Terrorism Failing

This is the third posting about the Boston Marathon bombings.

The 9/11 attack was a masterpiece of terrorism. If you think about it as an organizer, it’s difficult to imagine greater success for such modest inputs. The 9/11 horror demonstrated resourcefulness, imagination, and a fine understanding of the delicateness of the springs of American society.

In spite of its brilliance, the attack also failed eventually because no one- not even Americans – fathoms the deep-seated resiliency of this society. In particular, young people reared in chronically sick, often barely functioning national societies – that I won’t name – where privilege and family connections reign supreme, cannot begin to understand the strength inherent in democratic capitalism. Because their countries’ institutions would collapse from a single-finger push, they have trouble imagining that ours will rebound from a full blow to the face. (Not enough has been written to explain to the world the idea of American exceptionalism. Americans are not arrogant; they suffer from misplaced humility.)

The Boston Marathon bomb assassinations suggest that our war on terrorism is succeeding. The only successful attack on American soil in thirteen years did pathetically little damage to this society. Even for the most optimistic terrorists, bagging an eight-year old, a young Chinese student, and a lady restaurant manager must not give much cause for celebration. I don’t make light of the many others who were wounded, many atrociously. I just think that in the bloody arithmetic of terrorism it’s only the body count that matters ultimately. To gain face with your fellow-terrorists, to earn respect, you have to kill large numbers of kuffars; And you get more points the more important they are. Or you have to cripple the country, or part of it, economically.

The Boston bombs achieved none of this. The city shut down for a day. Peace officers logged thousands of extra-hours. The Republic will survive just fine. And, I know how callous this sounds but the death toll in the Boston massacre, including its aftermath, was on the level of a bad weekend on the road in the Monterey-Santa Cruz area.

The alleged terrorists looked almost pathetic. Pressure-cookers make only poor man’s bombs. (Compare with the panache of high-jacked, fuel-laden airliners.). The alleged terrorists did not even have the kind of competence needed to construct an escape plan two-bit bank robbers routinely pick up from movies. It seems almost incredible that they did not even have a getaway car ready, that they had to highjack one, a really good way to get caught. The younger suspect apparently even ran over his brother’s body – dead or alive- in his bumbling haste to flee from the police. This is the kind of event of which black comedy is made!

Note that the alleged terrorists were intent on escaping. They did their best although it was not good enough. This contrasts badly with the eighteen “martyrs” from 9/11 some of whom, at least, knew they were going to their deaths. The prospect of Paradise has lost its luster apparently. (Incidentally, I was one of the first, years ago, to affirm that the Muslim world did not have an inexhaustible supply of suicide bombers. I argued at the time the simple position that Muslims, by and large, just want what we all want: a chance to live their lives in peace and to raise their children.)

This act of terrorism at the Boston Marathon looked almost silly. It suggests to me that jhadists have run out of breath, that they inspire few capable people. (Or perhaps, the fact finally got around that the seventy-two virgins waiting impatiently in Paradise is just a mistranslation, that it’s really one seventy-two year old virgin.) Yes, terrorism against American must look like a discouraging prospect.

We have become vigilant except when the terrorists live inside one of our most cherished institutions such as the armed forces. There was the shoe-bomber, the panty-bomber, and the Time Square bomber, all miserable failures. There were countless others dreamers-for-glory who are now rotting in federal and state prisons without having ever lifted a finger against this great nation except in their sickly imaginations. And there was also one Major Hasan who succeeded beyond all hopes because those who should have stopped him closed their eyes with great determination. We have found the terrorists’ accomplices; they are us, or the criminally silly among us.

Boston revealed what many of us already suspected to be true. Terrorism does not succeed against this society when we don’t cooperate with it. It has stopped capturing our imaginations. It’s on its way to becoming just one of those things, like ammonia leaks from a gas plant in Texas.

Two more things:

This posting and my two preceding postings on the Boston Marathon bombings assume that the suspect brothers did it. I am confident in believing that they did although I don’t trust the Obama administration to tell the truth because of the Benghazi massacre mystery. I don’t trust the Department of Justice, and I don’t trust the FBI all that much either. I just think conspiracies involving potential hundreds of individuals and several different organizations (police organizations) are so unlikely, they are not worth worrying about.

On Monday 04/22/13, the Department of Justice announced that the surviving brother would be tried in a civilian (federal) court. This comes as a relief because he is clearly a terrorist and President Obama has claimed the right to execute such people on his say-so. Legally, I am not sure even a drone assassination of that American citizen was out of the question. I would have given him a wide berth, for sure.

Ron Paul’s 9/11 (with Helpless Comments from True Believers)

I have been pointing out for months on this blog that Congressman and Republican presidential candidate candidate Ron Paul frequently volunteers statements that are false, or incredible, or too difficult to verify. I have stated repeatedly that I distinguish between inaccuracies politicians may make when surprised by a question for which they are not prepared and pseudo-information they volunteer freely to aggrandize their cause or themselves. My several postings on the topic have been greeted by rational discussions as well as by bouts of insanity. There has also been innocent, stubborn denial, of the kind you would expect when reasonable adults get caught in flagrante of hero worship.

I have suggested several times that Congressman Paul is himself cracked. I based my judgment not on the nature of his followers but on the sum of his own many nonsensical statements. I was also impressed by the fact that Ron Paul asserted that Ron Paul did not read the Ron Paul Newsletter that published racist statements several times in the nineties.

Today, I am going to depart from the distinction outlined above. I will refer to statements Mr Paul made off the cuff, on the spur of the moment, and videoed on the spot. He was responding to a woman who I think was a supporter not a hostile party attempting to entrap him.

As he was standing a in an identified room surrounded by people, Mr Paul was trying hard to discuss the Federal Reserve Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and the alleged sinister relationship between them. A youngish woman who seemed to me like an enthusiastic well-wisher interrupted him and asked:

“Why can’t you come out and tell the truth about 9/11/”

Ron Paul replied distinctly, “ Because I can’t handle the controversy… I have too much on my plate.”

And then he resumed talking about banks.

What can the woman have meant? Are there any other interpretation than the one that comes to your mind instinctively?

Here is what Ron Paul did not say in response, “ What truth?” “What do you mean?”

The video is embedded in an article by Bryan Preston, a conservative who is evidently hostile to the Paul candidacy. The article is on the REAL CLEAR POLITICS  website and  dated December 10^th 2011. I viewed it on April 27^th 2012. It is only one of several reports from people who are themselves of a libertarian bent about Ron Paul and 9/11. The main witness is an long-time aide who, of course, would be called a “disgruntled employee” by true believers

I emphasize the video because it allows me to say that I heard Dr Paul myself utter those words. I have no doubt that it was Ron Paul I was watching and listening to. If someone wants to argue that what my eyes saw and my ears heard was just a movie production with an actor or otherwise a montage and not what I think I saw and heard, I hope he will take the trouble to do it on this blog. But if you are one of the people who really believe that any part of the the US government took a part in setting up the 9/11 aggression against our society, please stay away. We have nothing to talk about if you think this is tenable. If wish you well though wherever you may be, in a large enclosed park with tall trees and white-smocked attendants.

In the meantime, I believe more then ever that Ron Paul is cracked. I am disappointed and very sorry that he has succeeded in representing libertarian thinking to the rest of America. Libertarian ideas are unconventional, radical enough on their own. The last thing we need is a spokesman of dubious sanity.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2011/12/27/ron_paul_is_a_911_truther_amp_that_disqualifies_him_269938.html

Libertarian Pacifism vs Liberal Pacifism: What I Learned by Arguing with Libertarians

I think there are three good reasons, and many bad reasons, to argue about politics. The first good reason is also the least important. It’s to convince the other guy, the one with whom you argue, of the validity of your views against his. The second reason is to persuade mostly passive spectators to join you and to forsake the views the other guy supports. The third reason to argue is to better understand your own views.

The first good reason is not very good. As you may have noticed, the other guy never breaks up the debate to say, “You are right; my viewpoint has been wrong, ill-thought out. I am joining your faction or your party.” Instead, when you succeed in influencing the other guy the fact comes out far from your presence. Mostly, you don’t even hear about it. Sometimes, it takes several years. I know this because it happened to me; once. I understood the validity of an interlocutor’s position ten years later. I tried to tell him but I couldn’t trace him.

The second reason to argue speaks for itself. It’s exploitive really but mutual exploitation is not really exploitation. Or, if the other guy is so simple that he does not understand that you are using him to influence others, you should not be arguing with him anyway. (Same thing as talking kindergartners out of their juice money, or really plain girls out of… well you can finish the thought.)

The third reason is by far the best. I don’t know exactly what I think until I have heard it coming from my mouth with great élan and yet sounding shockingly stupid. I am often vague in my own mind about what I believe to be true until someone else points out the absurdity of one variant of one particular interpretation of my vague belief. Often, others force me to tighten my arguments; sometimes, they force me to abandon them. Nearly always, opponents induce me to be more articulate. I respond well to partial failure, including partial failure to make my point. I know others who do too. Many of my students did although they denied it.

Those who more or less follow this blog will have noticed that frequently, I criticize the positions of Libertarians, that often, I get into arguments with individual libertarians who may or may not be Libertarians (and some who may be closet Libertarians). The arguments always revolve about military action. In every other way, I am close to very close to mainstream libertarian positions. Foreign policy and the desirability of bearing arms abroad are the only reason I cannot be a real libertarian. Those are not trivial reasons. I am quite sure there are tens of thousands like me, libertarian-leaning conservatives who think it’s not wise to espouse dogmatically pacifist positions. Libertarian theoreticians, by the way, will insist strongly that they are not pacifists. Their argument is based on tiny technicalities. Let me explain what I have come to understand as a result of my encounters with those people. First our crucial area of agreement about how things work. (I am repeating myself, I have said numerous times what I say just below.)

Every war expands the capacity, the importance, the reach of government, technically, the power of the state, relative to civil society. And every expansion of the state reduces the area left for individual freedom and for voluntary cooperative enterprise. It is rarely the case that an expansion of of the state is subsequently reversed. It follows form this succinct description that every libertarian should have a horror of war, completely aside from humanitarian pacifism. I share this sentiment.

My estrangement from mainstream libertarians and from Libertarians exists because of our different transition scenarios. I see differently, or I simply see in my mind’s eye and they don’t, the most likely process by which this society can move toward radically smaller government. I think there are two archetypes of transitions. The first one is the Somalia scenario: The organs of government fall apart of their own accord as a result of civil war or other catastrophes. I don’t want a society with small government hard enough to wish the Somalian fate upon American society.

The second scenario entails a democratic and probably gradual take-over of the organs of government by political forces that desire smaller government. We are seeing this possibility more clearly today, as I write, because of the Tea Party movement inside and outside of the Republican Party. Of course, such a peaceful take-over can only happen in a society that already enjoys constitutional government. Roughly, this means a society where elections are fair and honest and perceived to be so, where the overwhelming mass of the people abide by election results, and a society where courts are able to arbitrate decisively differences concerning election results. Obviously, the USA would be a good example of a society with constitutional government (excepting Chicago and New Orleans,of course)

If constitutional government is threatened, the likelihood of such a desirable transition is also threatened. Of course, an issue of proportionality arises here. It’s not the case that everytime a fool issues a threat against the Republic, the Republic is actually threatened. After all, Timothy McVay, a successful terrorist if there ever was one, failed absolutely to change the social order or the political order of this country. But take the 9/11 attack, another successful act of terrorism, in operational terms. It caused less than one tenth of the deaths that take place on American highways in a normal year. As I never tire of pointing out, by the way, about one half of highway deaths are connected to alcohol and therefore, completely avoidable. They are in fact a form of terrorism allowed by our collective passivity, if you will. ( I say that alcohol- related accidents are avoidable based on the following assumptions: If the first DUI were punishable by a lifetime driving prohibition and the second by a five- year prison sentence, you would quickly see the incidence of that behavior go down to near zero. This wouldn’t happen because drunk drivers would stop drinking but because they would stop driving as their friends would take away the keys. Others would have five years to dry up and reconsider. During those years, they wouldn’t kill anyone with a vehicle.) The 9/11 attack was very brilliantly organized which makes us forget how modest the means engaged were. I think I could have financed it entirely with a second mortgage on my house.

Is there anyone who doubts that the 9/11 cheap terrorist attack provoked deep and lasting disturbances in our economy? Is there anyone who doubts that such disturbances usually have grave political consequences even if no one can describe them well at the time? Is there any libertarian who does not believe that those political consequences severely undermine the credibility of arguments in favor of a weak state?

And more directly, isn’t it the case that spectacular and violent attacks against a society with constitutional government make more palatable security measures that depart from the society’s own constitutional tradition. Attacks, and even the threat of attacks, make citizens more attached to their state, more unconditionally attached to it and, accordingly, more willing to accept a measure of authoritarianism. I argue that successful attacks do more harm to the cause than do the measures taken to protect against such attacks. It’s useful to remember that the Patriot Act was a response, not a preventive measure.

And I have not forgotten the issue of assessing the credibility of threats against the Republic. I am only trying to establish that there exist threats that are credible enough to require actions protective of our constitutional arrangement. Such actions include pro-active measures abroad and the possibility of military attacks against a foreign entity. I am attentive to suggestions concerning the thesis that such actions are never necessary. Take good note of the fact that it’s the only thing I am trying to establish here. I am explicitly not arguing that the wars the US has fought were all necessary. There are wars of choice, such as the Vietnam War – that I opposed – and the liberation of Iraq – which I supported and still support. Yet, the fact that many politicians are wont to see snakes under every rock does not prove that there are no snakes under rocks.

The libertarian pacifist answer to this line of argument is dual. First, they seem to say: Attacks on the US, in general, and current attacks by Islamist terrorists, in particular, are merely responses to American own foreign policy. (I mean by “Islamist” simply that the terrorists involved declare that they do what they do in the name of Islam. I am obviously not qualified to judge the validity of their claim.) The absurdity of the “response” assertion is obvious if you make any effort to read the Islamists’ own abundant declarations. The response receives superficial support from the fact that Islamists also affirm that Islamist terrorism is a response to American and Western actions. That’s not all that they assert, however. It’s clear that we are the Great Satan, first of all because of who we are. We would be the Great Satan if there were not a single American soldier anywhere outside the US. Although the regretted Bin Laden had threatened the US in connection with American military presence in Saudi Arabia, the 9/11 attack took place after the US forces had vacated that country, not as a means to make them move. Notably Al Qaida and all of its local branches (which may be all that’s left of it, I understand), and the Islamic Republic of Iran have never offered the US conditional peace. Neither of these entities ever said, “You stay home and we will restrain any terrorist organization plotting against you.” They have made no such offer because it would destroy their very reason for being.

Libertarians who affect to believe that American actions constitute a perfect or near-perfect explanation for Islamist terrorism are just not serious, I think. It’s strange that many are well-informed people in every other way. I believe that their position if in fact anchored in stubborn, primitive, and presumptuous American isolationism dating back to the days when a warship took three weeks to arrive from Europe if it arrived at all, and when there were only en ships in all of Latin America . Those people are opposed to every proactive defense on foreign soil or even in international waters. They will tell you with a straight face (you can sometimes discern a straight face on Facebook!) that one should never direct a weapon at anyone unless one is actually attacked. Those are people whose idea of a constitutional war begins with a Pearl Harbor! And they will sometimes maintain that a joint resolution of Congress passed with a huge majority is not a proper declaration of war.

The psychological underpinning of this isolationism rests, it seems to me, in a distant and somewhat haughty 18^th century view of the rest of the world. The rest of the world, un-America, in this perspective, is quarrelsome, petty, with strong criminal proclivities, fundamentally incapable of learning or of improving itself. This perspective nourishes a peculiar version of American exceptionalism made of 90% contempt. Those who hold it are often easy to spot because they rely excessively on the term “ Old World,” happily conflating the United Kingdom with Uzbekistan and Japan with Burkina Fasso.

And in this view lies the a crucial cultural difference between Left-liberal pacifism of the well-known type and the growing libertarian pacifism. Liberals profess to reject American military intervention abroad because of a strong myth of people of color’s virtuousness. According to this liberal myth, people of color, non-whites, seldom ever do anything wrong by any standard. When they do, as when they eat their neighbors, for example, it’s always somehow because of something or other that Westerners, Whites, usually Americans have dome to them, or to someone else. Or something. And then, of course, you shouldn’t do anything to them or in connection with them.

Libertarian pacifism has a significantly different basis that is almost the obverse of the first. It’s that the rest of the world is so fundamentally, irreversibly so awful that Americans must avoid it almost all costs. That position is qualified by an “almost” because there has to be room for when the outside world simply bombs one of your cities (Japan) or when it formally announces that it’s going to wage war on you (Germany).

The ethnocentrism underlying libertarian pacifism requires willful ignorance, not simply neglect of reality but clenched-jaws blindness. It’s obvious that in every continent and in especially large numbers in Europe, there are millions of people who share, on the whole, most of Americans’ wonderful virtues. Avoiding solidarity with such people is morally disgusting and strategically irresponsible. When they suffer, we suffer in short order. When they thrive, we thrive. The fewer of them there are the more vulnerable we are. Those who hate them want to kill us too. Just consider our collective disappointment at the electoral defeat of the secular and democratic forces in Egypt right now (December 2011). Are those Americans who are disappointed just being silly? Nevertheless, there are times when the avoidance of foreign entanglement is the only realistic stance, it’s true. But, erecting impotence as the main basis for principled collective action seems absurd.

The second thing I leaned from my interactions with libertarians severally defined (see above) is also the second basis of their adherence to the principle of non-intervention. Libertarians assert that non-intervention in the affairs of foreign countries is somehow a morally superior position. Whenever you argue about this matter with a libertarian, or if you listen to Republican candidate Congressman Ron Paul, you will hear a recurrent theme: We should mind our own business. The context always shows that “our” has a national definition. They don’t say that Presbyterians should not intervene in the affairs of Lutherans, or that Texans should leave Coloradans alone, or that football fans should not criticize basketball fans. (They might agree to all the above bye-the-bye but it’s not the point they make.) In fact, they are asserting unambiguously the moral position that Americans should not interfere with what goes one in foreign countries.

Most countries today are technically “nation-states,” that is, states based more or less on a single nation. The key word here is “state.” But remember that objecting to the existence of the state in general, or, at least wishing to see the importance of the state remain small vis-a-vis civil society is at the heart of libertarianisms of all breeds (mine included). So, suddenly, those who don’t like states put themselves in a position to defend the sanctity of the boundaries of that to which they object. Does this make sense?

They say in effect: We don’t want states because they are immoral but morality demands that states must be respected as if they were moral entities.

Incidentally, there is gross indifference, a massive lack of compassion also involved in this supposedly moral posture of non-intervention. This is puzzling because many libertarians are also, individually, Christians (although Christianity is not a necessary foundation of libertarianism ). The mental gymnastics to which Christian non-interventionists must subject themselves give me a headache. They have to pretend to believe, for example, that American military intervention in Bosnia where 10,000 civilians were killed in one city alone in the years 1992 to 1996 was a morally worse act than continued passivity would have been. They must force themselves to think that somehow things would have turned out better if America had let the massacre continue. Same thing with the subsequent use of American armed force in Kosovo to stop the completion of a genocide in progress there. Memory refresher: Serbian fascist dictator (formerly Communist dictator) Milosevic in the Fall of 1998 ordered all ethnic Albanian civilians who were citizens of Serbia to take to the roads and leave. They began to do so by their hundreds of thousands, which would unavoidably have led to the deaths of thousands of the aged, the sick, and small children. The US Air Force and Navy carrier planes eventually reversed this ethnic cleansing.

Non-interventionists must also think that the slaughter of between 500,000 and one million people in Rwanda in 1994, over only three months, would have been even worse had the US (or others) sent a dozen warplanes to bomb a single radio station directing the massacre. (The low estimate of the victims comes from the always cautious Human Rights Watch.) For me, it’s difficult to imagine much that would be worse than the attempted and largely successful violent liquidation of large minority of the population of a small country. By the same token, the continuing deadly ethnic cleansing of Darfur, in the Sudan, where rape is used systematically as a weapon of war, evokes only indifference among libertarians. By the way, the arguments for non-intervention in Rwanda, and now in Darfur, are such that it’s difficult not to think about racial prejudice: Black people in remote parts of Africa are eviscerating one another? What do you expect? That’s what they do!

In summary: You can’t seriously argue that the time to fight enemies is strictly only when they are on the beach in Malibu or in the New York City subway. You can’t be taken seriously, and you should not take yourself seriously, if you say one day that you want no more state and tomorrow that state boundaries are so sacred that they must not even be breached to stop the massacre of innocents

And no, I have not changed my mind: War, even the preparation for war, are inimical to the realization of a greater sphere of individual freedom. It’s a real dilemma, no question about it. I don’t see that libertarians will make much progress toward resolving it by pretending it’s not in the room with us, like a dinosaur.

And, as one of the Founding Fathers so aptly remarked: “ If we make ourselves into sheep, the wolves will eat us.” And that’s no individual freedom!

Ahmadinejad and Magical Thinking: Big Deal!

Following President Ahmadinejad‘s speech at the UN last week, the US mass media has been acting like an old nun who would has caught a glimpse of a naked man. “The horror, the horror!” they cry out. The grotesque President of the deadly Islamic Republic only mused about the possibility that the 9/11 mas murder was an inside American job. He made it a simple hypothesis. What’s the surprise? I bump into people downtown Santa Cruz who will offer all the details of the conspiracy and of the cover-up that followed. Mr Ahmadinejad probably got his information from an American blog anyway.

The kind of world-view that rests on endless conspiracies and on corresponding cover-ups is common everywhere. It’s just more common in the greater Middle-East than it is in Western countries, including this one. The President of Iran and probably, most people in his part of the world, think in terms of hidden causes most of the time. The Shiites of Iran even have a “Hidden Imam” who will come back any day now and set things right.

The fact is that primitive people and children normally live in a magical mental world where things are not what they seem to be. Many otherwise rational Americans, as well as other westerners, have lost even the ability to consider this self- evident truth because of the astonishing triumph of cultural relativism. It’s the doctrine that says that cultures must be considered “on their own terms” that is, non-judgmentally. In other words, all cultures are equal and there is no such thing as “primitive.”

It was no so long ago that the ancestors, both genetic and intellectual, of western rationalists were also magical thinkers. (More on this below.) And, of course, many of our contemporaries, often our own relatives, still live in mental childhood. How else to explain the fact that so many periodicals still publish horoscopes? How about the unlimited claims of many proponents of ill-defined “organic” foods? How about mass hysteria, even among our half-educated class, about global warming? The fact that the same-self half-educated like their magical beliefs robed in scientific garb simply tells you that formal education works, to an extent.

Show them that the leading scientists of the global warming religious movement were caught lying and it does not alter their faith. They are like “Rapture” believers: Come the announced day for the great event; nothing happens; they will just go on waiting for the Rapture. (I ask them if I can have their car.)

Middle-Eastern and Muslim magical thinking does seem to take a particular form though: The delirium of persecution, the instantaneous belief that occult forces cause most of the damage people from that region inflict on themselves. They rear, indoctrinate, motivate thousands of potential terrorists in their schools, in their official textbooks, in Friday sermons. But when a handful of these potential terrorists becomes the real thing, many among them can’t confront the simple fact that actions have consequences. The more reasonable, the more peaceful, the more decent, they are, the more difficult they find it to face this simple fact of life, the greater their propensity to engage in magical thinking. Bin Laden had no trouble admitting to the successful 9/11 mass murder. He bragged about gleefully on video. That’s because he is a blood-thirsty fanatic. On the other hand, my Muslim friends who live in America or France, all people who are easy to like, can’t face the simple facts precisely because they are horrified. It matters little: Someone else did it who was in no way connected with them. Could be the CIA for example. (This kind of allegation always saddens me as an American patriot: I wish the CIA were 1/10 as powerful, as omniscient, as effective, as people of the Middle East give it credit for. No such luck, alas.) Could be Muslims fanatics manipulated by the CIA. Could be Muslims fanatics who don’t understand that Islam is a religion of peace and who were armed by the CIA, once. Or their cousins who were armed. Could even be their neighbors, belonging to a slightly different sect of Islam, who must have been manipulated by the CIA also.

In the meantime, the same Muslims insist quietly on the unity of the umma, the community of Muslims world-wide. That could be why I don’t hear them condemn the thousands of atrocities Muslims commit against other Muslims all the time. (Think Darfur.) That could be why you never hear a Muslim voice mention the salvation of Muslim Bosnians and of Muslim Kosovars, entirely by American and Western European military intervention in the Balkans during the 90s. Saying anything at all about these recent events would raise the obvious question: Where were the Muslim saviors of Muslim Bosnians and of Muslim Kosovars?

In the meantime, it’s fiendishly difficult to prove that the CIA did not help or manipulate this or that group. It’s difficult because no one can prove a negative. It’s difficult, additionally, because the CIA, and most US administrations, don’t mind at all the legend of the agency’s all-around efficacy. Our government thus helps maintain the people of the Middle East in their mental infancy. I am not referring here to Middle-Eastern infants, to children, but to adults you would expect to know better, at least superficially. Here are two anecdotes drawn from my own life about knowing better.

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with a friend of mine who was raised in the near-Middle East. She is a woman in her mid-thirties with two advanced degrees, one from her country of origin, one from a good California university. Both her degrees are in subject-matters most people would consider difficult because they require above-average intellectual rigor. Though from the Middle-East, this well-educated woman is not a Muslim, yet her first language is a Middle-Eastern language. A propos of nothing, she told me she believed 9/11 was an inside job. Perplexed, I asked her why she thought so.

She averred it was because “not a single Jew” had died in 9/11 although New York has a large Jewish population. Later I sent her a list of names of victims. It included many names who are probably but not certainly Jewish, such as “Goldberg,” and names like “Shapiro” that must be Jewish. (Go ahead, ask yourselves how many Roman Catholics, how many Hindus are called “Shapiro.”) She had no reaction.

Later, I asked that same young woman why the US government would commit such a crime, for what purpose? She asserted without hesitation that it was to facilitate the invasion of Iraq. When I remarked that it would then have made more sense to make at least a few of the terrorists (in her book, CIA agents) Iraqis, she had no reaction. Nobody is perfect, she may have thought, not even the CIA!

This woman is a well-educated US citizen who has lived in this country for a long time and who likes it here. No bitter immigrant, she! She just relies on the tools of analysis that she is used to.

Another friend of mine was raised a Muslim, in another Middle-Eastern country, but he came to the US as a teenager. He has good mastery over the languages and, , I think, over the cultures of two different Middle-Eastern countries. In his daily life, he is an unusually perspicacious man. He had an even better take on 9/11: He confided that he too thought it had to be an inside job. He just did not see how Arabs would have the foresight, the planning ability, the discipline, and the raw personal courage to conduct that fairly complex endeavor to term!

As I said earlier, none of this should surprise us because we used to be them. In the later 12^th century, the perennially badly outnumbered Crusaders lost in battle what they thought to be a piece of the “true cross” on which Jesus died. From that point on, they also lost heart for fighting Saladin. A few years later, they also lost Jerusalem over which they had maintained a dominion, against impossible odds, for 90 years.

In a handful of Western countries that include the US, as an heir and as a participant, it took several centuries for a determinedly rationalist upper-class to emerge. The movement took those countries through the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment. (Civil authorities in Europe took charge of burning witches until the beginning of the 18^th century.)

Note the modesty of the claim I make above: A rationalist upper-class emerged and ran those countries most of the time. It’s not clear the the mass of the people ever became rationalists, ever abandoned childish magical thinking. It’s not clear how close to the rational surface this magical thinking remains. What is clear is is that there were major setbacks, at the societal level. Nazism was a dramatic instance of magical take-over. Communism was too, toward its end, when anyone who cared could see that it was a monstrous failure in precisely what it had promised to deliver: material abundance.

“I am still a Communist,” said Gorbachev. That was the Soviet leader whose role was paramount in dismantling Communism in Europe! And, of course, there are outbursts of magical thinking in the most mature Western countries on the occasion of important elections

The Middle-East has not gone through anything like the Renaissance, not for centuries, at least. It has experienced nothing like the Reformation and even less anything like the Enlightenment. There is no reason to expect even its leadership in general to have abandoned puerile magical thinking. It’s so deeply ingrained that doing anything with them along the line of the strict rationalism we try to follow is almost silly. It would be easier to make them like us and thus, to appeal to their tribal instincts which are entirely compatible with magical thinking.

Liberal Terrorism and Even More on the Mosque

A young man stabs a taxi driver in NYC after questioning him on his religion. The victim is a Muslim. The attacker practicing this private form of terrorism belongs to a group that supports the Near Ground Zero mosque project. No, this is not a mistake: supports. Here is the report from rabid right-wing newspaper The New York Times, dated 8/26/10: :

“ Mr. Enright is a volunteer with Intersections International, a nonprofit that works to promote cross-cultural understanding and has spoken out in favor of the proposed Islamic cultural center near ground zero.”

Several blogs and others blame Fox News! (Deuh!)

Another Muslim intellectual talks about the Near Ground Zero mosque in the Wall Street Journal of 8/26/10 (See my posting about his predecessors: “ Declaration by Muslim Intellectuals on Ground Zero Mosque, posted 8/16/10.) She says pretty much what I posted a couple of days ago (“ The ‘Ground Zero’ Mosque Issue Clarified,” posted 8/20/10.”) Yet, she says it better because she is better informed. Her name is: Irshad Manji.

She makes several proposals to ferret out malice and disingenuity in the mosque developers. Here are excerpts from her column in the Wall Street Journal today and my explanatory comments in parentheses:

“Where will be the men’s side to the mosque?” (To find out if the congregation will be segregated according to sex during prayer.)

“ Will the swimming pool (at the proposed multicultural center) be segregated between women and men…?”

“ May women lead congregation prayers any day of the week?”

“ Will Christians and Jews, fellow People of the Book, be able to use the prayer sanctuary for their services…?”

“ What will be taught about homosexuals?About agnostics? About atheists? About apostasy?” (In some Muslim countries, renouncing Islam, apostasy, is punishable by death.)

Professor Manji is a brave woman. I wish she were an American.

Note: In an earlier draft, I identified this brave person as a man and as an American. A reader kindly corrected me: Wrong on both counts. Shame on me because I had read about her a year ago; I just forgot her name.

In the meantime, I am having face-to-face bits and pieces of conversations with Muslims I know about the Near-Ground Zero mosque controversy. That would include devout Muslims who are currently observing Ramadan, and fallen Muslims heading for Hell. I encounter the same problems with both kinds:

First, they are slippery. They want to respond without answering my simple questions.

Second, I can’t seem to get across my position which I think is simple. Here it is, again:

The Constitution gives the Near-Ground Zero developers the right to build their multicultural center. As a conservative, I think private property is private property. No level of government should interfere with their right to do whatever they want with it, including build a mosque.

Here is what my Muslim acquaintances don’t seem to understand: The Constitution forbids the government from interfering with freedom of religion or with the freedom to enjoy one’s property. The Constitution does not obligate me to be nice according to the rules of multiculturalism I think of as brain paralysis. The Constitution does not enjoin me to show “tolerance” toward what I abhor. Neither the Constitution nor my belief in private property gives the near-Ground Zero mosque developers the right to be free from my thinking they are hypocritical ass-holes. It’s my constitutional right to think it and to say it. And also to draw cartoons disrespectful of Prophet Muhammad.
NEXT ON THIS BLOG: ISLAMOPHOBIA

The “Ground Zero” Mosque Issue Clarified

First, it’s not at Ground Zero but nearby. Small exaggerations make conservatives lose credibility. That’s what the other guys do. We must refrain. Second, there is no way to forbid the proposed mosque from being built that is both constitutional and legitimate. Conservatives protest rightly when any level of government abuses zoning laws. Let’s be consistent here.

The issue is not one of permission by civil authorities but one of a debate that should be taking place within the American Muslim community but is not.

American Muslims and their spokespersons are being judged, probably for a long time to come. Rational and moderate Muslims should be the most loud voices opposing the “Córdoba” Center. Here is why.

Its designated imam does not want to condemn Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist group. I think it is. The US State Department has officially designated Hamas a terrorist group. My opinion does not matter much (but it should matter some to Muslims). However, when it comes to terrorism, freedom of speech should be self-limiting. There is no constitutional guarantee to express the belief that murdering Jews – or anyone – is a sacred duty. This is one of these cases where if you are not with me, you are against me. The imam is an enemy of the US irrespective of what services he may have given to US governments in the past. He should be treated as an enemy.

The imam also said that this country should be ruled to a greater extent by Sharia, Islamic law. In several parts of the world, adulterous women are stoned to death in the name of Sharia. Others merely receive one hundred lashes of a whip, enough to kill a frail woman. By the way, under some or all interpretations of Sharia, an adulterous woman is a woman who has sex with someone to whom she is not married. That would be nearly all the single women in my town of Santa Cruz. In some cases, still under Sharia, some victims of rape are further punished for adultery. I am not making any of this up nor am I generalizing unduly. That’s one interpretation of Sharia. If the imam does not squarely denounce that particular interpretation of Sharia as barbaric and criminal, he is the enemy of most Americans. There is no ground for reconciliation at all. Hating such an imam is not intolerant, it’s a moral duty. It’s a moral duty for Muslims as much as it is for me. If they don’t, they are my enemies too and they don’t deserve any tolerance.

The leader of the group of developers involved is on the record stating that he doesn’t rule out accepting Saudi money for the project. That’s wrong. Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Malaysian, Indonesian funds are fine. Saudi money is unacceptable until there is an official Christian church somewhere in Saudi Arabia to serve the tens of thousands of Christians who work there, and until there is a synagogue. The synagogue could be tiny, it could be an oversized, glorified closet somewhere; it would have to be called a synagogue though. Until the Saudis do the obvious, those who accept money from them to erect their own place of cult show disrespect for our values. I have no obligation to like them or to respect them. Neither do American Muslims who are very well located to observe and to appreciate the benefits of religious freedom.

So, it’s fine for any American to take sides and to denounce the Islamic cultural center planned near the site of the 9/11 mass murders by Muslims.

American Muslims have an even greater obligation to take sides and to denounce because each of their voices counts for two or three in this case. If they don’t, they will bring upon themselves the enmity of their fellow-citizens and a big wave of  what they stubbornly persist in calling “intolerance.”

As to what rank-and-file conservatives can do, here is the best proposal I have heard: Set up a large gay nightclub as close as possible to the planned Islamic Center. If there were a public subscription to facilitate such a project, I would gladly contribute. I would also like to see a charcuterie on the other side. That’s a French-style butcher shop specialized in pork products.

I defy anyone to raise arguments against these two small, private, peaceful proposals that do not also destroy the rationale for an Islamic center within blocks of Ground Zero.

For more opinion on this topic see on this blog:

“Declaration on Ground Zero by Two Muslim Intellectuals,” posted 8/16/10.

Political Correctness Kills Americans at Fort Hood

Note: I wrote this on Nov. 7th, before much relevant information came to light. My instincts were right on (as usual).

An Army officer with a Norwegian last name, affiliated with the Lutheran Church, murders thirteen people at Fort Hood. The mainstream media, more pathetic than ever, are trying like hell to pretend that the Fort Hood mass murderer is not a Muslim with an Arab name. Newsweek came very close to calling the killer a victim of traumatic stress syndrome by proxy. Even Fox News followed suite within tow days. (Our limitless faith in clinical psychology is the second form of our collective insanity.) Hasan had not been deployed anywhere more dangerous than Maryland and Fort Hood itself. He was apparently complaining about being soon deployed to the Middle-East.

Some media try to excuse the mass murder by suggesting he was “harassed.” I am sure he heard the word “raghead” almost thirteen times. So? He was a fucking psychiatrist, not a fourteen year-old! He chose to work in a military environment, not in a progressive convent! Did he expect to hear only references to: “a gentleman of Middle-Eastern origin belonging to one of the sister monotheistic faiths”?

I am not going to wait for two months, or three months, or more, for the official investigation to be completed, to ask some more rude questions.

The man is a doctor. He spent much of his time in a medical environment, surrounded by other doctors and nurses. He is a psychiatrist, specifically. He was not practicing alone in the desert. There were other psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses around him, professionals specifically trained to detect dangerous emotional dispositions in military personnel.

Did they notice nothing in this guy or did they notice and not report it because the Army does not provide a form to say, “ There is a Muslim-American  in our unit who is much agitated about going to war against other Muslims” ?

Does it make sense for all levels of the command chain to refrain from asking the question in general: “Is it good management policy to send people of Arab origin near a battle-front where Arabs are sure to be killed (Iraq), to send Muslims, where Muslims will die at our hands if we are successful (Afghanistan)”? Is it wise to send them there without real military necessity. I provide this exclusion because people of such origins may obviously be useful on the battlefield itself. That’s a risk worth taking.

That guy was just a psychiatrist listening to soldiers’ mental and emotional complaints. He brought nothing special to the act of doing it in the Middle-East theater of operations, specifically. Does politically correct blindness have to extent that far?

By the way, the French are more rational on the same issue: They avoid sending to Afghanistan any of their many Muslim soldiers. They don’t find it hard to understand that if one such soldier is seized by the spirit of jihad in the middle of a French base he may do extensive damage.

Yes, the First Amendment applies to members of the military, and a good thing too. However, the protection of the First Amendment does not require the Government to be deaf to its soldiers’ utterances. You don’t have to shut them up to avoid posting them where they might act out their preferences with guns. There are jobs in Greenland or in Alaska for such people. Not segregating Muslims who oppose aloud war against Muslims is not a constitutional requirement, it’s passivity fed by the stupidity of political correctness.

Here is the elephant in the Army’s room it will not notice because of the cowardice political correctness induces: Since the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, 99% or more of unarmed people killed deliberately are killed by criminals who call themselves Muslims. The fact that most of the victims are Muslims changes nothing to the factualness of the statement.

The practical implications of this observation are not hard to understand. I don’t need a sophisticated study to know how to act: If I get threatened by a yellow dog on Monday, bitten by a yellow dog on Tuesday and Wednesday, my neighbor is bitten by another yellow dog on Friday, and me again on Saturday, by Sunday, I beware of yellow dogs.

All of this was avoidable. The insistence that everyone in the military is just like everyone else just killed 13 innocent people and degraded forever he lives of others. This happened in a location calculated to undermine military morale and to heighten military prejudice against Muslims and against Arabs.

Although Americans have shown admirable forbearance, since 9/11 lynchings would not bee surprising. Again, it was all avoidable. It will happen again because the Army does not have what it takes to do the obvious. Under a less silly administration, some general would be court-martialed for this event.

The FBI is also sick with political correctness. A couple of hours after the murders, it hastened to announce that the crime was not connected to terrorism. I am sorry, Mr FBI, whether or not the killer shouted “Alluha Akbar,” or not, if you murder in cold blood (or hot blood) thirteen unarmed people, most of whom you don’t know, that’s terrorism. It’s terrorism whether the killer is a member of an organized group or not. Might be a terrorist who is Muslim rather than a Muslim terrorist.

We can’t just profile, say the liberals manslaughter proponents. Of course, we can. Courteously conducted ethnic profiling if a minor inconvenience for the 99 999.99 out of 1 000 000 of the target categories who have no criminal intent. Having to take off my shoes at the airport is an inconvenience too. Period.

Ethnic profiling protects me, them, and their children. Let rational people start protesting imbecile policies loudly.In a less silly administration, some general would be court-martialed for this event. I am not holding my breath.

CORRECTION: I WROTE IN A PREVIOUS COLUMN ( “THE A.A. PRESIDENT” )mTHAT I DOUBTED PRESIDENT OBAMA HAD EVER PASSED THE BAR EXAM ANYWHERE ANY TIME. A FRIEND OF MINE, A GOOD LAWYER I HAVE KNOWN FOR A LONG TIME AND WHOSE UTTERANCES I TRUST SAID OTHERWISE. MY ATTORNEY FRIEND TOLD ME THAT THE FACT THAT BARACK OBAMA HAD BEEN ADMITTED TO PRACTICE BEFORE THE ILLINOIS SUPREME COURT PROVED THAT HE HAD PASSED THE BAR. THAT HE WAS SO ADMITTED CAN BE FOUND ON THE SITE OF THE ILLINOIS BAR ASSOCIATION. I ACCEPT MY FRIEND’S JUDGMENT IN THIS RESPECT. I AM STILL PUZZLED ABOUT WHY THE REAL ACHIEVEMENT OF PASSING THE BAR EXAM – WHICH CAN PRESUMABLY NOT BE EASED BY AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CONSIDERATIONS – IS NOT MENTIONED ON THE PRESIDENT’S WIKIPEDIA ENTRY. MR OBAMA ‘S LIST OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS IS SHORT AND THIN; THE BAR EXAM SHOULD BE THERE TO THICKEN IT. PERHAPS ONE OF THE PRESIDENT’S SUPPORTERS WILL DO THE JOB. I AM WATCHING.

THIS IS THE THIRD CORRECTION ON THIS BLOG REGARDING THIS MATTER.

The War Obligation: Afghanistan

As the nation’s attention is passionately riveted to the death rattles of Pelobama Care, some of America’s main business goes unattended.

Several months after being informed of General McChrystal requirements, two months after the general went public to force a response (thereby risking his career), the President has not said if he had made up his mind about what to do in Afghanistan. The argument that he was awaiting the results of the Afghan elections does not hold water anymore. No, Afghanistan is not Switzerland. Yes, it’s a pity there was so much cheating. But, there is no doubt that the winner was really the winner. The runner up Abdallah Abdallah never said otherwise, I think. In the UK, or in Germany, or in Italy, the winner would have gone on to form a government, even without 50% plus one votes.

In the current issue of the Weekly Standard (Nov. 9 2009), Donnelly and Sullivan opine that the President is going to announce an option McChrystal “lite,” 20,000 additional troops instead of the 40,000 requested. That falls short of everyone’s wish. There is mounting pressure from a segment of what is usually defined as the conservative side to leave Afghanistan altogether. Not all of the pressure proceeds from childish petulant desire to do to Obama what the Left did to Bush. Opposition emanating from my Libertarians friends, led by the Independent Institute, is principled, coherent, based on moral convictions, and thoroughly blind, in my opinion. Fortunately, most libertarians (like me) are not Libertarians. Here is a summary of what’s at stake.

The people threatening to take over the Afghanistan are the same people who sheltered the 9/11 assassins. I am not making this up. They are not hiding it. They are the same Taliban movement that was reduced to next to nothing by the flash-quick combined NATO, Northern Alliance victory in 2001. That was the price they paid for refusing to turn over for trial the Al Quaida Arabs responsible for 9/11. By the way, the invasion of Taliban Afghanistan was authorized by the UN and still is. (I don’t care much myself about this fact. I mention this for those of you who are concerned about the fiction of international law.)

There are four additive reasons for Americans to want the Taliban defeated. They are separate and perhaps of unequal importance but they point toward the same US policy. First, there is no reason to believe the Taliban leadership has learned any lesson from its removal from power. It sheltered the criminals who killed 3,000 American civilians even after they had no excuse to not know what happened. They hate kuffar, infidels, and they care nothing about international principles of justice or of peace. There is no reason why they would stop any future attempt to plan one, two, three, four, five, six, or more 9/11, on us, or on our partners. The potential victims are not all in the West. Note that predominantly Muslim countries struggling to become or to remain democratic such as Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, and Turkey make especially attractive targets.

I am not just imagining things. 9/11 was superbly planned, superbly executed and must have cost little more then $500,00. There are more 9//11 where it came from, given a place where the plotting can be relatively well sheltered from intrusion. Afghanistan remains a prime location for such activities because of its geographic inaccessibility and because of its very backwardness.

Let the Taliban take over again and hunch your shoulders! I am not referring only to unacceptable loss of life but to the economic devastation that would follow multiple attacks of the same type as 9/11.

The second reason Americans should want to defeat the Taliban is that newly democratic Pakistan has finally shaken itself out of its impotent torpor. Finally, it’s going with some vigor after its own home-grown violent jihadists, including some who call themselves “Taliban.” Nevertheless, there is little reason to doubt that the average Pakistani sees the military action as more of America’s fight than his own. It does not matter how deluded a view that is. It would not be the first time that the most likely victims of a crime are the most blind to it. After all, most German Jews seem to have made no attempt to flee Nazi Germany, even after seeing SA lowlife marched past them singing something like” “I smile when I see Jewish blood.”

It cannot be said enough that Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons. Even barring a full violent jihadist take-over, there is grave danger in any sort of political accommodation with jihadists, even of their physical proximity to the weapons. After all, how difficult would it be for a powerful Islamist politician to get two of his grand-nephews on the female side hired as night janitors in a nuclear arsenal? Hint: Pakistan is part of the Indian sub- continent where family pull matters. (Why the female line? Think it through.)

If the US is seen as faltering in Afghanistan, a large segment of Pakistani political opinion will ask itself why Pakistan should do what the vastly richer and more populous US is unwilling to commit to. A coalition government with Taliban or some other Islamist elements will be next. The dream of every two-bit violent jihadist, including American ones, to get his hands on dirty bomb material will come very close to being realized. A single dirty bomb exploding in a major American city would have the capacity to set back the world economy by many years through a chain reaction. The Islamist terrorists know this. They are insane, not stupid.

The third reason to beat the Taliban is they they are a morally obscene group. When they were in power, they executed “adulterous” women during soccer game intermissions. Guess what “adulterous” means under sharia ? They denied male-administered medical care to women in a country with no female doctors and they kept little girls from school. In the middle-run, the product would have been this demented thing: self-genocide through the dying off of many women. Today, in parts of the country they rule, they throw acid in little girls’ faces to discourage them from going to school. Perhaps worse of all, the Taliban outlawed music. (That’s a good enough reason to kill them, in my book.) I am well aware of the serious arguments against the US acting as the world’s sheriff. (I don’t buy them but that’s another story.) Yet, once in a while, a country’s self-interest and common decency happen to coincide. This is one such opportunity. We should not waste it.

The fourth reason is that the many potential and actual enemies of Americans are watching our every move. Every time President Obama demonstrates weakness, they take a step forward. The enemies include several terrorist groups, of course, Iran, North Korea, and Russia and China if they get a chance. Russia is just a hoodlum country that will grab what it can. The Chinese leadership probably does not want our destruction but it’s ill-informed and prone to miscalculation. If we falter on Afghanistan, they will reach out for a piece of us. Most of our vacillating NATO allies are the way they have been for a long time, as they were under the Soviet threat. They have no stomach for a fight unless we push and pull and, above all, set an example of bravery.

(Note: I know I have not dealt with our casualties or with civilian casualties resulting from our actions. Both matter, obviously.)

In the meantime, my Libertarians friends develop principled arguments against continued US and NATO military action to repel the Taliban that are all about propriety, and also about property. I have no doubt that war increases the importance of government, its dominion over civil society. As a libertarian (with a small “l), I hate it, of course. But a broad terrorist attack would increase the influence of government even faster, more deeply, and more irreversibly. I am not about to join the Libertarian Party because of its blindness regarding defense. The Libertarian arguments, I would buy if I were reasonably sure my house is not about to be set on fire. Moral principles are here to help people live good lives, in every sense of the word. They do not exist to excuse passivity. Passivity in the face of evil is the greatest evil of all.

PS An Army psychiatrist, a major, murdered 12 people at Fort Hood, Texas, today. It seems he was having career trouble. All the same, I wish he did not have an Arab, Muslim name. It makes keeping things in perspective difficult.

CORRECTION: I WROTE IN A PREVIOUS COLUMN ( “THE A.A. PRESIDENT,” POSTED 10/07/09 ) THAT I DOUBTED PRESIDENT OBAMA HAD EVER PASSED THE BAR EXAM ANYWHERE ANY TIME. A FRIEND OF MINE, A GOOD LAWYER I HAVE KNOWN FOR A LONG TIME AND WHOSE UTTERANCES I TRUST SAID OTHERWISE. MY ATTORNEY FRIEND TOLD ME THAT THE FACT THAT BARACK OBAMA HAD BEEN ADMITTED TO PRACTICE BEFORE THE ILLINOIS SUPREME COURT PROVED THAT HE HAD PASSED THE BAR. THAT HE WAS SO ADMITTED CAN BE FOUND ON THE SITE OF THE ILLINOIS BAR ASSOCIATION. I ACCEPT MY FRIEND’S JUDGMENT IN THIS RESPECT. I AM STILL PUZZLED ABOUT WHY THE REAL ACHIEVEMENT OF PASSING THE BAR EXAM – WHICH CAN PRESUMABLY NOT BE EASED BY AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CONSIDERATIONS – IS NOT MENTIONED ON THE PRESIDENT’S WIKIPEDIA ENTRY. MR OBAMA ‘S LIST OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS IS SHORT AND THIN; THE BAR EXAM SHOULD BE THERE TO THICKEN IT. PERHAPS ONE OF THE PRESIDENT’S SUPPORTERS WILL DO THE JOB. I AM WATCHING.