Russian hostage situation

[Rollory]

Command Post has been covering this since just before 6 AM this morning:

http://www.command-post.org/gwot/index.html

Turns out there were over 1000 people held hostage, and over 100 dead after the storming.

How do we go about finding everyone in the world who thinks like this or sympathizes with them, and shooting every single one in the head?

Bonus question: how long before we have a situation like that in the US?

[John Reynolds]

Command Post has been covering this since just before 6 AM this morning:

http://www.command-post.org/gwot/index.html

Turns out there were over 1000 people held hostage, and over 100 dead after the storming.

How do we go about finding everyone in the world who thinks like this or sympathizes with them, and shooting every single one in the head?

Bonus question: how long before we have a situation like that in the US?

I don't know, but I could've sworn the president reassured me last night that America is now safer than it was before.

[Midnight Son]

Well, John, it appears no Americans were hurt.

All joking aside, do terrorists really believe that they can achieve their goals by killing children? I don't think the russians will just cave in.

[Jason McCullough]

Command Post has been covering this since just before 6 AM this morning:

http://www.command-post.org/gwot/index.html

Turns out there were over 1000 people held hostage, and over 100 dead after the storming.

How do we go about finding everyone in the world who thinks like this or sympathizes with them, and shooting every single one in the head?

Bonus question: how long before we have a situation like that in the US?

Bonus question: who do you think killed them? Wouldn't surprise me if half or more were due to the raid, especially considering what happened the last time they tried to break a hostage crisis.

[Duality]

Putin has stated, time and again, that he will not back down to terrorism.

[chet]

You would think the Russians would get better at this.

MS, did you ever read the accounts of the brutality during the Chechen war (the last major combat, is it really even over?)? Killing children would have been considered honorable compared to some of what went on there by both sides.

Chet

[Jason McCullough]

Not following how "won't back down from terrorism" is equivalent to "get lots of your civilians killed through ham-handed tactics."

[Rollory]

http://www.command-post.org/gwot/index.html


Bonus question: who do you think killed them? Wouldn't surprise me if half or more were due to the raid, especially considering what happened the last time they tried to break a hostage crisis.

If you actually read any of the stuff on CP (I forgot, inconvenient factual evidence is irrelevant) you'd have seen that it was in fact the terrorists that shot them near the beginning of the seige.

[John Many Jars]

There was that one Chechen attack in the late 90s when the attackers successfully took their hostages back to safe territory in Chechnya in a convoy of trucks (I'd link, but it would take me forever to find it, as the details have gone fuzzy). I'm sure these attempts hope to reduplicate it --- though of course it's possible that the Chechens have been religiously radicalized to the point where they now expect martyrdom.

But, since that attack, the Russians have wisely shown zero tolerance for Chechen hostage-taking (though the policy backfired on them horrifically in that Moscow theater, when they fired in gas). Hopefully the Chechens will wise up enough to switch tactics.

[Midnight Son]

Chet, nah, I haven't looked into it. I wasn't assuming the russians are blameless. And the ham-handedness is certainly there.

[TheWombat]

I think the Chechyns though accomplish their goals whether the Russians give in to their demands or not. In fact, I'd suggest they fully expected the Russians to storm the school. They seem to want bloodshed, to show the Russian security forces as ham-handed, to cause as much pain and suffering as possible and to discredit Putin's government. The purpose, presumably, would be to make the Russian people so weary of the conflict that they force the government to throw up its hands and give the Chechyns what they want.

Which is...I really don't know. Independence? An economically unviable land locked bandit kingdom of Muslim extremists? If they did get that, how long before they start up the same tactics to demand a union with all the other Muslim former republics? The Russians are in an untenable situation. They can't give in, otherwise every ethnic and religious group in Russia would be demanding its own statelet (at least, that's a real fear of Moscow). They can't win militarily, because short of killing every single Muslim in the former USSR they won't be able to stop groups of sympathizers from joining the fighting.

[Jason McCullough]

http://www.command-post.org/gwot/index.html


Bonus question: who do you think killed them? Wouldn't surprise me if half or more were due to the raid, especially considering what happened the last time they tried to break a hostage crisis.

If you actually read any of the stuff on CP (I forgot, inconvenient factual evidence is irrelevant) you'd have seen that it was in fact the terrorists that shot them near the beginning of the seige.

Ok then, excuse me. The terrorists are being motherfuckers, but it's hard for me to muster up much outrage after the Russian war crimes in Checneya.

[quatoria]

Are you serious, Jason? I can always muster up outrage for children being killed - and it's a sad day if someone starts to think "Enh, those little kids probably had it coming, after what their people did to the people of the Terrorists." Understanding the motivation behind a terrorist attack should never lead to rationalizing away the awfulness of the crime of that attack.

[Tim Partlett]

Which is...I really don't know. Independence? An economically unviable land locked bandit kingdom of Muslim extremists? If they did get that, how long before they start up the same tactics to demand a union with all the other Muslim former republics? The Russians are in an untenable situation. They can't give in, otherwise every ethnic and religious group in Russia would be demanding its own statelet (at least, that's a real fear of Moscow). They can't win militarily, because short of killing every single Muslim in the former USSR they won't be able to stop groups of sympathizers from joining the fighting.

The Chechens weren't bandits or muslim extremists until they had their freedom stolen from them, and their country turned into a burned out hellhole by Yeltsin, and subsequently Putin. The Chechens declared independence at the same time as all the other former Soviet republics, like Estonia, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine. The Chechens don't, and have never, considered themselves to be Russian. They have been traditionally mistreated and mistrusted by the Russian government. Stalin ethnically cleansed the region of Chechens in 1944, dispersing millions to live in poverty all over central asia, before they were allowed to return years later.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38380000/jpg/_38380029_chech_grozny_ruins3_ap.jpg
Grozny - the Chechen capital destroyed.

Chechnya first declared its independence in 1991, and adopted a secular constitution, with an elected parliament and president. But Yeltsin decided in 1994 that Chechnya was unique among the former Soviet states, in that it wasn't going to become independent. He invaded, and the outcry in the West was pitifully quiet as an estimated 100,000 Chechens, a tenth of the population, were killed in the 20 months of fighting that followed. The country was also devasted, razed to the ground, and left to rot. Unsurprisingly the government of Chechnya, poverty stricken and broken, became increasingly helpless against the warlords and extremists that now roved the country unchecked.

Putin invaded the country again in 1999, and caused 200,000 people to flee their homes, and they are still refugees living in appalling conditions in neighbouring regions, like Dagestan. The Russians and their soldiers have a terrible record, reported by human rights groups for widespread torture, rape, summary executions, and other war crimes. There have even been mass graves discovered containing mutilated bodies. The Russians have also been guilty of indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, including the rocket attack upon Grozny's busy central market in 1999, killing dozens of civilians. Few people ever heard about that atrocity.

Like Afghanistan after the Russians tried to crush them, the country is now crawling with extremists who thrive on the carnage and the hatred it induces in the people. People with nothing left to live for are easy pickings for the likes of Al Qaeda. It should come as little surprise that the traditional Chechen suicide bomber isn't a young idealistic young man praying for eternal paradise, but women; the wives of Chechen men killed by Russian soldiers who have nothing to look forward to except life in a broken and destroyed country occupied by people who hate them.

Putin, whose questionable democratic elections in Russia itself pale compared to the joke elections held in Chechnya last month, has used America's justified, if somewhat aimless and unnecessarily polarised, war on terror as an excuse to crack down even harder on the rebellious nation. Now, however, rather than the callous indifference shown by the West previously, he is cheered on by "freedom loving" terrorist haters, who know little or nothing of the history of the conflict, because they never cared about it before, and now only care about the damn Chechens getting what's coming to them. Well, they already had it, in spades.

What these terrorists have done in Beslan cannot be condones in any way, but don't go thinking that Russia is in an untenable situation now because the Chechens are nothing but bandits and extremists. The Russians are in an untenable situation now, because a decade ago they decided that freedom was not an option for a people who have suffered at the hands of the Russians for centuries.

[Bub, Andrew]

Ok then, excuse me. The terrorists are being motherfuckers, but it's hard for me to muster up much outrage after the Russian war crimes in Checneya.

Jason, these are schoolchildren!

[Jason McCullough]

Are you serious, Jason? I can always muster up outrage for children being killed - and it's a sad day if someone starts to think "Enh, those little kids probably had it coming, after what their people did to the people of the Terrorists." Understanding the motivation behind a terrorist attack should never lead to rationalizing away the awfulness of the crime of that attack.

Didn't mean that; killing children is awful. But I'm equally pissed at the Russians for butchering *even more* children in Checyna. So my reaction isn't as much "righteous outrage at the Islamic terrorists" as "great, it's another Isreali/Palestine conflict in the making."

[TheWombat]

I never said the Russians were in a bad situation because of the Chechens, necessarily; simply that they are in an untenable situation. The fact that in many respects they brought it upon themselves doesn't really change that.

Certainly the Russian way of dealing with the Chechens in the past decade or so has created this situation, though I wonder really how other nations would have reacted to such a separatist movement (you might recall that the most destructive war in US history was fought because we decided not to let a section of the nation separate). In hindsight the Kremlin would have been much better off to let the Chechens go--unlike the North in the Civil War the Russians did not have the wherewithall or the cultural context to erradicate secession without erradicating the secessionists--but they didn't.

Regardless of the ultimate tally sheet of who's the most vicious and destructive, I still think the Chechen tactics today are precisely what I outlined--force the Russians into increasingly bloody actions until their own people get sick of it. That's the only way the Chechens can "win," if you call it that. And I still maintain that, had they received their independence as they wished (and sure, I'll grant that was probably the right thing to do, give it to them) the resulting state would be inherently unviable. And would probably turn to outside powers for economic and other aid. Which would put a foreign precence on Russia's borders in a sensitive area. Which would make the Kremlin very antsy. Which is one reason why they reacted so brutally to the prospect.

[Rollory]

The Chechens declared independence at the same time as all the other former Soviet republics, like Estonia, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine. ... But Yeltsin decided in 1994 that Chechnya was unique among the former Soviet states, in that it wasn't going to become independent.

This is perhaps right in spirit but quite wrong on the facts. Chechnya was never a Soviet republic, it was part of the Russian republic, and the Russian republic as a whole (as represented by Yeltsin) also declared its independence from the Soviet Union (as represented by Gorbachev at the time). On the one hand that wouldn't seem to make much difference - ethnic groups were going their own way everywhere else - but for the Russians it was a very big deal: to establish the precedent that pieces of Russia could go their own way just like pieces of the USSR had would mean that very shortly Russia would be a rump nation, having lost large amounts of territory to local groups that suddenly thought they could get something out of an independence declaration.

Russia has always been an empire. To suddenly allow it to become something else would turn much of northern Asia into one vast whirlpool of chaos and lawlessness and tinpot dictators.

Chechnya didn't have the same quasi-international status as, say, Ukraine or Kazakhstan. Whether it should have is an entirely different question, but the fact is its standing has always been that of a piece of Russia that hasn't been properly incorporated into the empire.

You can bet the Russians would be glad to get rid of Chechnya if they thought it was safe to do so.

[Midnight Son]

Latest update: Death toll could be significantly higher than 150.

[Jason McCullough]

To clarify a bit before I get accused of advocating child murder:

It's a big mistake to view this through the western "OMFG look what the Islamic terrorists have done" framework. This is the latest round in the ongoing series of escalations between Russia and Chechnya with truly appalling actions on both sides - but Russia started it, refusing to let Chechyna break away, and killing ludicrous numbers of civilians to keep them from doing so.

They had absolutely no moral grounds to do so; maybe you can make a realpolitck case for it, but I'll be damned if I'm going to do so.

Predictably, considering the Islamic/western divide, they're now reaping a bloody whirlwind. It's a goddamn appalling tragedy, but remember that a) Russia is driving this and b) this has nothing to do with the US war on terror.

Checyna is an escalating series of retaliatory war crimes with no moral basis on either side. The righteous-and-just US anti-terrorism campaign it's not, and I'll be damned if I'm going to agree with that son of a bitch dictator Putin that there's any parallels at all.

[Rollory]

Russia started it, refusing to let Chechyna break away, and killing ludicrous numbers of civilians to keep them from doing so.

OK, thought experiment time. Some strict constitutionalist survivalist militia types somewhere in the Northwest decide they don't recognize the US government anymore and declare three counties and a couple towns to be an independent nation. The US government would, of course, come down on them like a ton of bricks. Result: bloodbath and guerrilla war for the next few years, because the gun nuts don't feel like admitting defeat. How is that different?

Another: Mexicans in California, still smarting at losing the Mexican war (and that is entirely factual), manage to get some votes through in various municipalities declaring that southern California secedes from the US. The US Army gets sent in. Result: bloodbath, with lots of dead Mexicans. Probably lasts years, because the Mexicans don't feel like admitting defeat. How is that different?

[Midnight Son]

This is going to be a long one....

[Chris Nahr]

How is that different?

Not at all, from an orthodox libertarian perspective which includes unlimited right to secession. Which is why libertarianism should rule the world!

[Midnight Son]

I'm thinking of seceding my 5 acres of beach front property. All Hail Fredonia!!! :lol:

[TheWombat]

All hyperbole aside, though, the questions are real. To what degree is self-determination a good thing for the world? Over the years we've found out that it often works a lot better on paper than in action. Followed to its extreme, self-determination means that the only survivable state entity is one that is ethnically, culturally, linguistically (at least) homogenous. The question always is, where do you draw the line? And, how do you deal with minorities? Do they have to self-determine out of the self-determination too?

If you want to argue that the very concept of the nation state is outmode and unjust, you can do so, and you can build a "libertarian" for want of a better word case for devolution to small homogenous communities, but in practical terms I really don't think it works very well. On the other side of the fence, though, it's clear that some cases of self-determination are not only justified theoretically but work practically.

Most nations are conglomerations of peoples over time. No nation, that I can think of, is composed soley of the original inhabitants unbroken through time. At what point does an ancient invasion and occupation and assimilation become so distant that it becomes meaningless? At what point does a more recent absorption or engulfment create a legitimate reason to separate from existing state structures? And to what extent do existing governments have the right to protect their structures?

[Tim Partlett]

And I still maintain that, had they received their independence as they wished (and sure, I'll grant that was probably the right thing to do, give it to them) the resulting state would be inherently unviable.

Maybe, maybe not. They do have a lot of oil.

[Tim Partlett]

This is perhaps right in spirit but quite wrong on the facts. Chechnya was never a Soviet republic, it was part of the Russian republic, and the Russian republic as a whole (as represented by Yeltsin) also declared its independence from the Soviet Union (as represented by Gorbachev at the time). On the one hand that wouldn't seem to make much difference - ethnic groups were going their own way everywhere else - but for the Russians it was a very big deal: to establish the precedent that pieces of Russia could go their own way just like pieces of the USSR had would mean that very shortly Russia would be a rump nation, having lost large amounts of territory to local groups that suddenly thought they could get something out of an independence declaration.

Actually Chechnya was considered an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Before they were forcibly annexed by Bolshevic troops in 1923 they were an independent nation. The country is arguably more ethnically, religiously, linguistically, geographically and historically separate from Russia than any of the other republics that also went their own way in 1991. They also arguably have more genuine grievances against the Russian government than any of the other republics.

[TheWombat]

Maybe, maybe not. They do have a lot of oil.

True enough, but oil /= viability as a stable independent entity, sadly enough. They have to get the oil out and to market, through the territory of other states, lacking a convenient coastline.

Actually Chechnya was considered an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Before they were forcibly annexed by Bolshevic troops in 1923 they were an independent nation. The country is arguably more ethnically, religiously, linguistically, geographically and historically separate from Russia than any of the other republics that also went their own way in 1991. They also arguably have more genuine grievances against the Russian government than any of the other republics.

And most likely the best solution would have been to restore that autonomy, along with agreements on foreign policy, foreign presences, etc rather than, as Moscow did instead, resort of indiscriminate use of force. That would have been pragmatic. But it still begs the question of what standards one uses to decide whether a group of people is rightfully entitled to an independent political existence, in the face of substantial opposition of an established governing entity. Is it chronological? How many years since occupation? Is it geographical? How big would the state be? Is it demographic? What percentage of people agree with the sentiment?

But that's neither here nor there at the moment. The problem here, as it is in the Palestinian/Israeli case, is that everyone focuses on the atrocity du jour, and ignores the past, as has been pointed out here. If you focus just on the outrages and horrors of the immediate present, you'll never be able to step back and even start considering a true solution.

[Jason McCullough]

Russia started it, refusing to let Chechyna break away, and killing ludicrous numbers of civilians to keep them from doing so.

OK, thought experiment time. Some strict constitutionalist survivalist militia types somewhere in the Northwest decide they don't recognize the US government anymore and declare three counties and a couple towns to be an independent nation. The US government would, of course, come down on them like a ton of bricks. Result: bloodbath and guerrilla war for the next few years, because the gun nuts don't feel like admitting defeat. How is that different?

Another: Mexicans in California, still smarting at losing the Mexican war (and that is entirely factual), manage to get some votes through in various municipalities declaring that southern California secedes from the US. The US Army gets sent in. Result: bloodbath, with lots of dead Mexicans. Probably lasts years, because the Mexicans don't feel like admitting defeat. How is that different?

In some scenarios leveling entire cities and killing thousands of civilians are acceptable prices to pay. My point was that Russia doing it for....what, exactly? wasn't one of them.

I have no idea of Checyna really "should" be independent or not. But I know the pile of corpses the conflict has created isn't worth an answer either way.

[Jakub]

Well, John, it appears no Americans were hurt.

All joking aside, do terrorists really believe that they can achieve their goals by killing children? I don't think the russians will just cave in.
The Russians would cut through 100 children to get at terrorists themselves. No, this isn't hyperbole. They would.

Whereas terrorists have good reason to doubt that the US is too soft to fight an ugly terrorist war, the Chechnyans are being reaaaaaaaally naive and stupid if they think that Russia won't go to any means short of a nuclear strike to subdue them. Even then, given the right (wrong?) leader, I wouldn't rule out a nuclear solution. One very apt self-descriptive Russian saying is that "we are many". 100, 1 000, 10 000 children - it really wouldn't matter as long as the terrorists understood there is no winning.

I know it's an alien concept, but unless Russian leadership goes to absolute shit, Chechnya will never be independent. They'd sacrifice a million soldiers to keep that piece of dirt as long as they know they have 20 million more ready to die. Tibet will be free before Chechnya goes.

[Jason McCullough]

That's what worries me about this: the Russians make the Isrealis look like choir boys on stubbornness.

[TheWombat]

I know it's an alien concept, but unless Russian leadership goes to absolute shit, Chechnya will never be independent. They'd sacrifice a million soldiers to keep that piece of dirt as long as they know they have 20 million more ready to die. Tibet will be free before Chechnya goes.

In that case (and I'm not disputing this analysis), it could be one of those "irresistable force meets immovable object" connundrums, with ghastly consequences.

[Toddy]

Ok then, excuse me. The terrorists are being motherfuckers, but it's hard for me to muster up much outrage after the Russian war crimes in Checneya.

It's hard for you to muster up outrage? Excuse me? These fucking monsters wired a gym full of kids with explosives. They shot fleeing children in the back. They apparently took kids with them to use as human shields when they fled the school. And you can't summon any outrage? McCullough, of all the idiotic things you post here on a regular basis, this one takes the cake. No matter what the Russians did in Chechnya, that doesn't excuse wantonly slaughtering kids. Many of whom, I should add, weren't even born when the Chechyna turmoil started.

BTW, did you watch the news this morning when this all took place? I just happened to catch the start of the siege when I turned BBC World on to catch a top of the hour update, and watched over two hours of the most intense fighting, and saw dozens of bloodied, half-naked little kids running out of the school, desperately drinking water because the sadistic bastards who'd held them apparently refused them anything to drink for days. One shot of an adorable little girl who was maybe five, sitting in the back of a car, her face spattered with blood, brought tears to my eyes. And generated one hell of a lot of outrage.

Also, it looks like a majority of the attackers were Arabs, not Chechen nationalists. This is just another example of the growing war between Islamism and civilization. Or maybe that should be Islam and civilization at this point. I'm getting tired of saying "But Islam is a peaceful faith" while millions of its adherents are spreading hate and death across the globe.

[Nick Walter]

I know it's an alien concept, but unless Russian leadership goes to absolute shit, Chechnya will never be independent. They'd sacrifice a million soldiers to keep that piece of dirt as long as they know they have 20 million more ready to die. Tibet will be free before Chechnya goes.

In that case (and I'm not disputing this analysis), it could be one of those "irresistable force meets immovable object" connundrums, with ghastly consequences.

Possibly, but I think there's a lot of middle ground between independant Chechyna and occupied warzone Chechyna. It's a difficult road to follow, but efforts to dramatically improve things for Chechens and turn the situation around so that being part of Russia is a desirable thing might just do it.

[chet]

You can be outraged on how Russia treated Checneya, and how these "men" treated these children, the two are not opposing views.

Chet

[Jakub]

I know it's an alien concept, but unless Russian leadership goes to absolute shit, Chechnya will never be independent. They'd sacrifice a million soldiers to keep that piece of dirt as long as they know they have 20 million more ready to die. Tibet will be free before Chechnya goes.
In that case (and I'm not disputing this analysis), it could be one of those "irresistable force meets immovable object" connundrums, with ghastly consequences.
Trust me, Chechnya is not an immovable object in this case.

There's been considerable enlightened speculation that this "popular independence movement" is being fed - and was started - by Islamic extremist groups. Chechnya isn't Afghanistan. People have a lot to lose there - relatively speaking. They can't hide in rocks and live off the land. There's too many of them to do that and the province is too small to hide them all. I'd bet that most of them would be happy to return to the way things were 10 years ago if only they could be safe.

You are right in believing that this might escalate at any moment, but you're wrong in thinking that Chechnya won't be broken. It'll be ugly, and costly, but no one would raise a finger against the Russians to defend Chechnya.

[Toddy]

It's a big mistake to view this through the western "OMFG look what the Islamic terrorists have done" framework. This is the latest round in the ongoing series of escalations between Russia and Chechnya with truly appalling actions on both sides - but Russia started it, refusing to let Chechyna break away, and killing ludicrous numbers of civilians to keep them from doing so.

Agreed. Russia's made huge mistakes spanning the entire region. They've come way down too hard on Islamic movements and radicalized them. But, what was Russia supposed to do? Let the Caucasus secede? Take a chance and maybe let Islamists set up a fundamentalist state and control the oil refineries in Grozny? Not gonna happen. For starters, the Russians rightly feared that Chechnya would turn into another Afghanistan in the 1990s, a haven for Islamist terror that would eventually have to be rooted out and destroyed.

Predictably, considering the Islamic/western divide, they're now reaping a bloody whirlwind. It's a goddamn appalling tragedy, but remember that a) Russia is driving this and b) this has nothing to do with the US war on terror.

Bullshit. This current conflict is being driven by the international Islamist terror movement. Many, if not most, of the "Chechens" that took the school were in fact Arabs. These are the same Islamists that the US is targeting in the war on terror, which is fast becoming a covert world war being fought on fronts in every single region of the planet. And comments like "the Islamic/Western" divide sicken me. You're trying to intellectualize a conflict that has taken thousands of innocent lives. This is a real war, Jason, one that we have to win. Looking at this from a cultural perspective was the big problem of the Clinton administration, and it allowed the Taliban and al Qaeda to turn Afghanistan into a terror factory that cranked out thousands of operative who will threaten innocents like the Beslan schoolkids for decades to come.

Checyna is an escalating series of retaliatory war crimes with no moral basis on either side. The righteous-and-just US anti-terrorism campaign it's not, and I'll be damned if I'm going to agree with that son of a bitch dictator Putin that there's any parallels at all.

If you can say that after realizing that this was another Islamist Arab operation -- like Spain, like the nightclub in Bali, like 9/11 -- Jason, you're out of your fucking mind. The school tragedy just indicates that Putin in right, that he is fighting on another front of the war on terror in Chechnya.

[Toddy]

You can be outraged on how Russia treated Checneya, and how these "men" treated these children, the two are not opposing views.

Chet

Yeah, but that's not what Jason is talking about, Chet. He said that he couldn't be outraged over the Beslan kids being massacred because of what happened in Chechnya. He didn't even give the usual "nothing excuses this sort of crime, but..." weasel phrase that usually accompanies attempts to draw moral equivalents.

That's insane, and that view ignores the fact that this was an operation carried out by Arab Islamists who were carrying out yet another terror strike in the ongoing Islamist war with humanity. Chechyna was a motivating factor, but so was the invasion of Afghanistan, the Israeli wall, the US war in Iraq, etc., etc.

[Toddy]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/09/03/russia.school.inside.ap/index.html

Yeah, no outrage necessary over something like this, Jason. These were clearly just noble Chechen freedom fighters! It's just like it was when we were fighting the British during the Revolutionary War!

[hermyhermit]

If you can say that after realizing that this was another Islamist Arab operation -- like Spain, like the nightclub in Bali, like 9/11 -- Jason, you're out of your fucking mind. The school tragedy just indicates that Putin in right, that he is fighting on another front of the war on terror in Chechnya.


It isn't McCullough's children in the school, what the fuck does he care? Just another liberal too afraid of the truth so he makes convenient excuses for reality.

Islamic / Western Divide Jason? Damn right. They are living a 6th century backwards ass religion that has no place in the modern world. It is a religion that promotes peace? Shit... It promotes martyrdom, and victory at any cost. Go read more about it. Come to work with me and listen to Islamic peoples actually, you know, TALK. Instead of reading all your liberal horseshit.

Taking children as hostages is, like, ok, and stuff, if your cause is sanctioned by God! Allah-u-Akbar God is indeed Great you raving lunatic liberal twit.

Hopefully the Entity will ban me here for a personal attack, that is, quite frankly well deserved.

But remember one thing!! We are not at war with Islam! Right.....
When this politically correct environment ceases to exist (never) then we can really talk about the issues at hand but since its much more convenient to say "terrorists" instead of being honest and watching situation after situation expect a great deal more of this.

The holy war will be here within everyone's lifetime here. It is going to be magnificent in both scale and body count. Is that Cleve like enough for ya, or should I say more?

I'll make a wager that the next nuclear detonation on this planet will be somehow tied to religious belief. Anyone wish to take that bet? McCullough? You a betting man?

[Nick Walter]

If you can say that after realizing that this was another Islamist Arab operation -- like Spain, like the nightclub in Bali, like 9/11 -- Jason, you're out of your fucking mind. The school tragedy just indicates that Putin in right, that he is fighting on another front of the war on terror in Chechnya.


It isn't McCullough's children in the school, what the fuck does he care? Just another liberal too afraid of the truth so he makes convenient excuses for reality.

Islamic / Western Divide Jason? Damn right. They are living a 6th century backwards ass religion that has no place in the modern world. It is a religion that promotes peace? Shit... It promotes martyrdom, and victory at any cost. Go read more about it. Come to work with me and listen to Islamic peoples actually, you know, TALK. Instead of reading all your liberal horseshit.

Taking children as hostages is, like, ok, and stuff, if your cause is sanctioned by God! Allah-u-Akbar God is indeed Great you raving lunatic liberal twit.

Hopefully the Entity will ban me here for a personal attack, that is, quite frankly well deserved.

But remember one thing!! We are not at war with Islam! Right.....
When this politically correct environment ceases to exist (never) then we can really talk about the issues at hand but since its much more convenient to say "terrorists" instead of being honest and watching situation after situation expect a great deal more of this.

The holy war will be here within everyone's lifetime here. It is going to be magnificent in both scale and body count. Is that Cleve like enough for ya, or should I say more?

I'll make a wager that the next nuclear detonation on this planet will be somehow tied to religious belief. Anyone wish to take that bet? McCullough? You a betting man?

Are you 12?

[Jakub]

I wonder if playing up this situation would benefit the Bush campaign.

[hermyhermit]

Are you 12?


Nope, but I play one on TV. I'm just a real simple minded little man, far below the megawatt brain capacities of Qt3, yourself obviously being no exception to that cerebral power. Please, have pity on me in the same way that you watch a severely retarded child flail around when trying to complete a simple task like opening a door or trying to tie a shoe.

Thanks so much.

[steve]

Just another liberal too afraid of the truth so he makes convenient excuses for reality.
How is this a liberal/conservative thing? I'm pretty sure his political affiliation, in this case, is sorta irrelevant.

I'll make a wager that the next nuclear detonation on this planet will be somehow tied to religious belief. Anyone wish to take that bet? McCullough? You a betting man?
Will it be Islamists, or Christians?

[Jason McCullough]

But, what was Russia supposed to do? Let the Caucasus secede? Take a chance and maybe let Islamists set up a fundamentalist state and control the oil refineries in Grozny?

Give me a break, Brett; this is totally revisionist history.

He said that he couldn't be outraged over the Beslan kids being massacred because of what happened in Chechnya.

I said I couldn't muster too much outrage because the Russians practically signed up to get their children killed by their actions in Chechyna. What did they expect to happen? Sure, it's fucking horrible, but if someone lets their kid play in the streets I'm simultaneously going to feel very sorry for the children and not much sympathy for the parent that was that stupid.

Brett, your context-free certitude that is exactly like 9/11 or something is exactly what I'm complaining about.

I like how my giving outcome-based analysis and context is the equivalent of approving of the death of children. Christ.

[hermyhermit]

How is this a liberal/conservative thing? I'm pretty sure his political affiliation, in this case, is sorta irrelevant.


Because only a flaming liberal would somehow excuse children hostages as acceptable because these parties perhaps have some legitimate gripes about things done to them in the past. Conservatives love children at all times, even when they are blowing them up in the name of oil. Christ, do I have to explain everything here?

I'll make a wager that the next nuclear detonation on this planet will be somehow tied to religious belief. Anyone wish to take that bet? McCullough? You a betting man?

Will it be Islamists, or Christians?

Islamists of course. Christians are far too pussified for that now. They do their killing in other less dramatic ways. Again, do I have to teach these megawatt intellects here everything? If so, just say yes, and I will.

[Lunch of Kong]

Not following how "won't back down from terrorism" is equivalent to "get lots of your civilians killed through ham-handed tactics."

200 dead out of a possible 1000. To a Russian, that's a *win*.

[TheWombat]

You are right in believing that this might escalate at any moment, but you're wrong in thinking that Chechnya won't be broken. It'll be ugly, and costly, but no one would raise a finger against the Russians to defend Chechnya.

Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware that if the Russians really wanted to they could wipe the Chechens off the face of the earth. But that won't solve the problem, because it would then be taken up by others as a sort of martyrdom thing I suspect.

As for the other stuff creeping in to this discussion, it really makes me sad. Islam hasn't declared war on the West, if for no other reason that there is no one "Islam." Many Muslims have in fact declared war on the West and are doing so in the name, as they see it, of their religion. That's true. But there are so many different divides within Islam that it's useless to really lump them all together.

What's more, such diatribes usualy leave out the reasons why most Muslims around the world sympathize in theory with the causes, if not the actions, of terrorists. Those reasons stem largely from Western, particulary US and Israeli, policies. You don't have to believe those policies are wrong necessarily to understand that, nevertheless, they infuriate millions of people. That doesn't justify mass murder. But it does help explain why so many people hate enough to do things like the abomination that happened in Russia.

The only way to stop this is to couple a thorough and honest assessment of policy and actions with firm and appropriate military force when necessary. Just wringing hands and talking won't do it, no. But neither will simply blowing stuff up. We've been doing that for well over a year in Afghanistan and Iraq with nothing to show for it in terms of our overall national security. Nothing but dead people mostly.

[Jakub]

I hate to sound like an evil cynic here, but if the West gives into extremist demands, it'll simply invite more extremism. These people are far less rational than a certain dictator was in the 1930s. Appeasement won't work.

Besides, it's a movement, not a man. The revolutionary cycle gives us insights into movements - even if X leader agreed to stop the Jihad or whatever, he'd be quickly replaced by another extremist.

[hermyhermit]

The only way to stop this is to couple a thorough and honest assessment of policy and actions with firm and appropriate military force when necessary. Just wringing hands and talking won't do it, no. But neither will simply blowing stuff up. We've been doing that for well over a year in Afghanistan and Iraq with nothing to show for it in terms of our overall national security. Nothing but dead people mostly.

Please refrain from posting again. You are far too rational for this forum and its making my head hurt.

Of course Islam is *not* supportive of terrorists, I mean come on! Who would ever support the mass destruction of any culture they don't agree with? Obviously large sects of an entire religion would never do that either openly or secretively. Let history be no indicator here, it is all lies mainly fed to us by the right wing revisionist historians. The Wahhabi sect is very peaceful I think. I read that somewhere. And it makes a great sauce for Sushi too...


P.S. McCullough I notice you won't answer my attacks against you, smart idea, I'm far too irrational and ignorant of any real issues to engage in debate. You are a wise man to ignore me.

[antlers]

It does sound like the Chechens had very little to do with this tragedy, the dimensions of which are not yet known...

I'm afraid the Chechens will be paying the price for this.

[Jason McCullough]

The only way to stop this is to couple a thorough and honest assessment of policy and actions with firm and appropriate military force when necessary. Just wringing hands and talking won't do it, no. But neither will simply blowing stuff up. We've been doing that for well over a year in Afghanistan and Iraq with nothing to show for it in terms of our overall national security. Nothing but dead people mostly.

Please refrain from posting again. You are far too rational for this forum and its making my head hurt.

Of course Islam is *not* supportive of terrorists, I mean come on! Who would ever support the mass destruction of any culture they don't agree with? Obviously large sects of an entire religion would never do that either openly or secretively. Let history be no indicator here, it is all lies mainly fed to us by the right wing revisionist historians. The Wahhabi sect is very peaceful I think. I read that somewhere. And it makes a great sauce for Sushi too...


P.S. McCullough I notice you won't answer my attacks against you, smart idea, I'm far too irrational and ignorant of any real issues to engage in debate. You are a wise man to ignore me.

I don't have much of a response to personal slander and religous bigotry, no.

[TheWombat]

I hate to sound like an evil cynic here, but if the West gives into extremist demands, it'll simply invite more extremism. These people are far less rational than a certain dictator was in the 1930s. Appeasement won't work.

Generally I'd agree with this, but the trick is, what do you actually do? If the goal is to make yourself and the world safer, and not simply to feel good about "doing something" (the philosophy of action that Mussolini among others espoused, where any action, even if wrong or ineffectual, is preferrable to inaction), what do you do?

If your goal is to end this madness, somehow, it's going to take some hard choices. Military strength is part of the equation, for sure. But that won't solve it alone. Somewhere down the line people who don't like each other much, and who feel with some justification on all sides that "the other guys" have blood on their hands, are going to have to work out compromises that neither side is going to find very palatable. Once that's done, you can have greater sucess killing off the real hard core bad guys because they'll lose their support network. But getting rid of that support network can't be done militarily, as the network is vast, nebulous, and popular. It can only be done through negotiation coupled with the reality of force.

When you're dealing with actors who are already dead--the terrorists generally are dead men walking who expect to die--no amount of force can deter them. You have to make it so fewer and fewer people want to be walking corpses, somehow.

[Zarathustra]

Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware that if the Russians really wanted to they could wipe the Chechens off the face of the earth. But that won't solve the problem, because it would then be taken up by others as a sort of martyrdom thing I suspect.

Wouldn't surprise me if the Russians say "screw it" now and clean out Chechnya completely.

[Zarathustra]

If your goal is to end this madness, somehow, it's going to take some hard choices. Military strength is part of the equation, for sure. But that won't solve it alone. Somewhere down the line people who don't like each other much, and who feel with some justification on all sides that "the other guys" have blood on their hands, are going to have to work out compromises that neither side is going to find very palatable. Once that's done, you can have greater sucess killing off the real hard core bad guys because they'll lose their support network. But getting rid of that support network can't be done militarily, as the network is vast, nebulous, and popular. It can only be done through negotiation coupled with the reality of force.

When you're dealing with actors who are already dead--the terrorists generally are dead men walking who expect to die--no amount of force can deter them. You have to make it so fewer and fewer people want to be walking corpses, somehow.

How about using a Mutual Assured Destruction policy against Islamic extremists? We all know they willingly will sacrifice themselves as martyrs, but we also know they revere their "holy sites" and shrines and their land and family. So the civilized countries announce a new MAD policy to the world: any attacks by Islamic terrorists against the US/Europe/Russia/Australia will be repaid with one thermonuclear explosion over Mecca, Medina, etc.

It sounds crazy but that's exactly what we did with the Soviet Union, and it worked. Hell, it's only a matter of time until some Islamic terrorists get their hands on a nuke and vaporize New York City. Maybe years, maybe decades, but at some point it'll happen, unless we can convince them it's a no-win situation.

We fight for our homeland! Homeland? What homeland? All I see is glazed sand.

[Anaxagoras]

How about using a Mutual Assured Destruction policy against Islamic extremists?

This is quite possibly the dumbest suggestion I've ever seen for how to deal with Islamic extremists.

[Jason McCullough]

Somehow I don't think threatening to blow up the holy sites of the Muslims that aren't trying to kill us is going to stop the ones that are.

[Zarathustra]

So, you think the extremists do not value Mecca? Losing their holy of holies would not give them pause?

[Brad Grenz]

Sadr didn't seem to give a fuck about desecrating the Iman Ali Shrine...

[Zarathustra]

Sadr didn't seem to give a fuck about desecrating the Iman Ali Shrine...

Ok, point taken.

[Jakub]

I hate to sound like an evil cynic here, but if the West gives into extremist demands, it'll simply invite more extremism. These people are far less rational than a certain dictator was in the 1930s. Appeasement won't work.
Generally I'd agree with this, but the trick is, what do you actually do?
Simply put? You wipe them off the face of the Earth. We are facing a completely incompatible philosophy. The Fascism of our age. Sad but true, it's back to ideologies and we have to win to keep our way of life.

Ideally this would be a "carrot and stick" scenario, where you could punish them for their misbehavior and reward them for the good. However, the sad reality is that it will require a global hunt. Iraq might have been a mistake, but Iran or Syria might not be if terrorists really are training and equipping there.

Unfortunately this will may - in a bad situation - mean damage to Muslim holy sites and the creation of more extremists - from the ever-ready indoctrinated and poor youth with no outlets for their ambition and energy in the Muslim countries. This is a worst-case scenario of course, but we could be looking at the destruction of Muslim culture.

Realistically speaking, it'll be a quagmire for the foreseeable future. Constantly searching for hotspots with the help of co-opted Arab governments. Using force to calm them down while they mushroom up in another place. Unlike Vietnam, we can't just give them their country back. They seem to want to hurt us rather than gain back what's theirs.

Optimistically, we might be able to break those groups up from the inside or simply watch them implode on themselves. Although religious movements are more unified than revolutions, there is the element of extremism involved that may do to Osama what the French Revolution did to Danton and later Robespierre. Remember, while we view Danton as a moderate now, he was extremely revolutionary in the views of all outside states. So there is the chance that the extremists might faction themselves down to ineffectivity.

Osama bin Laden is not the most dangerous man alive because he is the most extreme. Rather, he combines extremism with intelligence and knowledge of opponents. If you removed the leadership of Al-Qaeda en masse, prevented them from training new leaders, odds are those that would take their place would think that the will to die for a cause would be enough by itself. They wouldn't understand that another 9/11 hijacking - or any hijacking for the foreseeable future - would work again. The ready-to-die kids are no different from the Beavis and Butthead dumbasses, they're just indoctrinated with religion rather than free will.

If Al-Qaeda regulars ever associate leadership with the ability to be the most extreme, or if they ever suffer a major unexpected defeat (I don't think Afghanistan was unexpected), then they'll turn on Osama. They'll lead themselves to failure, then become disillusioned and hopefully fade away.

I'm rooting for the optimistic view myself.

[Jason McCullough]

So, you think the extremists do not value Mecca? Losing their holy of holies would not give them pause?

It's irrelevant. Would you suggest that threatening to nuke Jerusaleum would be a good way to stop fundamentalist Christian Idaho militiamen if they took hostages?

[Tim Partlett]

Agreed. Russia's made huge mistakes spanning the entire region. They've come way down too hard on Islamic movements and radicalized them. But, what was Russia supposed to do? Let the Caucasus secede? Take a chance and maybe let Islamists set up a fundamentalist state and control the oil refineries in Grozny? Not gonna happen. For starters, the Russians rightly feared that Chechnya would turn into another Afghanistan in the 1990s, a haven for Islamist terror that would eventually have to be rooted out and destroyed.

Yeltsin didn't invade Chechnya to prevent it from becoming an Islamic fundamentalist state, this is absolute nonsense. The republic that was adopted in Chechnya when it declared itself independent from Russia in 1991 was secular. At the time Islam was just the religion of the people of the region, not their flag and cause. It was Yeltsin's bloody invasion of 1994 that radicalized the people and encouraged the creation of fundamentalist groups. What you are saying is that they invaded the country to prevent the very thing their invasion created.

[Jakub]

Yeltsin didn't invade Chechnya to prevent it from becoming an Islamic fundamentalist state, this is absolute nonsense. The republic that was adopted in Chechnya when it declared itself independent from Russia in 1991 was secular. At the time Islam was just the religion of the people of the region, not their flag and cause. It was Yeltsin's bloody invasion of 1994 that radicalized the people and encouraged the creation of fundamentalist groups. What you are saying is that they invaded the country to prevent the very thing their invasion created.
And you assume that Chechen independence is home-brewed. I doubt it is. It might have started that way but I suspect it's been hijacked by the terrorists.

Besides, do you think that every other minority wouldn't clamour for independence if Russia allowed Chechnya to walk away? Imagine the consequences of that.

[olaf]

It is the fucking religion. Who in the hell thinks targeting a school, taking the kids hostage and killing them will get you what you want? No one. No one with a fucking properly functioning brain anyway.

And, you look like a big fucking asshole trying to sympathize with them. A huge asshole that parents would like to tear apart. So quit it.

olaf

[Anders Hallin]

It is the fucking religion. Who in the hell thinks targeting a school, taking the kids hostage and killing them will get you what you want? No one. No one with a fucking properly functioning brain anyway.
I'd rather guess this had turned into a retaliation game by now.

[olaf]

It is the fucking religion. Who in the hell thinks targeting a school, taking the kids hostage and killing them will get you what you want? No one. No one with a fucking properly functioning brain anyway.
I'd rather guess this had turned into a retaliation game by now.
What do you mean? Do you mean that the targeting of a school, with the intent of killing 100s of children was some kind of payback for treatment in kind? If so I call bullshit. Pull your head out.

olaf

[Anders Hallin]

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. And not with sarcasm, for once.

[Rollory]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040903/ids_photos_wl/r3915888142.jpg

You and McCullough are looking at that photo and saying "she deserved it".

[Rollory]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040904/ids_photos_india_wl/ra3774087770.jpg

The caption to that one is interesting. Trust the Europeans to have their heads THAT far up their asses.

More photos here:
http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?sourceid=Mozilla-search&c=news_photos&p=beslan

[Anders Hallin]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040903/ids_photos_wl/r3915888142.jpg

You and McCullough are looking at that photo and saying "she deserved it".
McCullough and who?

[Rollory]

McCullough and who?

Yes, you. "Payback for treatment in kind". This is exactly the same attitude that showed up after 9/11; the Europeans and transnational progressives expected the US to sit back and wonder why everyone hated us, indulge in some self-flagellation, listen to the wise European elders, and then surrender who whoever was available. The only correct response to that expectation is to violently ignore it.

Barbarism on this scale is inexcusable whatever the provocation was, and it must be made absolutely clear that it will never reap anything but utter disaster for those who attempt it.

[Anders Hallin]

Yes, you. "Payback for treatment in kind". This is exactly the same attitude that showed up after 9/11; the Europeans and transnational progressives expected the US to sit back and wonder why everyone hated us, indulge in some self-flagellation, listen to the wise European elders, and then surrender who whoever was available. The only correct response to that expectation is to violently ignore it.
I am well known for condoning payback. Indeed. I know some people aren't keen on it, but there is a difference between explaining something and making excuses for it.

And I certainly didn't expect that. If I remember correctly, my first comment on the situation on September 11th was "I kinda feel sorry for Afghanistan".
No, it wasn't a comment on the horror of the deed, if you want to draw some conclusions about me based on that.

Barbarism on this scale is inexcusable whatever the provocation was, and it must be made absolutely clear that it will never reap anything but utter disaster for those who attempt it.
Those who attempt it has little to lose. The people who usually reap the results usually do have something, until one takes it away from them, at least.

[nutsak]

Also, it looks like a majority of the attackers were Arabs, not Chechen nationalists. This is just another example of the growing war between Islamism and civilization. Or maybe that should be Islam and civilization at this point. I'm getting tired of saying "But Islam is a peaceful faith" while millions of its adherents are spreading hate and death across the globe.

Hey man, one of my dearest friends is a member of the Islam faith, should I go around her house tomorrow and shoot her in the head just to make sure she doesn't go nuts and use her religion as a basis of killing others? These people aren't Islamic... they're just fucked up people using a religion to justify their hate. Really - change 'Islam' to the name of any other religion and see how it sounds.

[Tim Partlett]

Barbarism on this scale is inexcusable whatever the provocation was, and it must be made absolutely clear that it will never reap anything but utter disaster for those who attempt it.

I guess, for you, this applies only to the Chechens, as "barbarism on this scale" has been committed against them by the Russians repeatedly.

And you assume that Chechen independence is home-brewed. I doubt it is. It might have started that way but I suspect it's been hijacked by the terrorists.

Besides, do you think that every other minority wouldn't clamour for independence if Russia allowed Chechnya to walk away? Imagine the consequences of that.

There's no evidence to suggest that the desire for independence is anything but "home-brewed". The Chechens have attempted to reclaim their independence at every opportunity over the last century and a half since the Tsar of Russia crushed them under his boot in the mid 1800s. I also doubt that giving the Chechens independence would result in a Russia wide clamouring for indepenedence by all the republics. The vast majority of Russia's republics are dominated by ethnic Russians. Of the few that aren't, there has been little call for independence, except in Chechnya, and with muted cries in other areas of the Caucuses. A worst case scenario would be this small region separating from Russia, not a collapse of the entire country.

Chechnya really is a case apart from other regions of Russia, and much more in common with those who were allowed to break away, like Estonia and Armenia, than those that stayed.

[Qenan]

What do you mean? Do you mean that the targeting of a school, with the intent of killing 100s of children was some kind of payback for treatment in kind? If so I call bullshit. Pull your head out.


I agree with Anders; that's exactly what it was. Hatfield-McCoy on a large scale. Can you demonstrate otherwise?

[Anaxagoras]

It's so cute when people like Rollory get all worked up about an event that they have no understanding of.

"But I saw a picture!!!!!!!!!!"

That's nice, Rollory. You keep looking at the pictures. The rest of us are going to be reading the words below the picture... they're generally much more informative.

[Rollory]

I am well known for condoning payback. Indeed. I know some people aren't keen on it, but there is a difference between explaining something and making excuses for it.

I apologize then, I jumped the gun. It looked like making excuses to me.

I guess, for you, this applies only to the Chechens, as "barbarism on this scale" has been committed against them by the Russians repeatedly.

On the contrary. Two wrongs don't make a right. A justifiable response by the Chechens would've been a massacre of Russian soldiers, blowing up ammo dumps and railroads used by the military, that sort of thing. The military/noncombatant division exists for good and sufficient reasons. That the Russians aren't good at respecting it doesn't mean their opponents shouldn't either. By the same token, just because Al Qaeda doesn't make the difference, that doesn't give us the right to indiscriminately nuke the entire Middle East. If the Chechens aren't capable of implementing military solutions to their military problems, then they've lost, and the best thing they can do is lay down their weapons and rethink their situation, either to relaunch a more successful war later or to accept being part of Russia.

[Toddy]

If your goal is to end this madness, somehow, it's going to take some hard choices. Military strength is part of the equation, for sure. But that won't solve it alone. Somewhere down the line people who don't like each other much, and who feel with some justification on all sides that "the other guys" have blood on their hands, are going to have to work out compromises that neither side is going to find very palatable. Once that's done, you can have greater sucess killing off the real hard core bad guys because they'll lose their support network. But getting rid of that support network can't be done militarily, as the network is vast, nebulous, and popular. It can only be done through negotiation coupled with the reality of force.

Um, no, that's not how it works. You have to attack the structure first, kill the leaders, and make it so that these disaffected people have no outlet for their Islamist-fuelled rage. Or at least no outlet that's funded by states or millionaire exiles.

If you try to deal with the base reasons for the rage, Islamism will win, because it's a multi-headed Hydra. You're not going to satisfy everyone, because as Jakub pointed out, it's a movement. So, yeah, you might make those hard compromises with Osama, but the Zawahiri would break with him and continue the fight, and so on, and so on. We're always going to have really pissed-off people out there who want to export Islam to every country on the planet. You're not going to change all of their minds. But you can kill the people, organizations, and nations that give these lunatics the cash and ability to organize attacks that slaughter hundreds of people and destabilize whole countries.

The only way to win this war is to, quite frankly, attack any nation that supports Islamist terror, either directly with military forces, or with the credible threat of military intervention backed with lots of scary rhetoric. You have to cut off the head first, and the body will die. You go after the body, and you'll never kill Islamist terror.

When you're dealing with actors who are already dead--the terrorists generally are dead men walking who expect to die--no amount of force can deter them. You have to make it so fewer and fewer people want to be walking corpses, somehow.

See above. Who gives a fuck if there are Islamists walking around who want to commit suicide if they can take out Americans or Jews in the process? You're not going to be able to remove that hate no matter what you offer, because they don't hate you as an individual or even a particular government of the day -- they hate your entire culture and way of life. Unless you're willing to alter the entire structure of Western society, forget about making any deals. But you can limit these lunatics' access to the money and weapons requied to stage attacks like 9/11 and the Russian school massacre.

You've got to realize that Islamists are waging a war. You don't recognize that, and greet guns and bombs with flowers and peace treaties, well, you might as well sign the West over to the mullahs right now.

[Toddy]

Tim, there is loads of evidence to indicate that Chechnya was a hotbed of Islamism in the early and mid-1990s. I agree that the Russians went way, way too far in an effort to keep the republic, but come on. The Islamism that got going in Afghanistan in the 1980s (thank you ISI and CIA) had spread its tentacles through the entire region by 1994. Do some reading before you post, please.

But anyhow...so fucking what? This is a reason for seizing a school, torturing kids, and then blowing the place up and killing at leat 350 people? Sorry, I don't accept that, and I think both Islam and Muslim nations have to take responsibility for crimes like this because these plots are being continually hatched in the midst of Muslim nations. I mean, how do you think people would react if Christian militias based in the US were constantly sending attack teams all over the world to kill Muslims, and the US government never even bothered to condemn the actions of these groups?

Also, what powers people to an act like seizing a school and slaughtering kids? I'm sorry, but if crazed Brazilians conquered Ontario tomorrow and murdered every single member of my family, I still wouldn't help capture a Brazilian school in ten years and slaughter little kids out of some crazed notion of revenge. Very few people in the West would. But in the Islamic world, people willing to pull off these sorts of atrocities seem rather more common.

Sorry, Islam is part of the problem here, folks. Ignore that and you're no better than the Muslim nations themselves, who occasionally wring their hands in frustration over attacks like the one in Russia, but never bestir themselves to do anything about these groups operating from their own soil.

[Kalle]

If the Chechens aren't capable of implementing military solutions to their military problems, then they've lost, and the best thing they can do is lay down their weapons and rethink their situation, either to relaunch a more successful war later or to accept being part of Russia.

Well, morally I'd agree with you, but when it comes down to pure power politics the death of civilians as a means to an end can and often has been an effective tactic of getting what you want. And not only among terrorists either. If you play for power you are usually willing to sacrifice more than a few pawns.

[Toddy]

Oh come on. No rational group directly targets little kids like this. Islamist are the only people (at least the only organized faction with both the desire and the ability and lack of morals to actually put this into practice) who would even contemplate an attack of this sort. Especially outside of the actual territory being contested. The people at this school had as much to do with the Chechen war as people at any school in the US or Canada. And if we don't keep the pressure on these madmen, that's where they'll be striking next.

Tim, Jason, how would you guys feel if this had happened in a school down the street from where you live? Would you find it hard to summon outrage at the act, knowing that this was just fair retaliation because the US has been supplying the Israelis with weapons used to kill Palestinian children for decades?

[hermyhermit]

You've got to realize that Islamists are waging a war. You don't recognize that, and greet guns and bombs with flowers and peace treaties, well, you might as well sign the West over to the mullahs right now.

Please refrain from posting, you again, are far too rational for the liberal minds on this board and I'm afraid of what may happen if you and The Wombat continue to post.

Please excuse Islamists from their righteous anger and pay the proper respect to "the Arab Street", you are a simple man who doesn't understand the complexities of that religion and how we have mistreated these people over the years! :roll:

[Theodore Rex DX]

You're not going to change all of their minds. But you can kill the people, organizations, and nations that give these lunatics the cash and ability to organize attacks that slaughter hundreds of people and destabilize whole countries.

The only way to win this war is to, quite frankly, attack any nation that supports Islamist terror, either directly with military forces, or with the credible threat of military intervention backed with lots of scary rhetoric. You have to cut off the head first, and the body will die. You go after the body, and you'll never kill Islamist terror.

Is it possible - realistically or even theoretically - to kill every militant Islamic leader in the world and cut off all means of support? Even if they just stood there and let you do it? You'd have to kill all their friends and family and allies and all the friends and families and allies of their friends, families and allies and so on ad infinitum. You'd have to kill hundreds of millions of people over the years it would take to do the job right - and in the end you'd be the bad guy independent of any principles you had when you went in. Plus you'd probably be dead. The number of people killed by Islamic terrorism would pale in comparison by the amount of carnage you'd need to create in order to crush Islamic terrorism.
And if history has shown anything, it's shown that this kind of shit doesn't work on religious fanatics the way it works on other groups - the hydra head was a great example, but not in the way you wanted. You kill a few and even more will step up to take their place. These people just don't value their lives the way normal, rational, moral people do, and they value the lives of others even less. Every one you kill becomes a martyr, at least to somebody. How can you fight that?
A better way would probably be to just make their religion go soft. Prosperity will do that, but there might be other ways. Make them all filthy rich and they'll forget about killing the infidels. Something like that. Probably be more ethically and economically viable than just killing everybody.

[Toddy]

Is it possible - realistically or even theoretically - to kill every militant Islamic leader in the world and cut off all means of support? Even if they just stood there and let you do it? You'd have to kill all their friends and family and allies and all the friends and families and allies of their friends, families and allies and so on ad infinitum. You'd have to kill hundreds of millions of people over the years it would take to do the job right - and in the end you'd be the bad guy independent of any principles you had when you went in. Plus you'd probably be dead. The number of people killed by Islamic terrorism would pale in comparison by the amount of carnage you'd need to create in order to crush Islamic terrorism.

Did you even read what I wrote? You have to kill the organizers and the people who fund this stuff. And, if necessary, topple governments that do the same. You don't have to kill every radical, or even every cell or faction leader. As I said, you've just got to make sure that these radicals don't have access to huge amounts of cash and weapons, and that they don't have state sponsors. Take away the support infrastructure and these wackos won't be able to blow up schools. They'll be left with either killing themselves, alone, or with limited acts of crazed violence in their own neighborhoods that, while still sad and depressing, won't have any effect on the world at large.

This is why I'm so frustrated with the Bush administration actions in the Middle East. Right idea with the Iraq invasion, but wrong target. All this cash should have been poured into Afghanistan. The country should have been turned into one great big base for US and Allied forces, to give us a permanent presence in the region. There wouldn't have been nearly as much turmoil over such a move. It would have also put a lot of heat on Iran, Syria, Saudi, and Iraq, without stirring up unrest in an Arab state (which will always be more fervently defended by Arab Muslims than a non-Arab nation like Afghanistan, because most Arabs don't recognize modern borders between the Arab nations).

And if history has shown anything, it's shown that this kind of shit doesn't work on religious fanatics the way it works on other groups - the hydra head was a great example, but not in the way you wanted. You kill a few and even more will step up to take their place. These people just don't value their lives the way normal, rational, moral people do, and they value the lives of others even less. Every one you kill becomes a martyr, at least to somebody. How can you fight that?

Uh, yes it does work that way. And the people you are killing and the governments that you are stopping wouldn't be replaced. I'm not talking about just killing figurehead like bin Laden. I'm talking about stopping the madrassas in Pakistan and clamping down on the terror-funding elements within Saudi Arabia. Oil money and the terror schools just can't be replaced.

Like I said above, you don't go after the foot soldiers, you go after the organizers, the funders, the nations. Do that, and nobody will give a fuck about the foot soldiers because they will be too impoverished and too disorganized to have any sort of impact on us, or even on the Middle Eastern governments that they hate so much.

A better way would probably be to just make their religion go soft. Prosperity will do that, but there might be other ways. Make them all filthy rich and they'll forget about killing the infidels. Something like that. Probably be more ethically and economically viable than just killing everybody.

That's crazy. And wildly, wildly wrong. All the 9/11 hijackers were middle or upper class Arabs who were radicalized while attending universities in Europe. Ziad Jarrah went from going to Catholic schools and hanging out with bikini babes in Beirut to becoming a wild-eyed fanatic eager to kill himself for God in Hamburg. Ayman Zawahiri, the real leader of al Qaeda, is an upper-class Egyptian doctor. Osama is of course heir to a construction empire that practically built modern Saudi Arabia. Oh, and the chief surreptitious sponsors of Islamist movements are super-rich sheikhs in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

This isn't about economics. This is about Islam. Yes, it might be a perverted vision of what true Islam is all about, but it is a vision of Islam subscribed to by millions and millions of people in every country on Earth. We ignore that at our peril. Sorry to sound apocalyptic, but we are in the middle of a war here, and if we lose, we lose Western civilization. It's just sad that so many people aren't going to realize the stakes until Tel Aviv, New York, or London goes up in a mushroom cloud.

[nutsak]

These people aren't Islamic... they're just fucked up people using a religion to justify their hate. Really - change 'Islam' to the name of any other religion and see how it sounds.

Just in case you're fucking blind I decided to show you this again Mr Todd.

[Brian Koontz]

I really enjoyed the posts of Tim Partlett and TheWombat in particular in this thread. Otherwise I have just a bit more to say...

A State works only when it kills for justice. Russia abandoned justice toward Chechnyans long ago. It therefore abandoned its RIGHT to be a State toward Chechnya.

Since Russia has the military power, it has the responsibility to act morally. Russia clearly has acted poorly toward Chechnya. The only GOOD procedure now is Chechnyan independence, created by Russia.

Most humans that are terrorists are Islamic. I believe the most widespread training facilities are in Muslim-dominated nations. If a group without a built-in membership anywhere in the world was to undertake a large-scale terrorist project of any kind, its LIKELY that they would get Muslims. That's the TALENT POOL, so to speak. Its nonsensical to say Islam is behind this... that's simply the religion of most terrorists, thus most terrorists in any kind of terrorism will be Muslim. The only exception is groups with homegrown established troops, that don't have to look worldwide for talent.

Again, the sovereignty of the State is based on its adherence to justice. George Bush is pushing "justice" to the limit. As Russians turned Chechnyans into terrorists, how many terrorists will Bush create if he gets a second term? His "War on Terror"... well, I guess you have to CREATE terror before you can fight it.

Bush, after a second term where he increases the worldwide terrorist count by 100,000:

"You see! I TOLD you how necessary this War on Terror is! Goddamnit, these evil bastards are popping up all over!"

If indeed a War on Terror truly becomes necessary, two groups will be primarily responsible... Al Qaeda and the Bush Administration. They are ALLIES in their Agendas. They both want this war, while the rest of the world would rather work it out peacefully.

[Anders Hallin]

Islamist are the only people (at least the only organized faction with both the desire and the ability and lack of morals to actually put this into practice) who would even contemplate an attack of this sort. Especially outside of the actual territory being contested.
I thought this was funny enough to cursive.

[quatoria]

Tim, Jason, how would you guys feel if this had happened in a school down the street from where you live? Would you find it hard to summon outrage at the act, knowing that this was just fair retaliation because the US has been supplying the Israelis with weapons used to kill Palestinian children for decades?

No matter how outraged they might get, I find it hard to imagine that they'd suddenly be calling for the extermination of an entire race of people, or the systematic murder of every member of a religion, as some psychopathic people in this thread have done. Brett: can you honestly condone that kind of chillingly sociopathic talk? Surely you realize that embarking upon such a course would not only make us inconcievably worse than the people we were attacking in righteous fury, but also irrevocably destroy America itself, in any form recognizable to us. Rhetoric like that isn't just inflammatory, it's downright psychotic, and the only people who could seriously put forward such a case are the insane or the incredibly stupid.

[Jason McCullough]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040903/ids_photos_wl/r3915888142.jpg

You and McCullough are looking at that photo and saying "she deserved it".

Eat me, you fucking cunt.

[Theodore Rex DX]

Did you even read what I wrote? You have to kill the organizers and the people who fund this stuff. And, if necessary, topple governments that do the same. You don't have to kill every radical, or even every cell or faction leader. As I said, you've just got to make sure that these radicals don't have access to huge amounts of cash and weapons, and that they don't have state sponsors. Take away the support infrastructure and these wackos won't be able to blow up schools. They'll be left with either killing themselves, alone, or with limited acts of crazed violence in their own neighborhoods that, while still sad and depressing, won't have any effect on the world at large.

Did you read what I wrote? Fine - try to cut off the snake's head. Good. But can you do it? Sure, you can think about how great it would be to do that - but how can you do it and ensure that it doesn't grow back? Ever? I mean really be sure? Because if you aren't right, or if you don't do it right - things will get worse. Certainly worse before they get better. And you probably won't do it right. These people are not willing to let bygones be bygones, historically speaking. And it doesn't cost that much to hijack a plane or blow up a bus. I could get up from my computer right now and have a fairly high probablity of success (in my country, anyway). It takes funding, but it mostly takes hatred and an undying belief in retarded nonsense. I'm in favour of blowing up the bad guys - I didn't make that clear before and that was dumb of me - but that's not all you have to do. You have to make the minions believe that they're better off without these guys paying them to kill people, that they're better off not killing anybody at all. You can get rid of the means, but you also need some kind of long-lasting positive impact on these people. I pitched the 'economic stability' thing (which, sigh, I said in a dumb way), but I said that's not the only way. I'm sure you can think of a couple others.

This is why I'm so frustrated with the Bush administration actions in the Middle East. Right idea with the Iraq invasion, but wrong target. All this cash should have been poured into Afghanistan. The country should have been turned into one great big base for US and Allied forces, to give us a permanent presence in the region. There wouldn't have been nearly as much turmoil over such a move. It would have also put a lot of heat on Iran, Syria, Saudi, and Iraq, without stirring up unrest in an Arab state (which will always be more fervently defended by Arab Muslims than a non-Arab nation like Afghanistan, because most Arabs don't recognize modern borders between the Arab nations).

I think this is a fine strategy.

And if history has shown anything, it's shown that this kind of shit doesn't work on religious fanatics the way it works on other groups - the hydra head was a great example, but not in the way you wanted. You kill a few and even more will step up to take their place. These people just don't value their lives the way normal, rational, moral people do, and they value the lives of others even less. Every one you kill becomes a martyr, at least to somebody. How can you fight that?

Uh, yes it does work that way. And the people you are killing and the governments that you are stopping wouldn't be replaced. I'm not talking about just killing figurehead like bin Laden. I'm talking about stopping the madrassas in Pakistan and clamping down on the terror-funding elements within Saudi Arabia. Oil money and the terror schools just can't be replaced.

Like I said above, you don't go after the foot soldiers, you go after the organizers, the funders, the nations. Do that, and nobody will give a fuck about the foot soldiers because they will be too impoverished and too disorganized to have any sort of impact on us, or even on the Middle Eastern governments that they hate so much.

Okay, now you're just fucking fantasizing. As I said before, a dedicated psycho does not need a busload of dynamite to do some serious damage. He doesn't have to be a millionaire or have a millionaire friend. He doesn't even need a job. Oh, the cycle of vengeance won't continue this time 'just because'? A lot of these people believe they are fighting a holy war that started a thousand years ago and never really stopped. The specifics have changed but the main point hasn't - kill the infidel devils. The hatred and resentment will still be there if you cut their hands off and make them say they're sorry. You can temporarily make things better by blowing shit up - maybe - but poor people don't always stay poor, and hatred can last a millenium. No, blowing shit up isn't enough - though I believe it will be an important part of any solution involving sick mutant sociopaths. Like I said, I am not opposed to violence in some circumstances. I think you need to get rid of the bad guys and then make sure they won't come back. You have to kill the reason they have any power at all. Economic aid - to the right people - will help out. You have to make sure the right people are destroyed and the right people thrive. I'm not Neville Chamberlain. You can't satisfy the wrong people. You teach their leaders a lesson and then you do the same to the underlings, but in a different way.

A better way would probably be to just make their religion go soft. Prosperity will do that, but there might be other ways. Make them all filthy rich and they'll forget about killing the infidels. Something like that. Probably be more ethically and economically viable than just killing everybody.

That's crazy. And wildly, wildly wrong. All the 9/11 hijackers were middle or upper class Arabs who were radicalized while attending universities in Europe. Ziad Jarrah went from going to Catholic schools and hanging out with bikini babes in Beirut to becoming a wild-eyed fanatic eager to kill himself for God in Hamburg. Ayman Zawahiri, the real leader of al Qaeda, is an upper-class Egyptian doctor. Osama is of course heir to a construction empire that practically built modern Saudi Arabia. Oh, and the chief surreptitious sponsors of Islamist movements are super-rich sheikhs in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

Okay, you're mostly right - though you misunderstood what I'm saying (my fault - I said it in a stupid way). The ringleaders, of course, are filthy rich. Their suppliers are some of the wealthiest families on planet Earth. The vast majority of them are sincere Muslims, though their actions have more to do with power whoring than with religion. They do depend on their followers to be poor, though. But mostly they rely on their followers to be pissed off and able to believe total bullshit.

This isn't about economics. This is about Islam. Yes, it might be a perverted vision of what true Islam is all about, but it is a vision of Islam subscribed to by millions and millions of people in every country on Earth. We ignore that at our peril. Sorry to sound apocalyptic, but we are in the middle of a war here, and if we lose, we lose Western civilization. It's just sad that so many people aren't going to realize the stakes until Tel Aviv, New York, or London goes up in a mushroom cloud.

Okay, this is paranoid and insane and possibly evil. But other than that, I don't see that we're in any real disagreement, if I meet you halfway. You kill the bad guys and make it better for the peasants than when the bad guys were in power.

[Zarathustra]

If indeed a War on Terror truly becomes necessary, two groups will be primarily responsible... Al Qaeda and the Bush Administration. They are ALLIES in their Agendas. They both want this war, while the rest of the world would rather work it out peacefully.

Now that's the most idiotic comment I've seen on this board!

[quatoria]

If indeed a War on Terror truly becomes necessary, two groups will be primarily responsible... Al Qaeda and the Bush Administration. They are ALLIES in their Agendas. They both want this war, while the rest of the world would rather work it out peacefully.

Now that's the most idiotic comment I've seen on this board!

Not the MOST idiotic - the "genocide is the only answer" comments take that award - but it's still pretty fucking idiotic.

[olaf]

I still cant believe there is even one person here trying to sympathize with, or understand, pieces of shit who murder kids in a vain attempt to advance a political adgenda. Mind numbing. From my perspective, if there was ever something a group of people would be of a singular mind on, this would be it. I feel sorry for your kids, if you ever have any.

olaf

[Duality]

That's right. You'll never accomplish anything if you actually try to understand why other people do the things they do. :roll:

[antlers]

Looks like the final death toll is going to be near 700---


The problem with Todd's strategy of toppling governments and killing leaders is---it's been tried by the Russians, Israelis and now us, and it's not working. Terrorist attacks are cheap and simple to organize. That's why people turn to them when they have lost militarily; a military is expensive and complex to organize. Terrorism comes from the grass roots. Automatic rifles are about the cheapest durable good available anywhere, and that's really all you need to mount an attack like the one in Russia. If you keep toppling governments (you'd have to go after Sudan and Syria as well as Iran now, you can probably give Pakistan and Saudi Arabia a pass in the short term) you create more failed states. It's much easier to destroy a state than to create one, and since a totalitarian state is (at least) as effective a check on terrorism as a successful liberal democracy, toppling governments is about guaranteed to create more terrorism (at least in the short run).

The WMD we really have to worry about is not an A-bomb in the hands of a rogue state; it's a box cutter or an automatic rifle or an improvised explosicive in the hands of a suicidal extremist. Those are the weapons that will put the most people at risk, and it doesn't take any great level of organization to get them.

Suicidal terrorist Islamism is a meme that had managed to deeply entrench itself throughout the Muslim world, starting from roots in Afghanistan and Lebanon. Raising the level of violence just reinforces the meme. Osam bin Laden knows this, which is why he is so intent on staging provocations designed to evoke military response. He isn't afraid of a military response, he desires it to further his vision of jihad. Bush's invasion of Iraq, widely seen as an aggressive grab for the control of the resources of an Islamic nation, played perfectly into Bin Laden's hands, and to this extent Bush and bin Laden are allies. They both want the war in Iraq to be seen as part of a larger struggle.

I can't believe that we are trying to keep ourselves safe from Islamic terrorismm without attempting to deal seriously with either Afghanistan or the Palestinian problem. We are spending a small fraction of what we spend on Iraq on Afghanistan, even though it has a greater population. If we spent a third of what we spent on the Iraq invasion on solving the Palestinian problem, it would probably be a much safer world right now.

[Rollory]

Just throwing money at the problem will not create a solution.

Afghanistan, maybe. But as far as the Palestinians go, I really think that the only way that situation is gong to become resolved is after a lot more Palestinians die.

[antlers]

If we spent $10 billion or $20 billion, we could create full employment and massive infrastructure improvements in the occupied territories. I think that could go a long way to addressing the issue.

Instead, we're spending hundreds of billions in Iraq and we're just making things worse.

We're being penny-wise in Afghanistan, as well, although in that case it's militarily as well as economically. The real tragedy of Iraq may be the way it's diverted resources from efforts that might actually improve our security.

[TrodKnee]

Just throwing money at the problem will not create a solution.

Afghanistan, maybe. But as far as the Palestinians go, I really think that the only way that situation is gong to become resolved is after a lot more Palestinians die.
How many? A nice round ballpark figure will do. I assume none of those Palestinians will be children, right? You don't mean to kill those poor cute innocent children too, do you? If you do then who will grow up to become the terrorists of the future?

[Tim Partlett]

On the contrary. Two wrongs don't make a right. A justifiable response by the Chechens would've been a massacre of Russian soldiers, blowing up ammo dumps and railroads used by the military, that sort of thing. The military/noncombatant division exists for good and sufficient reasons. That the Russians aren't good at respecting it doesn't mean their opponents shouldn't either. By the same token, just because Al Qaeda doesn't make the difference, that doesn't give us the right to indiscriminately nuke the entire Middle East. If the Chechens aren't capable of implementing military solutions to their military problems, then they've lost, and the best thing they can do is lay down their weapons and rethink their situation, either to relaunch a more successful war later or to accept being part of Russia.

Chechens kill Russian soldiers nearly every day, but it does no good, because Russians are still there. At least when they pull stunts like this it grabs the world's attention, and reminds it of what the Russians are doing there, even if it does make people less sympathetic towards their cause. I'm guessing, though, with the people who committed this crime that strategy has little to do with their actions, and it is just plain rage. After a decade of brutality that makes the Israelis look like Palestinian loving peaceniks I doubt that many Chechens really care for sensibilities such as protecting the innocent.

It got that way with Britain and Germany during the war. We started off with ideals such as not targetting civilians, but after a while such niceties went out of the window. The British started it, because we were desperate, and it was a strategy. We bombed German cities in order to rile Hitler, and get him to retaliate in kind, saving our airfields at the expense of our civilians. For the British killing civilians was strategic, for the Germans it was retaliation, but both of them engaged in it whole-heartedly.

The Americans too, at the end of the war, joined in. In the destruction of Dresden, which many Germans consider a war crime, after Britain had firebombed the population through the night, American planes flattened what was left with conventional bombs. I think the only difference in attitude between the British and Germans and Americans is that the American public, thousands of miles away from the action, was a little more squeemish and didn't want to be told what its bombers were actually doing. The American public were fed stories about "precision" bombing technology, whereas the British and Germans were fed with rage filled propanda about bombing the crap out of the evil enemy.

A respect for life is a wonderful thing, borne of a life where such protections can be afforded, and should be supported by all, but equally we shouldn't become so far removed from what war and conflict can do to the human spirit that we cannot understand why people do things, other than assume it is because they are evil.

[Tim Partlett]

Tim, there is loads of evidence to indicate that Chechnya was a hotbed of Islamism in the early and mid-1990s. I agree that the Russians went way, way too far in an effort to keep the republic, but come on. The Islamism that got going in Afghanistan in the 1980s (thank you ISI and CIA) had spread its tentacles through the entire region by 1994. Do some reading before you post, please.

There's some evidence to indicate there was some Islamic extremism in the country, but that isn't surprising for an Islamic country in that region of the world. The facts of the matter, however, is that Chechnya declared itself a secular republic, and the government was in control. They had even banned fundamentalist youth groups. There's little to suspect that Chechnya would become any more of a "hotbed of Islamism" than Azerbaijan or Tajikistan, two other former Soviet states with a large muslim population. Certainly the Russians made no such argument for why they invaded Chechnya in 1994, as their argument was purely of the domino effect; that if Chechnya was allowed independence, all the other Autonomous regions would demand the same. The fact that during those three years of independence none had didn't alter Yeltsin's opinion.

It was only after the Russians pulled out of Chechnya in 1996, leaving the country in ruins, that the government was no longer in control, and was plagued not only by Islamic extremists, but also warlords, bandits and guerillas who thrived in the anarchy that the destruction of the country had left. The government was forced to make concessions to these groups, such as legalizing fundamentalist groups, and rapidly the government's power was eroded. By 1999 the Islamic militants made their presence felt for the first time, and invaded neighbouring Dagestan. Since 2001 Putin has managed to alter public opinion in the world, by lumping the Chechen rebellion in with the anti-American actions of Al-Qaeda, and has been doing a fantastic job, at least with Americans. I guess for many the issue boils down to: do you support freedom from oppression or do you fear muslims?

But anyhow...so fucking what? This is a reason for seizing a school, torturing kids, and then blowing the place up and killing at leat 350 people? Sorry, I don't accept that, and I think both Islam and Muslim nations have to take responsibility for crimes like this because these plots are being continually hatched in the midst of Muslim nations. I mean, how do you think people would react if Christian militias based in the US were constantly sending attack teams all over the world to kill Muslims, and the US government never even bothered to condemn the actions of these groups?

Also, what powers people to an act like seizing a school and slaughtering kids? I'm sorry, but if crazed Brazilians conquered Ontario tomorrow and murdered every single member of my family, I still wouldn't help capture a Brazilian school in ten years and slaughter little kids out of some crazed notion of revenge. Very few people in the West would. But in the Islamic world, people willing to pull off these sorts of atrocities seem rather more common.

I do not condone the action of these murderers in any way.

Imagine a different scenario, where your country or state was invaded by a brutal regime. Imagine that in defending yourself, and failing, a tenth of your population was killed. That would mean that everyone in your country would be guaranteed to know someone, a brother, sister, father, mother, who would have been killed defending their freedom. Imagine that a fifth of the population of your country had been forced to become refugees because of the fighting, as your entire country had been reduced to rubble. Imagine that the invaders engaged in summary executions of innocent people, raped your women, and indiscriminantly targetted civilians. Imagine how you would feel.

Now imagine that a group of people, not necessarily people you support, after putting up with ten years of this, go out and murder a bunch of civilians of the occupying force. Maybe because they are angry, maybe because they are insane for Jesus, or maybe because they think it will help them in the war for independence, it doesn't matter. Imagine they do this, and then the rest of the world condemns you for what they did, and your dreams of freedom from brutality are shattered because people from around the world, who don't understand the history behind the conflict, just decry the brutality of one act, without bothering to decry the brutality that caused the act in the first place.

[Tim Partlett]

If indeed a War on Terror truly becomes necessary, two groups will be primarily responsible... Al Qaeda and the Bush Administration. They are ALLIES in their Agendas. They both want this war, while the rest of the world would rather work it out peacefully.

Now that's the most idiotic comment I've seen on this board!

It may be paranoid, but it certainly isn't stupid. It does take a little more background reading to understand than a simple cursory glance, but claiming such a statement to be idiotic exposes your ignorance more than anyone else's. Plenty of luminary thinkers have applied this line of thought to this conflict and many others, including George Orwell and Gore Vidal (http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2002/09_september/10/gore_vidal.shtml). In Orwell's 1984 the government of Oceana started a fake war with one of the other superpowers every four years in order to maintain the work ethic and loyalty of those slaving in the middle classes. Gore Vidal believes that a similar ploy is at work here, and evil Islam has just replaced evil Communism.

(Orwell had a blinding political insight, and works like "Politics and the English Language" (http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm) are as valid now as they were in 1946 when he wrote them.)

[Toddy]

The problem with Todd's strategy of toppling governments and killing leaders is---it's been tried by the Russians, Israelis and now us, and it's not working.

Actually, no. It hasn't been really tried yet. The US started, with the invasion of Afghanistan and major operations such as the attack on Tora Bora (where I strongly believe that they killed Osama bin Laden), but then got distracted and got mired in Iraq. The Russians never went after the training camps in Afghanistan, where the leaders of the Chechen movement were trained, and where they got most of their funding. Nobody's ever gone after the mullahs in Iran. Nobody's ever even made a serious high-level attempt to root out the Islamists funding these groups with government cash in Saudi Arabia.

You don't go after the leaders, you're going to fail. I'm not advocating killing every little Abu Jihad out there -- though I'm not against the idea -- as that would only lead to failure. But if you combine those sorts of killings with, as I said, serious government pressure and the threat of immediate military action if another plot or bomb or shooting can be traced to a training camp in whatever country, you will see results.

The main problem? Western governments are fighting one another when they need to present a united front against terror. You get 20 or so of the richest nations on Earth putting incessant economic and military pressure on the countries that export this madness and people will soon come to realize that they can't sustain these groups any longer without losing their money, their lives, or their freedom.

Terrorist attacks are cheap and simple to organize. That's why people turn to them when they have lost militarily; a military is expensive and complex to organize. Terrorism comes from the grass roots. Automatic rifles are about the cheapest durable good available anywhere, and that's really all you need to mount an attack like the one in Russia.

Except they're not. This operation in Russia took lots of money, lots of training, and lots of organization. It's at least a million-dollar deal. Each of these terrorists had to be trained and equipped, not to mention indoctrinated in Islamist hate. These guys apparently waged gun battles with Spetsnaz commandos for 10 hours, by the way. So I think any assumption that this was just a gang of nuts who decided to round up some guns and take over a school one afternoon is way, way off base. And then you've got the weapon smuggling, the way that the terrorists apparently either bribed people working on school renovations or worked on those renovations themselves, as weapons were hidden under the floorboards in part of the school, and the knowledge of explosives.

Any way you look at it, this was a serious international operation, coordinated with lots of money and training.

The WMD we really have to worry about is not an A-bomb in the hands of a rogue state; it's a box cutter or an automatic rifle or an improvised explosicive in the hands of a suicidal extremist. Those are the weapons that will put the most people at risk, and it doesn't take any great level of organization to get them.

Even if I did agree with that -- I don't, because Islamists are desperately trying to secure weapons that, if used, will make 9/11 seem like a day in the park -- do you really think that major terrorist operations are conducted with a few bucks and some exacto knives? 9/11 cost at least $250K, that's been tracked, and you can expect at least another 200K was spent on training and other costs. Same with Beslan. I can't even begin to estimate the amount of cash spent on that operation, but with almost 20 heavily armed, well-trained terrorists in on it, you can bet that the siege wasn't done on the cheap.

Suicidal terrorist Islamism is a meme that had managed to deeply entrench itself throughout the Muslim world, starting from roots in Afghanistan and Lebanon. Raising the level of violence just reinforces the meme. Osam bin Laden knows this, which is why he is so intent on staging provocations designed to evoke military response. He isn't afraid of a military response, he desires it to further his vision of jihad. Bush's invasion of Iraq, widely seen as an aggressive grab for the control of the resources of an Islamic nation, played perfectly into Bin Laden's hands, and to this extent Bush and bin Laden are allies. They both want the war in Iraq to be seen as part of a larger struggle.

Actually, returning violence for violence is the only way to stand up to Islamism. It's just that we have to be smarter and more aggressive. And I don't think that bin Laden wanted military intervention at all. It's fairly well documented that both he and the other al Qaeda leaders thought that the US was a paper tiger. bin Laden has, however, made Bush's dumb invasion of Iraq work very well for al Qaeda. I think the big focus of al Qaeda is, and has always been, economic. The leaders want to weaken the US and the West so much, foment so much internal unrest and paranoia, that economies start to falter. At that point, ventures like the one into Iraq will be too expensive to mount. And then Osama and the boys can create that new caliphate without interference from the West.

I can't believe that we are trying to keep ourselves safe from Islamic terrorismm without attempting to deal seriously with either Afghanistan or the Palestinian problem. We are spending a small fraction of what we spend on Iraq on Afghanistan, even though it has a greater population. If we spent a third of what we spent on the Iraq invasion on solving the Palestinian problem, it would probably be a much safer world right now.

What's happening with the Palestinians has damn near nothing to do with internation Islamist terror. The terror groups operating in Israel and the territories have only slim links with those operating on the outside. The Arab world, by and large, has never given a fuck for the Palestinians, which is why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has remained remarkably self-contained so far.

Afghanistan has always been the key. This whole mess got started because of the Soviet invasion, and the CIA's decision to fight the Cold War there by directly and indirectly (via Pakistan's ISI and the Saudi intelligence serives) funding mujahedin. Of course, these problems could still have been avoided if the CIA had backed Massoud and gotten the goddamn ISI to back off supporting wackos like Hekmatyar (at first) and the Taliban (later on). Bush the Elder and Clinton really screwed things up in Afghanistan by not bringing about a proper end to the chaos that they had helped stir up by funding the mujahedin.

[hermyhermit]

If indeed a War on Terror truly becomes necessary, two groups will be primarily responsible... Al Qaeda and the Bush Administration. They are ALLIES in their Agendas. They both want this war, while the rest of the world would rather work it out peacefully.

Now that's the most idiotic comment I've seen on this board!

Not the MOST idiotic - the "genocide is the only answer" comments take that award - but it's still pretty fucking idiotic.


I don't think anyone is condoning genocide Mr. Hyperbole. I believe many people here simply see the intractable difference in culture that is modern 20th century Western ideals and backwards ass 6th century Islam.
Do you know of another modern religion that has such current violent trends based around religious fanaticism with the exception of the ongoing conflict between the IRA and Britain? Please, if you do, share with me as I'm one of those idiotic types you mentioned....

The problem is, with over a billion Muslims worldwide, a nice chunk of which really don't want to speak out much about this behavior or ferret these people out, it makes it rather difficult to deal with this situation.

Just because you think peace is an option, does not mean it is Mr. Pacifist. I sometimes wish the sky would turn a nice hue of greenish instead of blue, it hasn't happened yet though. I'm still hoping hard however...

Neville Chamberlain gave a really nice speech about how the world should have strived for "peace in our time". And if we simply understand people and give them the things they want, they can, you know, co-exist or something... You can read it here: All we are saying, is give peace a chance (http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/ralph/workbook/ralprs36.htm)

Unfortunately, sometimes, things don't work out (http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/ww2time.htm) as much as you'd like them to peace boy.

You think anyone wants war jackass? Sometimes ideologies are simply so different or radical that war is hoisted upon you whether you like it or not. How you react simply determines the victor. I know your liberal brain has difficulties with this concept, and history is indeed written by the victors and always has been, and always will be. You simply sometimes need to determine if its going to be written in English or Kraut ( I mean German ), or Arabic or English, or... you get the idea, right?

Your simpleton friend,

hh

p.s. McCullough you are super sexy when you talk all big and tough like that. Seriously...

[Tim Partlett]

Do you know of another modern religion that has such current violent trends based around religious fanaticism with the exception of the ongoing conflict between the IRA and Britain? Please, if you do, share with me as I'm one of those idiotic types you mentioned....

Hinduism. The Hindu Tamil Tigers practically invented the modern suicide bomber in their two decade long war against the predominantly Buddhist nation of Sri Lanka. The Tamils have used around 200 suicide bombers, and about 60,000 people have been killed in the conflict, and their speciality, the jacket bomb, has been copied by groups like Hamas and Hezbolllah. Nobody comes close to the Tamil tigers for suicide attacks, they are the inventors, the masters of the art, and the most prolific of all terrorist organisations.

Hindu nationalism, a form of fundamentalism, has also been on the rise in India for some years, and is believed responsible for fueling the religious hatred that led to the massacre of thousands of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. After a cross-border terrorist attack from Pakistani militants, Hindus in Gujarat went on a bloody rampage, killing thousands. Hundreds of women were raped in the streets, before being mutilated and burned. Hundreds of thousands more were displaced because of the violence, and are unable to return, forced to live in absolute poverty. There is also evidence of police complicity in the massacre, and not a single person has been convincted in the two years since it happened.

We can conveniently forget Northern Ireland, not because it shouldn't be considered, but because it has gone very quiet over the last decade, mostly because of a British change of strategy, from one of killing every terrorist, to one of concilliation. The terrorists have now turned into politicians, and instead of fighting the terrorists, the British government has been fighting the causes of terrorism in the region, which has been the imbalance of power between the Catholics and the Protestants. A feeling of wealth and inclusion has succeeded where decades of brutal clamp downs failed to do anything but make the terrorism worse. A lesson for everyone.

It's not like Christians are averse to brutal terrorism, it's just that much of the Christian world is far better off than Hindus and Muslims. We only have to look at some of the poorer Christian countries to see the kind of brutality they can accomplish. Rwanda, for example, is a Christian country which has seen the worst violence of any nation since the Holocaust, another brutal murder perpetrated by Christians. In Rwanda even the priests themselves have been found guilty of joining in the butchery. One mustn't forget Christian Columbia, either, which despite the internal aspect of its terrorism is just as brutal as anything a Muslim can produce. The last time I checked there were more Columbians on Interpol's terrorist wanted list than any Saudis, Iranians, Tunisians, or Syrians.

There is a connection between the people involved in the brutalities I mentioned, but it isn't religion. I wonder if you can work it out.

[hermyhermit]

Rwanda, for example, is a Christian country which has seen the worst violence of any nation since the Holocaust, another brutal murder perpetrated by Christians. In Rwanda even the priests themselves have been found guilty of joining in the butchery.

Ethnic cleansing though in this case, just like in the Sudan as well recently. Bosnia before that. Germany with a little religious twist thrown in for good measure during WW2, etc. etc. Let us be clear about the difference here. I'm certainly not suggesting that atrocities aren't committed in the name of <insert cause here> but my point was that nothing quite competes on the scale of Islam.

Sure, there is religious unrest in the disputed regions between Pakistan and India. We know some serious violence has been spawned there, and that was a good catch for an example, but you do see it pales in comparison to the Islamic attacks of the last 20 years in both scale and body count, right?

This will grow, because Islam is growing, so the segment that is willing to go to these lengths will grow as well unless there is a fundamental shift in ideology. The IRA are the exception to Christianity in modern times not the rule. They are universally shunned in a way that, quite frankly, Islam has not not shunned their more radical elements. There is a quiet acceptance of these tactics. Yes Christianity has the wealth and the power as you mentioned, and in doing that, you precisely reinforce my point nicely. Those are what wars are fought over, religion is the convenient backdrop in this case. Ethnicity in the past. Territory. Whatever. But wealth and power drive the train of humanity forward and sometimes in spectacular and terrible fashion when the ideologies clash very strongly. If I speak lies, please correct me.

[Tim Partlett]

Sure, there is religious unrest in the disputed regions between Pakistan and India. We know some serious violence has been spawned there, and that was a good catch for an example, but you do see it pales in comparison to the Islamic attacks of the last 20 years in both scale and body count, right?

Most of the Islamic actions have been localised affairs, based on local disputes, much like the Tamils and the Tutsis. Few of them even compare in terms of scale and body count to either of those conflicts, and even as a whole would unlikely to come close. When it comes to internationalised terror, the comparison is even weaker. Al Qaeda are one of the few groups who have successfully been able to export their battle outside of the region, but even their attacks have been small change compared to the attacks carried out by Hindus against Muslims or other ethnic and religious groups.

The chances of me dying to a terrorist attack are close to zero. Comparing lightning strikes to death by terrorism, you are more likely to be struck by lightning in the US than die in a terrorist attack, and that's even taking into account the unusual ferocity of the 9/11 attack. It doesn't stop people being scared witless by the idea, and I must admit to being unable to prevent myself from suffering similar paranoia when jetting about, but one should at least be able to put things into perspective when rationalising the actualities of modern life. Sure we need to be vigilant, as some nuts would love to go one better than 9/11, but we need to keep our emotions reigned in, or Christians may well be responsible for the next act of callous brutality, like they were only 50 years ago.

[antlers]

Terrorist attacks are cheap and simple to organize. That's why people turn to them when they have lost militarily; a military is expensive and complex to organize. Terrorism comes from the grass roots. Automatic rifles are about the cheapest durable good available anywhere, and that's really all you need to mount an attack like the one in Russia.

Except they're not. This operation in Russia took lots of money, lots of training, and lots of organization. It's at least a million-dollar deal.


Nope. As you admit below, 9/11 came in at under $1 million, and this was probably a good deal cheaper. Cheaper part of the world to work in, no plane travel, probably came together much more quickly. Probably all the Russian terrorist attacks in the last 2 weeks together cost less than 9/11.


Each of these terrorists had to be trained and equipped, not to mention indoctrinated in Islamist hate. These guys apparently waged gun battles with Spetsnaz commandos for 10 hours, by the way. So I think any assumption that this was just a gang of nuts who decided to round up some guns and take over a school one afternoon is way, way off base. And then you've got the weapon smuggling, the way that the terrorists apparently either bribed people working on school renovations or worked on those renovations themselves, as weapons were hidden under the floorboards in part of the school, and the knowledge of explosives.


The problem with having a long-running insurgency is that you somehow end up with a steady stream of motivated fighters. The ones who survive tend to be highly-trained and effective, because the ineffective ones die quickly. The Russian commandos probably would have been much more effective had the assault been planned; instead it was the result of a botch on one side or the other. Knowledge of explosives is cheaply acquired via the internet if not otherwise. None of this demands a wide-ranging international conspiracy.


9/11 cost at least $250K, that's been tracked, and you can expect at least another 200K was spent on training and other costs. Same with Beslan. I can't even begin to estimate the amount of cash spent on that operation, but with almost 20 heavily armed, well-trained terrorists in on it, you can bet that the siege wasn't done on the cheap.


If 9/11 cost <$500,000, I doubt that Beslan cost more than $200,000. It was just a few miles from a war zone, after all. If there were foreign fighters there, it might have raised the price somewhat. Not cheap, but pocket change compared to say, a Hollywood film or a large drug shipment. Stopping cash flows at that level is incredibly difficult.


Actually, returning violence for violence is the only way to stand up to Islamism. It's just that we have to be smarter and more aggressive. And I don't think that bin Laden wanted military intervention at all. It's fairly well documented that both he and the other al Qaeda leaders thought that the US was a paper tiger.


In fact, it's been fairly well-documented that he expected a military response, he just also expected that the Muslim peoples of the world would rise up to defend him. I think his world view is really as simplistic as that.


I can't believe that we are trying to keep ourselves safe from Islamic terrorism without attempting to deal seriously with either Afghanistan or the Palestinian problem. We are spending a small fraction of what we spend on Iraq on Afghanistan, even though it has a greater population. If we spent a third of what we spent on the Iraq invasion on solving the Palestinian problem, it would probably be a much safer world right now.

What's happening with the Palestinians has damn near nothing to do with internation Islamist terror. The terror groups operating in Israel and the territories have only slim links with those operating on the outside. The Arab world, by and large, has never given a fuck for the Palestinians, which is why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has remained remarkably self-contained so far.


On the contrary, the plight of the Palestinians is central to anti-Western and particularly anti-US propaganda throughout the Arab world, as well as to Islamist criticism of the corruption of existing Arab governments. It is key to bin Laden's claim to legitimacy as he tries to appeal to a broad segment of disaffected Muslims.


Afghanistan has always been the key. This whole mess got started because of the Soviet invasion, and the CIA's decision to fight the Cold War there by directly and indirectly (via Pakistan's ISI and the Saudi intelligence serives) funding mujahedin. Of course, these problems could still have been avoided if the CIA had backed Massoud and gotten the goddamn ISI to back off supporting wackos like Hekmatyar (at first) and the Taliban (later on). Bush the Elder and Clinton really screwed things up in Afghanistan by not bringing about a proper end to the chaos that they had helped stir up by funding the mujahedin.

This is correct, though I would add that plenty of mujaheddin funding went on during the reign of St. Reagan, as well.

[Brian Koontz]

Just because you think peace is an option, does not mean it is Mr. Pacifist. I sometimes wish the sky would turn a nice hue of greenish instead of blue, it hasn't happened yet though. I'm still hoping hard however...

Fuck peace. Its about understanding and acceptance (what you might call tolerance). You know, one of the things America is FOUNDED ON. The mere concept of a "Holy War" is absurd considering the roots of Americans in escaping from religious persecution. A Holy War will destroy the meaning of America regardless of the outcome.

A close dialogue, a coming together of the West and Islam has to occur. As long as both sides are honest with each other, I could care less whether they eventually come to an understanding or undertake an all out war. Right now there has been no determination made about compatibilities, finding global solutions for the two cultures, even trying to *appreciate* each other. Right now Al Qaeda and the Bush Administration, two war-mad dictatorships, are setting the agenda. That MUST stop. There must be a sincere attempt at mutual understanding and appreciation. War always remains the final option. But don't undertake Stupid Option #1 and Stupid Option #2 and then throw up your hands and call for war. Only when following correct early options will the possible subsequent war be a just one.

This is my preferred plan. Assuming a good communicative project is pursued, THEN you can call States that harbor terrorists to task, because they are acting AGAINST the plan of understanding and appreciation! Without such an Agenda, how can you attack the motives of the terrorist states? If I was the leader of a Muslim nation with Bush leading the US, I'd promote terrorism too! But if I felt my voice was being heard, that the West for a change was taking me *seriously*, I would call off the dogs.

Terrorism, like any other act of war, can be stopped with diplomacy. Or better than diplomacy, a longer-lasting effect... understanding.

If the United States effectively pursues my plan, and Muslim nations and terrorists ignore it or shun it and continue to demand blood, I will delight in dancing on the corpses of anti-American terrorists.

Will the United States be a Just State? That's my question of the day.

[Anti-Bunny]

I'm really excited to hear what Russia's next retaliation will be. Chechyan has already been bombed to the stone-age, maybe they could bomb them back even farther.

[Toddy]

Hinduism. The Hindu Tamil Tigers practically invented the modern suicide bomber in their two decade long war against the predominantly Buddhist nation of Sri Lanka. The Tamils have used around 200 suicide bombers, and about 60,000 people have been killed in the conflict, and their speciality, the jacket bomb, has been copied by groups like Hamas and Hezbolllah. Nobody comes close to the Tamil tigers for suicide attacks, they are the inventors, the masters of the art, and the most prolific of all terrorist organisations.

Er, most prolific? On what planet? The Tamil Tigers are/were a strictly regional phenomenon. You could compare them to Hamas, or one of the other Palestinian militias, but there are no comparisons between the Tigers and international Islamist terror. The scope and aims are completely different. Also, the Tigers are more of a political and racial entity, not a religious one. The only real similarlity is that each has operatives that blow themselves up for the cause.

Hindu nationalism, a form of fundamentalism, has also been on the rise in India for some years, and is believed responsible for fueling the religious hatred that led to the massacre of thousands of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002.

Again, this is regional stuff where religions and borders collide. There is no comparison to what's happening with Islamist. Nobody is trying to export Hindu terror to the US or other Western countries. Hindus aren't desperately trying to get a nuke and smuggle it into New York. These people are just merrily slaughtering each other in their own backyards. Which is too bad, but not something that threatens global peace, and not something too many people here are gonna lose sleep over because some group of people is always going to want to kill another group of people. Also, let's not forget that the Hindus are fighting Muslims, and that this is a tit of tat thing. For every massacre of Muslims by Hindus, I'm sure I could counter with a massacre of Hindus by Muslims.

It's not like Christians are averse to brutal terrorism, it's just that much of the Christian world is far better off than Hindus and Muslims. We only have to look at some of the poorer Christian countries to see the kind of brutality they can accomplish. Rwanda, for example, is a Christian country which has seen the worst violence of any nation since the Holocaust, another brutal murder perpetrated by Christians. In Rwanda even the priests themselves have been found guilty of joining in the butchery. One mustn't forget Christian Columbia, either, which despite the internal aspect of its terrorism is just as brutal as anything a Muslim can produce. The last time I checked there were more Columbians on Interpol's terrorist wanted list than any Saudis, Iranians, Tunisians, or Syrians.

Yes, Tim, these are horrible atrocities, all worthy of note -- though I notice that you somehow skip the biggest genocide currently taking place on the planet, in Sudan (although surely that can't be because Arab Muslims are the ones happily slaughtering blacks and Christians!). But you're comparing apples and oranges. For starters, these are regional conflicts. They are also more racial than religious. The Rwandan nightmare was about tribal affiliations, not Christianity. Same sort of deal with Columbia.

All you're saying here is that people of all religions can be bastards. Well, no shit, Sherlock. But Islamists are still the only ones exporting terror. The only ones killing solely for religious reasons. The only ones who want to incinerate entire Western cities because of our infidel ways and because we don't believe that Jews are the source of all evil in the world.

And the only ones sick enough to seize a school full of kids with the express purpose of blowing it to bits. Find me a non-Islamic comparison to this, Tim.

There is a connection between the people involved in the brutalities I mentioned, but it isn't religion. I wonder if you can work it out.

Yes, we can figure it out, o condescending one. But you're forgetting that poverty isn't the causal factor here. That's been demonstrated over and over again. All of the leaders of al Qaeda, all of the 9.11 hijackers, and, well, just about everyone else affiliated with Islamist terror comes from either upper middle class or upper class backgrounds. Many are millionaires. And a lot of the funding for these groups comes from some of the wealthiest sheikhs in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

Poverty is an aid, especially when recruiting disaffected people to throw their lives away to blow up Israeli bus riders, but it isn't the prime reason. Islam is. If poverty created terrorism, every poor region on the planet would be stocked with terrorists. Yet they're not. If this were really the case, Christian fundy terror groups in the poor, rural South would be blowing up an abortion clinic every couple of days.

I know you want to blame everything on the evil Christian white man, Tim, but you've gotta do better than this. Do you also believe that Mossad staged 9/11 and that the Russians actually killed all those kids the other day to make Islam look bad?

[Toddy]

Nope. As you admit below, 9/11 came in at under $1 million, and this was probably a good deal cheaper. Cheaper part of the world to work in, no plane travel, probably came together much more quickly. Probably all the Russian terrorist attacks in the last 2 weeks together cost less than 9/11.

Er, a million bucks isn't cheap. Especially in that part of the world. Ever travelled there? Let me tell you, 20 pissed-off poor guys aren't raising the hundreds of thousands of bucks needed for an attack like this on their own.

And then there's the training and logisitics needed to plan out such an operation. This took a lot of planning. These guys took on Russian Spetsnaz commandos and fought them openly for something like 10 hours. You really think that a bunch of skids trained on the cheap were able to do that?

The Russian commandos probably would have been much more effective had the assault been planned; instead it was the result of a botch on one side or the other. Knowledge of explosives is cheaply acquired via the internet if not otherwise. None of this demands a wide-ranging international conspiracy.

What!? Do you think the Beslan school bombers just put the whole thing together on a Saturday evening while chatting on ICQ and browsing Suicide Bombing For Dummies websites? And are you really saying that there is no international Islamist movement behind these attacks?

[quote=antlers]In fact, it's been fairly well-documented that he expected a military response, he just also expected that the Muslim peoples of the world would rise up to defend him. I think his world view is really as simplistic as that.

You're wrong. bin Laden and Zawahiri didn't expect massive US retaliation like what happened in Afghanistan. And I certainly don't believe bin Laden set this up so the US would invade Iraq. On the contrary, he was hoping to both tangle the US up in certain areas of the world and get the US to retreat in others. The aim has ALWAYS been economc. Ever wonder why the WTC was the top target of the Islamists from the early 1990s on? If this was a political thing, why didn't they make the White House the main target? Or even the Capitol?

And bin Laden isn't that stupid or simple.

On the contrary, the plight of the Palestinians is central to anti-Western and particularly anti-US propaganda throughout the Arab world, as well as to Islamist criticism of the corruption of existing Arab governments. It is key to bin Laden's claim to legitimacy as he tries to appeal to a broad segment of disaffected Muslims.

Propaganda, yes. But in actuality, the Palestinians are the shit on bin Laden's sandals. Neither he nor the rest of the al Qaeda leadership could give a fuck about the Palestinians. Yes, they hate the Jews. But a far bigger motivating factor is the US presence in Saudi during and after the Gulf War (this is what caused bin Laden to leave Saudi for good), and the US propping up the Egyptian government (al Qaeda, or more accurately, the groups that work under the al Qaeda umbrela, is an Egyptian moverment at its core).

This is correct, though I would add that plenty of mujaheddin funding went on during the reign of St. Reagan, as well.

I didn't say that the funding was a problem, nor did I say that Bush Sr. and Clinton funded the mujaheddin. They didn't. Bill Casey really got things rolling under Reagan, after Zbigniew Brzezinski got things started under Carter. The problem is that the US with its treacherous allies in the ISI and Saudi intelligence were funding really radical Islamist groups that not only wanted to get rid of the Soviets, they wanted to establish a hardline Islamic state. The US never quire realized how anti-American these groups were. Then the US pretty much walked away from Afghanistan the moment that the Soviets pulled out, and never reengaged until after 9/11.

[Toddy]

Sure we need to be vigilant, as some nuts would love to go one better than 9/11, but we need to keep our emotions reigned in, or Christians may well be responsible for the next act of callous brutality, like they were only 50 years ago.

I just caught this. So, Tim, you're one of the revisionist loons who blames the US for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki? You should have just said that up front. That way I would have known better than to try and hold a logical discussion with you.

[Anders Hallin]

Off topic, but an in mind hilarious quote reportedly said by an American soldier a few days after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the world was made aware of the power of the atom bomb, as written by Ernst Jünger in his diary:
"Good thing Hitler didn't learn of this weapon - he would have used it!"

[Zarathustra]

A close dialogue, a coming together of the West and Islam has to occur. As long as both sides are honest with each other, I could care less whether they eventually come to an understanding or undertake an all out war.
Lol! I mean, really.... :lol: ... stop, it hurts to laugh this much! People willing to shoot pre-schoolers in the back in Russia or slice the throat of a 26 year flight attendant with a box cutter... yeah, they just need to be honest... :lol:



Terrorism, like any other act of war, can be stopped with diplomacy. Or better than diplomacy, a longer-lasting effect... understanding.
Son, terrorism is not like any other act of war. Terrorism is the the extreme of war, and it cannot be averted by "understanding". The only way terrorists can be appeased is by giving in to their demands, and then they will assume this method works and will use it the next time they want something. These guys aren't labor workers on strike, man, they are killers.




If the United States effectively pursues my plan, and Muslim nations and terrorists ignore it or shun it and continue to demand blood, I will delight in dancing on the corpses of anti-American terrorists.


Oh, so you agree with us on the end solution, you just want another level of diplomacy first??

[quatoria]

I don't think anyone is condoning genocide Mr. Hyperbole.

How about using a Mutual Assured Destruction policy against Islamic extremists? We all know they willingly will sacrifice themselves as martyrs, but we also know they revere their "holy sites" and shrines and their land and family. So the civilized countries announce a new MAD policy to the world: any attacks by Islamic terrorists against the US/Europe/Russia/Australia will be repaid with one thermonuclear explosion over Mecca, Medina, etc.

We fight for our homeland! Homeland? What homeland? All I see is glazed sand.

Simply put? You wipe them off the face of the Earth. We are facing a completely incompatible philosophy. The Fascism of our age. Sad but true, it's back to ideologies and we have to win to keep our way of life.

You're right, how could I have made such a mistake? Clearly nobody is advocating the wide-scale massacre of millions of people who have committed no crime but belonging to an ethnicity or a religion that has members who have attacked us. No, I'm sorry, you're right. They weren't advocating genocide, because I'm sure a few thousand of them would be left, so it's no big deal, right? Clearly, detonating a nuclear weapon in a random islamic country in order to kill Arabs or Muslims and, of course, hundreds of thousands of their children, because this different group of Arabs or Muslims attacked us is entirely sensible. It's certainly entirely different from killing Russian children because Russian soldiers invaded our country.

You're a goddamned idiot. You, and Zarathustra, and anyone else who thinks the way to deal with murdering criminal scum who slaughter people in the name of revenge is to become even BIGGER murdering criminal scum, slaughtering even MORE people in the name of revenge.

[Ben]

quatoria- Yeah, quat, violence never solved anything. Just because it's true on the schoolyard doesn't mean it's true in the real world.

Tim- This is a callback, but my understanding was that Germans started strategic bombing and the British responded. Maybe my timeline is screwed up.

[Tim Partlett]

Er, most prolific? On what planet? The Tamil Tigers are/were a strictly regional phenomenon. You could compare them to Hamas, or one of the other Palestinian militias, but there are no comparisons between the Tigers and international Islamist terror. The scope and aims are completely different. Also, the Tigers are more of a political and racial entity, not a religious one. The only real similarlity is that each has operatives that blow themselves up for the cause.

Taking time to consider and comprehend what the other person is writing is not only the minimum amount of respect due someone that you reply to, it also helps to prevent you from looking ignorant. I didn't say that the Tamil Tigers were the most prolific terrorists on the planet, although with 60,000 dead from that particular conflict they rank as one of the most significant in history. What I actually said, and this all formed part of one sentence, is that the Tamil Tigers were the most prolific suicide bombers. With 200 suicide bomb attacks in the last 20 years no other terrorist organisation comes close.

From your differentiations between groups, it seems that the only terrorists you are concerned about are those that threaten you personally, rather than those that engage in terrorism. While that is completely understandable, it is a very narrow focus and completely worthless in the context of the discussion we are having. When trying to confirm the claim that Islam is a vector for violence unlike any other religion, it doesn't matter at all whether the violence is exported over great distances, or only internally, as long as the religious culture itself is capable of perpetrating violence. Hermy asked for examples of religious based violence committed recently, and I gave him that. Narrowing the focus down to only those that have committed acts of international terrorism against American, or Western, targets, is creating an artificial focus only as a means to justify your position.

Yes, Tim, these are horrible atrocities, all worthy of note -- though I notice that you somehow skip the biggest genocide currently taking place on the planet, in Sudan (although surely that can't be because Arab Muslims are the ones happily slaughtering blacks and Christians!). But you're comparing apples and oranges. For starters, these are regional conflicts. They are also more racial than religious. The Rwandan nightmare was about tribal affiliations, not Christianity. Same sort of deal with Columbia.

First of all, Hermy asked me to produce examples of non-Muslim violence. Excluding examples of muslim violence wasn't a gambit designed to prentend that such violence doesn't exist, because I love muslims and terrorists, but because they wouldn't have formed part of a correct answer. If someone had asked me to give examples of non-American cars, your response is akin to calling me anti-American when I only listed European and Japanese cars, as if American cars didn't exist. Again, it helps to use comprehension beyond the immediate sentence you are reading. Secondly, the current situation in Darfur is not Muslim against Christian, but Muslim against Muslim. It is a racial and sectarian conflict, not one based on creed. The blacks of Darfur are Sufi Muslims.

All you're saying here is that people of all religions can be bastards. Well, no shit, Sherlock. But Islamists are still the only ones exporting terror. The only ones killing solely for religious reasons. The only ones who want to incinerate entire Western cities because of our infidel ways and because we don't believe that Jews are the source of all evil in the world.

And the only ones sick enough to seize a school full of kids with the express purpose of blowing it to bits. Find me a non-Islamic comparison to this, Tim.

Muslims terrorist organisations, even Al Qaeda, are more complex than this nonsense you are presenting. But even if it is true, it doesn't make Islam evil, any more than terrorists fighting for Socialist causes, like FARC, make Socialists evil, or those fighting for Right-Wing causes make right-wingers evil. If you want to simply argue that Islamic terrorists are the only ones targetting your country right at this moment, and that gives you cause for concern, more than the likes of FARC and the Tamil Tigers, I can understand that, but don't try to argue that Islam or Muslims are somehow unique in their propensity for violence.

And plenty of terrorists, of all religions, are sick enough to kill children. The Columbian terrorists FARC are reknowned for using children in their terrorist attacks, like when they gave a child a bicycle and 35c to ride it past a police station, where they promptly blew up the bike and the child (http://usembassy.state.gov/bogota/wwwste11.shtml). Then their was your very own Timothy McVeigh, who planted a bomb under a day-care centre, and killed every one of the children in it, plus more elsewhere in the building. These are just examples from the top of my head, but show quite clearly that killing children is hardly unique to Islam.

Yes, we can figure it out, o condescending one. But you're forgetting that poverty isn't the causal factor here. That's been demonstrated over and over again. All of the leaders of al Qaeda, all of the 9.11 hijackers, and, well, just about everyone else affiliated with Islamist terror comes from either upper middle class or upper class backgrounds. Many are millionaires. And a lot of the funding for these groups comes from some of the wealthiest sheikhs in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

Again, if you'd spent time comprehending my reply before angrily responding, you would have seen that I mentioned more than one causal factor: poverty and ineqity. Even that is oversimplifying it, but not so much as saying that the cause is simply Islam. If that were the case, then every Muslim in every country would be a potential terrorist, and yet this is patently untrue, likewise if it were simply poverty. It is strange that you can accept one one-dimensional answer as being obviously bizarre, but not the other. Even a binary description of the causes is over-simplifying matters, but it does give a broader picture than simply blaming "poverty" or "Islam".

Power inequity is probably the greater of the two causes, it's just that poverty tends to exacerbate the situation. If you are without power to control your destiny, and watching others control it instead, it doesn't feel quite so bad if you have everything that you need to live a comfortable life. The people of Northern Ireland weren't exactly poverty stricken, although hardly wealthy either, the problem there was that one group of people, the Protestants, had a far greater share of the power than the other group, the Catholics. Now that situation has been addressed to a certain degree, most people have given up supporting violence to solve a situation that is no longer drastic.

Of course you do get wealthy young idealists joining up for terrorist causes, but these are usually the exception rather than the norm. The 9/11 bombers were unusual in being from wealthier families, and you will find that previous to this suicide bombers were almost universally desperate, young, men without futures, or, in the case of Chechens, young, desperate, futureless women - wives of men killed by the Russians. Idealists, however, need a cause, and that cause is almost always the inequity suffered by their brethren. The Spanish terrorists ETA, for example, are reknowned for being made up of students and intellectuals, but they believe they are fighting for the common good of the Basque people.

It's difficult to organise a group of people without a cause, so solving the problem of terrorism is primarily about removing that cause, not removing the terrorists, as if the cause continues to exist, then more terrorists will simply appear. This doesn't mean that one must let murderers off scott-free, it's just that the solution cannot be one-dimensional, as the cause is not one-dimensional. You deal with the terrorists with justice, and you deal with the causes with compromise. You make deals with the people whose cause the terrorists take up, not with the terrorists themselves. The terrorists might think they are winning that way, but if you also punish the terrorists for their crimes, then a balance can be found.

I know you want to blame everything on the evil Christian white man, Tim, but you've gotta do better than this. Do you also believe that Mossad staged 9/11 and that the Russians actually killed all those kids the other day to make Islam look bad?

This kind of rhetoric is quite pathetic, and very unbecoming of an adult, which I assume you are. If you are a petulant teenager, then let me know, and I will forgive you, before ignoring any more of your tirades. I do not believe Mossad staged 9/11 or that everything is caused by evil Christians. Simply pointing out that "evil Islam" is a one-dimensional fiction is not the same as saying that Jews and Christians are evil instead. I also said nothing about America deliberately targetting civilians with the Hiroshima bombings, but mentioned only Dresden. As far as I am aware, the American military always upheld the claim that in Dresden they were bombing industry, not people, just as they did in Hiroshima. The British, however, made no such claims. The net result, however, is the same, its really just a matter of how squeemish you are, and also how honest. If China was to aim a nuclear bomb on a single tank parked in Los Angeles, destroying the tank, but also vapourising millions of people in the process, you could claim you were targetting your enemy's military, but the result is just the same as if you were targetting the civilians you end up killing anyway.

The point is that even if you as an American won't admit to your country ever targetting civilians, I know that we British most certainly did. I know most Americans are very much opposed to killing civilians, and that is a very good thing, but to pretend that nice Christian people won't stoop to such measures when their very survival is at stake is foolish, and bigoted too. The British bombed German civilian centres because we believed that was our only chance of surving in a war against Hitler. The Germans bombed our civilians in return because they were enraged at us for killing their civilians. These were two "civilized" Christian countries only a generation or two removed from modern society. We really aren't that different to those "backward" Islamic nations.

[Tim Partlett]

Tim- This is a callback, but my understanding was that Germans started strategic bombing and the British responded. Maybe my timeline is screwed up.

Initially the Germans bombed London, but this was accidental and strictly against Hitler's orders. Churchill responded by deliberately bombing the civilian centre of Berlin, so the British were the first to deliberately target civilians. The British were also the first to develop a policy of trying to weaken the morale of the enemy by targetting civilians, rather than the tit-for-tat raids that developed from the first encounter. This policy of strategic bombing was based on Clausewitz doctrine, which I believe was also popular with the American military at the time.

[TrodKnee]

Lol! I mean, really.... :lol: ... stop, it hurts to laugh this much! People willing to shoot pre-schoolers in the back in Russia or slice the throat of a 26 year flight attendant with a box cutter... yeah, they just need to be honest... :lol:
I think you missed a couple LOLs in there moron. Go kill some Muslims, you ignorant blowhard pussy. Go look that cab driver or liquor store owner or whichever hardworking American Muslim who has no intention of ever hurting anyone in the eye and tell them "We can't get along because all those terrorists and stuff" and then pull the trigger. If you don't you are a spineless coward.

I love how the War on Terror has brought so many redneck bigots out of the closet.

[quatoria]

quatoria- Yeah, quat, violence never solved anything. Just because it's true on the schoolyard doesn't mean it's true in the real world.

I'm sorry, what? Who are you responding to? Is there an alternate universe Quatoria here, saying things like "violence never solves anything?" Because anyone with a basic human grasp of literacy can sure as hell tell that I wasn't. Jesus, no wonder Chet is constantly calling you an idiot.

[Daniel Morris]

1.

The 9/11 bombers were unusual in being from wealthier families, and you will find that previous to this suicide bombers were almost universally desperate, young, men without futures..

There may be some confusion here, due to the fact that Mr. Partlett seems unaware of the obvious distinctions between Qaeda's violence and any other kind of Arab/Muslim terror. To equate any West Bank bus bomber with Mohammed Atta is an act of almost willful ignorance. Qaeda's history-changing operatives are a class many times removed from the suicide-vest dead-ender of Hebron.

What I would call the "apocalyptic class" terrorist is an educated man -- he has to be, in order to have acquired the technical skills to wreak Qaeda-style havoc. (All too often, Palestinian bus bombers can't even figure out how to detonate themselves come the event.) Qaeda operatives have traveled extensively, achieved degrees, lived abroad, and speak multiple languages. They have been integrated -- technically, if not existentially -- into the globalized world.

The desperately poor and bitter Hamas conscript can't be listed in the same phylum as an Atta. There is nothing at all "unusual" about the education and affluence of the 9/11 hiajckers. These characteristics are, if anything, Qaeda's defining characteristics.

2.
We can conveniently forget Northern Ireland, not because it shouldn't be considered, but because it has gone very quiet over the last decade, mostly because of a British change of strategy, from one of killing every terrorist, to one of concilliation.

Or we can conveniently forget that the IRA had a real political agenda, as opposed to the modern Islamist apocalypticist for whom the "man-made realm" of politics is contemptible and for whom the notion of conciliation with the West is blasphemy.

When you bring up the political resolution of IRA terror in a conversation about Islamist terror, you beg the question: Where is the Islamist Sinn Fein? Who is Islamism's Gerry Adams? The all-too-obvious answer is that there's no one to negotiate with in the caves beneath Waziristan, nor in any of the back-alley mosques where apocalypticists are plotting strikes against Satan.

3.
..you as an American...
Brett Todd is actually Canadian -- yet even he can tell the difference between bombing Nagasaki in an effort to bring about the end of a total war between two societies and the moral outrages of Islamist terror.

[Toddy]

Actually, I'm both. Mother was American and half of my family (the half that I'm close to) is in the US, even though I live just across the border in Ontario. So, clearly, this makes me right in all P&R discussions.

[Tim Partlett]

Even he? My my. Your contempt for those who do not share your opinion is almost matched by that for Canadians.

There may be some confusion here, due to the fact that Mr. Partlett seems unaware of the obvious distinctions between Qaeda's violence and any other kind of Arab/Muslim terror. To equate any West Bank bus bomber with Mohammed Atta is an act of almost willful ignorance. Qaeda's history-changing operatives are a class many times removed from the suicide-vest dead-ender of Hebron.

I haven't stated anywhere that there is no difference between Al Qaeda's international brand of terror and the regional version of the likes of Hamas. That would be as stupid as believing that all Al Qaeda operatives are members of the wealthy educated elite. I know it is easier to argue against straw men, but I'm sure you can rise to the challenge of engaging my real points. But really, the level of education is a red herring, as I have already pointed out that intellectuals can engage in acts of terror, under the banner of idealism, and that it has nothing to do with Islam per se. I remember one particularly gifted young man, who organised the bombing of the King David's hotel that killed over a hundred people in Jerusalem. That highly educated man went on to be Prime Minister of Israel and win a nobel peace prize.

Or we can conveniently forget that the IRA had a real political agenda, as opposed to the modern Islamist apocalypticist for whom the "man-made realm" of politics is contemptible and for whom the notion of conciliation with the West is blasphemy.

A real political agenda? I don't know if you ever read the IRA manifesto, but it was not all that dissimilar in its preposterousness to that of Al Qaeda. Their goal was a Gaelic only Ireland, one free of the hundreds of thousands of Protestants that had made it their home for five centuries. There was no way that they could ever achieve this goal politically, so it can hardly be considered "real". I'm also sure that Al Qaeda engage in politics, even if they consider western style politics are beneath them. Just by the very fact of bombing Spain at a politically senstive time shows that they are fully aware of the power of politics, and well prepared to play that game to the full.

But this isn't the issue. It doesn't matter what Al Qaeda think. Their goals could be a moon made of cheese, and it wouldn't make a jot of difference. Al Qaeda, like the IRA, are criminals, and you deal with them like you deal with any other criminal, firmly but fairly. If they murder, you punish them for murder, but there is no point declaring war on them. War is a means of weakening a powerful enemy's military to the point where you are in control, and can dictate terms to the majority. The West is already in this position of control, and Al Qaeda are the weak remnants of the disillusioned who want to continue the fight.

What we need to do is catch Al Qaeda members and punish them, but at the same time root out that which causes Al Qaeda to garner support in the Middle East. If the cause is Imam's preaching hate to the masses, we need to discourage that. If it is because of a lack of democracy, then we need to encourage that. If it is because of a frustration at one sided politics from America, that empowers one group at the expense of another, then we need to look at altering the balance. What is probably the worst possible thing we can do is go in and start smacking muslims about because we think their religion is "evil", as this will only polarise them further.

[Jason McCullough]

I could call everyone who accuses me of supporting the death of children fucking cunts some more, but really, just read Tim's posts; he's doing yeoman's work on the systematic flaws in the "OMFG Islamic terrorists everywhere kill them all" thinking.

[Bub, Andrew]

major operations such as the attack on Tora Bora (where I strongly believe that they killed Osama bin Laden)

I'm not taking sides in the emerging battle in this thread, but this line sort of leapt out at me and I'd like to know what you mean by this Brett. Or, to put it another way: really? Why do you strongly believe that?

[TomChick]

Hear, hear. Thanks for being the voice of reason, Tim. It's pretty funny seeing folks who can't respond to his points resort to simply being snide or emotional.

Anyway, Beslan was a terrible terrible thing that affected me pretty deeply. But I think that's all the more reason to try to understand the whys and wherefores. Tim's doing a great job of putting everything in context.

-Tom

[Ben]

Uh, could we not have cheerleading?
Tim's an intelligent and educated guy, but Morris and Todd aren't coming off like idiots here. Nobody needs to do yeoman's work disproving CindySue style trolling or Zarathustra'a(I can only assume) joke about nuking Mecca.

Nothing that was ever done to the Chechnyans changes anything about what happened at the school, and everything he wrote about that situation was irrelevant. Maybe he was just trying to show off that he read a history book... There's a class of intellectual liberals who delight in cataloguing bad things done by "the good guys." Like the bit about how the British started targetting civilians because the German bombing of civilians that the British were responding to were strictly against Hitler's orders. Were the British supposed to know that? Did he fax them over with the "Don't bomb civilians" part circled?

There is a massive difference between the strategic bombing of civilians as practiced in WW2 and a terrorist attack. In a so-called "total war" killing enemy civilians(or driving them out of cities) has the completely intended effect of hurting industry. The goal is stop Germany from producing, the means is any, and one of those means is kill the producers. Terrorist attacks like Beslan are just focused rage. This wasn't a grand scheme to deprive the Russians of future factory workers so there'd be nobody to build tanks. This was an opportunity to hurt.

Also, Tom and Jason, Tim completely dodged Morris' question about the Islamic counterpart to Sinn Fein, because there isn't one. That's pretty fucking important. Why isn't there one? Why are "western-style politics" beneath them, and what does that even mean? That's a pretty huge point.

[Zarathustra]

How about using a Mutual Assured Destruction policy against Islamic extremists? We all know they willingly will sacrifice themselves as martyrs, but we also know they revere their "holy sites" and shrines and their land and family. So the civilized countries announce a new MAD policy to the world: any attacks by Islamic terrorists against the US/Europe/Russia/Australia will be repaid with one thermonuclear explosion over Mecca, Medina, etc.

We fight for our homeland! Homeland? What homeland? All I see is glazed sand.


You're a goddamned idiot. You, and Zarathustra, and anyone else who thinks the way to deal with murdering criminal scum who slaughter people in the name of revenge is to become even BIGGER murdering criminal scum, slaughtering even MORE people in the name of revenge.


Sure, but be fair: I said retaliate only after the Islamic terroists attack us first. We gave them fair warning. :wink:

[Zarathustra]

Lol! I mean, really.... :lol: ... stop, it hurts to laugh this much! People willing to shoot pre-schoolers in the back in Russia or slice the throat of a 26 year flight attendant with a box cutter... yeah, they just need to be honest... :lol:
I think you missed a couple LOLs in there moron. Go kill some Muslims, you ignorant blowhard pussy. Go look that cab driver or liquor store owner or whichever hardworking American Muslim who has no intention of ever hurting anyone in the eye and tell them "We can't get along because all those terrorists and stuff" and then pull the trigger. If you don't you are a spineless coward.

I love how the War on Terror has brought so many redneck bigots out of the closet.

Oh! Oh! Namecalling, eh? Out of rebuttal already?? :)

.

[Brian Koontz]

A close dialogue, a coming together of the West and Islam has to occur. As long as both sides are honest with each other, I could care less whether they eventually come to an understanding or undertake an all out war.
Lol! I mean, really.... :lol: ... stop, it hurts to laugh this much! People willing to shoot pre-schoolers in the back in Russia or slice the throat of a 26 year flight attendant with a box cutter... yeah, they just need to be honest... :lol:

Yes, that's right. Its not a radical proposition to kill someone... its pretty natural as the history of humans shows. Remove respect for identity or at least an effective method of communication for destruction of identity and the powerful become tyrants. The weak then become desperate. The desperate then use whatever means are at their disposal. That the US doesn't see themselves as tyrannical because they are self-righteously blinded by their love for America and democracy would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

Everyone loves democracy! The world must have democracy! We must GIVE the world democracy! The world must be FREE for democracy! The world must be LIBERATED to receive democracy!

And if anything objects? Well, it is subjugated and democracy is forced upon it. After all, Daddy knows best.

Using Soldiers is the way that the militarily powerful exert themselves. Using Terrorists is the way that the militarily weak exert themselves.

If you require that Soldiers fight Soldiers the more powerful army will always win. This philosophy probably has its merits, but is certainly isn't obvious to me that its best.

A single soldier is nothing, silly '80s movies notwithstanding. A single terrorist however can inflict mass damage. The military power of the individual is what terrorism is all about, philosophically speaking.

So if you want to argue against the position of Terrorism, you need to state why the philosophy of Soldier vs. Soldier is better than the philosophy of Terrorism. This does sound like a real debate... I'm not convinced of either side at the moment. Anyone care to begin?

Since neither philosophy dominates, Terrorists are NOT morally inferior to Powerful State-controlled military agents.

Terrorists are just as capable at mutual understanding and appreciation as any other military group.

Son, terrorism is not like any other act of war. Terrorism is the the extreme of war, and it cannot be averted by "understanding". The only way terrorists can be appeased is by giving in to their demands, and then they will assume this method works and will use it the next time they want something. These guys aren't labor workers on strike, man, they are killers.

Soldiers aren't labor workers on payroll, man, they are killers.

"Use it the next time"? Well, HELLO... don't governments use their ARMIES the "next time" they need them? Of course they'll use the military action of Terrorism the next time! If they can't use armies they'll use terrorism.

Oh my, the United States used its army in World War II. Engage in diplomacy with them, and they'll just use their army again "next time"!

Are you beginning to see what this is all about? Demonizing Terrorism after all is at the heart of this issue.

Guess what, folks, the very people demonizing terrorism are the people who don't understand it. Whenever those who support Soldier vs. Soldier are ready for debate, I'll be here. A Qt3 special... I doubt this debate is occurring anywhere else on the Internet (in conscious format).

[Linoleum]

For my thoughts on the subject, I'll just link to Djerejian (http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/archives/001537.html) who is far more eloquent than I. For the brief, his closing:

You simply can't win the war on terror, long term, without resolving these outstanding conflicts, addressing economic development through the Middle East as well as providing alternatives to radical madrasas and such. At the same time, you need to be extremely robust in terms of cracking down on terror groups and states that symphatize with various terror organizations (as Putin put it plainly, "the weak are beaten"). It's not easy to do all this simultaneously--but we must. This is the challenge of our era. While terror has been with us for milennia--it has never had the chance to reap maximalist damage of the sort now possible via chemical or nuclear weaponry. So, no, we will not endlessly prattle on about 'root causes' and shy away from combatting international terror groups and states. But nor can we mount this campaign divorced from the realities on the ground that so often create the conditions that allow for terrorism to thrive (national humiliation, stagnant economies, corrupt authoritarian regimes, longstanding territorial conflicts).

I suspect in this, posters such as Tim and myself may find consensus, even if we differ in thoughts on the most productive methods of dealing with 'the big picture'.

Where I think I disagree is in the specific aspect of combating terrorist groups. I do view the issue as warfare versus combating traditional crime. Perhaps you can draw analogies with fighting organized crime syndicates, but even then the concepts of persistence, objectives, intelligence gathering and the nature of having an organization bring the militaristic into it. At times I find the delivery of a Hellfire on a particular car from a UAV as essential a step as shutting down international money channels for financing.

[John Many Jars]

Speaking of the Chechen school siege, the Christian Science Monitor (www.csmonitor.com/2004/0907/p01s02-woeu.html) has an excellent article up providing details, background, and some opinions from Russians well acquainted with the conflict about Chechen relationships with Al Qaeda and with radical Islam in general.

[TomChick]

Nothing that was ever done to the Chechnyans changes anything about what happened at the school, and everything he wrote about that situation was irrelevant.

Ben, this is absolutely idiotic. Beslan did not simply happen ex nihilo, magically conjured up from a political vaccum. It's the latest move in a game of one-upsmanship that has consumed Chechnya and is now having an indelible effect on Russia.

It seems to me that's the point of Tim's posts, which are an important counterpoint to Brett shrieking about Islam and Dan chiming in with some ellipitcal observation about something-or-other he noted that's neither here-nor-there. Not to mention crap like hermyhermit's knee flailing wildly.

I'm not cheerleading. I'm just glad someone has the endurance to keep at it when the noise-signal ratio gets so high. Because, frankly, I'd rather be playing Phantom Brave.

-Tom

[Toddy]

major operations such as the attack on Tora Bora (where I strongly believe that they killed Osama bin Laden)

I'm not taking sides in the emerging battle in this thread, but this line sort of leapt out at me and I'd like to know what you mean by this Brett. Or, to put it another way: really? Why do you strongly believe that?

Because after that, bin Laden pretty much vanished. The videos stopped completely, and the audio tapes just don't sound like him. Those speeches don't even sound like his rhetoric. And we've also seen Zawahiri becoming more and more of the public face of al Qaeda's leadership.

[Ben]

So Tim was breaking news? I assume people tech-savvy enough to click a link to a major news site probably are capable of clicking other links, and the mainline articles about this generally mention that this wasn't an isolated incident.

The litany of how awful Russia has been to the Chechens was simply Tim playing Howard Zinn, unless he truly believed he was addressing a forum of idiots whose eyes glazed over while reading the AP reports and just skipped to the pictures of hurt kids.

I don't see the point of posting "Amen" or the "voice of reason" stuff. You've done it before to Tim, does he PM you about feeling unappreciated or something?

[TomChick]

Tim wasn't breaking news, he and Jason were participating in a discussion by giving some much-needed context to counterbalance people talking about how they cried when they saw bloody children on TV and it's all Islam's fault and maybe we should nuke Grozny and anyone who disagrees thinks the children deserved it!!1!

I don't see the point of posting "Amen" or the "voice of reason" stuff.

Oh, okay. Next time, I'll be sure to clear it with you first.

You've done it before to Tim, does he PM you about feeling unappreciated or something?

Good lord, what on earth are you talking about?

-Tom

[Toddy]

Ben, this is absolutely idiotic. Beslan did not simply happen ex nihilo, magically conjured up from a political vaccum. It's the latest move in a game of one-upsmanship that has consumed Chechnya and is now having an indelible effect on Russia.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. But just because something horrible happened to you doesn't let you get into a game of one-upsmanship, as you so blithely call it.

It seems to me that's the point of Tim's posts, which are an important counterpoint to Brett shrieking about Islam and Dan chiming in with some ellipitcal observation about something-or-other he noted that's neither here-nor-there. Not to mention crap like hermyhermit's knee flailing wildly.

Important counterpoint? The guy isn't making any sense. He's comparing every single act of Islamic violence with the highly organized, international sweep of al Qaeda, which has declared war on, well, what they call Jews and Crusaders. Meaning pretty much the entire Western world and a good chunk of the East.

I'm not cheerleading. I'm just glad someone has the endurance to keep at it when the noise-signal ratio gets so high. Because, frankly, I'd rather be playing Phantom Brave.

Yes, you are, in your usual pompous way. You want to get involved in the discussion, fine. But don't just walk in, make a few pronouncements from your magic mountain, and then retreat to prepare more pontificating for the next thread.

As for signal to noise, all I'm saying is that it's insane to keep saying "It's not Islam. It's not Islam," when clearly the religion is a part of the problem. No matter how you view Islamist terrorism and how we should deal with it, you have to admit this. Even if you think this is all about poverty, you have to acknowledge that Islam is a major factor in keeping the Muslim world so backward and impoverished. A religion that prohibits women from working, voting, and in some cases even driving is playing a huge role in keeping the Arab world far behind the West in terms of standard of living and overall economic prosperity.

Islam needs to go through a reformation. Badly. I don't see why it's so controversial to say this, or why it is "shrieking" to try and actually deal with the prime factor motivating terrorism today.

More and more people are starting to realize that there is a problem with Islam itself. Just take a look at the following, from an AP story the other day (http://www.middleeastinfo.org/forum3467):

"Our terrorist sons are an end-product of our corrupted culture," Abdulrahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya television wrote in his daily column published in the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. It ran under the headline, "The Painful Truth: All the World Terrorists are Muslims!"

Al-Rashed ran through a list of recent attacks by Islamic extremist groups - in Russia, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen - many of which are influenced by the ideology of Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi-born leader of al-Qaida terror network.

"Most perpetrators of suicide operations in buses, schools and residential buildings around the world for the past 10 years have been Muslims," he wrote. Muslims will be unable to cleanse their image unless "we admit the scandalous facts," rather than offer condemnations or justifications.

"The picture is humiliating, painful and harsh for all of us," al-Rashed wrote.

Now, I suppose that's all shrieking, too? Right, Tom?

[TomChick]

Interesting article, JMJ. It seems like al Qaeda ties are a constant boogyman these days, in Iraq and elsewhere. I don't doubt that various radical Islamic groups are aligned with each other, but I'm skeptical about the nature of the connections.

As the guy from the Foreign Policy Research Institute said of the Beslan attack: "This is not an Al Qaeda operation: These are autonomous groups. It's not like bin Laden wrote the checks. But they are synchronized ideologically and strategically." 'Synchronized ideologically' sounds like Bush's language about al Qaeda and Iraq being 'allied'.

I haven't seen any confirmation yet about the ten Arabs among the Beslan attackers, although a Moscow news site did say there was a Korean body recovered and there have been reports of a black man involved. But that sort of stuff smacks of 'foreign jihadist' thinking, which is a convenient way to offload blame.

-Tom

[TomChick]

No one is saying it's not Islam, Brett. We just don't share your generalizations. To implicate the entire religion is like implicating all of Christianity for the bombing of abortion clinics. Of course, maybe you feel that way, too, so perhaps it's a bad analogy...

Obviously, Islam is a factor. What's happened in the encounters between Chechnya and Russia is that it's been made a breeding ground for converts to radical Islam, sort of like a certain country where a lot of American troops are parked these days. But that's another thread.

Now, I suppose that's all shrieking, too? Right, Tom?

Your post speaks for itself. :)

-Tom

[Ben]

Tom- If Tim has been PMing you about feeling unappreciated, then your posts have a point. They serve something beyond letting everyone know that you agree. But just saying "Hear, hear" is posting for posting's sake. Brett's crazy, Dan's rambly, Tim's right, the end? Come on.

Do you have an opinion about Breslan besides "Oh, that was bad"?

Counterbalancing an evil act by listing the acts done by Russians to Chechnya is either pointless or apologist. We all know Chechnya and Russia have their problems. I wasn't like "Oh, shit, really?" Jason explicitly mentioned he has a hard time mustering outrage because of how awful Russia has been to Chechnya. Clarify and backpedal all you want, but that reads as "Them kids got what was coming to them!" That's precisely the sort of grouping and generalizations that you guys are yelling at hermyhermit for.

[TomChick]

Ben, I'll go slow for you and break it down in convenient bullet points. I'll even number them in case you get confused and need to move backwards.

1) I posted more than 'here, here'. You can scroll upwards using the handy bar to the right of your screen to verify that.

2) As I've told other people, we don't need forum cops. So feel free to PM me if you have a problem with the way the forum is being used or kindly take your observations on other people's posting habits elsewhere. Because the one thing we need less than "cheerleading", as you call it, is some jackass derailing threads by whining about "cheerleading".

3) I have never been PMed by Tim Partlett in my life, so you'll need to come up with some other snarky dismissive comment.

4) I have opinions on Breslan that you'll find in other posts I've written in this thread. For instance, I'm skeptical about an al Qaeda connection and I don't blame Islam for it. How's that?

5) You apparently have a problem with reading comprehension, as no one said anything about 'counterbalancing evil acts'. We like to think of it as trying to understand them and putting them in context.

6) Jason's comment about 'having a hard time mustering outrage' was weird, but if you read the other things he wrote, it makes sense and it sounds like he misspoke. If, however, you need to isolate one comment and take it out of context to ding someone, well, then you sure got him! Atta boy!

-Tom

[Brian Koontz]

Even if you think this is all about poverty, you have to acknowledge that Islam is a major factor in keeping the Muslim world so backward and impoverished. A religion that prohibits women from working, voting, and in some cases even driving is playing a huge role in keeping the Arab world far behind the West in terms of standard of living and overall economic prosperity.

Who cares? Obviously not enough Muslims to create their own change. If YOU care, you're just Colonialism in a nutshell, forcing them to become "prosperous" and "advanced" just like the West. Pretty much the exact same argument was given throughout history... Saving the Savages from themselves, in other words.

The United States isn't exactly HIDDEN. The West isn't secretive about its identity. If the West is so *great*, there shouldn't be a need to Colonize... Islam should convert of its own accord.

Obviously Muslims believe, yes DESPITE the economic supremacy of the West, that their identity is worth holding onto, fighting for, and dying for. This doesn't mean that it in fact *is*, they may very well be mistaken. But who are you to say you know better than they themselves what identity they should possess? Who are you to FORCE the West upon them? If "economic advantage" is your only ammunition, you'll be blown to bits. Not everyone VALUES economic advantage as highly as you and the West do.

All of your arguments are formed from Western bias. I recommended several months ago that you attack from within... that you begin with a close examination and appreciation of Islam, and go from there. You have neglected to take that approach and are thus repeating your same points again and again, points which are *Insufficient* to put a dent in Islam.

Islam needs to go through a reformation. Badly. I don't see why it's so controversial to say this,

Lots of people are making statements like yours nowadays. Its not a big deal.

or why it is "shrieking" to try and actually deal with the prime factor motivating terrorism today.

Islam has been around for a long time. Very little terrorism is associated with them, over the course of their history (granted, its easier to be a terrorist now than ever before). The prime factor motivating Islamic terrorism today is not the Muslim religion, but the fear of Muslims toward Western aggression and expansion. Views just like yours are why Islamic terrorism exists. Congratulations.

Maybe you're in fact right. Maybe its better to subjugate Muslims, force the West upon the world. But neither you nor I KNOW whether you're right. You claim to know but have offered no conclusive arguments. Muslims *mostly* disagree with you. Being right isn't enough. KNOWING why you're right is everything.

More and more people are starting to realize that there is a problem with Islam itself. Just take a look at the following, from an AP story the other day (http://www.middleeastinfo.org/forum3467):

There are a lot of Muslims. Finding ones supporting the Neocon Agenda isn't that difficult. You can find plenty of all stripes.

This isn't a beatdown session. Don't worry about Tom, he's just another Liberal ;). I get a little frustrated when you don't improve your arguments.

[Daniel Morris]

More "elliptical" points...

1. I'm no apologist for Russia's conduct of the Chechnyan war, but make no mistake that it is Islamist insurgents who have kept it going, spread its violence, and made continued conflict necessary. The little-discussed fact is that Chechnya was essentially abandoned to the Islamists after the first round of fighting in the early Nineties. Russia sought an exit, set up a friendly puppet regime it knew could not last, left control of much of the region to the insurgents, and withdrew after declaring peace with honor.

Alas, that wasn't good enough for the insurgents, who immediately began exporting their terror laterally into Dagestan and Ingushetia -- two regions which had absolutely zero interest in either Muslim political ascendancy or secession from Russia. The Chechen insurgents forced Russia to re-intervene. I know it's unfashionable to bring the lessons of appeasement into a discussion of Islamist insurgency, but by all rights the Chechen War should have been over in 1996, and the Islamist insurgents would have been the winners. But they relentlessly pushed their insurgency into Dagestan and Ingushetia, neither of which wanted any of it.

2. Don't blame Beslan on Islam. Blame it on jihadists. There's a difference, and it's commendable to insist on maintaining the difference. Blame ibn Taymiyya and Qutb and Abdullah Azziz. Especially blame the cynical Chechen warlord Basayev, who co-opted Muslim fervor in service of his own quest for lordship over a narco-state.

3.To Mr. Partlett --- you're quick to compare bin Laden with Begin and Michael Collins? News flash: Israel and Ireland are democracies and fairly approachable countries with lots of friends, among them Britain. What predictions would you make for the states that bin Laden dreams of founding?

That's the problem with moral equivalence -- while it shores up one's contrarian credentials, it also leads you into patently indefensible positions. The world has already experienced the fruits of Islamist sovereignty -- namely 9/11, the chief export (along with heroin) of bin Laden's Afghanistan.

[TomChick]

Rah rah, two four six eight
Who do we appreciate?
Dan, Dan, gooooo, Dan!

Well, at least for points #1 and #2. However, it's no more instructive to assign blame in that situation than it is in, say, the West Bank. You're basically saying it's the insurgents' fault. But you could easily say -- and Mr. Partlett probably already has somewhere in the previous five pages -- that Russia's crackdown fostered the Islamist insurgents.

I hope Mr. Todd pays attention to #2. Islam is an amazing phenomenon in so many ways, a textbook example of Western religion in a sort of pure form that Christianity and Judaism have long since lost. Unfortunately, 9/11 and the administration's irresponsible follow-up make it a lot easier for people to arrive at the sort of conclusions Brett has reached: Islam is broken and it's going to come get us!

As for the specifics of what you and Tim are disagreeing about, I haven't been following closely enough to make an informed opinion on #3. But if you'd like another cheer, just PM me and let me know you feel underappreciated.

-Tom

[Anders Hallin]

Also, Tom and Jason, Tim completely dodged Morris' question about the Islamic counterpart to Sinn Fein, because there isn't one. That's pretty fucking important. Why isn't there one? Why are "western-style politics" beneath them, and what does that even mean? That's a pretty huge point.
Because to have a legitimate political party one must have a legitimate democratic system?
I mean, the Kurds in Turkey probably have something similar, it's just that even Turkey, that shining light of Democracy would sooner shoot them than talk to them.

[Toddy]

I hope Mr. Todd pays attention to #2. Islam is an amazing phenomenon in so many ways, a textbook example of Western religion in a sort of pure form that Christianity and Judaism have long since lost. Unfortunately, 9/11 and the administration's irresponsible follow-up make it a lot easier for people to arrive at the sort of conclusions Brett has reached: Islam is broken and it's going to come get us!

Amazing phenomenon? Definitely. The history of Islam is spectacular, especially its first century of existence. Though the insanity of Heraclius and the devastation of the last Byzantine-Persian war -- not to mention the way that Byzantine persecution of the Monophysites prompted citizens of the empire across Egypt and Syria to capitulate to the Muslim armies -- made things a lot easier than they should have been for the Muslim armies, the conquest is an incredible feat. Islamic history is a fascinating read, particularly anything to do with the Umayyads. Heck, anything about late antiquity is fascinating, at least to me.

But pure form today? That's highly debatable, to say the least, even thougn I know what you're getting at (although, Tom, you're not giving the Eastern church its due here, because it is certainly a lot closer to "original Christianity" than anything practised in the West, and is quite similar to Islam in many ways). Today's Islam is a long way removed from what was practised in the 17th century, let alone the 7th. It has serious, serious problems with the modern world, thanks in large part to Wahhabism, which has twisted Islam beyond recognition and sought to destroy over a thousand years of Islamic enlightenment and evolution. You want to look at Islam today, you have to take note of what's taken place in the last few centuries, how Islam has changed.

Many people in the Arab world realize this. Look at the commentary by Mr. Al-Rashed that I noted earlier in the thread. This isn't some Qt3 wacko like myself screaming "The Muslims are coming! The Muslims are coming!" He's just another educated Arab Muslim brokenhearted over the "corrupted culture" of the Arab world.

I don't understand why you feel the need to lob the lame one-liners Tom. You're not a stupid person, but you certainly play one on the internet with all this bluster and empty posturing. Why don't you contribute something to the discussion aside from lame cheerleading? You've got a great background in religious studies. So why not give us more than pathetic insults? You were bitching just the other week about the quality of posts, complaining about that porn thread and the stupid cat-on-fire link, yet here you are contributing to the Usenet mentality that's taking over Qt3.

[Theodore Rex DX]

You were bitching just the other week about the quality of posts, complaining about that porn thread and the stupid cat-on-fire link, yet here you are contributing to the Usenet mentality that's taking over Qt3.

Your apparent hard-on for mass-killing is much more in-line with kitten burning movies and pornography then gentle teasing on an internet forum is.

[TomChick]

Lobbing lame one-liners? Playing a stupid person? Bluster and empty posturing? Lame cheerleading? Pathetic insults? Bitching? Contributing to the Usenet mentality taking over Qt3?

Brett, does the concept of hypocrisy mean anything to you? I try to take the high road when you get into your tizzies, whether we're talking about games, religion, or politics, but you don't make it easy. You should consider easing up if you're honestly interested in having a discussion. Seriously.

FWIW, I wasn't just talking about the history of Islam or its historical conquests. I never said it was "in its pure form". I'm not discounting any crisis of theology it's facing or the very real threat of fundamentalist Islam. If you'd like me to clarify whatever it was that confused you, I'd be happy to, but I'm just going to bow out now if you're looking for a pissing match.

-Tom

[antlers]

Interestingly for those calling for a Muslim reformation, what many Islamists are doing across the Muslim world may be the Muslim reformation. There are many similarities to the Christian reformation, particularly in their call for a more personal tie to God, use of the direct word of the Koran as opposed to the centuries of scholastic interpretation that have accreted, and a rejection of what they see as a corrupt and materialistic existing religious as well as secular hierarchy.

[Ben]

Tom- So we don't need people saying "Don't post like that", but people saying "Do post like that" are valuable? My belief is that both are pretty worthless.

No matter how bad some Russians are to some Chechens you should never have any difficult mustering outrage when some people who have the same religion as the Chechens kill a bunch of other Russians. Saudis blew up the WTC, would McCullough have trouble mustering outrage if we Delta-Forced a random Saudi school to death?

[Tim Partlett]

Nothing that was ever done to the Chechnyans changes anything about what happened at the school, and everything he wrote about that situation was irrelevant. Maybe he was just trying to show off that he read a history book... There's a class of intellectual liberals who delight in cataloguing bad things done by "the good guys." Like the bit about how the British started targetting civilians because the German bombing of civilians that the British were responding to were strictly against Hitler's orders. Were the British supposed to know that? Did he fax them over with the "Don't bomb civilians" part circled?

Churchill was unaware of it being an accident. Hitler's attitude towards the bombing of civilians shows that these two nations were behaving in a "civilized" manner prior to the bombing, but then both sides started bombing each others civilians for no reason other than pure rage. Britain's strategic bombing policy only developed later, which blows your theory of stragegic bombing being oh-so different from terrorism, because it has such lofty goals as destroying industrial production capacity, rather than destroying people. Even after Britain developed its strategic bombing policy, it's objective was to demoralise the Germans, rather than destroy their capacity to produce. Like terrorism, which actually cannot hope to destroy the industrial or military capacity, strategic bombing has been used by supposedly civilized nations to enact vengeance and to destroy the will of the enemy.

When it gets down to it, every nation is capable of killing civilians in order to win a war. You don't think that America's nuclear arsenal was intended purely for tactical use?

Also, Tom and Jason, Tim completely dodged Morris' question about the Islamic counterpart to Sinn Fein, because there isn't one. That's pretty fucking important. Why isn't there one? Why are "western-style politics" beneath them, and what does that even mean? That's a pretty huge point.

I actually answered this point, although you may have to read a little more carefully in order to see my response to it. Al Qaeda may not have a political wing that engages in Western style politics, but other Islamic organisations do. There is no "Islamic counterpart" to Sinn Fein, because Islamic terrorism is so divergent. That's like demanding to know where the European political wing is, while pointing out that the Bader-Meinhoff gang didn't have one. Just because they don't have a political wing, doesn't mean that you can't deal with the issues that create their existence. The roots of the violence doesn't somehow alter because they don't accept your political structure. As I said, even if the goals of Al Qaeda were that America make the moon turn into cheese, it doesn't change the way you deal with the problem. Whether the cause is just or not, people who engage in acts of terrorism are still criminals. We may be more willing to forgive if we support their cause, but if their are legitimate alternative means of advancing their agenda, there should be no place for terrorism.

The point I have been making is not that terrorism is legitimate if the cause is just, in fact quite the opposite. I have said, however, that we are all capable of acts of disgraceful terror, and its not just "evil" and "backward" Islam. I find it interesting how some will make excuses for people like the British, when they bomb civilians out of now reason other than rage and vengeance, but if others do it, those others being people of a different religion, skin colour or whatever, they suddenly become evil doers, and putting their actions in context is actually making excuses for them.

Counterbalancing an evil act by listing the acts done by Russians to Chechnya is either pointless or apologist. We all know Chechnya and Russia have their problems. I wasn't like "Oh, shit, really?" Jason explicitly mentioned he has a hard time mustering outrage because of how awful Russia has been to Chechnya. Clarify and backpedal all you want, but that reads as "Them kids got what was coming to them!" That's precisely the sort of grouping and generalizations that you guys are yelling at hermyhermit for.

Those children didn't deserve to die, and what those Chechens did was a war crime of great magnitude. All I have done is put the crime in the context of the war that has ravaged Chechnya for over a decade. If everyone here already knows about the history, they are doing a very good job of ignoring it, and certainly are unable to make the obvious connections, such as between the revenge bombings of civilians by the British in WW2 and bombing civilians in acts of rage by Chechen insurgents. I don't make any such distinction between crimes committedh by my people and those committed by people of a different culture, religion or whatever. Killing civilians is just plain wrong, in my view, but the act does not make a people evil. If what those Chechens did is evil, then so was the British bombing Berlin in revenge for Germany's accidental bombing of London.

As Robert McNamara said in the Fog of War,

"Lemay [commander of the bombing campaign against Japan] said, `If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals.' And I think he's right. He — and I'd say I — were behaving as war criminals. What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?"

[Brandon Clements]

Interestingly for those calling for a Muslim reformation, what many Islamists are doing across the Muslim world may be the Muslim reformation. There are many similarities to the Christian reformation, particularly in their call for a more personal tie to God, use of the direct word of the Koran as opposed to the centuries of scholastic interpretation that have accreted, and a rejection of what they see as a corrupt and materialistic existing religious as well as secular hierarchy.
That's kinda my theory as well (Islam being at about the "age" of Christinaty when the Reformation occured). Of course, the near term practical outcome of the Reformation was the 30 Years War, amongst other cultural upheavel.

[Tim Partlett]

1. I'm no apologist for Russia's conduct of the Chechnyan war, but make no mistake that it is Islamist insurgents who have kept it going, spread its violence, and made continued conflict necessary. The little-discussed fact is that Chechnya was essentially abandoned to the Islamists after the first round of fighting in the early Nineties. Russia sought an exit, set up a friendly puppet regime it knew could not last, left control of much of the region to the insurgents, and withdrew after declaring peace with honor.

Alas, that wasn't good enough for the insurgents, who immediately began exporting their terror laterally into Dagestan and Ingushetia -- two regions which had absolutely zero interest in either Muslim political ascendancy or secession from Russia. The Chechen insurgents forced Russia to re-intervene. I know it's unfashionable to bring the lessons of appeasement into a discussion of Islamist insurgency, but by all rights the Chechen War should have been over in 1996, and the Islamist insurgents would have been the winners. But they relentlessly pushed their insurgency into Dagestan and Ingushetia, neither of which wanted any of it.

For someone who is no Russian apologist, you seem very slanted in their favour. Saying Yeltsin signed a peace treaty "with honour" is an extraordinary way of describing a less than honourable peace treaty, where Yeltsin acknowledged the new government of Chechnya, but refused to write in Russia's acceptance of the new republic into the treaty itself, thus allowing him the later option of reneging on the most important part of the treaty for the Chechens: their own independence. You are also a little loose with the facts, prefering a version that makes Russia's actions appear more palatable.

First you fail to mention that Chechnya was no more an Islamic fundamentalist paradise when it claimed its independence than other former Muslim members of the old Soviet republic, like Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. In fact Azerbaijan, which forms a buffer between Chechnya and Iran, has had little trouble in dealing with Islamic fundamentalists, and neither did Chechnya until the Russians virtually destroyed the entire country. The Islamic insurgents didn't "immediately" move into neighbouring states, unless you consider three years to be "immediately". However, the gradual ascent to power of groups like Islamic fundamentalists, like the bandits and warlords who thrived in the anarchy that was left over after the country was razed to the ground, was pretty much guaranteed.

3.To Mr. Partlett --- you're quick to compare bin Laden with Begin and Michael Collins? News flash: Israel and Ireland are democracies and fairly approachable countries with lots of friends, among them Britain. What predictions would you make for the states that bin Laden dreams of founding?

Not everyone believes Israel is so wonderful. An impressive feat, and a reasonably fair democracy, but as an example of white neo-colonialism it stands alone and unpopular with those whom it dispossessed. Was it really worth deliberately murdering hundreds of civilians in order to attain Jewish hegenomy in the region, rather than power sharing with the existing population as was originally planned? If Jewish hegenomy was so important, couldn't it have been achieved another way?

The Irish democracy is a fine example for the world, but the Oireachtas is not exactly what the IRA were planting bombs in Birmingham for, as this already existed. The IRA wanted a pure Gaelic Ireland, an uncompromising goal that would have meant the destruction of a community of hundreds of thousands of people. The goals of Hamas and the IRA are almost identical, but you seem to be sympathatic towards one and not the other. The only real difference I can see is that one is muslim and the other Christian, which closely follows the logic for many of the other arguments presented here.

I think another problem you might be suffering from is confusing the goals of the terrorists with those of the people they purport to represent. The creation of the Israeli and Irish governments are fine achievements, but that is not necessarily what the extremists who were engaging in terrorism wanted. The people of Ireland wanted full re-unification, but not at the expense of the Protestants lives and homes. The IRA had a different agenda. Hamas wants to see the destruction of Israel, but most Palestinians would be happy with a return to the 1967 borders. The goals of Al Qaeda and ordinary muslims are similarly divergent.

[Ben]

I don't think any of the strategic bombing campaigns, by either side, were war crimes. LeMay would've been prosecuted because he would've been on the losing side and he was despised by the populace he bombed.

There were a handful of revenge bombings(Berlin, Toyko), but the grand "war crimes" McNamara is talking about are the large scale firebombings of Hamburg, Dresden, Toyko, etc.

The point of my strategic bombing example is that even though it's a thin rationalization for killing civilians, it's at least there. There's no such veneer on Breslan, no way to explain the Chechens into the good guys without going into "Eh, the Russians are bastards." How did this advance the war? It's not even going to demoralize the Russians in the way the RAF did, the night bombing campaigns were widespread and feared so that Germans kept their lights off, kept strict curfews, moved to the country, etc. etc. This was obviously an isolated incident. They might one day do it to another school, but they aren't going to be able to do it to 15 schools a day for a week.


At least when "real countries" do something awful they cloak it with good intentions and strategic doctrine bullshit, this is just evil. The Chechens saw an opportunity to bring pain to Russians and they took it. That's all. Children who had committed no evil besides being Russian were murdered, and not in as collateral damage in the greater fight. Hurting the children was the operation goal.

[Linoleum]

Once again, a rather lot of background material on Winds of Change (http://windsofchange.net/archives/005468.php).

[Jason McCullough]

Also, Tom and Jason, Tim completely dodged Morris' question about the Islamic counterpart to Sinn Fein, because there isn't one. That's pretty fucking important. Why isn't there one? Why are "western-style politics" beneath them, and what does that even mean? That's a pretty huge point.

Because every Arabic country is a dictatorship, and they have no framework to develop democratic institutions? If the US really wants to reform the region, we'd figure out a way to open Kiwanis clubs over there.

The point of my strategic bombing example is that even though it's a thin rationalization for killing civilians, it's at least there. There's no such veneer on Breslan, no way to explain the Chechens into the good guys without going into "Eh, the Russians are bastards." How did this advance the war? It's not even going to demoralize the Russians in the way the RAF did, the night bombing campaigns were widespread and feared so that Germans kept their lights off, kept strict curfews, moved to the country, etc. etc. This was obviously an isolated incident. They might one day do it to another school, but they aren't going to be able to do it to 15 schools a day for a week.

The dangerous thing about "thin rationalizations" is that they're awfulliy easy to write. Based on past terrorist movements, I'm sure these motherfuckers had a rationalization of "well, if we scare the shit out of the USSR enough, they'll sue for peace, and we'll get justice"; I'm sure they have some coded terminology to make butchering children sound less bad. I'd recommend reading up on the history of the Tokyo firebombing campaign sometime; there's some remarkable coded terminology involved in the "we've got the departmental budget, strategic doctrine to prove, and we've got to win the war" groupthink that allows perfectly well-meaning and moral people to incinerate 100,000 civilians.

Another angle: the morality of an action shouldn't turn on whether it'll "win the war" for you; outcome-based morality has a nasty history.

Anyway, as Tom points out "I can't muster up much outrage" was a pretty inflammatory choice of words.

Allow me to rephrase: What did Russia expect as the policy outcome of killing 100,000 Chechen civilians for no moral reason at all?

[Tim Partlett]

I don't think any of the strategic bombing campaigns, by either side, were war crimes. LeMay would've been prosecuted because he would've been on the losing side and he was despised by the populace he bombed.

You completely missed Robert McNamara's point. He said that they were acting like war criminals, not that they would have been considered war criminals by the Japanese if they had lost. He said that they were war criminals, and that the only reason they weren't prosecuted is because they were on the winning side.

The point of my strategic bombing example is that even though it's a thin rationalization for killing civilians, it's at least there. There's no such veneer on Breslan, no way to explain the Chechens into the good guys without going into "Eh, the Russians are bastards." How did this advance the war? It's not even going to demoralize the Russians in the way the RAF did, the night bombing campaigns were widespread and feared so that Germans kept their lights off, kept strict curfews, moved to the country, etc. etc. This was obviously an isolated incident. They might one day do it to another school, but they aren't going to be able to do it to 15 schools a day for a week.

This really is a mealy-mouthed defence of Christian values. We don't even know what the rationale behind the Chechen attack was, but even if it were purely rage at the Russians for what they have done to them, it is no different to the revenge bombings by both the Germans and British during world war two. The aim of terrorism, you may be surprised to learn, is to terrorise your enemy. You demoralise through terror. You make them fear attack from anywhere, and make them wish that it would go away. The effectiveness of it is arguable, but when you have no other weapon, it probably looks quite appealing. Your definition of "evil" seems now to be acts that nice Christians do, but on a smaller scale. So killing less people is actually worse than killing more.

Being dishonest about your intentions, or putting a "veneer" on it as you say, is also not really a mitigating factor. Making excuses for why you do something is just a way of selling an unpalatable means of waging war to a people who are so far removed from war that they have difficulty understanding the value of an act that they would normally consider unsanctionable. America put a "veneer" on its bombing of civilians, because American people were disengaged enough from the real fighting to still be able to afford to hold such values. British, Russian and German citizens needed no such molly-coddling of the truth. The same for Chechens, who after being brutalised for a decade probably hold life in even less value than the British during the Blitz.

If there is any difference between Britain's revenge bombing of German civilians, it is that the Chechens are in an even more desperate situation than the British were, and even more brutalised by their enemy. The Chechens lost about five times as many people as Britain did during the Blitz, and from a population that is sixty times smaller. We weren't invaded either, and didn't have to put up with foreign soldiers killing our brothers and raping our wives. I don't feel that anything excuses killing civilians deliberately, but if you are going to excuse anyone, it should be the Chechens, and not the British. Unfortunately that line of thought doesn't sit well if you have already decided that all followers of Islam are evil by definition.

[Jason McCullough]

BTW, there's a remarkably civil and interesting discussion about policy implications going on over at Crooked Timber:

http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002440.html

[Tim Partlett]

Coincidently, Ben, today is the sixtieth anniversary of the first V2 rocket to strike Britain. Interestingly these bombs were originally designated A-4, but to give them the proper "veneer" that would suit a German public angry at the British for bombing civilians, the propaganda minister Josef Goebbels named it the Vergeltungswaffe 2. Vergeltungswaffe means vengeance in German.

[Daniel Morris]

To compare the Allied bombing campaigns of WWII to today's Islamist terror campaigns is absurd.

May I point out that when discussing the bombing campaigns of WWII, one is discussing a total war between nations and their societies. In a total war, the totality of each nation's human exertion, whether industrial, economic, or physical, is in service of a war effort aimed at defeating the enemy's ability to wage war.

This reality is the justification for the bombing of Japan and Germany -- and I carefully use the word "justification" as opposed to "rationalization." The societies of Japan and Germany were committed to the domination of their respective continents, and were directing their full national efforts to this end. In order to defeat these rampaging societies, these societies had to be shattered to the breaking point.

Michael Beschloss (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684810271/104-7442108-2410322?v=glance) has made the point that the destruction of Japan and Germany were fundamental experiences in the peaceful reorientation of both those societies. Societies committed to continental-scale aggression were fought to total defeat, and militarism has been utterly discredited in both nations ever since.

To speak to Partlett's larger point, peace was at hand in Chechnya between 1996-99. It was a peace that promised the attainment of every one of the Islamist rebels' stated geopolitical aims. The fundamental(ist) problem with applying the morality of total war to the Islamists is this -- they do not want their war to end. Our campaigns ended WWII and made pacifistic friends out of our enemies. The Islamists' war is one without end, one that seeks no magnanimous resolution, one that takes seriously the Qutb interpretation of Islam as a divine decree to expand the Dar al-Islam at all times by any means.

I'll say again: only the rawest moral equivalizer can hope to compare the Allied bombing of Axis societies with the aimless, hopeless, endless terror of the Islamists.

[Jason McCullough]

Dead's dead, Daniel. There was no military purpose to firebombing Tokyo.

[Daniel Morris]

By the way, Partlett also horribly misinterprets Robert McNamara. Bob is simply acknowledging what goes without saying -- that the exertions needed to defeat imperial Japan were horrific. I'm sure Bob would go on to say that without those exertions, American society would have been the recipient of that treatment and Japan would have continued its rampage through the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, an alternative history that doesn't bear thinking about.

[Nick Walter]

Dead's dead, Daniel. There was no military purpose to firebombing Tokyo.


I'm going to have to disagree. Demoralization of enemy populace is a military pupose. Perhaps a distasteful one, perhaps even an immoral one, but a military purpose nonetheless.

Wars can be ended if the enemy populace becomes tires of fighting, rises up, and replaces their government with one less inclined to participate in war.

[Jason McCullough]

Jesus christ, Nick, look at what you're writing. That *exact same statement* could come out of the mouth of the the fucking terrorists. You're obviously not a bad person, but it's easy to do.....

[Jason McCullough]

By the way, Partlett also horribly misinterprets Robert McNamara. Bob is simply acknowledging what goes without saying -- that the exertions needed to defeat imperial Japan were horrific. I'm sure Bob would go on to say that without those exertions, American society would have been the recipient of that treatment and Japan would have continued its rampage through the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, an alternative history that doesn't bear thinking about.

Not what I took away from listening to him, as he didn't say that. He walked a line between saying "we're all war criminals, me especially" and......actually, I'd sum up what he was obliquely talking about in The Fog of War as:

"Our entire framework for thinking about mass state killing is broken."


Edit: Ah, here we go. Remarkably hard to find this:

THE FOG OF WAR
is built around eleven
lessons from the life
of Robert McNamara.

Lesson #1: Empathize with your enemy.
Lesson #2: Rationality will not save us.
Lesson #3: There’s something beyond one’s self.
Lesson #4: Maximize efficiency.
Lesson #5: Proportionality should be a guideline in war.
Lesson #6: Get the data.
Lesson #7: Belief and seeing are both often wrong.
Lesson #8: Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning.
Lesson #9: In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil.
Lesson #10: Never say never.
Lesson #11: You can’t change human nature.

[Nick Walter]

Jesus christ, Nick, look at what you're writing. That *exact same statement* could come out of the mouth of the the fucking terrorists.

Calm down Jason.

This is sort of like the debate about capitol punishment. If I say, "I killed Mr. X for the good of society", I'm a murderer. If the government says, "We killed Mr. X for the good of society", they are allowed to do so. Same words, different situation.

[Jason McCullough]

So it's ok for a government to intentionally kill children, but not for terrorists to intentionally kill children?

[Nick Walter]

I thought we were talking about firebombing Tokyo?

I'm going to assume you are above intentional topic shifts to distort the debate and assume I'm simply not following. What are we talking about again?

[Jason McCullough]

You said "demoralization of an enemy populace is a military purpose." Which is correct.

But I'm disagreeing on actions to create demoralization: demoralizing an enemy populace by killing a school full of kids (which you don't think is acceptable) or incinerating 100,000 Tokyo civliians (which you apparently do) are not. I think both are amoral, although Tokyo is somewhat more understandable in context; but what do you think is the difference? That one is undertaken by a government, and the other isn't?

[Nick Walter]

You said "demoralization of an enemy populace is a military purpose." Which is correct.

But I'm disagreeing on actions to create demoralization: demoralizing an enemy populace by killing a school full of kids (which you don't think is acceptable) or incinerating 100,000 Tokyo civliians (which you apparently do) are not. I think both are amoral, although Tokyo is somewhat more understandable in context; but what do you think is the difference? That one is undertaken by a government, and the other isn't?

Both situations are amoral and distasteful. I already said so.

The only distinction is that military actions taken during a declared war by designated offical agents of a recognized government have a little more justification than actions taken by notjobs acting without official sanction.

[Jason McCullough]

I'm having trouble squaring that with this blanket justification:

Dead's dead, Daniel. There was no military purpose to firebombing Tokyo.


I'm going to have to disagree. Demoralization of enemy populace is a military pupose. Perhaps a distasteful one, perhaps even an immoral one, but a military purpose nonetheless.

Wars can be ended if the enemy populace becomes tires of fighting, rises up, and replaces their government with one less inclined to participate in war.

[Nick Walter]

I'm having trouble squaring that with this blanket justification:

Dead's dead, Daniel. There was no military purpose to firebombing Tokyo.


I'm going to have to disagree. Demoralization of enemy populace is a military pupose. Perhaps a distasteful one, perhaps even an immoral one, but a military purpose nonetheless.

Wars can be ended if the enemy populace becomes tires of fighting, rises up, and replaces their government with one less inclined to participate in war.

My original post, which you just quoted, was entirely on the topic of, "Was there a military purpose in firebombing Tokyo". You had specifically stated that there wasn't. In my mind, there quite clearly is a military purpose. There is a military purpose in genocide also. Having no enemies left alive, whether military or civilian, would certainly end a war. However, having a "military purpose" doesn't make something moral or justified.

Then we started talking about justifications, which in my mind is a topic shift though I can appreciate how it might not be in yours. I asserted that many people consider it justified for a government to do something, even when it would not be justified for a private individual or group to do it. Capitol punishment is a great illustration of this distinction.

[Ben]

Tim- I'm not saying McNamara didn't think strategic bombing was a war crime, I'm saying I don't think it is. Had Japanese or Germans been able to firebomb Pittsburgh and kill 80,000 Americans we would've tried the people responsible as war criminals, but that's because we won and we could. The Japanese tried all kinds of wacky ways to bomb the American mainland and actually killed a view civilians, but I don't view those as war crimes.

In excusing the Chechens, does the nature of the foe and the intentions of the protagonist mean nothing? Putin's Russia, while not a paragon of virtue, is hardly the Third Reich. Churchill's England was not a hotbed of any sort of terrorism. Morality is not determined by who has a better sob story. Whether you dad beat you as a child has nothing to do with how right robbing a liquor store is. If Chechnya is so desperate they can only fight Russian children, it's time to give up.

And yes, an unfocused attack that kills more innocents can be more moral than a focused attack that kills fewer innocents. This attack didn't do shit to the Russian war effort, firebombing Toyko did hurt the Japanese war machine.

Jason- Are you adopting the hyper-libertarian belief of universal right to secession? Otherwise, the Russians had moral reasons(if immoral means).

Also, USSR?

[Jason McCullough]

Ok Nick, never mind. :D

Tim- I'm not saying McNamara didn't think strategic bombing was a war crime, I'm saying I don't think it is. Had Japanese or Germans been able to firebomb Pittsburgh and kill 80,000 Americans we would've tried the people responsible as war criminals, but that's because we won and we could. The Japanese tried all kinds of wacky ways to bomb the American mainland and actually killed a view civilians, but I don't view those as war crimes.

In excusing the Chechens, does the nature of the foe and the intentions of the protagonist mean nothing? Putin's Russia, while not a paragon of virtue, is hardly the Third Reich. Churchill's England was not a hotbed of any sort of terrorism. Morality is not determined by who has a better sob story. Whether you dad beat you as a child has nothing to do with how right robbing a liquor store is. If Chechnya is so desperate they can only fight Russian children, it's time to give up.

And yes, an unfocused attack that kills more innocents can be more moral than a focused attack that kills fewer innocents. This attack didn't do shit to the Russian war effort, firebombing Toyko did hurt the Japanese war machine.

Jason- Are you adopting the hyper-libertarian belief of universal right to secession? Otherwise, the Russians had moral reasons(if immoral means).

Also, USSR?

You seem to be dangerously close to "intentionally killing civilians is ok if it'll win the war", Ben. It's not like killing those kids would be any better if it really did single-handedly destroy the Russian war effort and get them everything they wanted.

On Checeyna's right to secede - I'm unable to give a principle that results in Russia having a valid reason to stop them. Culture, religion, history - what? This isn't California we're talking here; it's even stranger than if the US annexes Iraq.

[Idar Thorvaldsen]

Tim- I'm not saying McNamara didn't think strategic bombing was a war crime, I'm saying I don't think it is. Had Japanese or Germans been able to firebomb Pittsburgh and kill 80,000 Americans we would've tried the people responsible as war criminals, but that's because we won and we could. The Japanese tried all kinds of wacky ways to bomb the American mainland and actually killed a view civilians, but I don't view those as war crimes.
...
And yes, an unfocused attack that kills more innocents can be more moral than a focused attack that kills fewer innocents. This attack didn't do shit to the Russian war effort, firebombing Toyko did hurt the Japanese war machine.
IIRC, while the rules of war are always nebulous and subject to interpretation, attacks on targets that cause civilian casualties disproportionate to the military value of the attack are quite clearly considered war crimes under the Geneva Convention.

The 1977 additions to the fourth protocol (http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-proto.htm) pretty clearly state what sort of attacks are and are not war crimes. Under these protocols, by todays standards, all of the strategic bombing campaigns directed towards mainly civilian areas during WW2 would clearly have been war crimes:
1 The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations. To give effect to this protection, the following rules, which are additional to other applicable rules of international law, shall be observed in all circumstances.
2 The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.
3 Civilians shall enjoy the protection afforded by this Section, unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.
4 Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are:
a. those which are not directed at a specific military objective;
b. those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or
c. those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol; and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.

5 Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate:
a. an attack by bombardment by any methods or means which treats as a single military objective a number of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located in a city, town, village or other area containing a similar concentration of civilians or civilian objects; and
b. an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.

You may have a different interpretation of what a war crime is (as can everyone), but as of today, these are the internationally agreed-upon rules of war.
What would you define as a war crime if not indiscriminate attacks on the civilian population, by the way?

Edit: Quote.

[Daniel Morris]

You seem to be dangerously close to "intentionally killing civilians is ok if it'll win the war", Ben.

If he seems "dangerously close," I'll close the deal for you. In a total war in which a society is directing its every industrial, economic, and physical exertion at destroying my society, I am well within my rights to attack that society at its every industrial, economic, and physical node.

[Peter Frazier]

Wars can be ended if the enemy populace becomes tires of fighting, rises up, and replaces their government with one less inclined to participate in war.
Is there any time in modern history when this occurred (I'm not completely knowledgeable on Japan's surrender- I thought it was the Emperor intervening)? As far as I recall, strategic bombing of populations tended to harden people's resolve against the enemy. It's pretty hard to be supportive of the enemy's goals when they are targeting your family.
When wars are escalated to make everyone a combatant, you aren't going to get a change of government from within.
We also shouldn't forget that Germany's productivity also increased during the war, so can someone tell me again why indiscriminate strategic bombing is a good thing?

edit-spelling

[Jason McCullough]

You seem to be dangerously close to "intentionally killing civilians is ok if it'll win the war", Ben.

If he seems "dangerously close," I'll close the deal for you. In a total war in which a society is directing its every industrial, economic, and physical exertion at destroying my society, I am well within my rights to attack that society at its every industrial, economic, and physical node.

If we're talking a battle of competing genocides, I guess. But your definitions are way to vague.

[Anaxagoras]

Wars can be ended if the enemy populace becomes tires of fighting, rises up, and replaces their government with one less inclined to participate in war.
Is there any time in modern history when this occurred (I'm not completely knowledgeable on Japan's surrender- I thought it was the Emperor intervening)?

WWI - Russia

[Nick Walter]

Wars can be ended if the enemy populace becomes tires of fighting, rises up, and replaces their government with one less inclined to participate in war.
Is there any time in modern history when this occurred (I'm not completely knowledgeable on Japan's surrender- I thought it was the Emperor intervening)?

WWI - Russia

WWI was definitely what I was thinking of. Russia, Ottoman Empire, and almost the French if I recall my history correctly.

[Ben]

Though not successful, there was a deal of unrest among the German leadership towards the end of WW2 where some were agitating for overthrowing Hitler and trying to negotiate a peace.

Anyway, yes, I'd be a lot more sympathetic to the "Russia did a lot of bad things to Chechnya" line of argument if you could draw me a reasonable line from Breslan to "Russia doing fewer bad things to Chechnya."

So were none of the major bombing raids of WW2 justifiable? Do you think LeMay is a war criminal? I more or less agree with Dan. Total war is total, in a war in which the whole of a country is devoted to your destruction everyone is a combatant. Blowing up a tank on the field of battle or in the factory both remove one tank from your opponent's resources.


Frazier- Uh, quote for German's productivity? They made more tanks and planes and stuff, but that's because they were in a war.
Strategic bombing played havoc with their oil and ball bearing supplies, as well as reputedly ending their nuclear weapon program. I don't quite recall the story, but didn't we B-25 their heavy water tanks apart?

[Peter Frazier]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_survey_(Europe)
It hurt their oil, ammo, truck and sub productions.
Airplane and armour production increased and ball bearings were unaffected.
It's pretty disingenuous to say 'they made more tanks because they were in a war'.
My issue isn't the US air offensive so much as the British offensive whose point of the bombing was to reduce their capacity to produce by blowing up workers and their kids. This quote from http://www.historic-battles.com/Articles/can_the_allies_strategic_bombing.htm
is interesting in that context:

However, the raids did lead to “a loss of sympathy and support for the [Nazi] regime” and this influenced the German government’s decision not to mobilise the country for total war. However, the net effect of this is questionable as there is evidence that air raids actually motivated German workers and Albert Speer credited an increase in worker morale as one of the reasons German industry was able to increase production despite the bombing. Because of this effect, it is clear that the RAF’s area bombing attacks failed to achieve their main object of decreasing the Germans’ will and ability to wage war.
(This info is cited from:
Air Raids and Impact on German Morale, in J. Noakes (ed), Documents on Nazism, 1919-1945 vol 4, University of Exeter Press, Exeter. 1998. p 567
Murray. The Luftwaffe. p 300
Hastings. Bomber Command. p 233)
I honestly don't think that we should be killing non-combatants. As soon as you decide that killing children is an effective form of combat you have lost any moral high ground. I think that LeMay and 'Bomber' Harris are in their own circle of Hell where they can dig out the remains of the children they killed for eternity.

[Idar Thorvaldsen]

You seem to be dangerously close to "intentionally killing civilians is ok if it'll win the war", Ben.

If he seems "dangerously close," I'll close the deal for you. In a total war in which a society is directing its every industrial, economic, and physical exertion at destroying my society, I am well within my rights to attack that society at its every industrial, economic, and physical node.
Not really, no. Your targets have to have direct military value proportionate to the civilian casualties incurred for it to be within your rights to attack them. Purely civilian targets (manufacturers of civilian goods, infrastructure not used by the military or of strategic military importance) are still off limits.

[Tim Partlett]

To compare the Allied bombing campaigns of WWII to today's Islamist terror campaigns is absurd.

Are you incapable of replying without straw men arguments and the perjorative attacks upon them?

I haven't compared entire campaigns, but individual acts within them. I compared the Berlin attack by the British, inspired purely by rage, with the Chechen attack on the Russian school, which some people believe was inspired purely by rage. I'm not comparing the overall terror campaign of disparate Islamic groups to the campaigns of the Allies, and certainly I am not comparing their goals. You are just pretending that I am, in order to say that my argument is "absurd".

May I point out that when discussing the bombing campaigns of WWII, one is discussing a total war between nations and their societies. In a total war, the totality of each nation's human exertion, whether industrial, economic, or physical, is in service of a war effort aimed at defeating the enemy's ability to wage war.

This idea of "total war" does not apply to Germany in its dealings with Britain, nor Japan with America. Germany had plenty of other interests, besides the total destruction of British society, which was never a war aim of Germany's in the first place anyway. The exertion of German children playing in their nurseries was no more aimed at the destruction of Britain than the children studying at Beslan, but they both died because of the rage or misguided goals of their enemy. This idea of "total war" is just window dressing on murder, for those who don't want to believe their own "civilized" people are guilty of, and have the utmost potential for, the same vile and barbarous acts of the people they consider "backwards".

Again I will point out, as you seem to miss this when searching my replies for arguments to distort, that I do not consider the war aims of the terrorists to have any bearing on the point under discussion, that being the "evil" of Islam. Terrorists are criminals, and every society has them. The aims of groups of child molesters are no more representative of my society than groups of terrorists are of Islamic society. They are criminals who use the words of a religion that is no more backwards or civilized than Christianity, Judaism or Hinduism to push forward an insane agenda. The fact that Islamic terrorists exist no more shows the evil of Islam than Irish terrorists prove the evil of Catholics or Celts. The fact that Stalin twisted the ideals of Communism to create a mass-murdering totalitarian state doesn't make people who want to live in communal societies, like the Kibbutz of Israel, evil.

I'm not saying Al Qaeda and the Allies are the same thing, just that Islam isn't something that Christianity should seek to destroy.

[tronnc]

Did anyone read this? Pretty interesting aparently the attackers accidently set off one of their bombs which cause the standoff to erupt and come to a bloody end.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040908/ap_on_re_eu/russia_school_seizure&cid=518&ncid=716

"One of the militants was stationed with his foot on a button that would set off the explosives, Ustinov said; if he lifted his foot, the bombs strung up around the school gymnasium would detonate, he said.

On Friday, the militants decided for unknown reasons to reposition the explosives, and apparently set off one bomb by mistake, Ustinov said. That sparked panic, as hostages tried to flee, and the attackers opened fire.

That led Russian forces to storm the building. "

Also some of the attackers did not want to seize a school and were killed by their leader.

"They herded people who had gathered to mark the first day of school to the gym. Some of the militants objected to seizing a school, and their leader, who went by the name Colonel, shot one of them. He said he would do the same to any other militants or hostages who did not show "unconditional obedience."

Later that day, he detonated the explosives worn by two female attackers, killing them, to enforce the lesson, Ustinov said. "

[Tim Partlett]

By the way, Partlett also horribly misinterprets Robert McNamara. Bob is simply acknowledging what goes without saying -- that the exertions needed to defeat imperial Japan were horrific. I'm sure Bob would go on to say that without those exertions, American society would have been the recipient of that treatment and Japan would have continued its rampage through the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, an alternative history that doesn't bear thinking about.

The only person doing the misinterpretting here is you. Again. I made no reference to whether McNamara believed the war crimes to be justified, I simply stated that he believed them to be a war crime. I made no misinterpretation of his beliefs in regards to the justification of the bombing, but simply clarified exactly what he said. You then reply, with more pejoratives, to point out a mistake that I didn't make.

Do you just enjoy insulting people who disagree with you so much that you have to misinterpret what they are saying in order to be able to?

[Anders Hallin]

I also read that the presence of armed civilians (relatives and such) made things a lot more difficult than it had to be when things started falling apart.

If it was a surprise to anyone.

[Linoleum]

And now the questions, is the US ready (http://froggyruminations.blogspot.com/2004/09/beslan-usa.html) for this type of scenario and if not, what should be done?

[BrewersDroop]

And now the questions, is the US ready (http://froggyruminations.blogspot.com/2004/09/beslan-usa.html) for this type of scenario and if not, what should be done?

Arm the children.

[Midnight Son]

And now the questions, is the US ready (http://froggyruminations.blogspot.com/2004/09/beslan-usa.html) for this type of scenario and if not, what should be done?

Arm the children.

With automatic rifles. Hey, it's in the Constitution!

[Enidigm]

Although agreeing poverty, urbanization, despotic nationalism, rich oil states, and the inequalities inherited from the colonial period, have left fertile ground for the rise of the most reactionary kinds of fundamentalism in the Islamic world, i'm finding myself questioning, for the first time, whether or not there is indeed something inherently incompatable with Islam and modern society, and if so, how best to confront it.

Its true the Gulf States reacted to the politcal overthrow of the Shaw by Khomeinites by turning to their own imams for legitimacy; and true that whenever an Islamist movement gained power, such as in Algeria, Sudan, or Iran, socio-economic reforms and redistributions were often carried out under the guise of implementation of the Sharia, and restrictive anti-western cultural laws enacted to appease the seething undereducated masses of the "arab street". But at some point this begins to feel like the dog chasing his tail and i start wondering where the chicken and the egg fit into the metaphor. Why is the Arab street so powerful, and Islam still so meaningful and invincible in the ethical and philisophical lives of its adherents.

As far as i know, is there any other religion that imposes death upon apostates, and any other nation-state whereby such is the law? Or invoking Western ideals to defend and perpetuate their own seperatist ideologies which are broadly in contradiction to the traditions and beliefs to those held within their host countries?

The Sharia's treatment of women is frankly, and straightfowardly, anti-western and -modern in every possible sense. How can we disentangle this point of cultural engagement? When i hear of threats made by Muslim families in Western Europe to withdraw their childern from public schools unless they are given the right to raise them within isolated cultural enclaves of their own, i shiver. What if this happens for 50 years, and is expanded with hundreds of thousands of Muslim immigrants - and then a nativist government decides to the contrary? Will they rise up in insurrection and terrorism against their host country to defend the Sharia and what they see as their only truely inalienable rights, and will their host countries be forced to conceed and allow not just multi-culturalism but a kind of state-within-a-state, and allow muslims to live apart under their own laws and value systems?

Perhaps Beslan is just a reflection of the moral and philosophical rot within pan-nationalist Islamist movements - and many point out that despite seeming to drive the policies of the ME Islamism has singularly failed to create a stable political revolution except in Iran; though i would personally play up its remarkable indirect influences. But then, of course, militant Islamists don't believe in politics as we understand it in the Western world. Islamist hijacking of the Chenchen conflict, either willingly by the warlords or not, will pretty much end whatever legitimacy the seperatists once enjoyed.

[Tim Partlett]

is there any other religion that imposes death upon apostates

We used to call them "witches" and burn them at the stake, until we grew out of it.

Exodus 22:20 "He who sacrifices to any god, except to the LORD only, shall be utterly destroyed."

Christianity and Islam are as different as Fords and Volkswagens. One can take good from both, and bad, and we have examples of good and evil from both over the centuries. In modern terms Islam trumps Christianity, if you look at only the last 20 years since the rise of fundamentalism, which is a conveniently narrow frame for those with a particular ideology to forward. Go back a few decades more and the picture starts to look decidedly different. I guess if you wanted to be an absolutist, you could say that they can't be exactly the same, so one must be "better" than the other, but such thinking is purely divisive, and guaranteed to create isolationism from both societies.

To be honest, if you read through the comments made by some people in this thread, and on some of the raving blogs around the net, and replaced the word "Islam" with "Judaism", they would start to read like Nazis espousing Arian supremacy in the 1930s.

[Anders Hallin]

The Western world is an illustration of the success of a secular society. As such, I find the Christianity vs. Islam rhetoric often used by various parties unsettling, since a people whose religion is under fire by another is not likely to start believing less in it, opting instead to defend it. At any cost. Which is just bizarre, as pretty much all the values they reportedly abhor are because of the secular nature of the West. If practical dominion over all the lands of the world are inherently secular, I don't know, however.

[John Many Jars]

The New York Times (www.nytimes.com/2004/09/12/international/europe/12russia.html?hp) has a long article on the Chechens' motives, concluding (per the analysts they interview) that nationalism is preeminent, not participation in world radical Islam.

[hermyhermit]

We used to call them "witches" and burn them at the stake, until we grew out of it.



Tim, I give you credit for fighting along here despite being almost completley wrong. Lots of big brains in this place, so it certainly takes a certain level of prowess to keep it all going. Much love to Tom Chick for taking notice of someone as harmless as myself, thanks bud. <thumbs up>

Now, on to my overly simplistic point of view, which oft times happens to be right, Forrest Gump style.

"Grew out of it" seems to be the operative phrase here that you, and the other moral equivalence types are not getting here. Christianity has grown as a religion. Islam has not. Are you not getting this at all? Do any of you arguing for the wonderful merits of Islam even like women? Seriously? You do know they are not, you know, equal in Islamic societies? Do you refute this? Do you even care? Do any of my wonderful European friends or liberal Americans that visit here? Likely not....

How about separation of church and state? That is probably a Bad Idea(tm) too, right? I mean really lets not let a pesky thing like religion get in the way of fundamentally deciding how any government should operate or a populace should live!



To be honest, if you read through the comments made by some people in this thread, and on some of the raving blogs around the net, and replaced the word "Islam" with "Judaism", they would start to read like Nazis espousing Arian supremacy in the 1930s.

Except I don't particularly recall Jews crashing planes into buildings full of civilians during that era or suicide bombing, or..... you get the idea. They did have a secret control over all things though and clearly they controlled the money! Hence Germany's terrific economic downturn....

This thread is essentially dead, I just came back over the weekend and found some additional comdey value here so had to chime in my fairly worthless two cents about it all.

P.S. Oh an by the way, before you start plugging away that Israel is a religious state as well, let me preemptively strike, Bush style. I don't agree with that at all either.

[Theodore Rex DX]

Christianity 'grew out of it' for a number of reasons - but none of them had anything to do with Christianity. There isn't anything in the Bible about seperating church and state. That's not a Christian idea. Though, to be fair, burning witches and crashing planes into buildings don't have anything to do with religion either. Really what you're saying is that western society grew out of religion and became a generally well-behaved secular society, which is pretty much true. It's misleading to say that Christianity has grown as a religion - in many ways its regressed. It's just lost a lot of its power, and specifically its political power.

Nobody's saying anything about how great Islam is. Tim has been saying that past societies that were dominated by Christianity often did horrible things in the name of religion too, just to show that Islam doesn't have a monopoly on behaving shittily. Some of the nastiest things were done by irreligious societies - see Communist China/Russia. There's no moral equivalence here. Well, there is in the sense that you can find examples of horrible atrocities performed by proponents of just about any religion or crazy-ass ideology you care to name.

It would be great if countries dominated by fundamentalist Islamic doctrine would adopt secularism. And of course it would be great if Islamic women weren't treated like crap. But of course it's not the countries bombing embassies and schools (and abortion clinics etc.). It's terrorist groups. And of course you can't bomb sense into people who think women are just a lower form of life than men, any more than you can bomb stupidity into people who think they aren't.
So what's the real problem here? And what's a solution that's not completely sick and retarded?

Except I don't particularly recall Jews crashing planes into buildings full of civilians during that era or suicide bombing, or..... you get the idea. They did have a secret control over all things though and clearly they controlled the money! Hence Germany's terrific economic downturn....

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic here or not.

[hermyhermit]

And what's a solution that's not completely sick and retarded?

There isn't one, which has been my entire point from jumpstreet. They hate our ideals, this is not a terrorism thing. It is a fundamental difference in world view and in the past only "sick and retarded" has really changed two conflicting ideals that much. It is my sincere wish that as quatoria and others will hope, peace prevails. Reality is likely to be otherwise...



Except I don't particularly recall Jews crashing planes into buildings full of civilians during that era or suicide bombing, or..... you get the idea. They did have a secret control over all things though and clearly they controlled the money! Hence Germany's terrific economic downturn....

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic here or not.


Quite.... I have a subtle wit rivaled only by Dr.Crypt and/or Bill Dungsroman depending on the day and time.

[Jason McCullough]

Except I don't particularly recall Jews crashing planes into buildings full of civilians during that era or suicide bombing, or..... you get the idea.

Try googling for the Stern gang.

I can't figure out why you proceed from "Christianity has grown out of its problems, Islam hasn't" to "we must destroy Islam."

[Theodore Rex DX]

And what's a solution that's not completely sick and retarded?

There isn't one, which has been my entire point from jumpstreet. They hate our ideals, this is not a terrorism thing. It is a fundamental difference in world view and in the past only "sick and retarded" has really changed two conflicting ideals that much.

You're honestly advocating the mass-murder of fundamentalist Muslims? Somehow I don't think the women will thank you. Oh, and hey look - by your own admission, a whole bunch of bloodthirsty fundamentalist Christian countries got better without having to be totally annhilated. So I guess you just have no fucking clue at all.
Also: Is this what you meant by moral equivalence? That it isn't so much about right or wrong as it is 'us vs them'?
Also: I do not share your ideals or anything like them, so please don't include me in your fucked up little equation.



Except I don't particularly recall Jews crashing planes into buildings full of civilians during that era or suicide bombing, or..... you get the idea. They did have a secret control over all things though and clearly they controlled the money! Hence Germany's terrific economic downturn....

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic here or not.


Quite.... I have a subtle wit rivaled only by Dr.Crypt and/or Bill Dungsroman depending on the day and time.

Still can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but you better be.

[Ben]

Well, there are all kinds of different arguments going on here.

Is Islam the problem?

If so, how do you solve it?
(Hint: Not genocide)
If not, how do you solve it?

[Tim Partlett]

"Grew out of it" seems to be the operative phrase here that you, and the other moral equivalence types are not getting here. Christianity has grown as a religion. Islam has not. Are you not getting this at all? Do any of you arguing for the wonderful merits of Islam even like women? Seriously? You do know they are not, you know, equal in Islamic societies? Do you refute this? Do you even care? Do any of my wonderful European friends or liberal Americans that visit here? Likely not....

No, Christianity hasn't advanced, the societies of most majority Christian countries have advanced. As I pointed out with Rwanda, Christian societies that haven't advanced like those in the west are still prone to outbursts of extreme violence and hatred. The ill-treatment of women isn't peculiar to Muslim countries, but most of the poorer Christian countries too. In Christian South Africa young girls, even babies, are raped by men ignorantly believing it will cure them of AIDs. In many of the former Soviet states life is so cheap that women are sent into a life of slavery and prostitution in the West against their will. There are many examples from modern, but less advanced, Christian countries of violence, inhumanity and intolerance that is equal or greater than anything in Islamic societies. That is because it is not Christianity or Islam that is the problem, but the development of the societies that these people live in. You won't cure the problems that we face by destroying the societies they live in, but by helping and encouraging them to develop.

[Brian Koontz]

"Grew out of it" seems to be the operative phrase here that you, and the other moral equivalence types are not getting here. Christianity has grown as a religion. Islam has not. Are you not getting this at all? Do any of you arguing for the wonderful merits of Islam even like women? Seriously? You do know they are not, you know, equal in Islamic societies? Do you refute this? Do you even care? Do any of my wonderful European friends or liberal Americans that visit here?

They are NOT THE WEST. They don't have to act like the West does. They aren't invading Switzerland and setting up an Islamic economic policy, like the West is doing in Iraq.

While you're whining, why don't you whine some about Africa. Not exactly the most advanced secular democratic nations there, are they? Oh right, they don't have OIL and therefore are irrelevant.

If Africa had oil, Bush would be invading there and you'd be making up excuses for it.

Ultimately, WHAT THEY DO IN MUSLIM COUNTRIES does not affect YOU. So don't go all Big Brother on them... they don't *want* you as a brother.

Al Qaeda, a rogue agent, took 8000 eyes. So Bush takes a country. If Bush is indeed a Christian, he needs to review the "eye for an eye" policy. He also needs to review the policy on holding innocent Muslims responsible for the acts of other Muslims. You know, kind of like killing small children for the acts of their soldiers. OH WAIT, that caused conservative outrage!

Conservative: Well, you see, those were Russian kids. That country's kind of cool now, becoming Western and such.

Brian: And the kids killed in Iraq?

Conservative: Fuck 'em! Goddamn towelheads! Give the bastards Democracy! Foreign exploitation of their resources!

OH WAIT, Iraq was supposed to be all about getting Saddam Hussein out of power.

Conservative: AHEM, well, you know... *while we're there*...

Brian: Fucking jackass.

Bush is a War Criminal. He invaded and corrupted a country that was not a threat to the United States. If the UN is a respectable agency they will treat him as such.

[Enidigm]

I'm not in dissagreement about the socio-economic causes of Islamism, but i think a serious consideration about the difficulties of multiculturalism is essential when there are fundamental value conflicts.

The point of political Islam's role has always been the implementation of the Sharia, and many of its laws we find repugnant. But its also telling that in any ME state wishing to remain secular whether or not the Sharia has been implemented is basically a litnus test as to whether the state is in the hands of Islamist forces.

Ultimately, WHAT THEY DO IN MUSLIM COUNTRIES does not affect YOU. So don't go all Big Brother on them... they don't *want* you as a brother.


Uh, actually this is the epitome of wrong. What they do in Muslim Countries has been affecting us for over ten years. When one reduces the imperfections and stresses of Islam with the modern world to some sort of philosophic developmental issue, one is forced to ask whether the world will have to endure decades of unrest, violence, and terrorism until Islam "figures itself out", and whether that is "acceptable".

The other crucial problem facing the socio-economic solution to Islamic fundamentalism is to ask if such a resolution is not possible, if like in Sudan, Algeria, and other impovrished states they have no hope for such developments for long into the future - especially when both Saudi and Iran are fueling there own competing brands of revolutionary Islam with oil-gotten funds.

We used to call them "witches" and burn them at the stake, until we grew out of it.

Exodus 22:20 "He who sacrifices to any god, except to the LORD only, shall be utterly destroyed."


To be fair, i'm not certain you would call those attacked in Exodus 22:20 apostates, infidels, or heretics. However there is supposed to be a quote from somewhere in Deuteronomy that attacks apostates specifically, so i'm wrong either way, at least on the religion point. But on the national level?

What worries me is that looking at the recent history of political Islam is that in almost every country in which it arises, it tries to sieze power from the establishment and implement the sharia, and in literally every case, the Islamist problem is "solved" by beating them back using the time honored solution of nailing their head to the floor. From Malaysia, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, Algeria and on. Is this a result of their despotic goverments, or a terrifying portent of the only effective means of dealing with virulent cells of politicized Islam?

I need to study in greater depth Islam in Turkey and Bosnia; they somehow seem the guide to how modern Islam can (or can't) coexist with a modern secular state.

[Toddy]

No, Christianity hasn't advanced, the societies of most majority Christian countries have advanced. As I pointed out with Rwanda, Christian societies that haven't advanced like those in the west are still prone to outbursts of extreme violence and hatred. The ill-treatment of women isn't peculiar to Muslim countries, but most of the poorer Christian countries too. In Christian South Africa young girls, even babies, are raped by men ignorantly believing it will cure them of AIDs. In many of the former Soviet states life is so cheap that women are sent into a life of slavery and prostitution in the West against their will. There are many examples from modern, but less advanced, Christian countries of violence, inhumanity and intolerance that is equal or greater than anything in Islamic societies. That is because it is not Christianity or Islam that is the problem, but the development of the societies that these people live in. You won't cure the problems that we face by destroying the societies they live in, but by helping and encouraging them to develop.

I shouldn't even bother posting another reply to you, Tim, but this is just so insane...

How can you say that Christianity hasn't advanced? That's absurd. Of the major religions, Christianity has been the one that has most consistently looked at its precepts and changed with the needs and desires of its adherents. Look at what's happened in the West over the past few decades in regard to abortion, birth control, women's rights, and gay marriage. The Christian church is always changing and evolving. Please show me the same regard for societal mores in, say, Islam.

It's equally crazy to point to Third World countries and blame violence and societal problems there on the fact that the majority of the people are Christian. You're also ignoring the fact that Christianity is very different from Islam in many key areas. In most countries, Christianity and government are two completely separated entities. So it's usually ridiculous to blame governmental and societal ills on Christianity.

But that's not the case in the Islamic world, where government and faith are one and the same thing. Even dictatorial regimes in the Muslim world are at least quasi-theocracies. You can draw direct lines from Islam to societal problems in the Arab world. For example, women are second-class citizens in the Arab world solely because of Islam. Muslim governments are funding terrorism solely because of Islam. I'm not saying that Christianity hasn't negatively affected Western societies, but it certainly isn't the drag on modernity that Islam is.

If you want to develop Muslim societies, you have to work at reforming Islam. It's the very foundation of these societies, so you can't make any of the changes you've been bleating about without addressing it first and foremost. I mean, what are you suggesting? That Muslim governments can just make secular pronouncements to begin wholesale societal changes? That a government can simply say "Women are now fully equal and do not need to wear hijab" without consulting the mullahs and getting them to change their views on the Koran and Hadiths? Uh, not gonna happen.

Do you understand anything about Islam at all?.

[Toddy]

I need to study in greater depth Islam in Turkey and Bosnia; they somehow seem the guide to how modern Islam can (or can't) coexist with a modern secular state.

Essentially, the Turks forcibly separated church from state through fairly draconian measures like banning the veil. This is the only way to make Islam compatible with the modern world and democracy. And it doesn't really work, because unless the entire Muslim world adopts the same measures as the Turks, and Islam reforms, there will always be huge pressure on countries like Turkey to return to "true" Islam -- which means a theocracy of some sort.

I really don't understand why so many people here don't understand that Islam isn't just a religion as we understand it, that it is intended to serve as the template for entire societies. Secular government just doesn't exist, even as a concept, at least in a way that we define it in the West. That might change as interpretations of Islam evolve, and there are some interesting developments in Iraq with some things that Sistani has said about the role of Islam in the country's new government, but it looks pretty likely that modern interpretations are only going to be brought about after a lot of bloodshed.

Also, I get a kick about how so many people here are blaming Islamist violence on repressive actions in places like Chechnya and Algeria. Are you not aware that allowing Islamist parties to take power, even in democractic elections, means the end of democracy? Anyone remember the "one person, one vote, once" philosophy of Algeria's FIS Islamist party? And then there's the example of Iran. We're now 25 years past the revolution and the country is as locked down as ever, the mullahs still running the show despite demands for democracy.

[Jason McCullough]

You're right, Brent, the Muslim religion is completely incompatible with democracy. That's why Iran's leaders can barely keep their country under control.

[antlers]

Plus, Muslim countries are all built on the same societal plan. That's why Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia are virtually indistinguishable from Morocco or Egypt.

[Theodore Rex DX]

How can you say that Christianity hasn't advanced? That's absurd. Of the major religions, Christianity has been the one that has most consistently looked at its precepts and changed with the needs and desires of its adherents. Look at what's happened in the West over the past few decades in regard to abortion, birth control, women's rights, and gay marriage. The Christian church is always changing and evolving. Please show me the same regard for societal mores in, say, Islam.

Wow ... they finally caught up with Christ - almost. I don't think backpedalling on the various messed-up additions and misinterpretations that have been made to Christ's teachings should count as real progress. And treating women and gays like dirt was just something nearly everybody did - it wasn't specifically Christian. And in any case, more often than not it wasn't the church that spearheaded these changes, but the law. The church and the fundamentalist pressure groups/politicians are the ones that tend to resist this stuff.

It's equally crazy to point to Third World countries and blame violence and societal problems there on the fact that the majority of the people are Christian.

That is because it is not Christianity [or Islam] that is the problem, but the development of the societies that these people live in.

Please learn to read, Brett. I bolded the parts you seem to be having troube with.

But that's not the case in the Islamic world, where government and faith are one and the same thing. Even dictatorial regimes in the Muslim world are at least quasi-theocracies. You can draw direct lines from Islam to societal problems in the Arab world. For example, women are second-class citizens in the Arab world solely because of Islam. Muslim governments are funding terrorism solely because of Islam. I'm not saying that Christianity hasn't negatively affected Western societies, but it certainly isn't the drag on modernity that Islam is.

If you want to develop Muslim societies, you have to work at reforming Islam. It's the very foundation of these societies, so you can't make any of the changes you've been bleating about without addressing it first and foremost. I mean, what are you suggesting? That Muslim governments can just make secular pronouncements to begin wholesale societal changes? That a government can simply say "Women are now fully equal and do not need to wear hijab" without consulting the mullahs and getting them to change their views on the Koran and Hadiths? Uh, not gonna happen.


Okay, some of this we can work with. I am of the opinion that there really are some parts of Islamic doctrine that aren't compatible with ethical behavior. I haven't read all of the Koran, but you don't have to get far into it before you run into some pretty wrong stuff - about on par with the dumber parts of the old testament and some of the post-Christ new testament. Apologies for the cavalier approach to religion, but this really deserves its own thread and I don't feel like going into it here.
I don't think there's anything about women having to wear veils, though - just some stuff about how women should be 'modest'. It's pretty vague in any case.
But that doesn't mean you can't interpret Islam in a better way than it is currently being interepreted by a lot of Muslim countries. Even in the most severly fucked-up religious doctrine there's a better and worse way.
And there are Muslim countries that aren't theocracies, and they're not all run by priests.
Anyway, I don't see what this has to do with your plan of attack on Islamic terrorism. If you think the problem is Islam first-and-foremost - and not just the militant extremists - it makes me wonder who you were really talking about killing in your little rant earlier. And nobody's said anything about not reforming Islam. I think it's a great idea, but it's going to be pretty damn hard. Why make it harder?

[Uncle Larry]

To be honest, if you read through the comments made by some people in this thread, and on some of the raving blogs around the net, and replaced the word "Islam" with "Judaism", they would start to read like Nazis espousing Arian supremacy in the 1930s.

In spite of the quasi-Godwin here, it's worthwhile to note that the jews killed in the Holocaust weren't waging a holy war on the gentile world, let alone the Third Reich. Not that it vindicates every racist or indicts every Muslim, I'm just giving some context.

Also:

Christianity and Islam are as different as Fords and Volkswagens
Only most cases the Ford has saftey glass and adheres to current emission standards while by and large the Volkswagen is an ancient deathtrap, with no new models on the horizon and few mechanics willing or able to service the existing ones. I'm not really trying to convince you that Christianity is any better than Islam, but - strictly statisitcally speaking - they do blow up less stuff.

[hermyhermit]

Plus, Muslim countries are all built on the same societal plan. That's why Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia are virtually indistinguishable from Morocco or Egypt.

You are a funny man. Have you been to any of these places lately? Particularly Indonesia? Islam has really exploded there and I doubt it will have any effect (http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2001/s380839.htm) really. I'm certain the country will remain stable (http://weblog.delacour.net/archives/000734.html) despite the rise of Islam.

Certainly the radical element in the religion is not going to try and affect (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2778923.stm) the political landscape of the place.

I mean there is certainly no precedent (http://www.iranchamber.com/history/islamic_revolution/islamic_revolution.php) for anything of the sort... Ok Iran wants democracy, but the mullahs aren't having it, so want it all you want.

I'm admittedly ignorant, but being ignorant and not knowing it... far far worse

[antlers]

Plus, Muslim countries are all built on the same societal plan. That's why Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia are virtually indistinguishable from Morocco or Egypt.

You are a funny man. Have you been to any of these places lately? Particularly Indonesia? Islam has really exploded there and I doubt it will have any effect (http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2001/s380839.htm) really. I'm certain the country will remain stable (http://weblog.delacour.net/archives/000734.html) despite the rise of Islam.

Certainly the radical element in the religion is not going to try and affect (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2778923.stm) the political landscape of the place.

I mean there is certainly no precedent (http://www.iranchamber.com/history/islamic_revolution/islamic_revolution.php) for anything of the sort... Ok Iran wants democracy, but the mullahs aren't having it, so want it all you want.

I'm admittedly ignorant, but being ignorant and not knowing it... far far worse

Yes, there's Islamic terrorism in Indonesia (news flash)! Which only proves the main point of my post, as you might have missed, that Indonesian society is virtually indistinguishable from that in Bangladesh, Egypt or Morroco! Women in all Islamic countries have the same status!
Attitudes about sex are the same throughout the Islamic world! No Islamic country has embraced a secular government without violently suppressing religious expression! None of this reflects local conditions at all!

[Brad Grenz]

Brian: Fucking jackass.

Can't argue with that.

[Tim Partlett]

In spite of the quasi-Godwin here, it's worthwhile to note that the jews killed in the Holocaust weren't waging a holy war on the gentile world, let alone the Third Reich. Not that it vindicates every racist or indicts every Muslim, I'm just giving some context.

True, but it was commonly believed that the Jewish people were bent on taking over the world. There's only a relatively tiny number of Muslims waging a holy war against the west, compared to the billion or so that exist on the planet, and yet people here seem to blame the entire culture and population.

Only most cases the Ford has saftey glass and adheres to current emission standards while by and large the Volkswagen is an ancient deathtrap, with no new models on the horizon and few mechanics willing or able to service the existing ones. I'm not really trying to convince you that Christianity is any better than Islam, but - strictly statisitcally speaking - they do blow up less stuff.

Why don't most people in Christian societies blow more stuff up? Is it because they are good Christians? Why doesn't my Muslim boss blow things up instead of running a successful business? Is it because he is a bad Muslim? Or do you think there is a connection between us both living in secular societies were religious values have been sidelined at the expense of rational thought and good business? Mostly, the only Christian values we still hold, are the ones that are compatible with our modern life.

[Toddy]

And in any case, more often than not it wasn't the church that spearheaded these changes, but the law. The church and the fundamentalist pressure groups/politicians are the ones that tend to resist this stuff.

Perhaps in the US. News flash -- the US isn't the entire world. Christianity outside the United States is about more than blowing up abortion clinics and demonstrating with "God Hates Fags" signs. The United Church of Canada started ordaining gays in the 1980s, btw, long before any government told the church that it had to offer equal treatment. There are lots of other examples out there from other countries, but I'll leave them for you to discover.

That is because it is not Christianity [or Islam] that is the problem, but the development of the societies that these people live in.

Please learn to read, Brett. I bolded the parts you seem to be having troube with.

Uh, I did read it. And respond to it. Christianity is not the same as Islam. Period. It is intertwined with government and society as a whole in a way that hasn't been seen in the Western world since Henry VIII needed a divorce.

Okay, some of this we can work with. I am of the opinion that there really are some parts of Islamic doctrine that aren't compatible with ethical behavior. I haven't read all of the Koran, but you don't have to get far into it before you run into some pretty wrong stuff - about on par with the dumber parts of the old testament and some of the post-Christ new testament. Apologies for the cavalier approach to religion, but this really deserves its own thread and I don't feel like going into it here.

Agreed. But you do realize that the wildly predominant view of modern Islam is that the Koran and Hadiths must be taken literally? The vast majority of mainstream Christians don't take the Bible literally in this day and age.

I don't think there's anything about women having to wear veils, though - just some stuff about how women should be 'modest'. It's pretty vague in any case.

Well, not really. There are a number of Hadiths that spell out really, really clearly that women are inferior to men both intellectually and in regard to how they can practise religion. Many Islamic scholars believe that the Koran indicates that women were created like animals and plants, and thus have the same value to men. Wives will only get into paradise if they please their husbands. Rebellious women should be beaten. And so on. There's nothing "pretty vague" in there at all. Women are inferior in Islam.

But that doesn't mean you can't interpret Islam in a better way than it is currently being interepreted by a lot of Muslim countries. Even in the most severly fucked-up religious doctrine there's a better and worse way. And there are Muslim countries that aren't theocracies, and they're not all run by priests.

Yes, but Islam as it is currently practised by a huge swath of the Islamic world isn't about interpretation. It's about literally following the will of God, as set forth in the Koran and the Hadiths. There isn't a history of Islamic church councils debating what scripture means. There is just God and His word and His Prophet. It's hard to change that without major reform that goes to the heart of Islam and its history.

Anyway, I don't see what this has to do with your plan of attack on Islamic terrorism. If you think the problem is Islam first-and-foremost - and not just the militant extremists - it makes me wonder who you were really talking about killing in your little rant earlier. And nobody's said anything about not reforming Islam. I think it's a great idea, but it's going to be pretty damn hard. Why make it harder?

Partlett's been saying that there is no need to reform Islam from the very beginning. He's been writing nothing but ridiculous rants against the Christian church and saying that if we just make all the Muslim societies more wealthy, presto!, no more terrorism.

My little rant? All I said was that Islam needs to be reformed and that we need to hunt down and kill Islamists before they kill more of us. I don't know how that could even be the slightest bit controversial today, with the atrocities we see unfolding in the name of Islam on a weekly basis all over the planet. Hell, even Time had the problem with Islam as its cover story last week. It's hard to believe that anyone could look at the current world situation and not realize that there is something deeply, deeply wrong with Islam.

[Toddy]

Why don't most people in Christian societies blow more stuff up? Is it because they are good Christians? Why doesn't my Muslim boss blow things up instead of running a successful business? Is it because he is a bad Muslim? Or do you think there is a connection between us both living in secular societies were religious values have been sidelined at the expense of rational thought and good business? Mostly, the only Christian values we still hold, are the ones that are compatible with our modern life.

Why, then, are so many Islamists -- including pretty much every single one of the 9/11 hijackers -- radicalized after living in these secular Western societies? Why did Mohammad Atta, who was raised in a well-to-do family and was highly educated in secular areas of study, turn into a monster in Germany?

Even the acknowledged "father" of modern Islamism, Sayyed Qutb, was radicalized only while attending school in Denver in the 1940s. Before that point he was a school administrator who dabbled in literary criticism and wrote a novel. After the US, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and dedicated his life to killing Nasser.

How does this mesh with your idea that secular societies are responsible for civilizing influences? Shouldn't people like Atta and Qutb have embraced the benefits of secular society after living in the West?

If you can satisfactorily answer these questions I'll shut up.

[Uncle Larry]

Why don't most people in Christian societies blow more stuff up?

Someone should do an informal poll or something, because this has me fucking stumped. The only thing I can come up with is: maybe they believe they'll go to hell if they do. Wonder where those wahabi muslims think they are going when they detonate themselves in a crowded intersection? I read somehwere that it wasn't hell.


Why doesn't my Muslim boss blow things up instead of running a successful business?.

Dude, I dunno that either, but I'd say consider yourself lucky - I hear those types blow up all the time, it's crazy.

For the record, I'm not saying that living conditions, political climate, ect. aren't a huge factor, but I think it's downright irresponsible to dismiss fundamental Islamic ideology as no more dangerous than fundamental Christian ideology, or any number of other non-muslim religions not declaring holy war on the both of us.

For the record II: I've known plenty of "inert" muslims myself, including the doubly volitile Black Muslim variant, who had several opportunities to explode or be otherwise disagreeable, yet never did. So yeah, I totally get thet not every single practicing muslim on earth is one of the bad ones. But, like the rest of you, I'm also never not aware just where on the plane one of "them" might potentially be, because those days are over.

[Brian Rucker]

Meanwhile, in one of our good guy Christian countries, a leader uses terrorism as an excuse to concentrate power in his own hands. This a country whose policies we've criticised which have demonstrably been a cause of the terrorism that inflicts it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3650966.stm

Putin tightens grip on security

President Vladimir Putin has ordered a drastic overhaul of the way Russia is run in the wake of a series of bombings and deadly attacks on civilians.
Mr Putin announced plans to allow him to nominate regional governors, who are currently elected.

He said a new federal commission would study the troubled North Caucasus region, at the heart of much tension.

Mr Putin addressed a special cabinet meeting, summoned after hundreds died in the school siege in Beslan.

"The organisers and perpetrators of the terror attack are aiming at the disintegration of the state, the break-up of Russia," he told ministers, the Associated Press news agency reported.

He went on to propose that the lower house of parliament, the Duma, be elected wholly on a party-list basis. Currently, half of the Duma's 450 deputies are elected that way.

Many folks on the right and left in this country have begun making the rational distinction between Al Qaida hating us because 'we are free' and attacking us because of our policies as enumerated in their fatwas. Fundamentalist Islam is an excuse for violence in my opinion. Germans in WWII weren't Islamic. Stalin wasn't Islamic. Pol Pot wasn't Islamic. The genocidal westward expansion in the United States wasn't set in motion by Islamic shock troops. I'm firmly convinced that if we really want to figure out how to deal with the problem we need to understand what's put it in motion and what sustains it. To the extent lack of opportunities and education in foreign countries contribute we need to see what can be done about it. To the extent the lack of an evenhanded policy in the middle east contributes we need to see what can be done about it. To the extent our addiction to middle eastern oil encourages us to turn a blind eye and forces our hand whenever the source is threatened, we need to look into it.

That's not to say surgical violence isn't necessary and, even in some cases, regime change. However the crazy notion of American remaking the middle east through invasion isn't going to work. To the extent Islamic thought provides a rationale for violence you could do nothing worse than attacking and occupying wide swaths of terrain. That's precisely what jihadists need to prove their point and get more recruits.

I heard an expert say this weekend on CNN that when he reads Al Qaida boards there's a general consensus that George Bush is the best bet for them staying relevant. He'll keep on attacking countries and getting bogged down in quicksand while they keep using those wasteful invasions as recruiting posters. And this is something I've suspected was the case since Iraq.

[Uncle Larry]

Breaking news: Russia widely recognized as good-guy, christian.

[Tim Partlett]

Partlett's been saying that there is no need to reform Islam from the very beginning. He's been writing nothing but ridiculous rants against the Christian church and saying that if we just make all the Muslim societies more wealthy, presto!, no more terrorism.


No, no, no, Mr. Todd, I've not been saying that at all, but I'm sure it's easier for you to construct an argument based on what I don't say, rather than what I am actually saying. I haven't said that Islam doesn't need to reform, but that Islam isn't inherently evil and requires destroying. I listed a number of examples where we could help some of the Islamic societies progress, such as encouraging democracy and free-trade, putting pressure on them to rid themselves of inhumane practices, and requesting religious leaders preach a message of peace and not hate. This kind of leverage shouldn't be restricted only to Islamic states, but all states that have yet to reach the West's limited, but admittedly greater, state of freedom for its people.

We cannot hope to completely rid ourselves of terrorism by this route, but it will certainly work better than attempting to crush millions of people trying to hunt down a few thousand extremists, creating more and more extremists as we do.

Why, then, are so many Islamists -- including pretty much every single one of the 9/11 hijackers -- radicalized after living in these secular Western societies? Why did Mohammad Atta, who was raised in a well-to-do family and was highly educated in secular areas of study, turn into a monster in Germany?

So many? How many? Like none, or close to it. The combined muslim population of America, France, the UK and Germany is 16 or so million, nearly twice the population of Tunisia, and yet we have hardly any Islamic terrorist bombers who were born in these countries, and Tunisia has supplied us with dozens. The best you can come up with is some guy who was actually born in Egypt, but studied for a while in Germany. That's not a a Muslim German, that's not even a German citizen of Egyptian birth, that's an Egyptian.

Even so, the great mass of the Islamic population is based in countries that are not free and democratic. The highest leaders of the Islamic faith exist in countries where they feel they are at war with the west, and that their leaders are imposed upon them by the West. Just like the Christians of nations like Rwanda are influenced to some degree by the Catholic church's stances, the Muslims of the West are influenced too. By encouraging democracy in these countries, and reducing the amount of meddling we do to their governments, and their regional political power balance, the more these people will feel free from the threat of Western dominance.

[Tim Partlett]

For the record, I'm not saying that living conditions, political climate, ect. aren't a huge factor, but I think it's downright irresponsible to dismiss fundamental Islamic ideology as no more dangerous than fundamental Christian ideology, or any number of other non-muslim religions not declaring holy war on the both of us.

I haven't been saying that, nor would I. I disagree mostly on the way we should deal with the threat, and who exactly the threat is. I do not believe Muslims are a threat, nor their religion, but I do agree that certain factions, and their interpretation of Islam, are dangerous, are criminals, and need to be dealt with.

[Woolen Horde]

Why don't most people in Christian societies blow more stuff up? Is it because they are good Christians? Why doesn't my Muslim boss blow things up instead of running a successful business? Is it because he is a bad Muslim? Or do you think there is a connection between us both living in secular societies were religious values have been sidelined at the expense of rational thought and good business? Mostly, the only Christian values we still hold, are the ones that are compatible with our modern life.

Why, then, are so many Islamists -- including pretty much every single one of the 9/11 hijackers -- radicalized after living in these secular Western societies? Why did Mohammad Atta, who was raised in a well-to-do family and was highly educated in secular areas of study, turn into a monster in Germany?

Even the acknowledged "father" of modern Islamism, Sayyed Qutb, was radicalized only while attending school in Denver in the 1940s. Before that point he was a school administrator who dabbled in literary criticism and wrote a novel. After the US, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and dedicated his life to killing Nasser.

How does this mesh with your idea that secular societies are responsible for civilizing influences? Shouldn't people like Atta and Qutb have embraced the benefits of secular society after living in the West?

If you can satisfactorily answer these questions I'll shut up.

Alienation. Poverty. Many of France's muslims live in their equivalent of slums and are treated like 2nd class citizens. In that situation, easily molded young men fall under the influence of radical clerics, many of which are funded by our good friends, the Saudi Royal Family, in order to keep the clerics' heat off their own excesses.

Tim is also correct in pointing out the numbers. France is around 10-percent Muslim and rising. If living in the secular West automatically radicallized Muslism, then they'd have 6-7 million terrorists in France.

Also, many of the folk who trained in Al Queda camps in Afghanistan came from non-Western, non-secular countries, including many from Saudi Arabia. Obviously, they weren't "radicalized" by living in the West.

[Brian Rucker]

Breaking news: Russia widely recognized as good-guy, christian.

I'll break it to you gently but Russia is Orthodox Christian and Putin seems to be Bush's best buddy. He sung his praises the other day at the Russian embassy and I distinctly recall the odd line about how he looked into the man's soul...

Sounds like a character witness to me.

[Toddy]

No, no, no, Mr. Todd, I've not been saying that at all, but I'm sure it's easier for you to construct an argument based on what I don't say, rather than what I am actually saying. I haven't said that Islam doesn't need to reform, but that Islam isn't inherently evil and requires destroying.

Nice words to put in my mouth. I've never said anything even approaching that.

We cannot hope to completely rid ourselves of terrorism by this route, but it will certainly work better than attempting to crush millions of people trying to hunt down a few thousand extremists, creating more and more extremists as we do.

That's the sort of Clintonian thinking that created Afghanistan and led directly to the situation the world is in now with the war on terror.

So many? How many? Like none, or close to it. The combined muslim population of America, France, the UK and Germany is 16 or so million, nearly twice the population of Tunisia, and yet we have hardly any Islamic terrorist bombers who were born in these countries, and Tunisia has supplied us with dozens. The best you can come up with is some guy who was actually born in Egypt, but studied for a while in Germany. That's not a a Muslim German, that's not even a German citizen of Egyptian birth, that's an Egyptian.

Tim, all of this stuff is simply untrue. Many, many Islamist leaders are upper- or upper-middle-class, educated citizens with a lot of contact with the West and Western systems of business and government that you hold up as the cure-all for Islamism. Here are some names for you...

Osama bin Laden: Millionaire heir to massive construction company; degree in civil engineering; spiritual leader of al Qaeda

Ayman al-Zawahiri: Egyptian doctor, highly educated; responsible for 9/11 and Luxor massacre of tourists in 1997

Ramzi Yousef: attended college in UK for electrical engineering degree

Omar Abdel-Rahman: influential radical Muslim cleric who lived in NYC and helped organize WTC bombing in 1991

Abdul Rahman-Yasin: born and raised in Indiana; helped bomb WTC in 1993

Wadi el-Hage: Lebanese Christian who converted to Islam; joined al Qaeda after attending college in Louisiana; also lived in Texas and Arizona; involved in WTC bombing in 1993 and suspected of involvement in 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa

Khalid Sheikh-Mohammed: attended college in North Carolina; completed degree in engineering; organized 9/11

Mohammad Atta: wealthy Cairene; not known as religious until after attending Hamburg Technical University to study urban planning

Ramzi Binalshibh: Attending school in Hamburg, apparently became radicalized while living with Atta there; architect of 9/11

Marwan al-Shehhi: Attended school in Hamburg as well and was radicalized there; flew Flight 175 into the WTC on 9/11

Ziad Jarrah: Educated Catholic from upper-class family in Beirut; radicalized in Germany; flew Flight 93 on 9/11

Mohammed Haydar Zammar: Syrian native raised in Germany from age of 10; joined al Qaeda in 1996

Zacarias Moussaoui: Moroccan of middle-class background (mother was a teacher, I believe) raised and radicalized in France; al Qaeda member involved in some way with 9/11

Richard Reid: UK native; joined al Qaeda in late 1990s; 2001 shoe bomber

Ahmed Ressam: Algerian native radicalized after gaining political asylum in Canada in early 1990s; caught with carload of explosives in December 1991 on way to LAX

Abdelmajid Dahoumane: Also Algerian and apparently radicalized in Canada; assisted Ressam in LAX plot

Jose Padilla: NYC native and convert to Islam; currently in US custody for supposedly

Khadr Family: Self-described as "al Qaeda family" despite living in Canada since mid-1990s; children educated here for a number of years, yet at least three fought in Iraq and Afghanistan; father Ahmed Said Khadr was a top al Qaeda leader who used Western "charities' and gullibility to raise money for the group

Buffalo Six: Lackawanna, NY terror cell; all members were US citizens who were either born in the US or longstanding residents

This is just a short list I cobbled together from memory. You could easily add at least another 40 or 50 names to that list. And Sayyed Qutb isn't just "some guy." He's the acknowledged father of modern Islamism and there's a direct line from him to people like bin Laden and Zawahiri.

I'm not saying that the majority of shock-troop Islamists come from the West, but that many leaders were either radicalized here, or radicalized after they got a good look at what the West was all about, and rejected it utterly.

I don't see a shred of evidence for your assertion that terrorism can be stopped if we just show Islamists how beneficial Western culture and government can be. That's incredibly naive, and it ignores the fact that most Islamist leaders have already rejected what you seem to think will "convert" them.

Even so, the great mass of the Islamic population is based in countries that are not free and democratic. The highest leaders of the Islamic faith exist in countries where they feel they are at war with the west, and that their leaders are imposed upon them by the West. Just like the Christians of nations like Rwanda are influenced to some degree by the Catholic church's stances, the Muslims of the West are influenced too. By encouraging democracy in these countries, and reducing the amount of meddling we do to their governments, and their regional political power balance, the more these people will feel free from the threat of Western dominance.

It's different. Islam is woven into the fabric of those countries in a way that Christianity isn't in the West. You can't encourage democracy without first addressing an Islamic reformation, because as it currently stands, Islam is above earthly government. You don't change that, then secular democracy can't work.

[Tim Partlett]

If that list is from memory, then your memory is somewhat deficient and prone to make much stronger connections than actually exist. The list is long, but mostly consists of people who "lived" in the west for a while before carrying out some kind of terrorist attack on the west. That is really stretching your case to the limits. You can hardly claim Osama Bin Laden was raised in a secular Western society, just because his parents run a successful business in Saudi Arabia! The only real Western Muslim citizens on your list make for very slim pickings, especially after we take out your distortions.

1. Abdul Rahman-Yasin: born and raised in Indiana; helped bomb WTC in 1993

Abdul Rahman-Yasin was born in Indiana, this is true, and is an American citizen because of this. However, he was only born in America because his father was attending university there at the time. Once his father had finished university, he took his son back to Iraq, where he was raised in Iraqi society, not American. Jerry Springer was born in the UK, but raised in America. How British is Jerry Springer?

2. Richard Reid: UK native; joined al Qaeda in late 1990s; 2001 shoe bomber

This guy is genuine, although a failed terrorist. Hardly your typical muslim, terrorist, or even a typical human being. Of mixed Jamaican and English origin, and unable to find a direction in life, rejected by both white and black society, he found Islam while in prison for a string of petty crimes. There's an great article on him by the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukresponse/story/0,11017,659239,00.html), but given your shallow interest in the roots of people's actions, it probably won't be of interest to you.

3. Jose Padilla: NYC native and convert to Islam; currently in US custody for supposedly

You didn't complete the sentence. I guess that's because, in actual fact, he has yet to be charged with anything at all. Pretty poor.

4. Buffalo Six: Lackawanna, NY terror cell; all members were US citizens who were either born in the US or longstanding residents.

These first generation, or foreign born, Yemeni-Americans were only found guilty of giving material assistance to Al Qaeda while working on a training camp. They weren't even found guilty of actual membership of Al Qaeda, let alone assisting them on any particular terrorist attack.

So, tasked with listing the muslim terrorists bombers from the millions who live in the west, you come up with four examples. The only one of these who actually succeeded in bombing anything was actually only born in the US while his Iraqi father studied here, and was raised in Iraq. Only one who was born and raised in the West actually tried to bomb anything at all. One has yet to be charged with anything, and the others were only guilty of giving "material assistance" to a terrorist organisation, not being members of it, or actually bombing anything.

Given the large number of attacks, and attempted attacks, and the people who are necessarily involved in organising and carrying out these attacks, the fact that you can only come up with one guy who can actually claim to be a Western Muslim, and even he actually failed in his attempt, that shows you have an extremely weak case to argue. Well, I guess that was obvious from the moment you listed Osama Bin Laden as a man who was a Western citizen lol.

I don't see a shred of evidence for your assertion that terrorism can be stopped if we just show Islamists how beneficial Western culture and government can be. That's incredibly naive, and it ignores the fact that most Islamist leaders have already rejected what you seem to think will "convert" them.

Again, you over-simplify and distort my position, just so you can attack it. I clearly stated earlier that in addition to encouraging change, such as in the manner the EU has encouraged reform in Morocco and Turkey by offering the carrot of EU membership, we should also capture and punish the terrorists who carry out these attacks (and those who support them). I also said that we need to stop meddling in the Middle East to such an extent that we disrupt the natural power balance, such as propping up favourable dictators, like Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf and the extremely unpleasant Uzbekistani president Islam Karimov. The lack of freedoms in these country's causes discontent, and the meddling of Western powers, not just the US, causes us to be the target of their anger. Islam is just a tool for criminals, like Christianity was a tool for Hitler and many other unpleasant people and causes throughout history.

That's my solution. If yours isn't the destruction of Islam, what exactly is it? You want Islam to be reformed, how exactly do you plan to go about this radical objective? I'd be interested to know how you think it can be brought about without radicalizing Islam even further, or killing every Muslim.

[Tim Partlett]

Oh, don't worry, Brett, I've found your solution. And to think you called mine naive, or at least your distorted and over-simplified version of it.

This is just another example of the growing war between Islamism and civilization. Or maybe that should be Islam and civilization at this point. I'm getting tired of saying "But Islam is a peaceful faith" while millions of its adherents are spreading hate and death across the globe.

We're always going to have really pissed-off people out there who want to export Islam to every country on the planet. You're not going to change all of their minds. But you can kill the people, organizations, and nations that give these lunatics the cash and ability to organize attacks that slaughter hundreds of people and destabilize whole countries.

So you think we are at war with Islam, and that we should literally "kill" every nation that we discover to be supporting Islamic terrorists in any way, and somehow I am misportraying your argument by saying you want to destroy Islam. You don't believe we should try and encourage change in these countries, because you believe they are just pure hate, and they can never change. You believe that there is something intrinsically wrong with their way of life. I wouldn't be surprised if you think there is something wrong with their genes.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but you think that we can win the war against terrorism by engaging in Iraq style invasions of rogue countries. Given that the current situation in Iraq is proving a playground and recruiting station for Al Qaeda terrorists, and that the US military is steadily losing its grip while trying to control just one medium sized muslim country, it seems incredible that you think this plan could possibly work. America can win a war against any nation on the planet, I would not argue with that, but it cannot control an entire region. It would spend the whole time chasing its tail, crushing one country, while creating more terrorists who fight the resistance against it, getting support and funding from organisations in nations that either can't prevent it themselves, or tacitly support or allow their existence, which your policy would then mean the US would have to invade.

Unless you plan on dropping nuclear bombs on the entire region and killing every muslim on the planet, this kind of gung-ho approach would be purely counter-productive, increasing the threat of terrorism in the world, just like Bush's war in Iraq is doing.

[Jason McCullough]

Why don't most people in Christian societies blow more stuff up? Is it because they are good Christians? Why doesn't my Muslim boss blow things up instead of running a successful business? Is it because he is a bad Muslim? Or do you think there is a connection between us both living in secular societies were religious values have been sidelined at the expense of rational thought and good business? Mostly, the only Christian values we still hold, are the ones that are compatible with our modern life.

Why, then, are so many Islamists -- including pretty much every single one of the 9/11 hijackers -- radicalized after living in these secular Western societies? Why did Mohammad Atta, who was raised in a well-to-do family and was highly educated in secular areas of study, turn into a monster in Germany?

Even the acknowledged "father" of modern Islamism, Sayyed Qutb, was radicalized only while attending school in Denver in the 1940s. Before that point he was a school administrator who dabbled in literary criticism and wrote a novel. After the US, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and dedicated his life to killing Nasser.

How does this mesh with your idea that secular societies are responsible for civilizing influences? Shouldn't people like Atta and Qutb have embraced the benefits of secular society after living in the West?

If you can satisfactorily answer these questions I'll shut up.

This isn't surprising. Most 20th century revolutions were started by radicalized academic middling types - Lenin, for example. And there isn't much in their home countries where people can become radical academics, so there you go.

[Jason McCullough]

That's the sort of Clintonian thinking that created Afghanistan and led directly to the situation the world is in now with the war on terror.

What on earth does this mean?

[Uncle Larry]

Breaking news: Russia widely recognized as good-guy, christian.

I'll break it to you gently but Russia is Orthodox Christian and Putin seems to be Bush's best buddy. He sung his praises the other day at the Russian embassy and I distinctly recall the odd line about how he looked into the man's soul...

Sounds like a character witness to me.

Thanks for the gentle break. AFAIK Russia is decades removed from any serious religious influence in government, (Orthodox)Christian or otherwise. If you're just making the point that there is a religious majority of Orthodox Christians in Russia, then you've got me(or more accurately, somebody) there.

Putin is Bush's best buddy? (http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/09/07/putin.us/)
Asked about the U.S. presidential race, Putin was complimentary of President George W. Bush, saying he likes him. He is a friendly, decent, predictable person, but "it is not about personalities," Putin said.

He said polls in Russia show 7 percent support for Bush, and 25 percent for Democratic challenger John Kerry


Some buddy...

[Jason McCullough]

Bribing governments to support us while their populations didn't was pretty much our diplomatic strategy on Iraq.

[Brian Rucker]

Sorry, phrased that poorly. Bush is Putin's bestest buddy and seems willing to vouch for his great character showing the legendary judgement we've come to know and love.

[Toddy]

You can hardly claim Osama Bin Laden was raised in a secular Western society, just because his parents run a successful business in Saudi Arabia! The only real Western Muslim citizens on your list make for very slim pickings, especially after we take out your distortions.

My distortions? I posted facts. You simply ignored the many examples you didn't like because they prove you're lying to make your case! All of the people I listed were exposed to the Western cultural and economic benefits that you said would magically cure them of Islamist beliefs that lead to such wonderful events as the 9/11 bombing and the Beslan school massacre.

And you're the one who set the bar here. You're the one making the crazy claim that spreading economic prosperity and Western ways -- which surely include education in technical fields and operating multi-million-dollar construction firms and hanging out in Beirut discos in the 1970s -- will end Islamism.

Again, you over-simplify and distort my position, just so you can attack it. I clearly stated earlier that in addition to encouraging change, such as in the manner the EU has encouraged reform in Morocco and Turkey by offering the carrot of EU membership, we should also capture and punish the terrorists who carry out these attacks (and those who support them). I also said that we need to stop meddling in the Middle East to such an extent that we disrupt the natural power balance, such as propping up favourable dictators, like Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf and the extremely unpleasant Uzbekistani president Islam Karimov.

Yes, because we all know that allowing Islamist parties to take control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal would be a wonderful development for world peace. Release the doves! Surely if we just step out of the region and allow Osama and pals to build that caliphate across the Middle East, Asia, New Zealand, and the north part of Australia, everything will be roses!

The lack of freedoms in these country's causes discontent, and the meddling of Western powers, not just the US, causes us to be the target of their anger. Islam is just a tool for criminals, like Christianity was a tool for Hitler and many other unpleasant people and causes throughout history.

What? That's even more insane than your earlier loony-tunes rantings about Hiroshima. Hitler hated Christianity. He thought it was mindless superstition. Destroying it was on his to-do list from the 1920s on. Here's a passage from a letter to Himmler in 1941 that makes Hitler's feelings on Christianity pretty clear:

"So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it. The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advance of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. All that's left is to prove that in nature there's no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds - perhaps inhabited worlds like ours - then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity."

But even if I was to admit that Hitler used Christianity somewhat, it clearly wasn't out of any real belief in any of the faith's precepts. That is in direct opposition to Islamists, who clearly have very strong beliefs about their faith. They are motivated by Islam. It is the sole reason for everything that they do.

So, as usual, your comparisons make no sense at all.

That's my solution. If yours isn't the destruction of Islam, what exactly is it? You want Islam to be reformed, how exactly do you plan to go about this radical objective? I'd be interested to know how you think it can be brought about without radicalizing Islam even further, or killing every Muslim.

Yes, because you certainly can't advocate change without advocating genocide, right Tim? Positive evolution and development=mass murder!

Anyhow, it doesn't matter what I say here. You're just going to continue to lie and distort whatever anyone posts that doesn't agree with your halfwitted, woefully uneducated views on the world.

[Tim Partlett]

My distortions? I posted facts. You simply ignored the many examples you didn't like because they prove you're lying to make your case! All of the people I listed were exposed to the Western cultural and economic benefits that you said would magically cure them of Islamist beliefs that lead to such wonderful events as the 9/11 bombing and the Beslan school massacre.

A distortion, for example, is where you post as "fact" that someone was brought up in America, like Yassin, when he was actually brought up in Iraq. It is when you say that Osama bin Laden has been westernized by the fact that his parents own a company that deals with Westerners. It is when you say that my argument is simply to show Islamic countries how great the west is will magically cure terrorism, when my argument is nothing like that. You have distorted the facts, and you have distorted my arguments, in practically every post you have made in reply to me. Yet, you accuse me of lying, and provide no evidence of my lies. Having been exposed for your cheap ploys, you simply engage in the tit-for-tat reactions of a ten year old; "I'm not - you are!"

As I said, if you really are just a ten year old, please admit so, and I will not continue to respond to you.

We weren't discussing being "exposed" to Western values, we were discussing the fact that few Western muslims, compared to those living in the dictatorships of the middle east, have engaged in violent terrorism, such as bombings. You were tasked with providing evidence of Western muslims being as violent and extreme as their middle eastern counterparts, in order to support your argument that it is Islam, and not the conditions that Islamic people live under, that is the root and only cause of terrorism. Your response to that was to provide a long list of terrorists who don't live in Western countries, but just happened to spend some time there, or even just work for a "western style" business. I have been more exposed to Islam than most of those people have been exposed to the West, so by your argument I should be plotting to blow up the European Parliament!

You failed in your task, so you failed in your argument.

What? That's even more insane than your earlier loony-tunes rantings about Hiroshima. Hitler hated Christianity. He thought it was mindless superstition. Destroying it was on his to-do list from the 1920s on. Here's a passage from a letter to Himmler in 1941 that makes Hitler's feelings on Christianity pretty clear:

I said Hitler used Christianity as a tool, I made no mention of whether he believed in Christ or Christianity, that is a whole different discussion. Whether Hitler did or did not believe in Christ is immaterial, for of the millions who did his bidding, the vast majority of them did. Just like the Al Qaeda terrorists are Muslims, those that killed, or helped, to kill the Jews, Gypsies and Jehova's Witnesses were Christians. Germany was a Christian country. Hitler, in public, said he was a Christian, because, at the very least, he wanted the Christian Germans to believe he was.

But really, my reply had absolutely nothing to do with Hitler's belief in Christ or not, and responding to it with paragraphs of refutation of a claim I did not make only exposes your predeliction to knee-jerk reactionary responses to arguments that you read into other people's posts that don't actually exist there. I didn't say that Christianity was responsible for violence in the third-world, and you knee-jerked in response to that fabricated argument. I didn't mention anything about the Hiroshima bombing, and you knee-jerked in response to my imagined argument on that subject. I didn't mention anything about Hitler being a Christian, and you immediately jerked your knee and started an off-topic rant about how I am a nut-case for suggesting he was.

I actually posted a large segment of my reply that dealt specifically with my proposed solution to the situation, and a critique of your proposed solution, and in return I get nothing but rants about imagined off-topic arguments that I didn't make. Do you think it is possible for you to make a intelligent response to my actual proposed solution, and for you to fulminate a response to my critique of what, I imagine, is your solution? Or can we expect another bout of tantrum throwing while you respond to some argument in my reply that you think I am making, because certain words in my post trigger an angry and irrational response from your right frontal lobe?