We need to Bomb somebody!

OM wrote:



That was the joke, yes. But right now, we have to fart. Ha-ha!



I don't watch that show. It's toilet humor. I don't like toilet humor
because I'm superior to that.


Hmmm. Have they ever taken on "Classical Liberals"?
"Classical Liberals"...who **** their uncles?
Hah-hah! B-R-A-A-P!

T&P

jonathan wrote:
No, they think this way. They worship the tactic of using as a 'force
multiplier'
or terrorist weapon, the random attack against innocent civilians.
The biggest bang for the buck ever invented, and quickest way to destroy
a society. So that they can inherit the rubble and enslave
who is left alive.

They have come nowhere near "destroying" our society, or even
putting a dent into it really. 9/11 was bad, but "our society" has
moved on and has even released two major motion pictures this
year about 9/11! "Our society" has prospered just fine since
2001, although it would have done far better without the pointless
Iraqi diversion.

What "they" have managed so far are just nuisance attacks, which
any society could endure, and even adapt to, for decades or even
millennia. It would be easier if they used WMD to destroy a city
or two. Then we would have no reason not to use our full arsenal
against targets of our choosing to depopulate a sizable chunk
of the planet's surface, an act requiring the immolation of the
innocent along with the guilty. This is something the U.S. has
done before without even flinching - it just depends on the
circumstances.

- Ed Kyle

In article . com,
"Ed Kyle" wrote:

jonathan wrote:
No, they think this way. They worship the tactic of using as a 'force
multiplier'
or terrorist weapon, the random attack against innocent civilians.
The biggest bang for the buck ever invented, and quickest way to destroy
a society. So that they can inherit the rubble and enslave
who is left alive.

They have come nowhere near "destroying" our society, or even
putting a dent into it really. 9/11 was bad, but "our society" has
moved on and has even released two major motion pictures this
year about 9/11! "Our society" has prospered just fine since
2001, although it would have done far better without the pointless
Iraqi diversion.

On the other hand, the terrorist attacks (and other hints at same) have
put into power, and kept in power, the most authoritarian government the
U.S. has ever seen [1]. Police states always begin by frightening the
populace into thinking they need a "strong" government to protect them.
One can hardly find a better example of people supporting the trampling
of their own personal freedoms and those of others, in the name of
"national security." (Unless, dare I say it, one thinks back to Germany
in the 1930s.)

So while the terrorist attacks cannot destroy our society, they may well
(indirectly) destroy our democratic system.

Best,
- Joe

[1] See for example _Worse_than_Watergate_ by John W. Dean,
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-031600023x-3.

On Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:39:23 -0600, in a place far, far away, Joe
Strout made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

They have come nowhere near "destroying" our society, or even
putting a dent into it really. 9/11 was bad, but "our society" has
moved on and has even released two major motion pictures this
year about 9/11! "Our society" has prospered just fine since
2001, although it would have done far better without the pointless
Iraqi diversion.

On the other hand, the terrorist attacks (and other hints at same) have
put into power, and kept in power, the most authoritarian government the
U.S. has ever seen [1].

Oh, please.

Read a little history. Particularly on the Civil War.

Joe Strout wrote:

On the other hand, the terrorist attacks (and other hints at same) have
put into power, and kept in power, the most authoritarian government the
U.S. has ever seen...

Maybe, maybe not. But the end of this particular regime (the
Congressional part of it) will come soon enough. The election
is only three months away, and Americans of both parties
can't wait to punish those responsible for the Iraq fiasco.
They voted the first one out in Connecticut this week.

- Ed Kyle

On 11 Aug 2006 12:45:02 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Ed Kyle"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

Joe Strout wrote:

On the other hand, the terrorist attacks (and other hints at same) have
put into power, and kept in power, the most authoritarian government the
U.S. has ever seen...

Maybe, maybe not. But the end of this particular regime (the
Congressional part of it) will come soon enough. The election
is only three months away, and Americans of both parties
can't wait to punish those responsible for the Iraq fiasco.
They voted the first one out in Connecticut this week.

laughing

Those were rabid Democrats in a primary, not the American people. And
half of the Democrats voted for the pro-Bush candidate. Do you really
fantasize that Lamont is going to win the Senate seat? I predict that
Joe Lieberman will not be "voted out." He was simply voted out as a
Democrat, a party that seems to be trying to return to the good old
days of George McGovern. Good for him.

In article .com,
"Ed Kyle" wrote:

On the other hand, the terrorist attacks (and other hints at same) have
put into power, and kept in power, the most authoritarian government the
U.S. has ever seen...

Maybe, maybe not. But the end of this particular regime (the
Congressional part of it) will come soon enough. The election
is only three months away, and Americans of both parties
can't wait to punish those responsible for the Iraq fiasco.
They voted the first one out in Connecticut this week.

Yes, it's entirely possible we'll weather this spell and come out just
fine -- possibly even the stronger for it. There is definite resistance
(though mostly unsuccessful, so far) to the executive branch's power
grabs; maybe after the elections, some real checks & balances will be
restored.

Ed Kyle wrote:

Maybe, maybe not. But the end of this particular regime (the
Congressional part of it) will come soon enough. The election
is only three months away, and Americans of both parties
can't wait to punish those responsible for the Iraq fiasco.
They voted the first one out in Connecticut this week.



Unless of course there is a national emergency of some sort that means
those elections have to be put off for a while... say crazed Islamic
fascists set fire to the Senate and House, and martial law had to be
declared.
You know what would have to happen then, don't you? All of America's
Muslims would have to be resettled to the east. ;-)

Pat

Rand Simberg wrote:

Unfortunately, it seems that we're going to have to bomb
Londonistan... Or the Brits are going to have to do some mass
deportations (a disturbing number of British Muslims believe that the
July 7th subway bombings were justified). There are no pretty
solutions.

Yes, this is unfortunately very true.

When a crime is committed, what we naturally wish to do is:

- punish those who are responsible, in order to

- protect those who are not culpable.

This means protecting us from terror - and protecting those Muslims who
are innocent of terrorist ambitions from discrimination or other
consequences of things which are not their fault.

There is nothing wooly-headed or bleeding-heart liberal about wanting
to do what is right and just. Where the wooly-headed liberalism comes
in is if we decide to include a big chunk of "bad Muslims" in what we
treat as "good Muslims".

The only thing missing from my brilliant, incisive political analysis
is that we haven't yet learned how to read minds.

Different mainstream news media outlets are presenting divergent
perspectives on the current conflict raging in southern Lebanon. Some
show Israel as indiscriminately attacking the civilian population, as
well as hampering aid efforts and preventing evacuation of civilians
from the areas of fighting. Others note that Israel is fighting in
areas that were effectively under the control of Hezbollah, a terrorist
group that has killed Americans, not the Lebanese government, and that
Israel is taking scrupulous care to avoid civilians, and current
civilian casualties are only what is to be expected from a major war
such as Hezbollah has unleashed.

I have always feared that the unity of the democratic world, already
badly strained by the war in Iraq, could be shattered by new events.
For example, if China were to do something stupid with respect to
Taiwan, so that the U.S. would need to take action - and one of the
indirect consequences of that action would be the collapse of Chinese
central authority, with an ensuing famine in which millions starve.

Given the way the conflict in Lebanon is being presented in non-U.S.
media, and the U.S. support of Israel, forces are at work to isolate
the United States now.

If the European news media is handling this so as to put Israel and the
United States in an unfavorable light, how is the news media of the
Arab world doing?

What we want is simple. No more terrorism. A world in which Israel has
the same peace and security as the United States, and where that is the
level of peace and security we *thought* we had before 9/11. Consistent
with that, the United States must be respected, admired, and loved, by
all the world's people.

But it is difficult to stir a warm glow of approval in people's hearts
if you have to subject them to a harsh military occupation to keep them
from doing you violence. The long-term objectives and the short-term
objectives are at war with each other.

It was possible to turn around Germany's thinking at the end of the
Second World War. This was for a number of reasons. Nazi rule, being
twelve years old, had shallow roots in German society. The threat of
the Soviet Union, against which the United States was the only bulwark,
was clear and obvious. The Holocaust gave Germans reason to be ashamed
of their country's past.

Can we achieve a similar turn-around in the thinking of the Muslim
world?

What I want to see for the world's majority Islamic nations is:

- full equality for non-Muslim minorities,

- an absence of pressures to be or remain a Muslim, to concur in
criticism of Israel

and yet, a foreign presence or threat is just what solidifies group
identification.

And increased wealth, while it has centrifugal tendencies, also brings
increased power to make trouble.

It would make things simple if we could clearly and obviously point out
that terrorism is utterly antithetical to Islam. Being more Islamic
than the next guy is the one and only 'safe' form of political protest
in most of the Muslim world.

Surely that isn't hard! Religion is about doing good and being nice to
people. Terrorism is the opposite of that. Back during the Iran hostage
crisis, it was noted that the Quran said something about respecting
envoys.

During the anti-Danish demonstrations that raged through the Muslim
world, I looked up information on the life of Muhammad.

On two occasions, he led forces against Jewish communities on the basis
of specious justifications.

On both occasions, he captured the civilian survivors, *including
women*, and sold them into slavery. In each of these cases, he kept one
of the women for himself.

Also, one of his devoted disciples divorced a Coptic Christian woman
that he had obtained through slavery to present her to Muhammad as
well.

There are, very definitely, "good Muslims". The Amahdiyya Muslims, for
example, have tolerance as a basic, intrinsic part of their religion.
Unfortunately, they are not part of mainstream Islam, for much the same
reasons that Mormons and Christian Scientists are not part of
mainstream Christianity.

But with the example of the Prophet, and a glorious past based on
spreading Islam by fire and sword, it would seem that there is too much
risk that terrorism could appeal to unstable minds in that faith
community, and too little hope that we could feel secure, safe, and
confident in the peaceful intentions of the Islamic world after being
menaced by terrorism.

How can we, without openly restricting life for the Islamic world,
instead enhance it, and turn that world into a maze of feel-good New
Age religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism - a vibrant Buddhist
community in Afghanistan would solve the "Disneyland" problem with
respect to an ancient monument there destroyed by the Taliban that it
has been proposed to rebuild, although many Americans would resist what
they would see as spending taxpayer dollars on idols - as well as
moderate Islamic movements and related faiths like Baha'i?

John Savard

LooseChanj wrote:
Oh, btw, you think *exactly* like those fundies you love to hate so much. Pot,
kettle, etc.

Not really. After all, the Islamic fundamentalists *started it*.

What? When two small children are fighting, each one says the other one
started it? Didn't Palestine belong to the Arabs before it was taken
from them and given to the Jews?

One *could* point out that Britain had as much right to admit Jewish
immigrants to Palestine as it did Tamils to Sri Lanka or East Indians
to Fiji and Uganda. But that sounds so colonialist.

Or, one could point out that Jews were living in Palestine before
Zionism, even, and they were cruelly persecuted there with the tacit
acceptance of the Arab Muslim population - hence they really did start
it, and they deserved to be displaced. But that sounds so hypocritical
from people who haven't yet given Canada and the United States back to
the Indians.

Okay, then, how about this?

The people of the United States of America, Canada, Australia, Britain,
and Western Continental Europe, have enjoyed, for some decades now, an
unprecedented level of human freedom, material prosperity, and personal
security.

(And, incidentally, Israel is another country that shares their
democratic values and cultural heritage.)

If someone proposes to take this away from us, whether by high oil
prices or by terrorist attacks, they ought not to act surprised when
they find out we are not disposed to give it up without a fight.

The cheapest way to modify the behavior of others is to threaten
retaliation for misbehavior, since it costs nothing if it achieves its
result, and is relatively cheap to implement if it fails. Promising
rewards for good behavior is more expensive to deliver, and watching
over or guarding someone every second to stop him from misbehaving is
more expensive yet. Unfortunately, terrorism, unlike open warfare,
doesn't leave us with handy targets for retaliation - except innocents.

And I *do* agree with you that this would be wrong. But it's such a
natural temptation in the current situation that I find it hard to
completely condemn those whose sentiments lapse.

John Savard