London Bombing

Originally Posted by warch

Crusades and historic tallys aside, Fundamentalist Islamic militants seem (at least to me) to be creating more havoc right now. Trying to understand the enemy is one thing, excusing is another. I'm not up for that.

Who said anything about excusing them? There is no possible excuse for 9/11, no possible excuse for what just happened in London. We must be aware, however, that our side, too, has been responsible for its share of civilian deaths.

[warch]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/e...on/4664209.stmmissing

Yeah, yeah. I'm not up for a debate. I'm just angry and sad.

Originally Posted by warch

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/e...on/4664209.stmmissing

Yeah, yeah. I'm not up for a debate. I'm just angry and sad.

As are we all. Just remember the horror continues on BOTH sides. Wouldn't these pictures also make ANYONE angry? These are children injured by US bombs. When are both sides going to stop killing innocent children, someone's beloved father, someone's sister or brother, someone's best friend in this world? The tragedy of London is HUMAN tragedy. The tragedy of 9/11 is a HUMAN tragedy. The tragedy of these two Iraqi children and many more like them is a HUMAN tragedy. There is no "us" versus "them." There is only us. If I must be the first one to reach out my hand, so be it.

[warch]

I disagree. There is an "us" vs "them. Them being those who would specifcally target civilians during rush hour to create most terror and casualties.

Your peace movement needs a reality check.

Originally Posted by warch

I disagree. There is an "us" vs "them. Them being those who would specifcally target civilians during rush hour to create most terror and casualties.

Your peace movement needs a reality check.

Those children were responsible for the London bombings? Those children engineered 9/11? Why did we drop bombs over their homes? Why didn't we go after the REAL terrorist, Bin Laden?

My "peace movement" as you call it, is simply a desire to end the slaughter of innocents on both sides. If this desire makes me out of touch with reality, then so be it.

[warch]

Even with our govermental missteps and mismanagement of which I have been alarmed, I guess I still dont equate the motivations or results of our miltary actions with those of Islamic terrorists. I still think we're the good guys.

[Undertoad]

via Andrew Sullivan

"I feel the appeal, believe me. You are exasperated with the manifold faults of Tony Blair and George W Bush. Fighting your government is what you know how to do and what you want to do, and when you are confronted with totalitarian forces which are far worse than your government, the easy solution is to blame your government for them.

But it's a parochial line of reasoning to suppose that all bad, or all good, comes from the West - and a racist one to boot. The unavoidable consequence is that you must refuse to support democrats, liberals, feminists and socialists in the Arab world and Iran who are the victims of Islamism in its Sunni and Shia guises because you are too compromised to condemn their persecutors.

Islamism stops being an ideology intent on building an empire from Andalusia to Indonesia, destroying democracy and subjugating women and becomes, by the magic of parochial reasoning, a protest movement on a par with Make Poverty History or the TUC.

Again, I understand the appeal. Whether you are brown or white, Muslim, Christian, Jew or atheist, it is uncomfortable to face the fact that there is a messianic cult of death which, like European fascism and communism before it, will send you to your grave whatever you do. But I'm afraid that's what the record shows."

- Nick Cohen, writing yesterday in London's Observer.

For what its worth, here's my "peacenik", "bleeding heart" take on the entire mess:

We should hunt down Bin Laden and Co. and execute them.

We should hunt down those responsible for the London bombings and execute them.

We should hunt down any other terrorist responsible for innocent deaths and execute them.

We should do this cleanly, with surgical precision, and with no mercy.

We should stop carrying out theatrics which involve massive "collateral damage." We are smarter than this and all we accomplish is the creation of new fanatics who must again be tracked down and executed. We have better things to do with our time then to create breeding grounds for venomous reptiles.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

via Andrew Sullivan
---
Again, I understand the appeal. Whether you are brown or white, Muslim, Christian, Jew or atheist, it is uncomfortable to face the fact that there is a messianic cult of death which, like European fascism and communism before it, will send you to your grave whatever you do. But I'm afraid that's what the record shows."
- Nick Cohen, writing yesterday in London's Observer.

Then fight the "messianic cult of death". Fight the cult that worships death in the temple, in the synagogue, in the church, in the streets, in the halls of power, in every place such foul, repulsive, hateful, death-loving enemies of humanity are found. And since "it", "like European fascism and communism before it, will send me to my grave whatever I do." I will go down to that grave fighting.

But the last time I checked, history's grave contains European fascism and communism both.

Mr Sullivan, do you intend to bury Islam?! You're gonna need a bigger shovel.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Wait wait wait, I found this post from BigV on August 3, 1952. It was on the backups:

UT: A couple of points...

1 -- First off, that's pretty funny. 1952. hehehe. Nice to have a little laugh, even if only to take the edge off.

2 -- Pertinent. Nice tie-in. Good job avoiding the easy/wrong blunder of casting this in religious tones.

4 -- I have got to learn to type faster. At this pace, I put knots in the thread. Sorry.

3 -- Thanks for helping me understand that I have been unclear in my earlier posts. I wish to revise and extend my remarks. I have been freely mixing two different related ideas and the results has been to muddy my expression of both ideas.

The first idea is that greater understanding of each other leads to less violence.

The second idea is that there is an important distinction between what has happened already, and what can be done in the present to improve the situation in the future.

My first idea (peace love and understanding) is squarely aimed at the prospect of reducing and preventing future violence. I see nothing in your post, artful though it is, that inclines me to change my mind. I should say that there are limits, however. Sometimes this approach does not work. I believe that those limits are human limits, not limits on the effectiveness and usefulness of this strategy. Have you ever heard the aphorism: a conclusion is where you got tired of thinking? I believe that violence is where you got tired of understanding. Because trying to understand is work. It's tiring. People give up. And if that surrender happens before the understanding equals the grievances, then ignorance will fill the gap, and violence is the product ignorance.

Your illustration is instructive. Let's follow it a little while. I would say that the KKK lynched negroes about whom they understood very little. Understanding breeds compassion, not homicidal violence. I can imagine the mental conversations of a lynch-er "I've seen enough. Hang'im." A closed mind. A closed mind admits no further understanding.

When you put words in my mouth: "If only we understood them more, they would blah blah blah...", get them right. I am saying that if I understand more, I am less violent. If the Klanmember's understanding were to increase, his tendency toward violence would diminish. I believe there is a level of understanding among men that would eliminate violence. I think that level is beyond my limits sometimes, beyond the limits of many men. But those limits can be increased, and what exercise raises the limitations of ignorance? Understanding. Striving. Compassion. Cause when those run dry for me, all I have left is this rock, this gun, this bomb. The more I increase the former, the less I rely on the latter.

How do I know this is a good idea? What about a contrarian view? Why don't we just kill all the offenders? There are difficulties in that route, fatal difficulties. Like, how will you know who to kill? What if you kill the wrong person? What effect will that have on the people close to the person you killed? What if you kill the right person? What effect will that have on the dead killer's surviving comrades? What if you kill all the right ones? What effect do you think that will have on the people who knew the ones you killed. Don't you think that all this killing is likely to incite the survivors to greater hatred? Why would you propose a strategy that makes more killers more desparate killers? There doesn't seem to be a deterrent effect given that many of these people already behave as though they have nothing to lose.

I would clarify my second point, regarding the past, what has already happened. For those whose actions brought death to innocent people, no amount of understanding is possible to change the past. Our society has successfully coped with killers, for a long time. There are institutions and structures to serve justice, if not our hunger for retribution. Let those systems continue to work. It is hard work, and I support those dedicated individuals that do the work.

As to the second point regarding future violence. Let's look at your example again. Were the lynchings stopped because we carpet bombed the south? Because we made sweeps of neighborhoods and rounded up all the crackers and squeezed them until the squealled? Did we just shoot first and ask questions later? No. They stopped because our society's understanding of what was right and wrong reached a saturation point and crystallized into action. Whites and Blacks together decried the injustices, and worked within the bounds of our system to make it illegal then worked in their own communities to make it unpopular. Community shame was a powerful motivator, good ol' peer pressure, backed by the force of law. Upheld by people who believed in laws. Not because we just imprisoned indiscriminately or killed freely those who "looked like the perps".

Understanding is a UNIVERSAL HUMAN NEED. There is no man or woman that does not yearn to be understood. This understanding is not a finite resource. This is not a zero sum game. Understanding is like love, the more you give, the more you have. Like a wick kindled from a flame, one becomes two, and the light increases.

[Happy Monkey]

Whether we started the fire isn't as relevant as whether we're pouring gasoline or water on it, now. Of course the terrorists are evil. Of course, the vast majority of them are beyond rehabilitation. Of course Islamic fascism is a movement in and of itself, and one that needs to be stopped. The question is the best way of stopping it. And the only way to stop an ideological movement is to starve them of recruits.

Islamism stops being an ideology intent on building an empire from Andalusia to Indonesia, destroying democracy and subjugating women and becomes, by the magic of parochial reasoning, a protest movement on a par with Make Poverty History or the TUC.

Here Cohen displays some ignorance about the subject. The terrorists and Islamic fascists are beyond help. The ones at issue are the ones who are on the edge, ripe for the picking. And that edge is what needs to be pushed back. They need to be shown that we are on their side, and the terrorists are not.

Cohen is of course correct that terrorism is bad, but he seems to be trying to use that fact to say that we should ignore the things we do to make it worse.

[Undertoad]

You forgot about the part where we all plant trees and hold hands and sing Kumbaya.

Hitchens:

We know very well what the "grievances" of the jihadists are.

The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London. The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won't abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music, and of most representational art. The grievance of the existence of Hinduism. The grievance of East Timor's liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a licence to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way.

Understand them yet?

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Understand them yet?

The same was true with Jim Crow. Black people being allowed to live, work, ride, and marry with white people was a grievance of the KKK. Decades later, racism still exists, and even the KKK still exists, but the related terrorism and deaths have drastically decreased.

[warch]

First, its Cohen's quote, and second he specifies Islamism as in extremist/jihadist.
By shovel, bullet, economics, education, security....its a good goal.

[Happy Monkey]

Indeed. But Cohen's entire argument is that rich idealistic Westerners are deluded by thinking that if only we could convince the terrorists that we're nice people, everything would be hunky dory.

No. There may indeed be people like that, since there's nothing so daft that nobody will believe it, but that is not a widely-held view, and arguing against that view is pointless.

The people we have to reach aren't the terrorists. The people we have to reach are the people who are fodder for their recruiters. Those are the people who we need to understand, and who we need to help to understand us.