my family have been soldiers. So are a number of my friends, including currently serving front-line troops. None of them are perfect, but it is grossly defamatory to lump them all in together as rapists, looters and murderers. Beware lest you commit exactly the same sin that you warn against, except against our own rather than Muslims.
I feel deeply sorry for those Muslims who see no way out of a violent, contradictory religion. However I also believe in personal responsibility and that includes the responsibility to examine what we permit ourselves to believe. As long as Muslims shut their eyes to the behaviour and pronouncements of the "prophet" that they follow, they are endorsing those who follow the example of Mohammed.
That is your problem.
Islamic terrorists ARE following the example of Mohammed. The papal legate that you quoted, was NOT following the example and teachings of Christ.
It is also a false dichotomy to argue that we can simply divide Muslims into two discrete groups – fundamentalists and moderates……. No more than we could divide Germany of the late 1930s into Nazis and those who hated Nazis. That would be to ignore the more than 30% of Germans who voted for the Nazis, and those who were prepared to accept the Nazis for their achievements even while privately deploring some of their methods.
Take a country like mine – Australia – with a significant Muslim minority. It is easy to claim that they must be all "moderate" on the grounds that very few of them have engaged in acts of overt terrorism. However surveys indicate that so etching like half of them want Sharia law. That means that these "moderates" are prepared to see women stoned for being raped or whipped for the "crimes" of driving a car. Going berserk with an AK is not the only way to engage in violence and oppression.
These same "moderates" invited, funded and supported a Grand Mufti who stated very clearly that women who did not dress in the approved fashion deserved to be raped. Getting the community leaders to condemn acts of terrorism is like squeezing blood out of a stone. The majority of the effort toward reconciliation and understanding has come from the non-Muslim government.
Tell me again how these people are the victims of terrorism and no possible threat to us?
@PeterW at 2:27 AM: I understand your concern at not wanting to tar all soldiers with the same brush of criminal conduct. I fully agree, with this caveat: I think it's possible for almost any soldier to be 'driven over the edge' by the brutality of war. I've seen that in person, where the most civilized of men became 'worn down' by what they saw and experienced, until after a year or two they were themselves doing things that had shocked, disgusted and nauseated them at the start of their combat exposure.
I think St. Thomas Aquinas had it right when he said (and I paraphrase from memory) that we cannot begin to understand grace until we understand that we, personally, are capable of the worst sins that it's possible to imagine, no matter who we are or how 'holy' we consider ourselves to be. In my own life, I've not (yet) been driven to those extremes: yet, there have been enough times that I know I could be driven there by the right (or wrong) combination of events, circumstances and pressures. I don't say that lightly.
I don't wish to condemn all soldiers. I've been one, and I have many colleagues and friends who have been and are military men of the highest quality. Yet, even for myself, even for them, I have to acknowledge that there are depths we dare not plumb. My Lai did not happen because evil men planned and plotted it. It happened because otherwise good men were driven over the edge. In history, there have been many My Lais . . .
So which Muslim country is that beacon of hope love tolerance and economic prosperity for the rest of the world to emulate? You seem to pine over it. There isn't one. Not one. Nothing comes from Islamic cultures. Medicines, computers, cars, inventions for mankind, nada. Wait, I'm wrong, they do constantly innovate means of blowing up and shooting innocents who don't follow their Allan. That speaks volumes of just what kind of evil dwells within Islam. Those who choose to be affiliated with such intolerance and evil should be shunned. While governments still talk as you do, thinking that those who follow Islam are human, it prevents us from doing what needs to be done. The west needs to completely separate itself from all things Islam if there is to be peace. Of course there is another option…live life knowing that muslimswill blow people up in your country as a matter of due course. You must also know that they may blow you and your family away today too. To hell with that. That's not a way for HUMANS to live. I prefer Mayberry USA and that means no muslims in our midst.
Simple, though not easy, 4 step process to peace with Islam.
Step 1. Refuse all immigration by Muslims, from whatever point of origin.
Step 2. Ban the practice and proselytization of Islam as incompatible with and in direct opposition to national values and survival.
Step 3. Identify and expel all Muslims. The opinion of the point of reception does not matter. Drop them off at sea 7 miles from the coast of a Muslim country, if necessary. (I'll be gracious, and say give them a life raft and point out the right direction to go.)
Step 4. Implement and ruthlessly enforce a containment strategy. No Muslim may depart their nations or territories by land, sea, or air for any reason, except carefully controlled ambassadors (without family members).
This is how peace may be achieved between us. Good fences make for good neighbors.
I will disagree with you, Peter, and say that it is actually possible to exterminate them all. I do agree, however, that it would be extraordinarily difficult and wasteful. Separating us is, to my mind, a much better strategy.
We could always hire the Chinese to take care of the necessary heavy lifting; of course eventually we would have the problem of what to do with the Chinese…
Been back and forth and lived in the ME since '83. Every where except Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan. Have muz friends all over the area. But the short reality there (and here) is that the only thing respected there is the Strong Man.gov. Democracy, Arab Spring(HAHAHAHAHAHAHA), is not and option. Family, tribal, and intra-tribal is THE way of life for these people. Even Abdullah II, King in Jordan, goes out into the desert to hang with his Bedouin buds regularly.
I wonder, never having met Peter Grant, if this article is his post-traumatic stress syndrome coming to the fore? As in, "I've done my share of war-fighting, include me out."
Even though there is no conceivable scenario where he would be called up.
Submitted respectfully. Not meant as a comment questioning Peter's character or bravery.
Interesting suggestions, McChuck. Sounds a lot like how Josef Stalin treated Islam (and all other religion, for that matter). It also sounds a lot like the Knights of the White Camelia of the KKK when they say mixing of the races (and religions) is the cause of all our problems. Great company you're hanging out with there. I'm sure you feel proud.
Your proposals certainly couldn't be done in the United States, not unless we tore up the Constitution and its guarantees of freedom of religion. But hey, the Constitution is just a piece of paper, right? Same deal with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, hey, it's just a fundamental founding document of the European Union, it's not like it's important or anything. Let's tear it all up and impose Christianity upon people at gunpoint, because that's the way to deal with other countries imposing Islam at gunpoint. We won't be safe until we're just as evil as they are.
Alrighty, then!
[/snark]
Bad Tux,
when it comes to answering a certain kind of comments, you and your sarcasm are simply priceless. Congratulations. If english were my first language, I would enter a friendly contest against you. 🙂
To highlight an aspect that was not mentioned in this discussion: victimhood.
It needs a lot of it, real or imagined, to become as jaundiced and acrimonious as these commenters are.
You find a lot of this frame of mind in extremists all over the world. "THEY take everything from us". "We are lied to by the government and the press". "Nobody listens to us". From PEGIDA ("Patriots against the islamisation of the Occident" – that's what they call themselves here – serious!") to extreme SJW's or Eco-Terrorists ("The earth is dying", "More and more people are starving", "THEY want us to buy their GMO…"), and – of course, islamic fundamentalists ("THEY kill our islamic women and kids", "THEY want us as slaves") it's always the same. They feel they are victims. Of course there are lots of things to improve, but nobody ever seems to notice the worldwide positive developments.
Hansjörg
BadTux – the Constitution isn't a suicide pact, and it's been widely ignored by the US government when it isn't convenient since the 1930s. Our founders said, in so many words, that it was a constitution that was designed for a largely self-regulating and Christian people, and unsuited for others. When we let in large numbers of "others" that are neither Christian nor very good at self-regulating, that's a problem. And rather than sling around ad hominems "you're just like Stalin and hitler, you commie/nazi," how about you make a proposal, offer your own solution, that will both work and be "acceptable" by the majority of the people that want to keep the nation economically functional and relatively free?
Hmmm?
We're all waiting.
Peter,
In your post you say "We're going to treat him with the same suspicion and exaggerated caution that we would a live, possibly armed hand-grenade. He's asked for it, so we're going to give it to him.". I believe that you are wrong in a critical way. We are not saying "He's asked for it." we are saying that there is a good chance that he is a threat and we will treat him as such. This is not a matter of justice "He asked for it." this is a matter of self-defense "He is a likely threat". I just hope that it does not come to "It is conclusively presumed that he is a threat. Shoot him."
@Anonymous at 11:18 AM: No, it's not. I don't expect to have to put on a uniform again, but I have no doubt that there's a better than fair chance of being forced to confront evil again. It's active, looking for targets, and we're all in the line of fire. Whether it be terrorism, or 'normal' crime, or any other form of evil, it's got to be confronted and defeated. If necessary, count me in.
I'm not pushing for it but we if we were willing to accept the consequences we do have the technology to pretty much eliminate Islamic terrorism.
We'd have to do some very horrible things our consciences would not allow and as the old saw goes, we'd make a wasteland and call it peace but its a moral problem, not a technical one.
Peter,
I once read a novel "Wild Fire" by Nelson DeMille. The story is about some american conspirators planning to detonate nuclear warheads in two american cities and put the blame on muslims. Their objective was to trigger an existing kind of "SIOP"-plan (said Code Wild Fire), to bring thermonuclear death to all muslim cities to end all muslim terrorism for good. Of course the protagonist kills them all and stops the ticking time-bomb.
I enjoyed this book, but I was unable to imagine that successful, intelligent, wealthy men from a rich and powerful nation could be so crazy to devise a plan of absolute evil.
Hm.
Having read the comments to your outstanding blog, I am now able to imagine anything…
May you, the christian, please tell me, the atheist, one thing:
Are these men, most of them living in the US and being christians, as I may assume, aware that they sound like the antichrist himself? Did they ever visit a church? Did they ever get the slightest idea what made Jesus' teachings so different from Judaism and lslam?
Hansjörg
@Hansjörg: You know it, and I know it, and anyone with a couple of brain cells to rub together knows it . . . but apparently some of them don't.
If anyone subscribes to the theory that they can kill every Muslim and thereby solve the problem of how to relate to them or how they relate to the rest of the world, that makes the individual(s) concerned potentially as great a terrorist as any member of ISIS or Al Qaeda; potentially a greater mass murderer than Hitler or Stalin or Mao.
Some criticize me for adopting a Christian moral foundation in my approach to the problem. That's their right, and I have no objection to their proposing an alternate moral foundation – but they won't state clearly what it is. What underlies their approach? What's their world view? If it's not explicitly stated, we can only guess . . . and some of our guesses, based on what they actually say, must inevitably be extremely uncomfortable. Disagreement is one thing. Alternatives are acceptable. Requesting or advocating the killing of those who think differently is not. Genocide is not.
One wonders – if they'd kill as readily as ISIS, would they enslave the women of an entire people like the Yazidis as well? If mass murder is OK with them, what about mass rape and sexual torture? After all, the latter can hardly be worse, in moral terms . . .
"They were – and still are – killing 'kaffirs', unbelievers . . . not human beings."
I am moved to consider just who is teaching whom to consider us 'kaffirs'.
Three things the more homogeneous your society is the more stable and healthy it is.
1st Most societies in the Middle East being clan based can never be homogeneous though even when ethnically and doctrinally identical
2nd Islam has never coexisted with the West. It doesn't mean that they all have to be destroyed but the best thing for both of us is to stay far away from each other. Moderate Muslims are not our problem but they cannot be allowed in the West in any case. No Africans, No Muslims much less problems. If they decide to show up, we deport them. No exceptions
3rd Yes we can destroy Islam if we wish. We lack the will to use our technology to this end or to even get rid of the leaders who bring these people into our lands but if we did have the will some kind of multi disciplinary Manhattan Project to this goal would be the end of pretty much all of them.