Why Israel needs to finish the job now:
Iron Dome can defend successfully against a handful of rockets fired simultaneously in the general direction of Israeli cities. At some point Israel’s enemies will acquire the capability to fire large salvos of precision-guided weapons at key military or civilian targets and overwhelm the existing defenses. GPS-guided rockets are not that difficult to make. Iron Dome gives Israel a respite, not relief in the long term.
Israel has an extraordinary opportunity that may not last. It can protect its citizens from retaliation for the time being. Its right to self-defense is so obvious that Western governments usually hostile to Israeli interests must affirm its right to self-defense. Even the German Left Party (“die Linke”) is split, with some of its leaders attending pro-Israel rallies while others join the largely Muslim demonstrators chanting “Jude, Jude, feiges Schwein, Komm heraus und kaempf allein” (“Jew, Jew, cowardly pig, come out and fight alone”). It has the tacit (and sometimes not entirely tacit) support of Egypt, not to mention the Gulf states, in its war against Hamas. But it cannot afford a repeat of 2012, after which Hamas rebuilt its weapons capability. Where Hezbollah is concerned, the Chinese proverb applies: Kill the chicken while the monkey watches. The reduction of Hamas has to serve as a deterrent for Hezbollah and Syria, not to mention Iran.
Yes.
“Hamas must be rooted out in depth.” Given that the people in Gaza overwhelmingly support Hamas, and that a sizable fraction of them are willing to have their sons die for it, what exactly is being proposed? What is likely to work in the long run? I have trouble seeing anything working except for, Everyone in Gaza who will not take a loyalty oath to Israel (which is all of them) is moved to the West Bank to try again, a last chance at building an actual society. Gaza returns to the Israeli settlers and is annexed to Israel.
No one will support Israel in this, but no one supports Israel in anything anyhow. I do not think that the USA would prevent it by force, though I’m not completely sure. I think that the conservatives and we Jews could gridlock things for long enough.
But it can’t happen. Israel itself would be torn in half politically by the question, even though the Sharon plan for the Gaza has manifestly failed and no one alternative has any real chance of working.
MikeR,
Do you think the withdrawal from Lebanon was a failure for Israel? Hezbollah went to war, Israel fought back, the world, including the Arab states, wasn’t particularly upset, and it has been largely quiet since. Israel’s Northern cities are still vulnerable to rocket attacks from Lebanon, but I don’t think Israelis consider the situation with Lebanon unacceptable. So: do the same thing for Gaza and, ideally, the West Bank. Pull out. Give them full independence. Allow them to import stuff (to the extent that Lebanon is allowed to, which means the occasional freighter from North Korea or truck shipment from Syria will be intercepted). Inevitably, they’ll attack Israel, but why won’t the situation evolve into one like the one with Lebanon? (I do recognize that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are not the same as Hezbollah, but what are the differences that matter?)
“So: do the same thing for Gaza and, ideally, the West Bank. Pull out. Give them full independence. ”
Didn’t Israel pull out of Gaza a decade or so ago? They gave Gaza independence and they elected Hamas, who then started killing off their domestic political opponents when they weren’t trying to kill Israeli Jewish civilians.
You put the onus on Israel. You frame the problem in terms of what Israel has to do, what concessions they have to make. But the root problem is that Palestinians have a culture that demands the eradication of Jews in general and Israel specifically. There isn’t anything Israel can do to change Palestinian culture. Giving Gaza to the Palestinians, a major concession, didn’t moderate Palestinian racism, didn’t have any effect on the cultural practices of Palestinians, and didn’t stop Palestinian violence.
My question is, what can the Palestinians do to change their own culture? What can they do to achieve peace? What concessions can the Palestinians make?
“which means the occasional freighter from North Korea or truck shipment from Syria will be intercepted). Inevitably, they’ll attack Israel”
Why is this acceptable? The Israelis are expected to put up with attempts to exterminate them in perpetuity? Palestinians have no responsibility to control their own actions?
I am thankful that the Israelis do not live or fight the same way as the Palestinians but I don’t know why we should hold Israel to a higher standard and have no standard for the Palestinians.
I think the Palestinians totally blew it with Gaza, but they were not given independence in any practical sense (or in the legal sense, but nevermind that.) I agree with most of what you say, but for me, and I think, for you, the goal is to make a better Israel, not point fingers. When I read your comment, I’m thinking about Lebanon and Hezbollah. Is the situation better for Israel there than in Gaza? I think so. If you agree, then ask yourself: why?
I don’t see how moving them to the West Bank is a solution, add two million people to the West Banks 2.6 million and you get more poverty and hardship, just another Gaza.
To “finish the job” Israel simply needs to start building lots of gas chambers, you know, follow the lead of Hitler with his “final solution”.
Yah, because defending yourself makes you a Nazi.
“Yah, because defending yourself makes you a Nazi.”
Well if that’s what you think you’re a strange little man.
It was your strange little comment about gas chambers to which I responded. You simply replied with an ad hominem attack.
“Pull out. Give them full independence. Allow them to import stuff (to the extent that Lebanon is allowed to, which means the occasional freighter from North Korea or truck shipment from Syria will be intercepted). Inevitably, they’ll attack Israel, but why won’t the situation evolve into one like the one with Lebanon?” But that’s what Sharon’s plan was. Bit by bit, the situation degenerated with Israel trying to block one type of attack after another, until they’ve repeatedly had to go in to undo military buildups that Hamas in Gaza was building and using. When will you admit that this isn’t working? What will you do then?
‘To “finish the job” Israel simply needs to start building lots of gas chambers, you know, follow the lead of Hitler with his “final solution”.’ Lovely analogy. Because the Jews in Germany were attacking and murdering the rest of the Germans, firing rockets and guns at them, kidnapping them and torturing them.
Gas chambers. Did I suggest that? I suggested moving them out of the area that they are using as a staging ground for attack. I don’t imagine they’ll be happier in the West Bank, but they won’t be able to make tunnels to Egypt to get missiles. The West Bank Palestinians aren’t noticeably more loyal to Israel than Gaza, and I wouldn’t expect them to be. But they aren’t firing missiles at it, because they can’t get any.
And if, in the long run, the West Bank became as much of a security problem as Gaza has, I would support the same response: moving the enemy population out of there. You don’t have a right to live in a place if you are using it to attack your neighbors.
MikeR,
The difference between Lebanon (including parts run by Hezbollah, or in other words, including the parts most threatening to Israel’s North) and Gaza & the West Bank is that Lebanon is independent. Lebanon’s failures and successes are primarily due to the people who live there. Israel can respond to rocket attacks from Lebanon without the world complaining (as long as Israel avoids killing lots of innocents, as is usual for all countries) With Lebanon, the situation has evolved to be the case where the world, and the Israeli public (left, center, and right) see Israel is a normal country with a right to self-defense. And the border with Lebanon has been quiet. (The key question: is there a causal relationship?)
With Gaza, you’re putting the cart before the horse. Gaza isn’t independent, it suffers from a blockade, the people can blame Israel for their problems. Treat the Palestinians like the Lebanese, treat Hamas like Hezbollah, and see what happens. You can explain why this would be a disaster, but you can’t claim, as you are doing, that the experiment has already been tried.
Again: they did that. You’re walking into the middle of the story. There is only a blockade because they abused independence.
The blockade is one aspect of their lack of independence. Do you disagree with the timeline presented here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip
The blockade started when Hamas won an election (and then took over like the ruthless killers that they are), not later when they attacked Israelis.
Another aspect of independence is freedom to travel, via air, land, and sea.
(Although, obviously, travel by land is up to Israel and Egypt. But Gaza is fortunate in that it is not land-locked, Also: Lebanese can travel by air, Gazans can’t.)
Israel has had a lot of experience with Hamas. Hamas is a party/organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel. That’s what they are. What do you think it means when they are in charge of Gaza? Do you seriously believe that the only reason they are firing rockets etc. is because Israel blockaded them, but otherwise they’d be building their country? Hamas is doing exactly what they have always done. They were attacking Israel before they took over the government, and before Gaza existed, and after. They were already in a war, and Gaza welcomed them as allies.
The whole idea of Gaza independence, as put forward by the war-hawk Ariel Sharon, was that the Palestinians of Gaza would now have something worthwhile that they could build and take care of. Implicit in the notion was that they would be held responsible if they started a war.
MikeR, I agree with you. But what about Hezbollah in Lebanon?
Since you’re refusing to argue with me about Lebanon, I will now switch sides, and argue with myself. I’m very disappointed that it has come to this! Here goes:
Bob-1, What do you think Hezbollah is doing right now? They are busy fighting in Syria on behalf of Assad. You say, Bob-1, that the border with Lebanon is quiet, but that’s only because those murderous thugs have other fish to fry. If things settle down in Syria, don’t you think Hezbollah will go back to attacking Israel? Signed, Bob-2
Two Jews, three opinions.
Well if you think having 4.6 million people in a properly locked down prison is finishing the job, I don’t think you’re looking very far ahead, now, genocide would “finish the job” the only other conceivable way to bring about peace
To quote Patrick Henry “Give me liberty, or give me death!”, this may seem strange to you but peoples aren’t usually happy to settle for the “liberty” (would anyone seriously use that word to describe the status of the people living in Gaza or the WB??) that has been lavished on the people living in Gaza or the WB by Israel so far, offer that “liberty” to Americans and they’d fight, maybe even have a revolution.
Obviously they don’t have “liberty” now. They made that choice when they chose to go to war with Israel instead of building a country. Israel withdrew from Gaza and they could have chosen to build. Instead they chose to destroy.
When you chose to go to war with a country, you accept the consequences. The consequences are that if they win, they may decide to destroy you. The more you convince them that there is no way to live in peace with you, the more likely that will be the result.
And no, millions of people in a locked-down prison is not “finishing the job”. It would stop the missile attacks, since they couldn’t get missiles in the West Bank. No one can “finish the job” except the Palestinians. They can decide that they are done with war and make peace, which means once and for all accepting that they have no right to destroy the State of Israel. Or, they can continue making war, in which case Israel has the right to do whatever it needs to do to protect itself. No one has a right to try to destroy their neighbors, and when they insist on trying, they deserve to lose what they have.
What is your obsession with equating Israelis with Nazis? The words you are spewing are nonsensical.
Gaza was independent and Hamas took over the land. While their leaders lived in lavish hotels, they spent money on tunnels and rockets rather than infrastructure. I pity the average Gazan, for they are pawns in an Islamic game, but it doesn’t mean Israel has to withstand rocket attacks.
But, MikeR, I do agree you about the failings of the linked article. It doesn’t explain what would replace Hamas, nor does it explain how Hamas would be eliminated. It is easy to find Israeli articles (from the rightwing) on why Hamas can’t be eliminated in any politically acceptable scenario.
“GPS-guided rockets are not that difficult to make.”
From what I’ve seen for off the shelf guidance systems for hobbyist radio controlled aircraft, neither that difficult nor expensive. For a couple hundred dollars you can get a GPS guidance computer that can pilot an aircraft through a set of waypoints and trigger a servo at selected points.
MikeR is correct. Israel should simply annex Gaza and forcibly repot its current population to the West Bank. When the Palestinians have no border with Egypt and no sea coast they will lack the ability to import missiles – or howitzers or mortars for that matter – and the shelling will top. As for qualms about confining 4.6 million people in a “prison”, I have none. Prisons are for people who are unreformably violent. 4.6 million is about twice the number of people in prison in the U.S. All that seems to mean is that homicidal sociopathy is normative in Palestinian culture while it is exceptional in American culture.
“4.6 million is about twice the number of people in prison in the U.S. All that seems to mean is that homicidal sociopathy is normative in Palestinian culture while it is exceptional in American culture.”
For the pedants, there are actually only about 1.5M people in prison in the U.S.; the other 725,000 or so are in jail.
In any case, “homicidal sociopathy”, as you refer to it, is even more exceptional in the U.S. when one considers that less than 50% of the U.S. prison population is made up of people convicted of violent offenses. In the Federal system, it’s only about 8% (compared to 50% for drug offenses), and at the state level, it’s about 53% violent. So, really, only about 750,000 violent offenders (most of whom are innocent or the victims of circumstance of a cheating spouse, just ask them!) in the U.S.
Of those in Gaza and the West Bank, I’m sure that at least a few of them aren’t completely anti-Israel, so you can’t hold it against EVERYONE. That said, it was eye-opening for me when I met a really nice, pretty girl here in Iowa about 10 years ago who ran her family’s restaurant. Mid-20’s, Lebanese, funny, smart. Had a crush on her for a year or so until one day a friend and I were eating dinner with her and she started talking about ending Israel and spewing bile about Jewish people. I was shocked that someone of her stature and intelligence could hold such views, but now I understand that it has been ingrained in her from birth, more or less.
Which isn’t an excuse for her behaviour, of course. I stopped associating with her shortly after that, despite her ability to make amazing pizza. It definitely removed more of the scales from my eyes about people in this world who blindly follow the things that they have been taught from birth, and helped me understand some more about the roots of racism in this country and around the world.
Also, I would like to thank Andrew_W for his insights in this thread. At first, I thought he was just a one-note band and one-trick pony, continually posting delusions about CAGW. His lunatic suggestions and comparisons between Jews and Nazis in this thread have really added some depth and dimension to his otherwise flat character.
Also, I would like to thank Andrew_W for his insights in this thread. At first, I thought he was just a one-note band and one-trick pony, continually posting delusions about CAGW. His lunatic suggestions and comparisons between Jews and Nazis in this thread have really added some depth and dimension to his otherwise flat character.
I’ve no idea what my “delusions about CAGW” are supposed to be, I’ve always made it clear that I think CAGW unlikely, maybe you’re a CAGW fanatic and think I should be too?
“His lunatic suggestions comparisons between Jews and Nazis in this thread”
I haven’t made any such comparisons, I could only do so between Israelis and Nazis if Israelis decided to exterminate Palestinians.
My point has been that “Israel needs to finish the job now” doesn’t make sense unless that’s a call for genocide (which it obviously isn’t).
Dick Eagleson has in another thread stated that he’s a fan of “mild extermination” of the Palestinians, whatever that is, maybe it means extermination nicely and without gratuitous violence.
What is your proposed solution to dealing with a large number of people whose primary goal in life is to kill you?
Jobs, freedom, opportunities to build a better life for oneself, same as everyone else should have.
“Jobs, freedom, opportunities to build a better life for oneself, same as everyone else should have.”
They had that in Gaza. They didn’t want it.
“Peace will come when the Arabs start to love their children more than they hate us.” – Golda Meir
“Peace will come when the Arabs start to love their children more than they hate us.” – Golda Meir
I guess that makes as much sense as Saddam Hussein or Ho Chi Min claiming: Peace will come when the Americans start to love their sons more than they hate us.
Only if one is so obtuse and ignorant as to think that one is like the other.
Case in point.
Israel sets up missile-defense systems to protect its children from Hamas and does everything possible to get Gazan children out of the way of military targets before it hits them. Hamas uses its children as human shields to protect its missiles so that it can kill Israelis. Do you have any sense how completely blind and foolish you sound with the imagined symmetry?
Israel ….. does everything possible to get Gazan children out of the way of military targets before it hits them. Hamas uses its children as human shields to protect its missiles so that it can kill Israelis. Do you have any sense how completely blind and foolish you sound with the imagined symmetry?
What’s “everything possible” and where’s the proof “Hamas uses its children as human shields”
Doesn’t sound like “everything possible” is very much when over 200 of the 800 killed so far have been children.
No doubt we’ll soon hear the “look what you made me do!” that’s so popular with the contemptible coming from those doing most of the killing.
Doesn’t sound like “everything possible” is very much when over 200 of the 800 killed so far have been children.
That is because despite everything that Israel does, Hamas wants them to die, so fools like you can talk about how horrible Israel is.
There is obviously no proof you’ll accept. You are hopeless.
Andrew,
Just to set the record straight, I described myself as having become a “moderate exterminationist” with respect to Muslims at large, not just Palestinians. I am particularly pessimistic about the likelihood of being able to induce sanity in large parts of the worldwide Muslim population. For reasons why, see my previous 1:54 PM comment below made in response to your 10:58 AM comment.
There are some exceptions. The Kurds have been noteworthy as an example of a heavily Muslim population that has mostly managed to avoid the Arab-sourced social dysfunctions – i.e., normative child molestation – and blood-madness that characterize Islam in much of the rest of the world, notably including Pakistan. In large measure this seems to be because the Kurds mostly ignore the incessant calls the Koran makes to kill or enslave anyone who isn’t part of the club, so to speak. Sufis, regardless of ethnicity, also seem to be comparably laid back. So Islam, per se, isn’t necessarily the problem. If the normative adherent of Islam was someone who went to mosque regularly, prayed five times a day and just ignored all the hateful calls for bloody jihad in his Koran, things would be fine.
Christianity and Judaism, Lord knows, have plenty of fairly off-putting admonitions, especially in the Old Testament. Leviticus, with the exception of the chapter on what’s kosher and what isn’t, is pretty much a horror show of retrograde attitudes that most Christians no longer share even in Fundamentalist circles. Christianity has been much improved by the implicit abandonment of much that is plainly written in its holiest text. Islam, in order to become even minimally compatible with modernity and liberty, must do likewise. Problem is, this is still anathema to most Muslims.
I’ll repeat \Rand’s question. What, excatly, is your brilliant bloodless solution to a largely intransigent and mentally dysfuctional religion/culture that defines itself in ceaseless opposition to the rest of humanity? We eagerly await your Nobel Peace Prize-worthy prescription.
I described myself as having become a “moderate exterminationist” with respect to Muslims at large, not just Palestinians.
Yep.
What, excatly, is your brilliant bloodless solution to a largely intransigent and mentally dysfuctional religion/culture that defines itself in ceaseless opposition to the rest of humanity?
Well, since I’m not aware of a group that fits your description – a description reminiscent of the ravings of a rabid blood-thirsty lunatic, (as is the term “moderate exterminationist” is that supposed to mean “extermination nicely and without gratuitous violence”?) I can’t really suggest a “solution”, as far as a solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict, I’ve given my answer to Rand.
Addressing the wider issue of Islam, most people here recognize that the vast majority of Muslim people around the world are not in conflict with any neighbors they have who’re not Muslim, If you actually look at religious statistics by country you can see that in the vast majority of countries there are significant Muslim populations, conflict between those populations and members of other religions is comparatively rare.
I know you don’t want to hear such things, as hate mongers such as yourself need excuses to hate, it serves your egos to exaggerate the levels of hostility and strife, having an enemy to hate and kill gives you a buzz, so people who think like you can always rationalize yourself an enemy out of someone, if the imperialists or communists don’t fit your requirements for a boogyman, just find someone else.
acrosshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religions_by_country
I’m not aware of a group that fits your description
Your implicit lack of awareness already seemed manifest to me, but then we’re having an argument here, and I could have been influenced in my assessment by that fact. Still, your assertion of moral equivalency between the deliberate slaughter of civilians by Islamist terrorists and the highly selective killing of those same Islamist terrorists by U.S. military personnel operating under almost comically restrictive rules of engagement seemed objectively dispositive of this point. Nice of you to baldly acknowledge your perceptual deficiencies. Now no one has to entertain any further doubts. As Dennis Prager likes to say, “I prefer clarity to agreement.” Nice when you can have both, though.
…the ravings of a rabid blood-thirsty lunatic…
Heaven forfend! I can’t even eat medium-rare steak!
All kidding aside, I’m in no hurry to kill anyone. Muslims started the current unpleasantness. It can stop as soon as they foreswear further unprovoked violence against non-Muslims. Until that day comes, as I have said numerous times in the past on this forum and elsewhere, I favor killing whatever minimum number of Muslims is required to induce the rest to behave them-damned-selves. If that means every last Muslim on the planet must eventually die, I’m okay with that, but I’m perfectly happy to stop at any point short of that which is agreeable to Muslims themselves, conditioned only on their abandonment of jihad. There are a great many blood-thirsty people in the world. These days, the vast majority of them wave Korans and shout “Allahu Akbar!” at the top of their lungs. I count myself among the ranks of neither Muslims nor the blood-thirsty.
is that supposed to mean “extermination nicely and without gratuitous violence”?
Not something I ever wrote so the quote marks are a bit mystifying; unless you are perhaps just adding scare quotes for emphasis to one of your own little japes. But, as you have asked, and to clarify, no, I know of no way to indulge mass extermination without pain to those on the receiving end. Of the three categories of WMD – the only instruments suitable for inflicting mass slaughter efficiently – I would rate biological weapons as likely to cause the most suffering. thermonuclear weapons as being in second place and so-called nerve gases as causing probably the least suffering, especially if administered at night to a mostly sleeping target population. Nuclear weapons cause no pain to the large majority of those they kill as death occurs too quickly. It is the periphery of the blast where all the suffering is concentrated. Germ weapons, besides being quite unpleasant to those on the receiving end, are also very difficult to control. They are no one’s first choice when more tractable means are in-hand to do the same job.
most people here recognize that the vast majority of Muslim people around the world are not in conflict with any neighbors they have who’re not Muslim
When you have negligible numbers of “neighbors” who are not Muslim, it’s pretty easy to avoid killing infidels. There is little religious strife in most Muslim-majority countries, with the notable exception of internecine conflict between Sunni and Shia sects of the faith, because, in most of these cases, the Muslim population has long since killed off or driven out all, or nearly all, non-Muslims. I grew up in a town that was almost entirely free of racial strife, for example. Black population? Zero. The bigots in town had to make do with occasional fistfights with reservation Indians who wandered through now and then.
Muslims are similarly well-behaved when their numbers are tiny relative to the majority infidel population. The United States is a place where such demographics prevail. Once the Muslim percentage of a population gets much above very low single-digit percentages, though, Muslims seem to spontaneously get nasty. Hindu-Muslim strife is endemic in India, for example, where the Muslim population is somewhere in the 10% or above region. Significant Muslim minorities have also made themselves recurrent pains in the ass in many other places, including many countries in Western Europe – Great Britain, France, Netherlands, Sweden and Norway come to mind – where Muslims typically constitute between two and five percent of these national populations.
In places where the Muslim population fraction is sub-majority but still large, there is often open warfare aimed at forcibly converting the infidel population and imposing Sharia Law. Nigeria is the biggest and bloodiest such situation at present, but it isn’t alone.
Muslims, as a class, just don’t have the knack of playing nicely with others. A cursory glance through the Koran reveals why. A great deal of this poisonous book can be summed up as, “I you ain’t Muslim, you ain’t shit!”
If you actually look at religious statistics by country you can see that in the vast majority of countries there are significant Muslim populations, conflict between those populations and members of other religions is comparatively rare.
As just noted, this is simply nonsense.
I know you don’t want to hear such things,
In a perfect world, I suppose I wouldn’t. In the decidedly imperfect real world, to which I have long since resigned myself, the incidence of arrogant, self-righteous stupidity remains far too high and I do my poor best to challenge it here and there.
as hate mongers such as yourself need excuses to hate,
“Excuses” is a fraught word. To people of your general philosophy, it usually seems to translate as “any reason.” Hate is always bad – unless it is the hatred of the progressively righteous for the Satanic imps of the Right. Being possessed of a functional intelligence, and having never foresworn its use in favor of blind obedience to ideology, I fancy I am able to distinguish between reasons for a hatred engendered by sufficiently dire external circumstances and an excuse for intrinsic hatred that was always present because, well, as a non-progressive, I must, perforce, be a bad person. As the late Robert Heinlein wrote, in commenting on the notion that to understand all is to forgive all, “What nonsense. The more you understand some things, the more you hate them.” That has certainly been my experience in learning more about Islam and about the Arabic tribal barbarian culture that is thoroughly mixed into it.
it serves your egos to exaggerate the levels of hostility and strife,
My ego exists quite independent of external levels of hostility and strife. Far from being puffed up in any way by such things, I am long since grown weary of the caperings and atrocities of – literally – the howling barbarians of the world. The hostility and strife originating in the Islamic world is remarkable for both its scope and its scale. It hardly requires exaggeration.
To people of your philosophical bent, though, it seems to require noisy denial and obfuscation. Your pathetic efforts along those lines are about as successful as a cat trying to cover up an “accident” on a linoleum floor.
having an enemy to hate and kill gives you a buzz,
I derive no pleasure or satisfaction from hating people. It is simply a regrettable truth that there are a lot of people in this world who are worthy of that emotion. Would that it were otherwise, but it’s not.
As for killing, I must, perforce, leave that killing which cannot be avoided to much younger men in possession of youthful vigor and a full complement of functioning sensory organs.
so people who think like you can always rationalize yourself an enemy out of someone, if the imperialists or communists don’t fit your requirements for a boogyman, just find someone else.
I’ll reiterate another point here I’ve made before, namely that it is not my political philosophy that perpetually requires enemies, but yours. Absent the idea of “oppression” and “oppressors” leftist philosophies have no coherence. The founding axiom of all varieties of leftism is that there is some class of people somewhere that is always being screwed by “The Man,” however one chooses to define him. That is not true of libertarianism or even of garden-variety Republicanism. If all leftists, criminals and Islamists suddenly disappeared tomorrow in a sort of Scumbag Rapture, we of the Right would blink twice, carefully look around to be sure what we seemed to be seeing was really so, then laugh a full-bodied laugh and get on with making money and improving the world – improving it still more that is. Pretty hard to beat the record of improvement a Scumbag Rapture would provide.
On the other hand, if leftists woke up one morning to find that all the erstwhile poor were now well-to-do, it would remove their entire alleged reason for existence.
“If you actually look at religious statistics by country you can see that in the vast majority of countries there are significant Muslim populations, conflict between those populations and members of other religions is comparatively rare.”
As just noted, this is simply nonsense.
No, it’s statistics, if you want to dispute it, offer contrary statistics.
Here’s examples of research at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KAUST#Scientific_research_and_discoveries
I’ll reiterate another point here I’ve made before, namely that it is not my political philosophy that perpetually requires enemies, but yours.
And, unbelievably, this section of your comment manages to make even less sense after this initial sentence.
One think Libertarianism does recognize is that oppression is very real, maybe you should check to see if you’re actually a libertarian, maybe you’re just a conservative right wannabe.
No, it’s statistics, if you want to dispute it, offer contrary statistics.
As you have offered no actual statistics, merely an assertion that you have seen such statistics, your demand seems both arrogant and hypocritical – e.g., typically Leftist. Just off the top of my head, though, I can cite many places where Muslims have, and in many cases, still are, engaged in violent conflict with their non-Muslim neighbors. In many of these places the death tolls are in the hundreds, even thousands.
1) Kashmir – Muslims vs. Hindus
2) Nigeria – Muslims vs. Christians, mass slaughters, church burnings, etc.
3) Sudan-South Sudan – Muslims vs. Christians and adherents of traditional African religions
4) Egypt – Muslims vs. Coptic Christians, killings, church burnings
5) West Bank – Muslims vs. Christians, killings, destruction of churches and historic sites
6) France – Muslims vs. French natives, particularly Jews, mob assaults on synagogues, years of massive car burnings and other gang violence
7) Netherlands – Muslims vs. Dutch natives, particularly Jews and gays, high-profile murders of a filmmaker and political figure
8) Norway – Muslims vs. Norwegian natives, particularly women (rapes)
9) Australia – see Norway
10) U.K. – Muslims vs. native Brits, bus bombings, gangsterism, rapes, recent broad-daylight murder of British soldier, etc.
11) Spain – Muslims vs. native Spaniards, train bombings, etc.
One hopes that everyone else here gets the point, as I harbor few hopes that you ever will. Muslims are a routinely violent people. This is attributable to a combination of the hyper-aggressive mandates of their religion and to the fact that, in most Muslim populations, the normative person, whether male or female, was the victim of routine sexual abuse in childhood. It is the latter circumstance that will make defeating Islamists a more strenuous and sanguinary exercise, long term, than was defeating the WW2-era Japanese.
No Dick, if you want to argue that more than a tiny tiny minority of Muslims hate as you think, you’ll have to prove that more than a tiny tiny minority are responsible for such violence, that’s the measure I would apply to any population, there are hundreds of millions of Muslims who can find a Christian to kill if that’s their goal, where are the hundreds of millions of Christians that logic dictates you think are being murdered?
Many people who think that others should be killed don’t have the motivation to do it personally, thankfully.
As you have offered no actual statistics,
I have in past discussions, you’ve just ignored them, I’ve given a breakdown of religious beliefs across all countries, and statistics on violent crime, if as you believe, Muslims are inherently violent towards non-Muslims there should be a strong correlation between mixed religious populations and the level of violence where in fact in the vast majority of countries such religious violence is utterly swamped by the background level of violence.
And we have explained to you the flaw in your logic of those statistics.
Rand, if you think your July 26, 2014 at 3:26 pm comment is pointing out a flaw in my argument I find it unconvincing. As you’re claiming that though many/most(?) Muslims want to be violent towards non-Muslims, in actual fact in most countries every population is far better at acting violently towards others irrespective of religion.
I have no reason to doubt your figures on incarcerations in the U.S. As to my point about the wildly varying incidence of homicidal sociopathy in different societies, it’s worth pointing out that, according to FBI Uniform Crime Reports, about half of all violent felonies in the U.S. are committed by black males between the ages of 15 and 35. This demographic constitutes only about 2% of the U.S. population. So black males 15 – 35 are 25 times as likely to be homicidal sociopaths as normative Americans of other ages and/or ethnicities. Thus, the notion that the incidence of homicidal sociopathy in Palestinian society is very high is quite plausible.
Your experience with the cute Lebanese girl (a redundant description in my own experience by the way) has demonstrated to you something I also learned while working and living several places in Western Europe during the late 70’s – namely that foreigners really are foreign. The idea that many Americans have that “people are basically the same everywhere” is a load of road apples, easily refuted by any extended contact with “people everywhere.” Good to know you have figured that out in a non-dangerous context. I found that quite depressingly large numbers of Europeans have completely screwy ideas about a lot of things and it has – and continues – to hold them back. And these were Western Europeans; much closer to we Americans culturally than the deranged wackjobs who appear to be normative in the Arab world.
Dick,
This is a non-politicial reply: Look up the extent to which the people in Gaza are manufacturing their own rockets. When I use google on the question, I get widely varying estimates, so I can’t provide a definitive link. There is no doubt that they do manufacture their own rockets, and there is no doubt that in this latest conflict, the use of domestically produced rockets has increased, but I’m unclear on how many, which kinds, what remains an essential import and what doesn’t. This is a question for the “rocket scientists” here: could certain kinds of weapons could be produced in Gaza (or the West Bank) for a very long time, even if the borders were completely sealed today?
Here’s an example of what you can easily find on the internet:
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-hamas-homemade-rocket-industry-bypasses-crumbling-supply-lines-2014-15
It is a crappy article, but it indicates that there is something to learn more about.
MikeR, the above comment about domestic rocket production is for you too, since it was you who claimed that Palestinians wouldn’t be able to get rockets on the West Bank.
I certainly don’t know the answer. I assume, though, that whatever they can get in the West Bank (without any tunnels, of course, there’s nothing nearby), would not be the same level of threat as the really scary increase in rocket technology that they are showing recently.
Israel really really didn’t like having border towns that needed to run to bomb shelters their whole lives, with an occasional death. But if Gaza gets a significant ability to send a lot of rockets to the whole of Israel, opposition in Israel to relocating them may vanish.
I’d just add that whatever the reasons, the West Bank Palestinians _have not_ been firing rockets at Israel. That is evidence to me that they cannot, as I don’t see them as being much different from Gaza in their attitudes.
Also: consider that the West Bank is actually less sealed than Gaza. There are two problems: 1) the porous border between Israel and the West Bank, and the 2) the border between Jordan and the West Bank.
1) Israelis and Palestinians travel between Israel proper and the West Bank every day. For economic and political reasons, there are no prospects for the West Bank border crossings to be completely sealed off. Smuggling GPS components (or whatever) from Israel to the West Bank will be possible for a long time to come.
2) I don’t know anything about the Jordanian border, but look at this:
http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/iran-syria-smuggling-weapons-gain-influence-west-bank
Bob-1
The main things needed to make short-range unguided rockets are some material useful for casings and materials suitable for mixing up into solid propellant. The latter constitutes, by far, the majority of the mass that must be in-hand to make such rockets. The Palestinians in Gaza used to get such things from smugglers who would land them on the Gazan seacoast. The Israeli Navy has pretty well put paid to that in recent years, hence the alternative tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.
The point is that making rockets of any kind on an industrial scale requires industrial quantities of material. This ain’t diamond smuggling. Get Palestinians entirely out of Gaza and the current smuggling infrastructure is rendered inert. Put them in the West Bank and they have to re-establish such infrastructure. They won’t be able to do it on the Israel-West Bank border so the only even faintly practical alternative is the West Bank-Jordan border. But Jordan isn’t Egypt. The Jordanians remember when “refugee” Palestinians tried to take over their country back in the late 60’s. I don’t see much likelihood of Jordan tolerating the kind of crap that the famously corrupt Egyptians let go by on their border with Gaza. YMMV.
All that seems to mean is that homicidal sociopathy is normative in Palestinian culture while it is exceptional in American culture.
Homicide rates in the US and Palestinian territories are similar (around 4 per 100,000 people/yr).
Killings of foreigners by Palestinian para/military lag far behind killings of foreigners by the US military.
It’s certainly not for lack of trying. The only reason Palestinians aren’t killing more Israelis is that they suck at it. If they had the capability to do so, they’d wipe out the whole nation.
You seem to have a very huge blind spot.
Palestinians see Israel as their oppressor, you and I might disagree about how justified that view is, but any normal people hate their oppressor.
The solution is, I think, to convince them the oppression is over, that’s not going to happen by killing a few hundred, thousand, hundred thousand? more.
So you have no actual real-world proposed solution. Hint: The “Palestinians” (sorry, they’re just Arabs) don’t hate the Israelis because they are being “oppressed.” That adds to the problem, but there is nothing the Israelis can do to make those Arabs not hate them other than to commit mass suicide (and they’d still probably spit on and mutilate the corpses). It is their totalitarian ideology/religion that generates the hate. They are like the alien in Independence Day who, when asked what it wanted, said, “I want you to die.”
“It is their totalitarian ideology/religion that generates the hate.”
Well, we’ve discussed this before, you take those people out of Gaza, and give them the opportunity to move on to a better life, and the vast majority do (Johnny B mentions a cute Lebanese girl that still hated Isrealis/Jewish people, I’d compare that to lots of people who still hated the Germans or Japanese they fought, for many years after the war).
Paranoid schizophrenics hate their “oppressors” too. That doesn’t make them objectively correct about either the “oppression” or their feelings about it. The Palestinian culture is, like the larger Islamic culture of which it is simply a subset, a form of mental dysfunction. Normative mental illness is the sort of thing that tends to happen when, as is the case with Islam, a social order is founded by a child molester and then maintains child molestation as a normative behavior for centuries. Why are Arabs homicidal lunatics to such a startling degree? Look at what we in the West now regard as the major childhood indices – in rank order of importance – of future serial killers.
1. severe sexual and/or physical abuse in childhood
2. animal cruelty
3. pyromania
4. bed wetting
Don’t know about the incidence of pyromania and bed wetting in Arab/Islamic culture, but sexual abuse and animal cruelty are rampant. Mohammed liked little girls but didn’t like dogs. Many of his spiritual descendants preferred little boys to little girls, but that seems to have been okay too. As for the dogs, get any veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan to tell you about the things he or she has seen natives of those places do to dogs – if you have a strong stomach.
What are we to do, exactly, with cultures that are, top to bottom, barking moonbat nuts?
What Rand said.
“What are we to do, exactly, with cultures that are, top to bottom, barking moonbat nuts?”
Well, cultures of dangerous infective organisms can be dealt with by incineration…
Well, cultures of dangerous infective organisms can be dealt with by incineration…
True. I once did a little back-of-the-envelope exercise along those lines. It turns out that well over half the currently extant Muslim population – perhaps even three-quarters – could be incinerated in less than an hour by employing only half the warload of a single Ohio-class SSBN. That would be 12 Trident D-5 missiles carrying 144 warheads. For maximum localized herd-thinning effect, combined with minimized fallout creation, such weapons should probably be detonated at several thousand feet of elevation above local terrain.
Conveniently, for this scenario, Muslims tend to be fairly tightly clustered and to mostly live in countries in which they constitute overwhelming majorities, vastly minimizing the collateral damage problem.
The main exception to this pattern is India where significant numbers of Muslims are mixed inconveniently into a much larger Hindu population. There are also a few lesser such problematic situations such as Lebanon and Nigeria. Even in the latter case, though, Muslims are busily increasing their concentration by indulging in pogroms against non-Muslims – mainly Christians – in regions of the country where Muslims predominate. As remaining non-Muslims flee southward away from such violence, the Muslim north of Nigeria grows more uniformly Muslim. It shouldn’t be long before nukes can be lobbed with impunity into northern Nigeria causing negligible non-Muslim casualties, save only the regions near the shifting border between majority-Muslim and majority-Christian parts of the country.
Egypt is also a bit problematical in this respect, still having a sizable Coptic Christian minority. Given the rapidity with which the Egyptian Copts are currently being killed or forced to flee, though, I would anticipate that Egypt will also have transformed itself into an essentially infidel-free zone, like northern Nigeria, by the time any such thermonuclear solution becomes thinkable.
Would the United States ever unleash Hell on the Umaa? Probably not until Islamist terrorists manage to achieve their long-sought aim of wielding a WMD against the Unites States. If their WMD of choice happens to be a nuke – and this seems likeliest – and their target is Washington, DC, I can certainly see such a massive retaliation in the cards. Whoever winds up as President in the aftermath of an attempted decapitation strike on the U..S. is likely to be well down the 25th Amendment’s succession list – Secretary of the Interior perhaps? – and will have no hope of continuing in the job if a major counterblow is not promptly authorized.
The thing about America that a number of now defunct former “Great Powers” have tended to forget, to their ultimate cost, is that, while America will tolerantly put up with a certain amount of juvenile geopolitical behavior from the arrogant bullies of the world, said bullies tend to mistake initial forbearance for existential weakness. Then one fine day, their overconfidence and dismissive attitude toward the U.S. impels them to cross a line.
Then we come and kill them.
True. I once did a little back-of-the-envelope exercise along those lines. It turns out that well over half the currently extant Muslim population – perhaps even three-quarters – could be incinerated in less than an hour by employing only half the warload of a single Ohio-class SSBN. That would be 12 Trident D-5 missiles carrying 144 warheads. For maximum localized herd-thinning effect, combined with minimized fallout creation, such weapons should probably be detonated at several thousand feet of elevation above local terrain.
I can’t even imaging the sort of mind that would see a reason to even do the math, it’s the sort of exercise I’d expect from terrorists, imagine turning that around and trying to work out how many tonnes of sarin would be needed to wipe out the entire American east coast, what would you think of a Muslim who wrote such things?
I can’t even imaging the sort of mind that would see a reason to even do the math,
One with a firm grasp of the realities of the current world and a view to considering contingencies that might someday be required to insure the survival of Western Civilization. And non-Islamic Eastern Civilization for that matter. Make no mistake, Andrew, both Sunni Islamists (Al Quaeda, Boko Haram, Al Shabab, Ansar Al Sunna, etc.) and Shia Islamists (Iran, Hezbollah, the Al Sadr militia, etc.) have loudly and frequently announced their intentions of destroying the United States and all other non-Muslim nations as part of their campaign to establish a worldwide Islamic tyranny. They won’t make any exceptions for useful left-wing idiots like yourself no matter how much water you have carried for them in the past.
The Islamists started the current war, of which the Iraq and Afghanistan so-called “wars” were just theaters of operation, as is the current shooting war in Gaza and many other local arenas of conflict elsewhere. Our nincompoop President imagines that he can end “wars” by simply withdrawing and refusing to actively fight any longer and suffer no adverse consequences. He has already found that he is quite mistaken in this belief, but, as usual, will never acknowledge that any part of his Ivy League faculty lounge worldview is, in any smallest respect, defective.
So the Islamists will advance on all fronts – excepting the Israeli-Palestinian one – until we get a U.S. president who understands that wars are only ended when one side decides it is beaten and gives up. Under current and prospective Democratic administrations, the surrendering side will be ours. Under a Republican administration, starting in 2017, there is at least a chance that reason will prevail and the necessary steps will be taken to decisively end a conflict which, like so many others, has been forced upon us by the depredations of others.
We need to defeat militant Islam. The only way to do that is to inflict so much pain on the bad actors that they yield. Cultures of martyrdom, unfortunately, have very high tolerances for punishment. The Japanese of WW2 are a non-Islamic example of one such. Given that I regard the Islamists of the world as even more fanatical than the early 1945-era Japanese – and considering what it took to subdue them – I regard it as merely prudent to consider that similar, though probably more extensive, measures are all but certain to be required in subduing the current enemy.
I’m still waiting for you to provide the statistics to support your claims about this worldwide conflict you imagine exists across about a hundred countries with significant Muslim and non-Muslim populations, you know, where the Muslims are all trying to impose tyranny.
Given the demographics, there should be a few tens of millions of people dieing each year.
Unless you’re talk sh!t.
In other news Militants from the radical jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria have set fire to a 1,800-year-old church in Iraq’s second largest city of Mosul[Al Arabiya News]
I guess for you the amazing thing would be that despite being in the middle of an Arab country, whose people (you imagine) have all been hell bent on destroying Christianity for well over a thousand years, until now they hadn’t even managed to destroy this, and many other, Christian churches in their midsts.
Normal and rational people would question their world model given this inconsistency with their beliefs about Islam, I assume you’ll put it down to Muslims being too primitive to light a match.
Here’s a thought: should it prove necessary to mass relocate inhabitants of the Gaza strip, consider separating the men from the women and children.
Worth considering. Especially if the separation is extremely permanent.
Dick Eagleson – That really is a horror scenario, isn’t it? I don’t think the Western idea of civilisation would long survive something like that.
There does remain a possible remedy to this particular infection, which is to apply cautery to the source. Which would require perhaps three warheads. After all, if one of the five pillars of Islam is impossible (because the destination of the pilgrimage no longer exists) and another is pointless for the same reason (what is the point of pointing yourself to an unoccupied patch of half-melted desert?) then that must weaken Islam. And such an action would prove once and for all that Allah can’t protect the “holiest” places.
I’ve said it before, and many others also. And I’ll say it again. There should have been two new glass parking lots in Saudi Arabia, on 9/12/2001 (to use the somewhat illogical American system). A decent leader, not bought and paid for by the oil industry, would have arranged it.