…losing the war against Jihad.
It’s as though, ten years after the start of the war, we had killed Hitler, but left Nazism intact.
[Afternoon update]
Who has won the war against terrorism? Not the West.
[Anniversary morning update]
I don’t really have any profound thoughts on the ten-year anniversary, but Reason has a lot of thoughts from Reasonites. But I agree with this — we’re still falling:
to me, those airplanes are still falling, those buildings are still falling, those people are still falling. They will always be falling, forever falling in my mind. And we are falling along with them, still falling, ten years later.
At the time, I was stupid enough to hope that losing three thousand Americans to a sneak attack by the Muzis would be the catalyst that would reignite the American Spirit. I thought it was our Pearl Harbor. I thought that we as a nation would finally sweep aside the bullshit, the weasel words, the lies, and the ideas behind the lies, and deal with reality as it exists. I thought were finally going to shrug away the spiritual rot of the past fifty years and cure ourselves of our cultural and political madness.
Yes, I had those hopes, too. But I’m not as pessimistic as Bruce is.
Mark Steyn is also his usual anti-pollyannaish self:
What of the 23rd Psalm? It was recited by Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer and the telephone operator Lisa Jefferson in the final moments of his life before he cried, “Let’s roll!” and rushed the hijackers.
No, sorry. Aside from firemen, Mayor Bloomberg’s official commemoration hasn’t got any room for clergy, either, what with all the Executive Deputy Assistant Directors of Healing and Outreach who’ll be there. One reason why there’s so little room at Ground Zero is because it’s still a building site. As I write in my new book, 9/11 was something America’s enemies did to us; the ten-year hole is something we did to ourselves — and in its way, the interminable bureaucratic sloth is surely as eloquent as anything Nanny Bloomberg will say in his remarks.
In Shanksville, Pa., the zoning and permitting processes are presumably less arthritic than in Lower Manhattan, but the Flight 93 memorial has still not been completed. There were objections to the proposed “Crescent of Embrace” on the grounds that it looked like an Islamic crescent pointing towards Mecca. The defense of its designers was that, au contraire, it’s just the usual touchy-feely huggy-weepy pansy-wimpy multiculti effete healing diversity mush. It doesn’t really matter which of these interpretations is correct, since neither of them has anything to do with what the passengers of Flight 93 actually did a decade ago. 9/11 was both Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle Raid rolled into one, and the fourth flight was the only good news of the day, when citizen volunteers formed themselves into an ad hoc militia and denied Osama bin Laden what might have been his most spectacular victory. A few brave individuals figured out what was going on and pushed back within half an hour. But we can’t memorialize their sacrifice within a decade. And when the architect gets the memorial brief, he naturally assumes that there’s been a typing error and that “Let’s roll!” should really be “Let’s roll over!”
Meanwhile, Al Qaeda has found a new haven in Pakistan (or as the president would say, Pahkeestahn). It’s hard to be optimistic.
[Update a few minutes later]
I’d like to agree with Jake Tapper that this is the most idiotic thing that anyone has said about the occasion, but it’s rivaled by Paul Krugman’s vileness, who (as Professor Jacobson notes) does us the favor of giving voice to what the loony left is thinking. And lest we think his derangement a recent occurrence, recall what he wrote back in the day: “In the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will…be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society.”
Yes, he really wrote that.
Meanwhile, Iowahawk sums up the day pretty well, I think: “The one enduring lesson of 9/11 and its aftermath: PC kills.”
But it’s a lesson that our so-called leaders haven’t learned.
[Update a while later]
What to say to the totalitarian left on 9/11.
[Update a few minutes later]
Thoughts on 9/11 and the foreseeable future:
Many illusions were challenged on September 11. One illusion concerns the fantasies of academic multiculturalists, so-called. I say “so-called” because what goes under the name of multiculturalism in our colleges and universities today is really a polysyllabic form of mono-culturalism fueled by ideological hatred. Genuine multiculturalism involves a great deal of work, beginning with the arduous task of learning other languages, something most of those who call themselves multiculturalists are conspicuously loath to do.
Think of the fatuous attack on “dead white European males” that stands at the center of the academic multiculturalist enterprise. As a specimen of that maligned species, one could hardly do better than Pericles. Not only is he a dead white European male, but he is one who embodied in his life and aspirations an ideal of humanity completely at odds with academic multiculturalism. He was patriarchal, militarist, elitist, and Eurocentric, indeed, Hellenocentric, which is even worse.
The good news is that Pericles survived September 11. The spurious brand of multiculturalism that encourages us to repudiate “dead white European males” and insists that all cultures are of equal worth may finally be entering a terminal stage. Figures like Edward Said and Susan Sontag, Harold Pinter and Noam Chomsky continue to bay about the iniquity of America, the depredations of capitalism, and so on, but their voices have been falling on increasingly deaf ears. The liberal media began by wringing its hands and wondering whether the coalition would hold, whether we were fair to “moderate” members of the Taliban, whether the Afghans were too wily for Americans, whether the United States was acting in too “unilateral” a fashion. On Christmas Eve, in a masterpiece of understatement, The Wall Street Journal ran a story under the headline “In War’s Early Phase, News Media Showed a Tendency to Misfire.” “This war is in trouble,” quoth Daniel Schorr on NPR. At the end of October, R. W. Apple warned readers of The New York Times that “signs of progress are sparse.” Et cetera. Every piece of possible bad news was—and is—touted as evidence that we may have entered a “quagmire,” that we are “overextended,” “arrogant,” “unresponsive” to the needs and desires of indigenes. It is too soon to say which way the rhetorical chips will ultimately fall. But, as of this writing anyway, a constant string of victories has the liberal pundits frustrated and baffled. They had been waiting for a repeat of Vietnam, and the Bush administration disobliged by giving them a conflict in which America was in the right and was winning.
I mocked them mercilessly at the time, including the odious Sunera Thobani.
[Update a few minutes later]
Related thoughts from Bruce Bawer:
The divisions that ensued after 9/11 weren’t any one person’s, or party’s, fault. If we’d had a president who had dared to speak the truth about our enemies and about the ideology (which is to say theology) that motivates them, and had done so eloquently and stirringly and repeatedly, à la Churchill — instead of pretending that all religions are by definition good and that the hijackers had “betrayed” their faith (as if it were the job of any American president to judge who was or was not a “good” Muslim) — it might have made a huge difference. Such an assertive, informed response might have helped to overcome the ideological depredations of Michael Moore, Gore Vidal, Oliver Stone, and others, which did such appalling damage. But perhaps not. Perhaps the poison of multiculturalism — the fear of acknowledging that our enemies were, in fact, our enemies — was simply too potent. In the years after 9/11, politicians, journalists, professors, and schoolteachers alike cowed millions of Americans into being scared of even saying, flat out, why those people had piloted those planes into those buildings. In doing so, they crippled our ability to respond in a strong, unified, and self-assured way to a threat that did not end that day but that is ongoing.
But too many remain in denial.
[Late morning update]
I forgot the appropriate description of Krugman. Make that former Enron advisor Paul Krugman.
Is there a link?
There is now…
But we’re winning! Obama’s hands-off kinetic military action has won the day in Libya, resulting in possibly 20,000 surface to air missiles falling into the hands of parties unknown. But at least they’re not fingernail clippers, which Big Sister regards as the true threat to the West.
Since these missiles will only trace back to a failed state and a diposed dictator, they don’t come with any strings attached, as would a missile from Iran or Syria.
…even if al-Qaeda were totally eradicated tomorrow, the terror threat to the West would hardly recede, since al-Qaeda has never been the source of the threat, but simply one of its manifestations.
This is why I want Allen West for VP 2012. He is the only person in politics I know that understands the threat and all it’s historical perspective. Nobody else comes close and VP is the correct position for such a person. The president needs to focus on domestic issues after the destruction Obama has caused. Responding to the terrorist threat is mostly an intelligence operation.
The Arab Spring movement is offering the Islamic world a very different option that what Al Qaeda has been trying to force down their throats. Very few Muslims in any country want a Caliphate run by people with their minds in the 15th century.
Again I ask Rand: do you actually know any Muslims?
Adherants to radical islam will either die or adapt to modernity. I think that continuing to execute the leaders as they arise and are indentified is a sound strategy given the very minimal nature of the threat. Winning hearts and minds is a futile effort. Heavy handed invasions are expensive and ultimately self defeating.
The Arab Spring movement is offering the Islamic world a very different option that what Al Qaeda
Bullshit Kevin, it’s the same goal by other means.
Very few Muslims in any country want a Caliphate run by people with their minds in the 15th century.
I think that’s a fantasy, but even if true, there are enough that do that it is a serious problem.
Again I ask Rand: do you actually know any Muslims?
I already answered that question, not that it has any relevance whatsoever. You need to actually read responses to what you comment on.
Why should we listen to anything Kevin says? He is the complete fool who compared VP Cheney and Che the butcher.
Notice the sleight of hand. It’s not about Muslims. It’s about Islam. Islam is the tortoise that will use any tactic to win. We need people like Allen West that will not lose focus. We’ve been fighting this war since before we were a country. We need to hold the long view, but fight all local battles (even when they don’t look like battles) to win.
Lose focus and they make progress making our eventual win farther in the future and more costly.
“The Arab Spring movement is offering the Islamic world a very different option that what Al Qaeda has been trying to force down their throats.”
It is making the offer but will anyone take it?
A million Egyptians marched in a rally in support of the destruction of Israel and their army sat by and watched as the churches and homes of christians were burnt to the ground. I understand how the left doesn’t see that as a draw back but the arab spring isn’t all unicorn farts and pixie poop.
The west held up Wael Ghonim as the face of the Egyptian revolution but he and people like him have largely been shut out after the fall of Mubarak. Only time will tell how the elections will turn out.
Rand, your answer was unsatisfactory because it contradicted your role in The Narrative. Therefore he’s going to keep asking until you give him an answer he can hit you over the head with.
Still Falling
“Winning The Battle Against Al Qaeda…losing the war against Jihad.
“It’s as though, ten years after the start of the war, we had killed Hitler, but left Nazism intact.” says Rand Simberg.
In Germany, use of Nazi symbols is illegal. The USA eschews such tactics as not only unjust and unconstitutional, but also ineffective. So what tactics would you use to win the ” the war against Jihad”?
The article talks about Holder using words like “for whatever reason” instead of “Jihad”. If Holder said “Jihad” instead, I don’t think anything else would change. Obama critics are very fond of saying that words and, particularly, big eloquent speeches, are no substitute for action. So what concrete actions would you take to win the war against Jihad?
—
—
Regarding the “myopic” battle against Al Queda, here’s a stark quote:
Mr. Obama, a president who banned torture in the interrogation of suspected terrorists and pledged (unsuccessfully, so far) to close the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, carried out more drone strikes in Pakistan in his first year in office than Mr. Bush did in his eight years.
In the process, the White House said, it has killed more Al Qaeda officials in the last two-and-a-half years than were eliminated by the Bush administration in all the preceding years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/us/12obama.html?pagewanted=1&ref=politics
I’d like to agree with Jake Tapper that this is the most idiotic thing that anyone has said about the occasion
Before I go further, I want to give credit to National Geographic for trying to expose these people to reality, but ultimately, there’s a few “experts” on this show who agree with our enemies. The program was evidence to me that we didn’t sweep aside the bullshit, the weasel words, the lies, and the ideas behind the lies, and deal with reality as it exists. Tar and feathers!
I just sent a letter to the editor at the NY Times. What Krugman wrote, and they published, was incredible. Hateful and lunatic – they should be very ashamed.
Larry O’Connor has Krugman summed up well:
In the same way he tried to capitalize on the horrific Tucson shooting as an excuse to attack Sarah Palin and conservatives, Paul Krugman has used his New York Times blog to attack Rudy Giuliani and President George W. Bush this morning in a most disgusting way.
Click the link, and you’ll find a link to some of what Krugman said about the Tucson Shooting, all of which was vile supposition proven false in very short order. You’ll also find maps with bull’s eyes on them put out by the DCCC. I’m sure Gerrib will be horrified by the rhetoric of the Democrats.
IowaHawk’ twitter, “The one enduring lesson of 9/11 and its aftermath: PC kills.” sums it up for me. The FBI knew that Arabs were taking aircraft training that was very odd (learning to fly but not land) but didn’t do anything presumably because there was no good reason to harass those individuals (who turned out to be the bombers).
That thinking and its defenders murdered 3000 people.
As for Krugman, in a truly just world he would have been struck by lightning just while typing the headline on his latest piece of filth.
Twice.
The airline ticket counter worker that sold Mohammed Atta his ticket had a chance to stop Mohammed Atta. The ticket agent recalled that when he looked at Atta, after asking him a basic security question, that Atta had a look of pure hate on his face. But he thought better than to say anything about it because he didn’t want to come off as singling out a Middle Easterner. The subliminal mantra of the PC culture is quietly swaying us into submission.
I agree that the PC clique has found sway in the mainstream and that this acceptance needs to be met with an unending resistance. But I am heartened that while spouting ridiculous domestic platitudes, our president has allowed the CIA, NSA, (Fill in the Acronyms) to create a new weapon. A weapon which can be used in countries, unwilling, or incapable of controlling the territories within its own borders. A weapon that is manned by highly motivated Americans Airman. Over the years I have noticed a pattern Democrats administrations espouse their dedication to other people’s sovereignty while assassinating peoples in those countries with which they disagree. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the concept that some people need killing. Their deaths further the greater good. But this is a concept that Democrats loath to admit. Republican administrations spend political and actual capital building cases for eliminating enemies and when consensus is reached spend inordinate amount of money and lives making sure they won’t be accused of doing what their counterparts do almost openly and are never called on buy then Press. After the election is over we will see if the Press miraculously recovers its warped moral compass.
JJS,
First, you might it fun to look back through this blog’s archives, where you’ll find Rand, Leland, and others criticizing Obama during the 2007-2008 campaign for saying he would take the war on Al Queda into Pakistan. Rand and Leland and other likeminded folks were outraged — how dare he invade an ally?!
Second, read Obama’s famous 2002 speech on Iraq, in which as an Illinois State senator running for the US Senate, he went to an anti-war rally, and gave this speech: http://usliberals.about.com/od/extraordinaryspeeches/a/Obama2002War.ht Over and over, he told the anti-war crowd that he did not oppose war. He couldn’t have made it more clear. He did it, as you put it JJS, openly. And they voted for him anyway.
“The divisions that ensued after 9/11 weren’t any one person’s, or party’s, fault.”
The divisions happened because the Democrats went batshit crazy.
@Bob-1
In regard to the shadow war in Pakistan, you do realize that your party criticized it under Bush and that Obama’s escalation was only possible because of the stepped up procurement of UAV’s under Bush? Obama was fortunate enough to inherit a lot of good things in Iraq and Afghanistan from Bush.
“Over and over, he told the anti-war crowd that he did not oppose war. He couldn’t have made it more clear. He did it, as you put it JJS, openly. And they voted for him anyway.”
Much as with Obama’s religiosity, they probably thought he was pandering to appease the bitter clingers. Or they didn’t even hear what he said because they were so focused on how he was saying it.
I agree with you about Bush, except that I wonder what would have happened if Bush had focused on Al Queda with the “myopic” focus that Obama has.
Regarding the anti-war crowd, no. Respectfully, your guess is incorrect. They were annoyed with him, he didn’t get a good reception. It was clear that he wasn’t speaking to them, but to a larger audience, and that he was out of place at a leftwing event. The story that has been told (and I’ve retold it on this blog before) is that one protester turned to another and said “That guy wants to run for president.”
“Regarding the anti-war crowd, no. Respectfully, your guess is incorrect. They were annoyed with him, he didn’t get a good reception.”
Where are they now? Drone wars in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and who knows elsewhere. Renditions and secret black prisons. Starting wars without the approval of congress. Trying to overthrow the government of Honduras. Where exactly is the anti-war crowd?
Have they all moved on to protesting union rights? If so, any shred of pro-peace and anti-violence has flown out the window.
Now Bob, if you can’t defend your own views, don’t make up stuff and suggest I said it. Oh, and Bob… squirrel! 🙂
“you might it fun”
Now that’s hilarious bob! Did you come up with that all by yourself?
Please see
transterrestrial dot com/archives/2008/07/is_obama_a_fibb.html#comment-118079
Leland wrote:
Is it more important that Obama knows the President of Pakistan or that Pakistan is an ally. Because last I heard, Obama was threatening to unilaterally attack Pakistan. Thanks for the reminder about that Obama gaffe, which was damn close to a horrendous national incident.
If you google site:trasterrestrial.com and obama and pakistan and either 2007 or 2008, you’ll be reminded that you, Rand, and many others went on and on about Obama’s campaign gaffe. For example, see this:
transterrestrial dot com/archives/009477.html where Rand and other readers express their views on the subject.
And what did Obama actually say? He said this:
“I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”
— Candidate Obama
Quite a gaffe, eh?
The link to Obama’s whole speech is in the second Transterrestrial link I provided. I’m putting the links in “dot com” format because Rand’s blog software censors working links to Transterrestrial – I’m sure this is just a quirk of the software.
Let me help you out bob:
Is it more important that Obama knows the President of Pakistan or that Pakistan is an ally.
Remember when people complained about Bush not knowing the President of Pakistan. Well, when it mattered, he worked with the President of Pakistan to make them an ally. So I guess it wasn’t important in a gotcha moment to recall names.
Because last I heard, Obama was threatening to unilaterally attack Pakistan.
Remember when people who complained about Bush attacking countries unilaterally and calling it a bad thing. Actually, you don’t have to remember, go read the comments to various British news stories from yesterday. Apparently it is ok for Obama to unilaterally attack things.
Thanks for the reminder about that Obama gaffe, which was damn close to a horrendous national incident.
Good thing Bush did all that ground work, so Obama could rage war on Al Qaeda in Pakistan without fear of retaliation. And to be fair, Obama did some good work in Yemen, but Yemen isn’t exactly a nuclear power. Too bad he screwed up Libya and Egypt.
So Bob, did you always support the war on terrorism, or just now that Obama is President?
You can’t admit you were wrong about Obama’s foreign policy campaign speech.
As for me, I was very supportive of Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. I didn’t need 9/11 as a wakeup call – I wanted Clinton to do it. WMDs were the motivation for me — I didn’t think a psychopath like Hussein should control them. Had Bush wanted to go on to attack Syria’s WMD program, I would have been in favor too. Had Bush wanted to go after WMDs in Iran or North Korea, I would have been worried about it all going terribly wrong (much worse than Iraq did, in terms of civilian deaths, and Iraq was already more horrible than I expected on that count) but I would have supported the wish to deny WMDs to outlaw regimes.
And getting back to Rand’s comment about a war on Jihad — I’m very glad that the USA didn’t attempt a war on Jihadists. Terrorism and WMDs are the proper focus, not Isalm. If you want a war on Jihad, then you should agree with Krugman that attacking the secular Iraqi regime was a mistake.
If you want a war on Jihad, then you should agree with Krugman that attacking the secular Iraqi regime was a mistake.
You mean the secular regime that was funding Jihadis? We are at war with Jihad whether we want to be or not. Jihad is certainly at war with us, and to deny it is to be an ostrich.
My understanding was that Saddam was funding people who were at war with his regional enemies — people who wanted to overthrow the government in Egypt, Bahrain, etc, and he was funding the Palestinians for domestic consumption (as all Arab regimes use the Palestinians — to distract from internal dissent). None of these people focused on attacking the USA.
Was attacking Iraq an unneeded distraction from Al Queda (given that there were no WMDs in Iraq after all). Did we have too much on our plate? If so, then the USA should focus on direct threats — terrorism and WMDs — and not take on too much — more than we can handle, or at least, more than we want to spend.
And again, I ask you Rand: what concrete steps, beyond words, would you use to wage war on Jihad?
Bob, apparently others can’t admit their wrong about what Bush had to do. If you don’t understand the sarcasm I used then and just explained to you now; then that is entirely your problem.
To push my point a bit more, I’ll give another example. Isn’t it amazing that eventhough it was Obama’s first executive order (as if to highlight and set the new tone of his administration), that the Guantanamo prison facility is still open. This is just one of many things that Obama supporters routinely criticized Bush and Republicans, yet completely ignore now that Obama uses it. And their are so many other examples similar to it, that sometimes I think even Glenn Reynolds gets bored with the “They told me if I voted for John Mccain…” tag line.
As for you support of Iraq because of the threat of WMD, well that again is your problem. My support for Iraq was Saddam’s failure to follow the ceasefire agreement, and my desire not to see our forces patrolling a dangerous “no fly zone” for decades, as they still do patrol the DMZ in Korea. The Iraq war was never a distraction anymore than algebra is hard. Some people just have a problem grasping even slightly complex issues (or even sarcasm).
Just to start, I’d be shutting down madrassas run by radical imams.
I’d also stop with the PC nuttiness about pretending that Islamic terror attacks aren’t (e.g., Fort Hood).
Rand, your second idea, “stop with the PC nuttiness”, is just words. What about actions? And your first idea “shutting down Madrassas” runs contrary to the 1st amendment, at least, if you’re talking about madrassas in the United States. That’s a complete non-starter. Got anything else?
I would think this is an exercise that would make a good series of blog postings: “Ideas For Waging War On Jihad” by Rand Simberg and his readers.
The subtitle could be “A List Of Practical, Effective, & Legal Actions To Defeat Our Enemy.”
No, it’s not just words. If Major Hassan had been drummed out of the service before he went off on his killing spree (or better yet, tried for treason), it wouldn’t have been “just words.” And there’s nothing in the Constitution that says we have to allow the fomenting of violence against our citizens and government. It’s not a suicide pact. You can’t hide sedition behind the cloak of a religion.
You want to suppress religion and free speech. Brownshirt tactics would have been wrong even if everything (or anything) Hitler said about the Jews of Germany was true.
runs contrary to the 1st amendment
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
An IQ test for Bob. If they assemble for the purpose of overthrowing our government… is that peaceably? Is that the intent of the 1st amendment?
2nd question: If Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Does that make it OK to destroy the government? If your religion says you must.
3rd question: If my religion says to murder somebody is that a legal defense?
You want to suppress religion and free speech.
If the “religion” and the free speech is seditious, yes. Do you seriously believe that we should allow the preaching of hatred and violence, and recruiting of terrorists, out of public view? Really? As I said, the Constitution isn’t a suicide pact.
Brownshirt tactics would have been wrong even if everything (or anything) Hitler said about the Jews of Germany was true.
“Brownshirt tactics”?
Yes, I seriously believe we should allow the preaching of hatred. You’ve surely noticed how many people accuse you of “hating” even though you vigorously deny it. If we disallowed the preaching of hatred, your blog would surely get shut down. And then where would I find crazy stuff to read?
Do you believe in “hate crimes”?
As for preaching violence — it is tricky, and the courts have thrashed this out. I don’t think the Supreme Court has it wrong.
As for sedition: If a group of people came together to discuss the overthrow of the government, as happened just before the civil war as various state conventions considered and voted on seceding from the Union, I would disagree with such people, but I would defend their right to free speech.
Our military is fully capable of fighting the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Focus was never shifted.
The strategy in Afghanistan was to have a lighter footprint. Obama changed that by sending more troops. You could argue that Obama was not focused on Afghanistan since he didn’t meet with his commanding general for something like six months.
The intelligence that led to the killing of Bin Laden was a decade in the making and it still took Obama eight months to make the decision to pull the trigger.
And there certainly was WMD in Iraq. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334/ns/world_news-mideast/n_africa/
“The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program — a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.
The removal of 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” — the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment — was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam’s nuclear legacy.”
If a religion encourages sedition or murder, Congress doesn’t need to pass a law against the religion–there are already laws against sedition and murder. If those laws happen to interfere with the free practice of a religion, too bad for that religion. Religion shouldn’t be a get out of jail free card (I think the exemptions allowing peyote consumption for religious ceremonies are wrong–if peyote is illegal for me it should be illegal for them. I don’t think it should be illegal for me, either, but that’s a different rant).
The way to attack Jihadis is to use the culture that produced them against them. The Arab culture is very sensitive to the use of humiliation as a weapon.
It should be a humiliation when the mightiest warriors of Islam are reduced to attacking school buses, undefended business parks and Bat Mitzvahs.
It should be common practice in the West to ask, “How does a culture exist with such thin stuff passing for manhood? Is reproduction asexual?”
When a member of the West tries to equivocate (“Some people can’t tell the difference between George Washington and a terrorist.” or “Let’s not use the word terrorist it is a charged way to refer to the kind of person who will crucify the children of political opponents.” or “Sure it’s wrong to slaughter an infant in it’s crib but we in the West insentively mistreat Korans.”), those people need to be identified as imbeciles. They are imbeciles because they fail the simple intelligence test of distinguishing easily distinguished quantities.
Oh. And, finally, we need to secure the heartbeats of terrorists without anger or passion.
Joe, you make many good points, but this is well stated:
When a member of the West tries to equivocate (“Some people can’t tell the difference between George Washington and a terrorist.” or “Let’s not use the word terrorist it is a charged way to refer to the kind of person who will crucify the children of political opponents.” or “Sure it’s wrong to slaughter an infant in it’s crib but we in the West insentively mistreat Korans.”), those people need to be identified as imbeciles. They are imbeciles because they fail the simple intelligence test of distinguishing easily distinguished quantities.
You want to suppress religion and free speech.
Nope. I do want people intent on killing us monitored. If they act on those intentions I want them dealt with before they actually get a chance to accomplish anything.