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The Torture Debate Shows Our Vulnerability to Radical Evil
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1418 ^ | David P. Goldman

Posted on 05/15/2009 7:26:26 AM PDT by ventanax5

Nearly two hundred thousand Americans, military and civilian personnel, were exposed to Iraqi terrorist organizations that routinely employed suicide bombings in order to kill Americans and their supporters. Some of these organizations were supported by Iran, which employed waves of children as human minesweepers in its war with Iraq. These atrocities were motivated by a religion that permits a peaceful interpretation, but cannot refute the cruelest and most violent interpretation. America simply is in no position to expose large numbers of its military and civilian personnel to this sort of horror. Instead we should attempt to quarantine such cultures and expose our own people to them as little as possible. In other words, we should intervene in the Islamic world where urgent American security interests are at stake, but to the minimum extent possible, and with no commitment to determine the civil outcome. We must leave the Muslim world to its own destiny rather than to attempt to engineer a happy ending. And unless Western leaders, religious as well as civic, help their followers to understand the Islamic manifestation of radical evil, the West will continue to be vulnerable

(Excerpt) Read more at firstthings.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Israel; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: americans; bush; clinton; islam; israel; miltary; muslim; obama; security; separationist; spengler; torture; wot

1 posted on 05/15/2009 7:26:26 AM PDT by ventanax5
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To: ventanax5

This is a must read


2 posted on 05/15/2009 7:43:51 AM PDT by Former MSM Viewer ("We will hunt the terrorists in every dark corner of the earth. We will be relentless." W 2001)
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To: ventanax5

Indeed, we tried to introduce democracy with mixed results. Quarantine may be the only realistic option.


3 posted on 05/15/2009 11:50:18 AM PDT by neverdem (Xin loi minh oi)
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To: neverdem
Indeed, we tried to introduce democracy with mixed results. Quarantine may be the only realistic option.

Democracy can work anywhere. In the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, we just tried to push it before the enemy was totally beaten.

As a society, we have become weak. We can watch 3000 fellow citizens die in flames, planes and jumping to their deaths and still not have the stomach to completely destroy the enemy who propigated those actions.

4 posted on 05/15/2009 12:38:16 PM PDT by Erik Latranyi (Too many conservatives urge retreat when the war of politics doesn't go their way.)
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To: Erik Latranyi
Democracy can work anywhere.

Aren't you quite the optimist.

There are preconditions to democracy, and one of the is not having a majority of the population believing in the Caliphate as the correct way to govern.

5 posted on 05/15/2009 6:54:09 PM PDT by slowhandluke (It's hard work to be cynical enough in this age)
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To: Erik Latranyi
Americans just aren't build to remember evil. Japan started releasing it's major war criminals in the early 1950’s, saying they were just following orders.

Not a peep from the US veterans organizations or politicians .....

6 posted on 05/15/2009 11:03:51 PM PDT by investigateworld ( Abortion stops a beating heart.)
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To: ventanax5
Why is lord McCain not weighing in on this, after all it was he that made an @ss of himself throwing his insane fit demanding ‘anti-torture’ legislation... Somebody wants to replace him in AZ start replaying his fit throwing sound bits.

How memories fade as to what gave these liberals their ‘new foundation’ upon which to transform this nation.

7 posted on 05/15/2009 11:10:24 PM PDT by Just mythoughts (Bama and Company are reenacting the Pharaoh as told by Moses in Genesis!!!!!)
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To: ventanax5; neverdem; nuconvert; FARS; SandRat
...we should attempt to quarantine such cultures and expose our own people to them as little as possible. In other words, we should intervene in the Islamic world where urgent American security interests are at stake, but to the minimum extent possible...

Islamic cultures might be too toxic to bother with ...

Ping for thought...

8 posted on 05/16/2009 5:17:17 AM PDT by GOPJ
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To: slowhandluke
There are preconditions to democracy, and one of the is not having a majority of the population believing in the Caliphate as the correct way to govern.

Go study what we did in Japan after WWII. We were fighting people willing to kill themselves for their emperor.....who was believed to be a god and we were still able to create a thriving democracy and capitalistic society.

9 posted on 05/16/2009 5:50:11 AM PDT by Erik Latranyi (Too many conservatives urge retreat when the war of politics doesn't go their way.)
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To: Erik Latranyi
Japan was a single island. We were able to defeat them all. I don't think we are about to do the same for all 57 Islamic countries.

And I don't think the Japanese were as rooted in that 'God Emperor' thing as you do. According to Paul Johnson's history of the 20th Centure, "Modern Times", Japan was a pretty screwed up country with lots of warring factions. Towards the end of the war, as it was clear they were going to lose, some of those factions were willing to kill the Emperor they worshipped, in order to continue the war.

Shintoism in the 1930s was a fairly recent revival of older forms, much like the German Nazis bought into the Wagnerian romantic view of Teutonic history. Likewise, Bushido was an exaggerated bit of romance about the Samurai. Japan was a civlized country, gone temporarily nuts. They had already started assimilating many western ideas before WWII. They'd just not got the job fully done before things blew up. The Japanese might revere tradition, but they don't have a rule about never learning anything new.

The Islamic world has a 1300 year, unbroken history of belief in rule by, for and of the Muslims, and via a single strong person in the Caliph. There's no history of the Islamic world assimilating much from the west except for military arms, and methods of repression and various luxury items. They have freely borrowed from such Western authors as Marx and Hitler for ideas about how to be more effective at staying in power, but that is just more of the same thing they'd have done anyway.

There's just one way for this to work out your way. You are going to have to go the Ann Coulter route on 1 billion people. Conversion to an alternate belief system would be required, as anybody who follows the Koran knows democracy to be simply un-Islamic. The logic of the Koran is simply incompatible with democracy as the West understands it.

Now if it was the full-out Coulter approach you were considering, I apologize for not understanding.

10 posted on 05/16/2009 10:08:13 PM PDT by slowhandluke (It's hard work to be cynical enough in this age)
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To: ventanax5
We must leave the Muslim world to its own destiny

How about we do to the 'muslim' world what Rome did to Carthage.

Then we won't have to worry about it at all.

11 posted on 05/16/2009 10:10:07 PM PDT by Lurker (The avalanche has begun. The pebbles no longer have a vote.)
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To: slowhandluke
There's just one way for this to work out your way. You are going to have to go the Ann Coulter route on 1 billion people.

If there is one thing we have learned over the past 8 years is that there is no "Muslim Street" that will rise up against a western aggressor.

We could have pummeled Iraq into dust and no other Muslim nation would have cared....except Iran who is asking for the same treatment.

Most of the Arab world has no stomach for a fight with the United States.

The Coulter option....which is vintage Ann (ie: over the top) does not have to be employed.

12 posted on 05/17/2009 5:00:22 AM PDT by Erik Latranyi (Too many conservatives urge retreat when the war of politics doesn't go their way.)
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To: Erik Latranyi
If there is one thing we have learned over the past 8 years is that there is no "Muslim Street" that will rise up against a western aggressor.

Not rising up is not the same as embracing Democracy, which was the aim you suggested. Muslims have been ruled by the British and the French at various times and places, but that did not make them embrace parliamentary rule.

If it's only 'not rising up' or submission you are looking for, I think that's a more plausible goal than democracy. Islam is good at teaching submission to Allah's will. You just have to convince them that right now it's Allah's will that they submit to rule by the Western powers. Gunboats used to do the trick. But when Al Queda gets the Pakistani nukes, it's going to be much harder.

13 posted on 05/17/2009 7:57:36 AM PDT by slowhandluke (It's hard work to be cynical enough in this age)
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To: ventanax5

There were so many points in this piece that I agreed with, but the conclusion is pretty much leave it alone.
“We must leave the Muslim world to its own destiny rather than to attempt to engineer a happy ending.”

The problem is we can not. They slowly but methodically enter host countries and slowly demand more and more rights under the guise of religious demands. As the host gives in the demands become a sanction on everyone not just the Muslims.

It is in their religion to take over and occupy then change every host country until it is subject to sharia law.
When does it end? when you have to pay a tax to be a non Muslim or be beheaded for not paying the tax?


14 posted on 05/17/2009 6:31:19 PM PDT by Munz ("We're all here for you OK? It's a circle of love" Rham Emanuel)
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To: Munz
“We must leave the Muslim world to its own destiny rather than to attempt to engineer a happy ending.”

The problem is we can not.

Western and Islamic culture are incompatible. So long as they remained isolated in their part of the world, we could get along. After all, Westerners tend to practice "When in Rome, do as the Romans do".

But, when Muslims insist on not only encroaching on our turf and have no respect for our culture -- and aggressively seek to impose their religion, their laws and their ways on Westerners, we have a problem that won't be easily solved.

To my mind, the conflict between Americans and the Indians is a direct parallel. The two cultures were simply incompatible -- one had to prevail over the other to achieve peace.

At some point, Islam -- the irresistable force -- meets the immovable object. And the issue will be resolved...

15 posted on 05/17/2009 7:00:08 PM PDT by okie01 (THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Ignorance on Parade)
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