We’ve had some of the most thoughtful comments ever on this blog to what was a throw-away comment in my last post about Muslim extremists. In addition to those comments I received several mails as well. I’d like to clarify my point and give everyone the opportunity to explore this issue further.The first step in solving any problem is to recognize that the problem exists and call it by its true name. This is hardly a controversial point of view; it is shared by many people and is the first step in 12 step programs like AA.
One big problem facing this country is that radical Muslims are at war with us. Invading Iraq and Afghanistan may have exacerbated the problem, but they were at war with us long before those events, and they won’t stop killing us if we leave. Regardless of your position on the wars, this is a big problem that has taken many American lives and it isn’t going to go away by wishing it so.
Many Americans, including some members of the media, seem to be afraid to acknowledge this fact. I’m sure their reasons are varied, but it seems to stem from the belief that it would be even worse to acknowledge the problem because it would stigmatize innocent Muslims as well as those who make war against us. I don’t have an answer to that problem and I feel bad for the innocent. But the problem remains and is made worse by throwing a blanket of political correctness over it.
Failure to recognize the true problem has had us chasing Osama, Saadam, the Taliban and Al Qaeda when the real enemy is a belief system. It should be a propaganda war we are waging. It’s so ironic that a bunch of dark-age religious fanatics are beating us at the game of global communications and social networking. Maybe we should put the Google boys in charge of the war.
No one, not even the nut cases, are calling for Japanese-style internment camps. Quite the opposite; who best to help in this effort than loyal American Muslims who left the old world behind and want to enjoy the fruits of American liberal democracy.
Surely this is one issue where left and right can find some common ground and find a path to victory.
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From a purely Darwinian point of view, this is a struggle for resources hiding behind the mask of god. A play for power with no frontline.
Some questions to ask the public:
Who speaks for god? Orthodoxy, sects, no one?
Is there one god or do different people worship different gods. Or is there no god!
What is the word on the street on the US in the Muslim world, warts and all?
How non-PC are we prepared to go? The Romans would have killed all those whom they caught as well as their seed. This jibes with Darwin's take on the struggle: if we are vessels for our DNA, total warfare results in the loser having no stake in the gene pool.
One rational way to overcome this problem is to drive the price of oil down and raise the price of water. The Pentagon is a hammer where every problem is a nail. We need to take the ball away. However, support of corrupt regimes only undermines our purpose.
I veer, hourly, between "carpet bomb the bastards off the face of the earth" and "but they don't all hate us. What if I had been looked down upon, feared, rounded up and disrespected all my life".
There is no way the left and right will come together on this or any other issue. Even I am not enough of a Pollyanna to think that. Nor do I think loyal, American will get involved - especially now. I would imagine they'd be too fearful for their families.
Perhaps if the countries where most Muslims live had less oil revenue their governments would become less repressive.
I fear this is like the Palestinian situation: no solution. Although The Troubles in Northern Ireland were resolved . .
Left and right cannot come together because there is no consensus as to how to deal with the problem.
Obviously some Muslims hate the US enough to try to do us harm. I have never seen even an estimate of the size of Al Qaeda. Are there 1,000 or 1 million followers who are pledged to destroy us? We know we are fighting some group of unknown size and unknown origin, so how do we know what we should be doing more than we are?
We cannot negotiate our way out because the perpetrators probably don't even agree on what they want. At least the Brits knew that the IRA wanted Britain out of Ireland.
If we are going to take away yet more civil liberties, who makes the decision as to who to go after? What are the checks and balances?
A story that circulated in DC, when the NSA employee leaked the phone tapping info, was that the government was bugging Christina Ammanpour's phone. Her husband was a foreign policy advisor for Kerry during the 04 campaign. Was the white house listening for political reasons or legitimate national security reasons? Nobody knows for sure, but do we just trust the government not to abuse the power?
A side note is that the FBI could not be told of Hasan buying a handgun after the background check. Background checks are just to determine if a person has a criminal record. The record of the inquiry into the background check cannot be shared and must be destroyed at some point.
We should fight this problem covertly and accept the fact that just like in Britian there will be some loss of life but that the country will survive.
Ah Fenway, but there is a solution to the Palestinian situation I think. It involves two states and the recognition that people shouldn't have the right to give something away that's not there's in the first place like the Balfour Declaration did in 1917. Surely there must be a solution to our conflict with the Muslim world. I just don't have any idea what it is.
Ah, Kaz, I do agree: a 2-state solution. But that will NEVER happen. You know that big Israeli lobby and Jewish voting bloc?
I agree that a 2-state solution is the way to go but I also agree that it will never happen. Hamas will never let it happen and neither will the conservative Israeli lobby. It seems intractible. Also the leaders in the Arab countries have no interest in a permanent resolution. It's a perfect distraction for their radical elements to focus on. Without it they'd have to do something about the economies in their own countries.
Public relations and covert intelligence is the way for us to go over there. Our popularity is inversely proportional to the number of troops we have there. Trying to nation build in Afghanistan and Iraq is a fool's errand doomed to failure.
We haven't a clue how big Al Quaeda is or where they are. We're pretty good at set piece battles but we stink at chasing, what amounts to 12th century street gang, around the globe. Leave this job to predator drones and covert intelligence. Not the 101st Airborne Div. or the 1st Marine Division.
Keep Americans close and the Muslim extremists closer.Our weakness is exploited. We are a free society,they know this.It's one of the reasons that make us unfidels.The backlash against having our freedoms trampled is too much to bare.People have a stroke when they have there right to bare arms are violated with a background check. let alone profiling for Muslim terrorists. We need to use our upperhand of technology. At the point we know we pull the trigger. Its a little unrealalistic to return with a kiss.They hated us yesterday, they hate us today and they will kill us tomorrow.
How about someone actually making a public statement regarding the mental state of terrorists? Are these heros you want to live next door? If Madison Avenue can sell cigarettes to the 3rd world, they should have ideas on how to portray these individuals for what they are, bullies, dupes and fascists.
And what about Saudi Wahbism? Are we so in bed with their regime that we can't put pressure on preaching this form of radicalism? A less than PC, and perhaps morally ambiguous tack, would be to target imams who are sowing these seeds among the young. Hire those who can take them out within their borders. Isn't the CIA the same CIA which planned on giving Fidel an exploding or poisoned cigar?
Wait a minute! You want to hire assassins to take out imams and al-Qaeda but waterboarding was too extreme. What happened to due process and human rights? Why now are you confident that the US government will not make mistakes? How will this play out on Arab streets and in the Arab press? I am in favor of aggressive action against terrorism but I have not changed my opinions based on an administration change.
Did I say that I advocate subterfuge? I brought it up as a possible solution to asymmetrical conflict. A change in tactics is due. The very nature of guerilla warfare is to keep the other side off balance. In an ideal world, providing education and jobs should save the day. But a seemingly limitless supply of money and arms are being infused by outside forces. And something needs to be done about recruits to their cause.
Are you saying drones are killing with due process? Supposedly, targets are lost as they need to be identified prior to firing, but there is no due process when an enemy combatant is identified. As to how the law defines who it responsible for crime, I cannot say. Does a person who stirs up a mob to commit an act, but he himself not actually lay a hand on the deed bear responsibility?
You might believe waterboarding is effective, I am not convinced in the least. And the damage it cascades down the line does more harm to our soldiers and cause.
The arab street??? These are the same people that dance with glee as people took a swan dive off the twin towers to avoid being burned to death. Who cares what they think. Do what works. Waterboarding and other torture techniques don't work. I'm willing to try almost anything as long as it works. I'm not squeamish. I just want to do stuff that's not going ultimately jump up and bite us in the ass.
The idea that education and jobs could save the day makes sense if you really knew who we are fighting, why they declared war on us and exactly what country they are in.
We cannot counter why they want to fight us, because despite W saying they hate our freedoms, it isn't that simple. In Iraq they wanted us out, okay we get that. But Al Qaeda, with members from all over the Muslim world, it isn't black and white. "Who" is another puzzler, though the backbone originally was Saudis, it now appears that there are "fellow travelers" from all over the world including the US.
Not only don't they wear uniforms, they don't come from the same country and they are at war with us for a myriad of reasons and do not have battlefield positions to attack.
It really leans itself to a covert war and not a boots on the ground siege.
I am still obsessed with what "win" is. How can you win a war against a tactic perpetuated by neither a nation nor inspired by a specific grievance.
We cannot win in a classic military sense with a surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri, we must just try to minimize the impact and covertly attempt to destroy the network.
I just heard a piece on Scott Simon's Weekend Edition reviewing a one hour documentary to be aired on November 19th on HBO entitled" Terror in Mumbai." From what I heard, this will provide insight to questions on this thread. Peasants were processed into pathologic killers in a matter of months. Indoctrination into the terrorist fold and jihad conferred a sense of immutable purpose, abnegating moral responsibility.
I had a thought while listening to Charles Krauthammer and other right wing "commentators" wax breathless about the evils of political correctness and how it translates to "death to Americans" especially in the case of the Ft. Hood shootings. They say that the psychiatrists at Walter Reed didn't out Hassan as a terrorist because of liberal bias and political correctness.
I think it just as likely that these doctors kept silent because of the age-old practice of not criticizing fellow practioners for fear of being criticized themselves. Clearly the ball was dropped here but to claim, as many on the far right have, that that this obviously and failure of the army, the FBI, and the Obama administration as they blindly pursue diversity is wrong-headed and irresponsible. But then again, what else is do you expect from these people.
Army Chief of Staff General George Casey after the Ft. Hood shootings: "as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse."
Just so you take his point, he means worse than 54 unarmed casualties, including 14 dead (I include in that count the unborn dead civilian).
If that's not "blind," "wrong-headed," and "irresponsible," then those words don't have much meaning.
I doubt that I'm the only one who expects better from the leader of the US Army. The Army is not a social service agency. It exists, and we tolerate it, because it will kill people and break things when told to by the elected civilian leadership, and for no other reason. Nothing else counts in an army than the will and the ability to do that.
Get ready. This attitude by Casey will lead to worse, and shortly, I predict.
If Casey is wrong and we are going to screen our military for race, sex and country of origin, then we may have a real problem.
Although we may not have a large number of Muslims in the military, we do have many Latinos.
It will be difficult enough to determine the good Muslims from the bad...maybe he should have been booted out because he went to VaTech and they have a penchant for shooting people. How do we tell a good Mexican from a bad one? Our last Attorney General was probably the son of illegals, should he have been suspect? This sounds great until the enforcement part comes around.
kgwhit: Of course, I agree with all of that. I don't and won't view any call to screen for race or ethnicity as anything other than what it is - unamerican.
In this case however, it didn't take Sherlock Holmes, waterboarding, or lie detector tests to see Hasan as a bomb waiting to explode - he told everybody who was willing to listen, and some who weren't, who he was, and what he thought. It took blinders to avoid sight of the onrushing tragedy. All I'm saying is take off the blinders.
I think you're right. Blinders need to be taken off. I do think, however, that this incident and how it was or was not handled says more about the officer corps in the Army and doctors as a subset of that. I guarantee you that if Hassan had been an enlisted man, they would have snatched him up in a heartbeat.
Birdman, you must have forgotten about Sgt. Asan Akbar, the enlisted man who killed and wounded his fellow soldiers with grenades in Kuwait City in 2003. He was a Muslim who expressed antiwar views to his fellow soldiers.
I'll go back to the premise of we are at war with a belief system. The Koran, as with the Bible, has statements that can be interpreted many ways. Unfortunately many of the radical Muslims interpretation of how the Koran says the 3 choices you have to deal with an Infidel (Non-believers) are to Convert them, Enslave them or Kill them. Islam is a religion that grew by the sword and many believers want to take it back to it's roots.
As a former Marine who is quite familiar with a fragging incident 40+ years ago, I'm not so sure it is easy to tell. I was back in the States when it happened but a guy I served with badly wounded a Captain. The guy, Chuck Fullerton, hated the war...he was not alone on that front...he did constantly say he was going to off the next sob who told him to do this or that. But crap like that was hardly unique. He constantly bitched about all officers, and often it was warranted, but even when I heard about it I couldn't believe it.
After the fact you can often see the signs, but when you know the guy and he doesn't seem to be much more of a headcase than the rest of us then it is easy to miss.
Woody, I did forget about that incident. Although insubordinate (not rare by any means) most of the motives for his attack were discovered after the attack. The guy down in Ft. Hood left ample warning signs of instability which were not acted upon. Some of the reason for this is probably an unwillingness to be accused of being culturally insensitive. Some of it is also a belief that because the guy was a fellow officer, he couldn't be that crazy.
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