Sarah Hoyt is worried that we are losing the war to save it.
I’ve been very concerned about this myself for years. Before 911, in fact; I’ve been concerned about Islam since the 80s. Whenever I hear people say “There’s no military solution to this,” I always think that of course there is. But it’s one that could be pyrrhic.
Indeed, when speaking to friends in 1965 about the Muslim Brotherhood, I mentioned the problems of living with any group dedicated (as MB’s charter states it is) to reviving an Empire dedicated to universal rule and universal enforcement of a single religious/cultural viewpoint. I was repeatedly told that this could not be a problem because the proper view was accommodation of this as another cultural view than those of industrial society. It wasn’t “multicultural” to do otherwise.
In fact, I find that academia cannot find it possible to see *any* non-industrial culture viewpoint as a threat. Their institutions see the threat of industrial society to their own hierarchy as the primary problem of its existence. Since the oligarchs, or would-be oligarchs of a universal Empire, see the freedoms of action of industrial society as intolerable, then they can’t be anything but the good guys.
“There’s no military solution to this,” is very much like “violence never solved anything” – completely wrong.
Violence actually solves a lot of things. Violence solved the problem of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Saddam Hussein isn’t invading any more countries because the US used a military solution. Violence put an end to Osama bin Laden’s effectiveness at leading al Qaeda, and ultimately Osama bin Laden himself.
And at some point, a nuclear-armed country – my guess is France – will finally have enough of Muslim violence and will nuke Mecca and Medina, to make the Hajj impossible and to demonstrate to all concerned that Allah isn’t God. Pyrrhic, indeed, but decisive.
There is a lot of fatalism that leads to self fulfilling prophecies. Like, the war in Afghanistan can’t be won. People said the same about Iraq. They (people who weren’t alive then) even retroactively say it about Vietnam, without knowing any actual history about the war and just what hollywood told them.
Strangely enough, a lot of it comes from people who are not religious (are actually very hostile toward some religions) and view their lack of religious belief was imbued by them being a more evolved form of human being. But all too often, these people do not even possess the self awareness to recognize their own magical thinking, like fatalism.
Give me the person that acknowledges their religiosity and magical thinking over those that blindly act out their magical thoughts while thinking they are a higher form of being. The former you can rationally converse with, the latter not so much.
Obama acted as though the “arc of history” was a real thing, as if there was a history god somewhere up there making sure things came out right. It was magical thinking.
Hope is also magical thinking. His whole presidency was based on magical thinking, bullying, and corruption.
And at some point, a nuclear-armed country – my guess is France – will finally have enough of Muslim violence and will nuke Mecca and Medina, to make the Hajj impossible and to demonstrate to all concerned that Allah isn’t God. Pyrrhic, indeed, but decisive.
Even if we ignore the reprehensible act of killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people (how much Muslim violence would be needed to justify that again?), we’re still left with the problem that we didn’t make the Hajj impossible or demonstrate that God isn’t God. Recall that nuclear weapons don’t make a place permanently uninhabitable, not even cobalt-seeded ones. And we already know how to clean up radioactive fallout, even if it is laborious.
Second, Allah is just Arabic for God. I can’t quite see how the use of nuclear weapons will prove that a supernatural being is not itself, but I suppose with enough time someone will think the argument worth bothering with.
At this point though, I think even from a barbaric propagandist point of view, you’ve just created a few hundred thousand martyrs without significantly impairing the religion or proving that God is not God. Maybe we should be looking for an approach that would work?
“we’re still left with the problem that we didn’t make the Hajj impossible”
When’s the last time anyone went swimming at Bikini Atoll? If the Hajj means guaranteed death for more than 120 years, there will be at least six generations that cannot make the journey.
And there is nothing like a nuke to demonstrate decisively that the being one reveres as a god isn’t actually God. Saying “Allah akbar” rings hollow when the two holiest cities of Islam are radioactive ruins. No Japanese people today revere the Emperor as a god. He’s at the level of the Queen of the Netherlands.
I’m not the one with my finger on the button. It is not my preferred solution. But someone in that position, somewhere in the world, is wargaming this very scenario. My bet is France, but it could be someone else. It could be China. It could be Russia. It could be India. It was very nearly America on 9/11. At some point, one of them will say enough.
“When’s the last time anyone went swimming at Bikini Atoll?”
Yesterday? Scuba diving enthusiasts and other tourists swim in Bikini Atoll all the time.
See https://www.google.com/search?q=dive+bikini+atoll
to see the list of tourism companies, or get info from the horse’s mouth: http://www.bikiniatoll.com/divetour.html
OK, bad example. Ever go camping in the Nevada nuclear test range?
If the Hajj means guaranteed death for more than 120 years, there will be at least six generations that cannot make the journey.
That’s the thing. It won’t. There are two things to consider here. First, there’s plenty of resources to clean up the site just like one would clean up any sort of radiation leak. It might be costly and require the movement of vast mountains of contaminated soil, but it’s feasible. Second, it is trivial to modify the conditions of the Hajj to accommodate the consequences of this attack.
And there is nothing like a nuke to demonstrate decisively that the being one reveres as a god isn’t actually God. Saying “Allah akbar” rings hollow when the two holiest cities of Islam are radioactive ruins. No Japanese people today revere the Emperor as a god. He’s at the level of the Queen of the Netherlands.
Like Christians abandoned God when nukes were developed in the first place?
You earlier wrote:
There are only two endgames. Either the entire world ends up living under Sharia law or Islam ends. The longer it goes on the bloodier it will be.
The US, Russia, and China (and a few other countries) are all capable of ending Islam in an eyeblink. One bomb on Mecca, one bomb on Medina, and it is vividly demonstrated that Allah is powerless and also Hajj becomes impossible for generations.
I’m struck by the contradiction here. Islam is supposed to be this merciless, unstoppable, virulent ideology. So we’ll blow up their pet rock to stop them. If the ideology is truly that much of a problem (and I see no evidence that it is, in blunt contradiction to most people here I suppose), then blowing up a couple of holy cities will be taken in stride.
This sort of primitive religion bashing has been going on for thousands of years. Hebrews/Jews being uppity? We’ll take their Ark or build a big mosque on top of their holiest site. Christians being a problem? We’ll outlaw display crosses except of course for public executions. Hindus not being the right religion? We’ll destroy their temples and build our own in their place.
Modern religions are more durable than that. Destruction or suppression of a religious symbol isn’t going to matter much.
Second, Allah is just Arabic for God.
This is a little disingenuous as the Muslim Allah is not the same concept as the Christian God or what westerners have traditionally considered God. The theological differences get people killed so let’s not lump everyone in together.
Maybe we should be looking for an approach that would work?
Destruction is easy. Getting a religion and culture to change their ways from the outside, is much harder. People keep saying we need to combat the ideology but what has anyone ever done to do this? Usually the people who suggest this, just want to engage in appeasement and surrender.
We need to stop the PC bs and export our culture. Many of the problems in Iraq and Afghanistan are because of their culture. We need to change it. Outside of those countries, we need a concerted campaign to change the Islamic/Arabic world. Pump in American media and give free access. Translate it for the masses. Get Hollywood to stop making anti-American movies.
And that is part of the problem. In order to export our culture, we need cultural leaders who actually like our culture rather than choose to defend other cultures as superior to our own. A self loathing USA isn’t going to get anyone to change. Sure, people who hate the USA like it, but that doesn’t help anyone, especially us.
Actually defeating Islam is probably quite easy. Their core belief, that the Koran wasn’t written by Muhammed, but by Allah, is very brittle. One of the reasons they freak out at the slightest questioning of Islam is that if any part of the Koran is false, their entire belief system is false, and Muhammed must have lied.
Yet Muhammed based much of the Koran on the Bible, and Christians can trivially reject many biblical stories as being not literally true. Mainstream Christianity, and especially Christian scholars, maintain that many stories are just included to support the narrative, or to keep the work entertaining, or to make some larger point.
For example, serious Christian scholars stopped believing that Noah’s flood was literally true shortly after the discovery of the New World, and its vastly different flora and fauna. It was obviously absurd to think that a bison swam across the Atlantic ocean to get on a boat so it wouldn’t drown, and then swam back. In fact, the Noah’s flood story doesn’t make sense on any level. It’s likely a reworking of a polytheistic Sumerian story about Enki and Enlil, in which Enlil, the powerful god, wanted to wipe out humanity with a flood (we were too noisy), and Enki the water god who liked people, warned a man about and told him to build a boat. Having thwarted Enlil’s plan, Enki calmed him down, and told him it had been a bad idea. Reworking that basic conflict into a monotheistic religion just doesn’t work because the omniscient god has to screw up, then realize they screwed up, then apologize for it.
So you take something like that and start out attacking it as a silly Jewish myth. Muslims love it if you attack anything Jewish. As you thoroughly destroy the Noah story, they’ll realize the Koran has the same tale about Nuh, but by then the damage is done. No real god would have repeated the story because it doesn’t pass the laugh test, so the Koran can’t be the word of Allah. Repeat, as necessary, because Muhammed copied a whole lot of the Bible without knowing which stories would later be rejected as false by the very experts on those stories.
Basically, the only reason Islam is surviving in Western countries is because Westerners have refused to simply say “You’re wrong.” Islam cannot be wrong or the belief system implodes.
One option is to educate Muslims about Islam. The other is to realize it doesn’t matter, education will not result in a reformation until after dealing with the threats in a more straight-forward manner.
We start with people are mostly the same. Growing up without Islam, Muslims would be as decent as any other people. The algorithm of Islam has only one outcome which must not be tolerated. Islam wants to muddy that distinction and we can’t allow it.
Islam must be destroyed and Muslims must be shown love. There is no inconsistency in that.
Showing love doesn’t mean bringing Islam and Sharia into this country. The courts are over stepping their authority that is clearly a president’s right to ban any immigrant for any reason.
Obama would have had the right to ban Christian immigrants if he wanted. The constitution and history gave him that right.
It’s only unconstitutional when Trump does it is lawlessness.
Growing up without Islam, Muslims would be as decent as any other people.
That depends a lot on their culture as well. Religion and culture are so intertwined over there it is hard to say where one stops and the other begins.
This is a little disingenuous as the Muslim Allah is not the same concept as the Christian God or what westerners have traditionally considered God. The theological differences get people killed so let’s not lump everyone in together.
That alleged difference is not what gets people killed. After all, how many unique, omnipotent beings can there possibly be? It’s the culture differences that do. And those differences have over the centuries been enough to set like against like, Christian against Christian and Muslim against Muslim, despite minute differences in religious doctrine.
That alleged difference is not what gets people killed.
Nothing alleged about it if you actually study any of the religions involved beyond knowing that they share common roots. And yes, that difference and others is what gets people killed.
The religious war being carried out now is just part of a 1400 year struggle to determine what is the true Islam and to subjugate all the non-believers. Sunni Muslims don’t even consider Shia Muslims to be Muslims. In the west, we tend to think of it like Christianity, where there are many different denominations. That is not how the Islamic world views things.
The problem is that too many in the west apply their own paradigm to the situation rather than realizing that other people view reality totally differently. It is one thing to talk about cultural differences but another to actually understand another culture’s different views on what reality is. It is nearly impossible to not make judgments based on our own programming.
Is it even safe to assume that all parents love their children? We assume that everyone thinks of their children the same way we do but that is not the case now or historically.
It’s the culture differences that do.
There are many cultural similarities at play, despite different religious beliefs. They also want to conquer those with the same culture but different religious beliefs. So while the jihad may indeed hate other cultures, their prime motivation is religious. Not sure as any distinction matters as the two are so intertwined.
After all, how many unique, omnipotent beings can there possibly be?
An infinite number. The Christians believe in three. The Muslims believe in one. And there are many other religions that exist or have existed on our planet with thoughts on the existence of omnipotent beings.
While I’m thinking about it, another angle is to contrast the story of Jesus in the wilderness (the temptation of Christ) and the life of Muhammed.
Mathew 4:8-11
Luke 4:5-8
Offering prophets world conquest in return for their worship is just something Satan does. At Medina, despairing of the Meccan’s greater numbers prior to battle, Muhammed obviously took him up on it. Thus the Koran promises Muslims that they will conquer and enslave the entire world.
Getting a religion and culture to change their ways from the outside, is much harder.
Not really, but no one is really trying with respect to Islam. For example, have you seen an Academy Award nominated picture portraying media coverage of systemic rape allowed by Islamic leaders? No such film would ever get made, much less receive critical acclaim, because news media basically ignore as best they can negative stories about Islam. That’s why we the media doesn’t know the motive behind the Orlando night club shooting, but everyone knows why Pope Benedict XVI needed to step down.
What is happening is not a failure to defeat Islam, but rather a lack of any effort to prevent it from expanding. If a person is spiritual and looking for higher meaning, they are told Buddhism is weird, Judaism is insular and not to be trusted, and Christians are out to take over the world, plunder it, and destroy it. So how about trying a “peaceful” religion (but not that weird one)?
What is happening is not a failure to defeat Islam, but rather a lack of any effort to prevent it from expanding.
I agree that nothing has been done to change Islam or the culture in Islamic countries. But I think movies and similar attempts to influence them, would take a long time. I think it should be done, though.
We should also use the influence we have in Iraq, Afghanistan, and potentially part of Syria to impose societal changes. Along with that, we should promote similar changes in our ally countries. Saudi Arabia and the UAE might be open to reforms because they see a future apart from oil.
This is far harder than just killing people or invading countries. But it should be done in conjunction with our military efforts.
Obama always preached using diplomacy but was totally inept with that tool and used it as a way to ignore problems while spinning that they were being addressed. He was also inept with his use of the military.
What we need, and I don’t know if Trump can do it, is the combined use of the military and diplomacy. There are two major roadblocks to this, the entertainment industry and the State Department.
Maybe we should be looking for an approach that would work?
Give that man a seegar! I’m with you on that. The fundamentals are that Muslims are just people and Islam is an algorithm that can not be tolerated.
Work out a solution from there.
Be nice if they put one down that well in Qom too, while they’re at it.
Frankly, he might be less scary than Bush) keep in mind that after a few more attacks, we’ll get someone who will be more inflexible and perhaps a whole lot more eager to push the button in retaliation for an attack.
It probably wont be a Republican. We have all seen how Democrats treat Christians and others they consider unhumans. When that ferocity is turned on the Muslims, watch out. I am not sure what it will take to get Democrats to turn on their fellow travelers but something will.
That would have been Ms. Clinton (seriously!), but we narrowly backed way from choosing her.
She probably would have picked some country she thought weak to demonstrate her Woman Power. That is what she tried with Libya. Maybe Russia would have been a target? She definitely would have started a new war somewhere, not sure it would be nuclear though.
Some on the right have been pointing out for a long time that the kind of people who become raving SJWs are the same kind of people who’ll be demanding death camps as soon as the tide turns against unassimilating immigrants.
Today’s ‘we’re all the same under the skin’ SJW will be tomorrow’s concentration camp guard. Because both roles require the same kind of disconnect from reality.
I haven’t the slightest clue what she was trying to say. I think it was a case of drunk blogging. It made no sense whatsoever.
It is really simple MfK. If we don’t convince them to moderate their ways by reason or other non violent methods we will have to kill them all and wear the stain on our immortal souls for all eternity.
It’s fairly easy to solve the issue. Every Muslim has to, at least once in their lives, go to Mecca to see the rock in a pilgrimage. We just setup several Maxim machine guns around the rock and when they come we just mow them down. Rinse and repeat.
But it’s one that could be pyrrhic.
What does this mean? I’m not familiar with the word pyrrhic, and the context and dictionary definition (a metrical foot consisting of two short or unaccented syllables) didn’t help. I apologize for my ignorance.
It means extremely costly victories that are as bad as defeats. The term comes from a campaign in the southern Italian peninsula by King Pyrrhus of Epirus against the Romans. King Pyrrhus by legend is supposed to have stated after a very bloody victory:
I thought it meant “with reference to a gum disease,” but your answer makes a little more sense.
Thanks, Karl. I’ll read up on King Pyrrhus.
Blerg, there’s a Pyrrhic victory Wikipedia article…color me embarrassed. Thank you for your patience.
My view is that this problem will take generations to sort out. We would be better served dealing with the similar problems that afflict the developed world instead so that we can be a beacon to the rest of the world rather than just another problem.
Unfortunately, humanity is a never-ending stream of bad ideas and plenty have taken root in the developed world which are just as harmful to us as if they were radical Islamic instead.
1. You don’t have generations. In the West, Sweden will be Islamic within two generations. France and Britain not far behind.
2. The people in many of those countries are getting sick of the situation. The biggest problem is the complete disconnect between government and people, which will eliminate any chance of a non-violent solution. Things will continue to get worse for a few years until the people just snap.
3. Fossil fuel usage is about to collapse, due to new technologies like VR and local manufacturing making travel obsolete, and the occupants of the Middle East will soon go back to their old hobby of murdering each other. Ten years later, there’ll be very few people left there.
The interesting thing is how some ME countries are trying to change their economies, including efforts in the space industry.
My view is that this problem will take generations to sort out
I agree.
We would be better served dealing with the similar problems that afflict the developed world instead so that we can be a beacon
Beacons shine light out. As I stated above, we should intentionally spread our culture and system of government. Everyone wants to come to America but there isn’t anything magical about our country. Any country can copy our system.
In the meantime, we have to stop the “refugee” invasion intended to change countries by means other than outright violence. We also have to deal with the actual violence inflicted on our friends and interests.
I don’t subscribe to the “we’re gonna have to kill them all” philosophy. Let’s look at the WMD scenario. For the foreseeable future, WMD is going to involve state actors – nuclear will be forever out of reach of independent terror groups due to the difficulties in obtaining the fissile material; biological and chemical weapons are difficult to develop dispersing devices for, and the terrorists are much more likely to kill themselves.
So, let’s play out the scenario: A state actor, Pakistan for instance, gives Al Qaeda a nuke, and AQ manages to transport it to, say, some US port city – let’s say Long Beach – and detonates it; deaths are well over 100k. We don’t know who did it, but the US response is to tell ALL the potential state actors – Pakistan, India, Iran, North Korea – that they have 24 hrs to turn over the responsible parties or they will all be turned into radioactive glass. Or maybe we just decide to wipe the nuclear capabilities of all of the above off the map. Either way, every nuclear capable state knows that to allow or help a terrorist group to obtain and/or use WMD is instant suicide. Maybe lil’ Kim is crazy enough to try it anyway, either via third party or directly, but I see no chance that anybody else is, not even the Iranian mullahs.
As I see it, they’re far more likely to be French nukes after France goes Islamic. Or maybe British, but I believe they can’t be used without US codes.
Pakistan doesn’t want to get nuked. Islamic France or Britain won’t care so much.
Islamic France or Britain will still have far too few willing to commit suicide by trying to nuke the US to matter. And I don’t think either country will end up at that endpoint.
Either way, every nuclear capable state knows that to allow or help a terrorist group to obtain and/or use WMD is instant suicide.
A WMD tit for tat isn’t what people have been talking about but rather attacks either in scale or barbarity removing any moral qualms about retaliating with overwhelming force in collective punishment.
How would Americans react if every kid in a school was beheaded or American children were thrown into industrial bread kneading machines? If the barbarity already seen in other countries directly impacts Americans this way, or any other world power, what will the people demand?
Americans are getting tired of sending their soldiers off to do battle in countries that don’t particularly like us even when the Islamists are not in power. Eventually, it will be hard to argue we should sacrifice their lives when other means are far easier.
I hope it never gets that far but the intra-religious struggle in the Muslim world for dominance over other Muslims and regional minorities and the desire to exterminate the non-Muslim world isn’t something that will end any time soon.
In order to insulate ourselves, we would need to stop the flow of people from the region and institute economic blockades. In order to protect the minorities, we need to prioritize them for a safe haven separate from their persecutors. In order to protect Muslims, we need to set up, and defend, safe havens. These are three things the left and globalists are fiercely against.
The strategy hasn’t been to save it. The strategy has been to encourage it to destroy itself.
That would work better if we weren’t importing it.