Posted on 01/29/2008 9:06:24 PM PST by Cannoneer No. 4
-snip-
By implication the struggle between Hesher Islam and Coughlin is symptomatic of a far larger and unresolved debate, which might be summarized as being over whether or not "Islam is a religion of peace", an assumption which has undergirded the War On Terror From September 11 onwards.
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One of the implicit strategies of the War on Terror has been to fight Islamic terrorism in conjunction with the populations of Muslim countries. In Iraq, for example, the alliances between Coalition Forces and local groups have formed the basis for attacking and eventually destroying al-Qaeda.
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This strategy has many benefits, not in the least because it allows the West to form alliances with groups and populations who might otherwise set their faces against America if it openly declared itself against Islam. It would be hard to imagine how to proceed in either Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan if America were to openly declare that Islam was in fact an ideology as noxious as Nazism. But citing the advantages of a policy assumption doesn't answer the question of whether the assumption is true; it doesn't settle the question of whether Wilders -- or Coughlin -- are correct. I am agnostic on the point. Nor do I expect any answers soon.
There seems to be a bipartisan political consensus not to examine the subject of political Islam publicly. It is the most verboten of foreign policy subjects. But like other "open secrets", its exclusion from formal discussion doesn't banish it from public consciousness. It merely pushes it underground, like Barack Obama's middle name.
The key problem with subjecting the question of political Islam to debate is that every other conclusion except that of regarding it as a "religion of peace" implies consequences no one dares face. Concluding that Islam is a 'religion of war' would precipitate a revolution in diplomacy, energy policy and military strategy. It's a bottle of nitro nobody wants to shake; it's a can of worms nobody wants to open: not a Republican administration and most especially not a Democratic one.
Explosive questions such as this are as likely to be resolved by events as by debate. To a very great extent the West is genuinely hoping that Islam is a "religion of peace"; and I suspect many Muslims are too. Unfolding events will resolve the issue -- and perceptions -- one way or the other. Ten years from today we'll have a better understanding of the truth.
Your position is still bull poopoo, and your thin skin about a perfect word choice simply shows that you know it.
Bull poo poo?
islam is fascist. Ergo followers of islam are by definition fascists. Your statement is akin to saying "not all Nazis are fascists." It's demonstrably false. They believe to the core of their beings in a fascist ideology.
Bull poo poo?
Enquiring minds want to know.
L
Well, yes. Your problem is that you've made the mistake of equating "islamofascism" with "Muslim people." And as a result, you end up coming to silly conclusions. I have no time for such idiocy.
I'd point out, too, that in clumping together all Muslims as "enemies" -- which you have done, you're espousing a belief system that was rather successfully promulgated by a very famous fascist.
Perhaps you need to start thinking rationally about the noxious implications of your stated opinions.
The Truth Will Not Always Set you Free
We want Muslim proxies to replace our trigger pullers. We want Muslim informants to rat out their murderous brothers. We don’t want to be too kinetic, because that loses us valuable tools allies, but if we aren’t kinetic enough nobody over there respects us and nobody in the rear can pump up support for a half-vast, politically correct, over-lawyered war. The Regular .gov strategic communicators don’t want to say that, and I don’t blame them. The “truth” has to be massaged, made palatable, less painful.
The painful truth is that neither the Ummah nor a significant segment of the population of America is worth the life of a single Mississippi paratrooper.
The painful truth is that there is no legal way to cull the American oxygen thieves, so our defenders defend the unworthy along with the rest of us, and there is no WMD that can rid us of 1.2 billion enemies, enemy sympathizers, enemy apologists, and enemy enablers without fouling our own nest, so we can’t kill near as many as need killing. The best we can do is kill the worst and reconcile the rest.
The painful truth is that Muslim activists in America want to provoke attacks on Muslims in America. They want video of burning mosques on al Jazeera. They want enraged American vigilantes to violate their First Amendment rights. They want the benefits of victimhood. They want to show the world that Americans aren’t the people we’re supposed to be.
The painful truth is that our leaders continue to shovel the Religion of Peace bullshit because neither they nor the American people have the balls to round them up and deport them or intern them like was done to the Nisei.
Here is another painful truth: Jacksonian solutions really do have more downsides when applied to 1.2 billion people than upsides. And I'm a Jacksonian who would dearly love to have bin Laden's head on a pike at Ground Zero and the entire world quaking in fear over what we might do next.
Some simple math for you:
islam = fascism.
islamists = fascists.
Perhaps you need to start thinking rationally about the noxious implications of your stated opinions.
I have. You're the one who's chosen to delude himself with this pap about islam being 'peaceful'. It isn't. The implications of my opinions are no more noxious than Gen. Curtis LeMay's or President Truman's were in WWII.
Neither of them worried about killing 'peaceful' Germans or Japanese at Dresden or Hiroshima. Neither should we.
Have you read the koran?
If you haven't, then you're speaking from a position of profound ignorance on the subject.
As Ibn Waqqid put it: "There may be moderate muslims, but there is no moderate islam."
L
I was just perusing your site and caught the bit about the Hesher-Coughlin controversy.
I have been in a small city in Anbar province for four months now and it seems to me that the whole "is it a religion of peace or not" debate is largely misplaced. This is coming from a guy who once wrote, on his own blog, a post entitled "The Real Strategic Question" which I put as "Is Islam compatible with democracy?"
The Iraqis in Anbar have completely rejected Al Qaeda. A while back I told the police chief in my town that I thought the reason the terrorists are weak is because their ideas have been rejected. He said,
"In 2002 and 2003, we thought Al Qaeda was just another Muslim group. Now, you can go far out into the desert and talk to even a shepherd, and he will tell you that he hates Al Qaeda. One hundred years from now, you will be able to go into the desert and talk to a shepherd and he will still tell you that he hates Al Qaeda."
So, having rejected extremism, what is left? They are still Muslim in my town, but I wouldn't call them devout -- they go to the mosque and pray, and mention God in everyday conversations -- as do I to them -- and granted, I certainly don't know or interact with all of them, but I don't think that "moderate Islam" fully captures who they are. In fact, religion is almost irrelevant in the conversations I have with local leaders.
The real text to turn to in understanding what comes next is not the Koran but the Leviathan. The Iraqis have lived in a state of nature for the past 5 years, and in a state of nature there is no law, no order, no justice or injustice, only survival, period. And so, their ability to care about each other is stunted a bit. Not only that, but the history of Saddam's regime is that of playing people off against each other and destroying the trust between them. These are the crucial issues today in my town in Iraq -- social trust, how to incubate it, and especially how it relates to good governance. Nepotism and corruption are part and parcel of life here, as I imagine they are in many parts of the developing world, Muslim or not. Advancing democracy in Iraq is not a question of Islam, it's a question of helping the Iraqis move past the concept of "me against my brother, me and my brother against my cousin, all three of us against everyone else." Perhaps it seems a gargantuan task, but so did defeating Al Qaeda in Anbar about a year ago.
That's how I see it from my neck of the woods. I recommend David Kilcullen's article "Countering Global Insurgency" and his advocated strategy of disaggregation -- which is really the opposite of trying to lump everything together as a "war on terror" or a "clash of civilizations". Perhaps other places are different. This is the other problem with trying to develop a unifying theme that sums everything up: each locality is dramatically different. I don't know if working with the tribes in Pakistan is going to work as well as in Anbar. In Anbar, many of the successful sheiks are semi-westernized, having studied in Europe at one point or another (like the one in my town) and Al Qaeda was essentially a foreign invention that wrapped itself into local grievances. In Pakistan, Al Qaeda has been there, really developing, for a long time. There is no one cookie-cutter solution.
I invite you to Google Kilcullen's "Countering Global Insurgency" and Raymond Millen's "The Hobbesian Notion of Self-Preservation Concerning Human Behavior During An Insurgency," and Art Chrenkoff's "Post-Totalitarian Stress Disorder". These are by far the best and most relevant works I have read for what I do on a day to day basis.
Well, feel free to use this, if you'd like, Richard. You can use my name too for this one. By the way, here's the city website, which still needs a lot of work: www.barwanah.com
Semper Fi,
-Josh Manchester
Let us grant your point for the sake of argument. Which raises the fundamental question: Are all Muslims therefore "the enemy?"
If not all Muslims are "the enemy," then you really have no position at all.
And if all Muslims are "the enemy", what do you propose be done about all of those "enemies?"
2. Mr. Manchester points out that the key to this mess lies in dealing with people as people, not as cardboard cutouts labeled "Islamic fascist."
We don't need to kill all of them any more than we needed to kill every Nazi. We de-Nazified Germany and we can de-islamize the 'muslim' world.
So I propose a modified version of The Coulter Option. First we destroy Mecca utterly. Make it so no stone stands upon another. Then we trod the ruins under our infidel boots. That will remove the psychological underpinnings of their ideology. After all the koran says that Mecca can't be destroyed. Put the lie to that and their house of cards falls.
Then we destroy every single islamofascist government on the planet through a sustained campaign. Start with Pakistan, Syria, then Iran, then Saudi Arabia. Flatten the 'pali' territories on general principle and drive those wretched scum back into the countries they belong in.
Then we destroy their militaries and wipe out their leaders to a man.
Every single 'imam' who's ever preached violence in their mosques anywhere in the world gets a war crimes trial followed by a speedy hanging.
Wahabbi mosques are razed to the ground wherever they're located and the ground sown with salt.
That'll do for a start. In 20 years or so we'll have a pretty good knock on the problem.
L
Uh huh. My previous assessment stands: you’re talking like a fascist.
Were the Nuremburg trials fascist?
How about the Japanese War Crimes trials?
I'm willing to bet you couldn't define 'fascism' right now on your own if your life depended on it.
L
You're talking like a fascist.
I'm done with you.
When did I mention race? When did I elevate it over the individual? When did I advocate a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictator? When did I advocate social regimentation?
As I suspected, you're tossing the term 'fascist' around like the left uses the term 'racist'. It's a pathetic attempt to silence opposition you can't beat with logic or facts. Why not just call me a homophobe and complete your little trilogy?
I'm done with you.
I hope the women in your life don't mind burkhas because it's for damned sure you're more than willing to accept their dhimmitude.
L
If you actually want the course of action you describe followed, you are going to have to analyze your target audience and persuade them to your way of thinking.
As it stands now what you describe is a revenge fantasy. Satisfying emotionally, but it doesn't resonate with the people you need on your side if you really mean it .
Sure I am. He asked me how I proposed to handle the problem. My solution is straightforward, relatively simple, and would be damned effective. It's not my fault that the majority of my fellow citizens have become slack jawed p******.
, unless the death toll rises above a million,
It will. You know it and I know it.
If you actually want the course of action you describe followed, you are going to have to analyze your target audience and persuade them to your way of thinking.
Just doing what I can with what I got.
As it stands now what you describe is a revenge fantasy.
The revenge part is merely a satisfying little side bonus to my plan. It would be damned effective if implemented. Once the 'muslim' world saw that whackjobs like Assad, Osama and Ahmadinijad bring them nothing but death and ruin the rest of them will fall into line PDQ.
it doesn't resonate with the people you need on your side if you really mean it .
Wasn't trying to 'resonate' with anyone. The man asked me a question and I answered it. Persuasion is for forums other than this one.
And once the first nuke, chemical, or bio-weapon goes off on American soil it'll be nearly impossible to prevent ANY Administration from reducing mecca to rubble.
L
15. First "all the people of the land" engaged in the burying for seven months; then special men were employed, at the end of the seven months, to search for any still left unburied. The passers-by helped them by setting up a mark near any such bones, in order to keep others from being defiled by casually touching them, and that the buriers might come and remove them. Denoting the minute care to put away every relic of heathen pollution from the Holy Land.
Interesting.
And what of post #36?
Makes sense - especially if you look at the way God worked with the children of Israel throughout the OT. He is the same today.
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