Over at Hot Air, Allah links to a Daily Mail (UK) story highlighting the growing concern over the progressive’s multiculturalist project—a story that, in its way, dovetails nicely with the Melanie Phillips post Dan cited earlier (LGF video here).
From “Multiculturalism ‘drives young Muslims to shun British values’”:
The doctrine of multi-culturalism has alienated an entire generation of young Muslims and made them increasingly radical, a report has found.
In stark contrast with their parents, growing numbers sympathise with extreme teachings of Islam, with almost four in ten wanting to live under Sharia law in Britain.
The study identifies significant support for wearing the veil in public, Islamic schools and even punishment by death for Muslims who convert to another religion.
Most alarmingly, 13 per cent of young Muslims said they “admired” organisations such as Al Qaeda which are prepared to “fight the West”.
The poll exposes a fracture between the attitudes of Muslims aged 16 to 24, most of whom were born in Britain, and those of their parents’ generation, who are more likely to have been immigrants.
A report published alongside the poll, commissioned by the Right-wing think tank Policy Exchange and carried out by Populus, said the doctrine of multi-culturalism was at least partly responsible.
A series of Labour ministers have broken recently with the idea that different communities should not be forced to integrate but should be allowed to maintain their own culture and identities.
Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Racial Equality, and Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, have also expressed serious doubts about multi-culturalism.
Academic Munira Mirza, lead author of the report, said: “The emergence of a strong Muslim identity in Britain is, in part, a result of multi-cultural policies implemented since the 1980s which have emphasised difference at the expense of shared national identity and divided people along ethnic, religious and cultural lines.”
Regular readers of this site will, of course, find it spectacularly unsurprising that multiculturalism—in all its various social and policy guises (from “political correctness” to “diversity” initiatives to mandatory “tolerance” training seminars)—is one of the prime conduits for fracturing what progressive transnationalists have always seen as unseemly nationalism, the goal being to create countries composed of “citizens of the world,” a utopian ideal that has always conveniently and obdurately bracketed the harsh reality that much of the world is itself quite unseemly, and that we’d do well not to confuse the delightful commingling of cuisines and customs that have made boutique multiculturalism so popular among self-styled cultural elites with the balkanization of entire countries, wherein cultural identity groups each develop and nurture their own grievance narratives and, as a consequence of vying for limited government largesse, are always eager to assume the role of oppressed victim in order, ironically, to increase their social and policy influence.
In short, the very foundation of multiculturalist philosophy, as I’ve long argued, practically ensures the various social strains that will, if left unchecked, lead inexorably to civil unrest and a potential deconstruction of the free societies that have (blindly and, worse, arrogantly) promoted the project.
I’ve written before about the problems of multiculturalism in Britain (which is not to be confused with the different problem of hyper-nationalism in France, though the results look strikingly similar), and in general, the reaction from the progressive left has been to sneer at the implication that a social philosophy that allows for the “celebration of individual cultures” can have disastrous consequences. This I attribute to an unwillingness to surrender their (unfairly) assumed moral highground, which has allowed them to indulge (and subsequently, to protect) the failed multiculturalist project in the first place.
And to be generous, the project, at least superficially, is quite attractive to those who believe themselves beyond what they doubtless consider the petty nativism inherent in assimilation; everyone, after all, likes to imagine himself cultured, and so it is an easy seduction to make the move from the melting pot to the “quilt,” particularly if in doing so one is granted the plaudits of his or her unquestionably cultured superiors in the academy.
Which is to say, I don’t believe that everyone who backs the multiculturalist project intends to back a structural move to undermine statehood (and so to push for a “new world order”)—though the architects of the scheme, from Said on up, most certainly did recognize what it was they were doing, and in fact set out, using the cover of postmodern demolitions of “truth” as something beyond the competition of man-made narratives, to create the conditions for a politics of “authenticity,” a move that has enabled individual identity groups to coalesce around a contrived identity narrative which in turn has made it possible for them to purge dissenters as inauthentic, while willing the group narrative into the realm of established “truth” that cannot, by definition, be challenged by those outside the self-selected and self-regulated feedback loop.
That many people were lured into this philosophical trap by grandiose notions of their own “tolerance” is hardly surprising; but that they continue to defend their earlier errors in judgment is both sad and, as we’re seeing now in Britain, potentially quite dangerous.
In fact, as Bernard Lewis recently noted:
Islam could soon be the dominant force in a Europe which, in the name of political correctness, has abdicated the battle for cultural and religious control […]
The Muslims “seem to be about to take over Europe,” Lewis said at a special briefing with the editorial staff of The Jerusalem Post. Asked what this meant for the continent’s Jews, he responded, “The outlook for the Jewish communities of Europe is dim.” Soon, he warned, the only pertinent question regarding Europe’s future would be, “Will it be an Islamized Europe or Europeanized Islam?” The growing sway of Islam in Europe was of particular concern given the rising support within the Islamic world for extremist and terrorist movements […]
Lewis, whose numerous books include the recent What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, and The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, would set no timetable for this drastic shift in Europe, instead focusing on the process, which he said would be assisted by “immigration and democracy.” Instead of fighting the threat, he elaborated, Europeans had given up.
“Europeans are losing their own loyalties and their own self-confidence,” he said. “They have no respect for their own culture.” Europeans had “surrendered” on every issue with regard to Islam in a mood of “self-abasement,” “political correctness” and “multi-culturalism,” said Lewis, who was born in London to middle-class Jewish parents but has long lived in the United States.
Over at Mahablog (don’t bother commenting, you’ll soon find your posts removed—FOR THE GREATER GOOD!), the “progressives” have worked themselves into a self-abasing, anti-nationalist lather over Johns Hopkins University History professor David Bell’s LAT op-ed “Was 911 really that bad?”—the gist of the “discussion” revolving around the premise that the US overreacted (though not in their name!) to a fringe movement within Islam, and that the WoT is simply an excuse for the “wingnuts” to live out their fantasies of bloodlust, something they’ve accomplished by effectly scapegoating an entire religion.
Leaving aside the irony of “the wingnuts” being reduced to a simple, homogenized group, what is at play here is the suggestion that, because the jihadists are small in number, they could never have posed a significant threat to the US, and so are best treated as the kind of inconvenience President Kerry likes to think them as.
Writes Maha, echoing Bell:
There aren’t enough jihadists in the world to destroy the United States. There aren’t enough of them to invade us, seize Washington, and occupy our territory. There just aren’t. That ought to be obvious. Even if they could pull off another 9/11, that wouldn’t destroy us, either.
[…]
if the jihadists could pull off a 9/11 attack every six hours for four years, that would constitute an existential threat. But, obviously, they can’t come anywhere close to that.
At this point I want to remind readers that I was, in fact, in lower Manhattan on 9/11 and am an eyewitness to the collapse of the WTC towers. Anyone who comments that I am in denial about what happened on 9/11 will be well and thoroughly ridiculed.
Naturally a number of rightie bloggers already are hyperventilating over Professor Bell’s op ed, and their reactions prove once again that righties have the reading comprehension skills of gnats. And you absolutely can not challenge a rightie’s overblown senses of righteousness and victimhood without getting snarked.
The point that Professor Bell only mentions, but which is critical, is that our overreaction is hurting us more than it’s hurting them.
[…]
Whoever the next President is, let me say now that it is not enough for this individual to want to end the war in Iraq. I want this individual to lead the American people away from the fear and hysteria the Bushies have cultivated to their advantage. The American people need to understand that, although terrorists can take lives and knock down buildings, the only thing the nation has to fear is, well, fear itself.
Such a material view of the war being waged is not, to me, very surprising; and although one of the motivations behind the war on terror was to prevent fringe groups from aligning with sympathetic countries to get their hands on more advanced and potentially dangerous weaponry, the chances are good, as Maha notes, that the country itself would not be destroyed.
Where she goes horribly awry even in such a strictly superficial analysis is in believing that just because the country likely won’t be destroyed in the wake of several additional terror attacks, we should, then, in effect countenance such attacks—or at least, treat them as law enforcement concerns. Nevermind that, were such attacks to become commonplace, the reaction of the American populace would likely be swift, severe, and local (remember, is wasn’t Joseph McCarthy who authorized the Japanese camps)—and would create just the kinds of “fascist” conditions that many on the left are (idiotically) convinced we’re already living under.
Beyond that, though, the real danger we face from Islamism is evidenced in the type of rationalizations that animate such “realist” arguments as the one employed by Maha—which, while they purport to be speaking “unspeakable truths” to the end-times fantasies of evangelical warmongers, are in fact primarily concerned with hiding from the real unspeakable truth, namely, that it is the progressive worldview itself that has created, and continues to nurture, the conditions necessary for the destruction of a truly liberal country from within.
With each capitulation — with each nod toward a fundamentally intolerant application of “tolerance,” with each decision to defend censorship, with each move to “regulate” free speech, with each fundamentally anti-American (in the strictest sense) attempt to erode individualism in favor of a cosmetic “diversity” that does nothing more than cynically push people into more easily manageable voting blocs—we are preparing the ground for precisely the kind of problems we’re seeing now in the UK.
And so while it is unlikely we could ever lose this country to a military-style attack (though I think it quite obvious that we could easily lose buildings, or ports, or entire population centers), it is important to remember that one of the goals of those attacks is to cow us into the kinds of social and policy concessions that will open the door to the slow but inexorable undercutting of our founding ideals.
The academy has already done much to weaken the foundation—mostly through a linguistic assault that goes unnoticed, for the most part, until it starts to manifest itself in public policy and law (the “Living Constitution” being a prime example). And as is becoming increasingly evident, rather than re-thinking their earlier missteps (they had hoped to bring about a transnational utopia, not a new Caliphate), many outspoken “progressives”, like their ideological proxies in the establishment press, are hunkering down to defend their failed philosophies, the consequences be damned.
Pride, as they say, goeth before the fall.
Do I think it can ever get as bad in the US as it has gotten in the UK—where entire parts of London are, in essence, mini-terror states? Likely not (though parts of Michigan and New Jersey have gotten dangerously close)—at least, not so long as the Second Amendment stands protected. But I do think that a long-term strategy to force a kind of internal velvet revolution meant to undermine individualism is well underway, and that we’d do well to beat it back by exposing how precisely it works, and by refusing to accept the incremental capitulations upon which its entire strategy here relies.
****
update: Materially related (h/t Dan Collins).
Notice the implications of Bell/Mahablog’s line of argument.
They are not saying that the invasion of Iraq was an over-reaction. They are saying the entire War on Terror was an over-reaction. Which, by definition, includes the invasion of Afghanistan and the toppling of the Taliban.
So much for the Left supporting the war in Afghanistan.
Indeed, but for the invasion of Iraq, we’d have been treated to six years of “quagmire” arguments, except that they’d be focused on Afghanistan, rather than Iraq.
It’s also useful to remember that the “brutal Afghan winter” and “extinct Afghan” memes were aired by the Left back in October 2001, long before we invaded Iraq. Similarly, some Aussie Lefties have cited the Bali bombing (2002) as precipitated by Dubya’s invasion of Iraq (2003).
So, it’s not like they were foursquare behind that war—no matter how much they’d rewrite history to make their own role doubleplusgood.
I actually think that this is the crux of the matter, Jeff. The existential threat to progressives is that there are still people pointing out that there is an existential threat. Therefore, this “homogenized” group must be dehumanized and dismissed.
It makes me think of the line from the Incredibles, “and when everyone is great, no one will be!”
The multi-cult worshippers envision a world where individuals exist in the theoretical sense, with each idea and action as valid as any other in the “system” that created them (systems theory). The terrorists exploit this, of course which is why they use the victim terminology turning it against the elite masters.
Because multi-cultists can’t possibly be wrong, they attack those who threaten their philosophical existence–they would rather be on the receiving end of a literal bomb, than proven wrong on the merits of their empty argument.
You should expect more DoS attacks. You’re a bigger threat than any suitcase bomb could be.
Was 9/11 so bad? For whom?
Anyway, Jeff, you’re going to be accused of arguing D’Souza’s line, so you might as well prepare for it, though I’ve no doubt there are significant differences between your way of conceptualizing the problems and his.
As for me, it was a godsend, because it gave me a pretext to express my slavering bloodlust.
My one consolation is that the day will come when the principles we are called to capitulate on will be liberal enough that even a Liberal will stop to reconsider. Our uppity women and gays will not happily surrender to the veil and the wall.
With a bit of luck, and your continuing loud protestations, we may even be able to show them these consequences before it comes to that.
Excellent post, Jeff. Maybe the best I’ve read here.
Squid: “the day will come when the principles we are called to capitulate on will be liberal enough that even a Liberal will stop to reconsider.”
You know, this is exactly my fear. They want us to wait until the threat is so mature that no one could possibly call our self-defense an overreaction. I shudder to think what we’ll do if we get to that point.
Squid,
I’m not so sure about that. Like the aborting of female babies in India creating a lopsided society even more abusive to women (young girls stolen as sex slaves because not enough women to marry), the likely outcome is a complete stall-out. To me, that’s what’s happening in Europe. Any action taken implies a judgment “this is bad”, so no action is taken.
Why should we expect it to be any different in America? The feminists lionized a woman-using, power-abusing man because he spoke the right language. Forget his actions.
The terrorists have the language down. When the war that matters to Leftists is waged, that is the theoretical and rhetorical war, their own arguments are used by terrorists. They will have to admit their arguments are wrong.
I see a lot of burqa-wearing feminists (embracing the de-sexualizing nature of it, of course–liberated to be judged for their mind, not their body, just like men, blah, blah, blah) and quiet gays.
I think the author is wrong to contrast a “strong Muslim identity” with a “shared national identity.” There’s not much about what I have seen in this report that could not be equally as well summarized as a “Muslim identity” contrasted with an “extremely attenuated national identity”. As Lewis notes, in Europe, an attenuated national identity is by no means the exclusive province of Muslims.
I don’t have a lot of energy for critiquing Europe. It’s like PBS: it’s not going anywhere, but you can click past it readily enough. At least when you’re me. However, though the attempt by Bell/Maha to delegitimize the war on terror is so extraordinarily myopic in so many ways, I would offer this above any other response: They invite the US not to look outward in response to threats, but to look inward. The “only fear” we can possibly have when we develop the proscribed attitude about terrorism would inevitably express itself in distrust of our own Muslim citizens. It is such a fragile and precious thing that the majority of Americans know very well that *our* Muslims are not like *their* Muslims. Once that’s gone, there’s no reconstructing it. Afghanistan, Iraq, Middle East democratic reform – this puts the focus precisely where it needs to be… Crafting a society tolerant of terrorism would have concomitants which would alter US in ways that would not serve anyone’s ideal of pluralism.
I dunno… at the rate Sully keeps spelunking into the Moonbatcave, he might be openly supporting jihad in a few years.
BECAUSE OF THE DOUBT!!!
Women compelled to wear burqas, prevented from driving, executed for wearing high-heels, but I’m not sure NOW has come out against Islamofascism.
Gays killed by toppling walls on them, but Andrew Sullivan seems to view Dubya as a worse threat than Islamic fundis (at least after Dubya opposed gay marriage).
I’m not sure where they’ll draw the line. Any more than the Left opposed the USSR, despite Communism being far more anti-liberal than the worst charges levied against Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and William F. Buckley Jr.
Some have even extolled Chamberlain and company, precisely for waiting so long that the “true face” of fascism was made clear. That the result was a longer, bloodier war is ignored.
Melissa:
One of the funniest examples of Left hypocrisy is that, whenever you point to an ANSWER or a Bell that the Left is embarrassed by, they immediately dismiss that person with “S/he doesn’t represent the Left.” But the Right is this monolith, and every conservative is really Pat Buchanan, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh, all rolled up in one, with doses of Karl Rove thrown in for good measure.
So, multi-cultis also exist as individuals when it is convenient, but their opponents never do.
Oh. That’s what I tried to get at above. You put it much better. Really shouldn’t try to do this at work. Bad happyfeet.
Are we really back to the “we need to understand the terrorists” mantra? Or did I miss the context in my skimming? My apologies if so.
The lefties overall don’t fear the terrorists because they know we would protect them in a large scale defense. So, their isolated way of life is not disrupted. Thus, they can continue to play social constructists.
Other than that, the terrorists hate Israel. The enemy of my enemy is my friend…..
I almost fell off the treadmill today when MSNBC aired Hillary’s comments about Bush ending the conflict; before the next president hits the office. Nothing like announcing to the jihadi’s that Washington is pulling for you in 08…. Way to go!
I guess we over-reacted to Iraqi’s invasion of Kuwait, the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor, the Nazis declaring war, the Germans sinking the Lusitania, the Spanish sinking the Maine, the South’s bombarding of Ft Sumnter, and the British blockade in 1812 . . . because “the country itself would not be destroyed.”
Jeff, fantastic article.
Yes, the self-loathing left has long followed the Gramsci principle of undermining the liberal and tolerant West with slow but steady erosion of its ideas, tenets and identity. Multiculturalism is the most potent poison it has come up with yet. Undermine shared values and attitudes and you weaken the wall of nationalism so that it eventually falls. It’s like pounding on a brick wall. Over time the mortar cracks and weakens until the final blow scatters the bricks and the wall is no more.
The Left weakens our resolve to survive by undermining our civilizational confidence. Attacks on Western civilization as the product of dead white men, all racists and evil exploiters of darker shades of people, is one such tactic. They are nihilists who believe the West is so corrupt and evil that it is not worth saving. So they do nothing to save it and oppose those who try.
They hate themselves and want to ensure their own destruction. They will take us with them if they succeed.
Squid
They are masters of lying to themselves and others, what makes you think they would do anything other than redefine a move to sharia as something positive for them?
The left simply can’t be counted on, at least for now.
Some fool makes a claim that the murder of some 3000 of our fellow citizens is “no big deal” in the scheme of things, and the rest of the fools nod as if this is wisdom. That every last aspect of our society was affected by that minor national blip goes down the memory hole with an ease that is beyond comprehending. They want to forget, and so they will.
We are lost.
By it’s very nature, fostering political (and cultural) modernization within Islam is anathema to multiculti doctrine. If successful in stalling the effort, the Left only draws us closer to responses exemplified by Dresden, Cologne, Tokyo, Hiroshima & Nagasaki.
And they’ll be too ignorant as to how we ever got there.
tw: hell25, as in the next quarter-century?
Yeah, exactly, other forces. The most dangerous enemy truly is within, at the moment. I’m not sure how to combat that enemy, since so many of their professed beliefs seem so blatantly and self-evidently wrong that it’s difficult to come up with a way of explaining that to them.
Af for jihadis, I’m still in favor of killing lots of them.
Oops. I typed and retyped that comment half a dozen times and still screwed it up. As, not Af, should be the first word of the second paragraph.
I realize this is a longish post, so I’ve distilled it into a poem.
“Juice Pussy”
Juice pussy you
swing and throb
like the Cuban gal
who suffers the
lashes to save
a rhythmic culture—
and to save juice
pussy, I offer succor,
in a loop of my
desires / deep friars
Che Che Cha Cha
Sorry if that was a bit nebulaic—I’ve had the stomach flu and am a bit high on bitters.
Regarding the first part of the article. Unlike the English and French, our society continues to be dynamic and embraces foreigners. In our history we have assimilated the Irish, the Scots, the French (Ben Franklin was terrified of French influence), the Chinese, the Irish, the Poles, on and on. As long as I continue to see Muslim girls at the mall desperatly feeding their materialism, I am confident extreme Islam will never find a place to grow here.
Of course, it helps to station an FBI agent in every mosque…I mean, I’m sure we’re not doing that.
I see you go by the “one sentence per paragraph” rule.
…….;;;;:::::—–—
There you go. Edit as necessary.
Doubtful, Melissa—though I appreciate the thought.
Ironically, it is my increasing unimportance on the right that makes me unimportant to all but a few on the left who continue to carry a grudge.
Maybe if I had appended another name to the post, it would have been picked up more widely.
I just read Professor Bell’s essay and, although Jeff diagrees with it, I think you guys should give it a read. it is powerful, heady cold water int he face of over-heated rhetoric. I’ve lost count have many Hitlers we’ve battled in my life time…Noriega = Hitler, Saddam = Hitler, bin Laden = hitler, achmajendad dude in Iran = Hitler, Hugo Chavez = Hitler, Milosovich = Hitler.
I think he makes a fine point regarding over-reacting. Stopping Al Queda is important and we will do that, but we have stop listening to Bill Kristol and the Kagan brothers and their dreams of a bucolic Middle East, I mean, unless you are Brit Hume, then you need to listen.
Let me see if I follow their – for lack of a better term – logic in regards to the current WoT. Unlike 9/11, the attack on Pearl Harbor justified the entrance into WWII, but only because the Japanese had an organized army/navy & troop numbers enough to react to. It is the size & organization of who performs the attacks & not the attacks themselves that is the qualifying factor we should use in determining whether or not to return the favor or respond at all. So 9/11 should be treated as what… an act of vandalism or a case of large scale littering? Or are they using as a qualifier the actual number of deaths involved? What a message to send, if you don’t kill x number of Americans or innocent civilians in x amount of time, we will not respond militarily, because we can’t justify defending ourselves unless you match the number of Russians killed by Hitler. Funny thing how the left always seems to work back around to the Nazi’s or the communists… apparently anything short of those stunning benchmarks just isn’t worth the cost or their time. That is when they aren’t defending them & condemning Christians or the US that is. Does this mean that the US should have re-responded after the fall of Saigon & to the murder of the hundreds of thousands of civilians in Cambodia or is the qualifier only for white people?
Ben Franklin was a smart guy. Having been to Washington, DC, I find myself in agreement with him.
I think they might be right. It got me thinking about how many innocent victims get killed while being mugged or raped because they fought back, or more importantly because the perp didn’t want to leave any witness because of the severity of the punishment if caught. I mean, we are just talking about a couple of bucks or a little bit of your time here people, is that really worth dying over? If you just gave them what they wanted and then we all just look the other way, how many innocent lives would be saved?
Have you considered changing your name to Glen Reynolds? To me, that’s a name that can move product.
Excellent article by Jeff, IMHO.
Also:
the Spanish sinking the Maine
Yeah, right. That war and its aftermath was a disgrace and there’s a reason the centennial in 1998 passed virtually without notice.
Jane call home: 1-800-TEHERAN
There aren’t enough jihadists in the world to destroy the United States. There aren’t enough of them to invade us, seize Washington, and occupy our territory. There just aren’t. That ought to be obvious. Even if they could pull off another 9/11, that wouldn’t destroy us, either.
Holy cow. Way to totally misunderstand how terrorism works. The Taliban didn’t take over Afghanistan by invading the capital with an army in the traditional way. What they did was take advantage of the chaos that was left in the wake of the Soviet defeat and present themselves as saviors who would restore order. They got support from a war-weary populace who were eager to have someone, anyone, crack down on the warlords.
Oh, and they had a truckload of cash from Pakistan.
If the jihadis were to mess with us directly, on our soil, in a manner similar to what they’re showing on this season of 24, the result would be massive civil disruption and loss of confidence in the government to provide security.
Terrorism softens up a population so that they yearn for the strong man to come in and restore order. OR the population begins to give in to the demands of the terrorists, figuring that no concession is too high a price to pay to end the daily horror.
Or they’ll not start off with us right away. They’ll get established in the mideast first, then take on Europe, and with the resources of those nations, THEN they’ll begin to take us on.
But the scenario that she raises? I don’t envision it at all. Nice hat on the straw man, though.
But in the meantime, I’m thoroughly enjoying this war, what with all that good bloodlust and all. BECAUSE OF THE TESTOSTERONE!
You forgot one.
Eerily reminiscent of Uncle Joe Stalin circa spring of 1940:
There aren’t enough nazis in Deutchland to destroy the Soviet Union. There aren’t enough of them to invade us, seize Moscow, and occupy our territory. There just aren’t. That ought to be obvious. Even if they could pull off another blitzkrieg, that wouldn’t destroy us, either.
[…]
if the nazis could pull off a seige of Warsaw every six hours for four years, that would not constitute an existential threat. But, obviously, they can’t come anywhere close to that.
Tens of millions of dead later he was proven to be right.
BTW, the whole “it’s not a threat unless jihadis can destroy the U.S.” thing is totally ripped off from alphie:
Of course, that was the same thread where alphie claimed that I
…a claim which—as with most of alphie’s claims, is not a fact at all.
BTW, also waiting for someone to explain how, if 9/11 is not a big deal, our reaction to it is an over-reaction. We lost a few thousnad in a day, and our reaction thus far has only cost us a few thousand volunteers in the military—over the course of years. And clearly, the TimmyBs of the world could care less about the fate of the brown people in the Mideast, so I’m not counting them.
The Left is clearly over-reacting to our reaction.
/sarcasm
9/11? M’eh get over it.
Abu Ghraib? Atrocity! Genocide! Calamity!
Our friend alphie who thinks that Russia won WWII with a low cost assist from the US, who thinks that “we” are growing opium in Afghanistan and who wrote on his blog that maybe the insurgents would stop attacking if we just dramatically reduced troop levels.
Again I say that every time he posts I get a strong urge to peel a banana and pick lice out of my hair. (Not that I have, you know, I don’t, I mean, oh shut up!)
Come on, alphie, how do you feel about Mile High Dirt Berms in Israel?
Jeff, great post that I’m going to keep and reuse in some classes that I’ll be teaching. Bernard Lewis is one of the clearest and most eloquent thinkers on this topic. I’ll leave you with the last paragraph of his book “The Crisis of Islam”
I like how Bell cites “the present global upheaval” while cautioning us against “seeing international conflict in apocalyptic terms.”
Geopolitical concerns of Liberals? Global upheaval, and rightly so …
Geopolitical concerns of Conservatives? … unalloyed hysteria.
“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
Hear hear, Jeff. Fantastic job.
As for Bell, he writes that:
…without considering that our reaction to 9/11 had something to do with that. A deep thinker, that one.
Our direct reaction to 9/11, i.e. the over-throwing of the Taliban and chasing of AlQueda was good policy and mostly well-executed.
The invasion of Iraq was silly. Cost us the goodwill and cooperation of many Middle Eastern countries and has us bogged down in a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Further, as Don Rumsfeld himself asked about the GWOT, “are we killing more than we create”?
In the words of Richard Clarke (I know, a pariah) attacking Iraq after 9/11 was like attacking Mexico after Pearl Harbor.
That’s the over-reaction, Karl.
We could have just enforced the no-fly-zone and sanctions for the next 50 years.
We could have starved Iraq for soccer teams, palaces and weapons for the next 50 years.
We could have made Kofi Annan and his son, Bruce Sevan, George Galloway rich for the next 50 years.
It’s a perfect liberal solution:
It coddles the dictator, kills the innocents and leaves the problem wholly intact.
“has us bogged down in a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.”
Is Al Queda in Iraq right now? How did they get there?
So this guy is saying Hirshima is on par with 9/11 as an unspeakable act of mass murder against a civilian target? At least he gives you an early warning of where he is coming from.
In any case we have been hearing this retarded argument for a few years now and it is still mindblowing in it’s stupidity. I mean sure we all know that currently there is no Muslim army that can invade and subjugate the US. I don’t recall anyone ever claiming there was. What we don’t want to happen is for us to sit on our hands at Mr. Bell’s behest and party like its 9/10/2001 until Iran gives a nuke to a terrorist group and they detonate it in Manhattan or LA or Chicago or wherever. Apparently Mr. Bell feels rather confident that that is not going to happen, I wish I could share his certainty.
In any case we will only have to listen to specious, silly arguments like this until the next terrorist attack because while Mr. Bell may have a number in his head for dead Americans he is willing to countanence in order to appear wise and tolerant, for most Americans that number is 0.
Bell does not single out Iraq as over-reaction, whatever TimmyB might say.
Instead, Bell is saying that treating the whole thing, Afghanistan included, as a war, or terrorists as a threat to the survival of the US, is silly.
I’m of the firm belief that had we never even thought about going into Iraq, we’d still be seeing the moaning about ending “War” and the “quagmire”, but it’d be about Afghanistan instead.
I haven’t forgotten about the “brutal Afghan winter” “swallower of Armies”, etc. that was going on before hand.
There doesn’t have to be. It only took 19 to bring down the world trade center and damage the pentagon. There’s a reason that it is called asymmetric warfare.
Jeff, a great post. If this is how you write while down with the stomach flu, I’m sending you a gallon jug of pathogens.
One of the greatest battles of the WoT is ongoing in our country, for the hearts and minds of the populace and the breaking of our will to fight this war, and to accomodate those who would destroy our islamist enemies. Until they are strong enough to take over or destroy us.
Just my view, but we’ve seen the first phase of discrediting the WoT with the administration (rightly or wrongly) being de-legitimized as well as the de-legitimization of our mission in Iraq and the increasing calls for withdrawl.
Aided by the academy, as you so brilliantly wrote about a well as a compliant MSM and opportunistic political opposition that used the politicization of the WoT to regain power.
Professor Bell’s peice is just the opening of the next phase of the assult on the entire WoT, not just the mission in Iraq. Next Afghanistan will become a quagmire too. Imagine how this would not have been uttered in public four years ago. We have come a long way baby.
Another sad note is that for all the talk of the ‘new media’, it has become evident that the old media, with its relentless attacks on this administration and implicitly the WoT, have been successful in persuading a sufficient number of Americans to vote for the democrats and against the WoT. That is not an overstatement either. The democrats have come out all but explicitly against the entire endeavor. The democrats with the aid of the MSM have shown that unrelenting attacks and negativism without outlining a alternative can sufficiently change public opinion over time.
Glad you’re back! Keep writing, there’s lots of work to do and you’re one of the best at articulating it.
I just found this quote in response to the same dumbass assertion over at Mahablog, but that paragon of Journalistic Integrity banned me immediately, lol, so here you go timmy:
TimmyB claimed to have read Bell, but here’s Bell:
and Afghanistan
and Afghanistan
and Afghanistan
Got it, Timmuh?
OT, but Big E if you still work for Panic, drop me an email please.
TimmyB: a one an a two…
is that better or worse than disaster? How about fiasco? Or Quagmire? I’m just trying to get the decodser ring calibrated.
and I would agree with you if those were the primary reasons for Invading Iraq, which they weren’t.
Osama bin Laden was quoted as saying that the greatest recruiting event for the ulema was watching the Towers fall. We create ‘em when we fight and we create ‘em when we are attacked. Which is it? Somebody needs top show me a poll because i’m not believing either of those tales.
Answer to Rumsfeld’s question? Killed or captured: yes! (IMHO)
whjich makes the whole “pariah” think self evident as that is one of the stupidest comparisons I’ve ever seen. Mexico didn’t have WMD’s, the abil.ity to make them and the history of using them. Mexico never paid Palestinians and their families for suicide attacks. Mexico never threatened us both directly and indirectly. Mexico hadn’t blown off countless UN resolutions. Mexico didn;’t have operating foreign terrorist training camps… do I need to go on?
We can certainly argue (and even reach some agreement) that the prosecution of the war in Iraq was fundamentally flawed but we are never going to agree on the rightiousness of the action.
Quagmire? Silly? Whatever!
BTW, is Timmuh’s position that any threat less than Hitler is not worthy of a military response? Inquiring minds want to know.
I’m so glad someone’s finally writing common sense! I can’t wait for his follow up article in the Islamabad Daily Mail explaining how all the islamic terrorism is just an over-reaction to the percieved threat of modenity and the secular west over-running the long-established tradition of sharia law in the bucolic environs of the modern pre-1948 middle east.
By the way…
If you knew how offensive the word “balkanization’ is to Serbs, Croats, Kosavars, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Romanians and Montenegrans, you would understand why most members of the academy, at least the sensitive, modern ones use the less offensive term “clusterfuck”.
I’m sure you only used the “b-word” out of ignorance and not out of any desire to offend, but just in case, expect a demonstration of pissed off southeastern europeans mixed with a few frizzy-haired female professors in dirty skirts, comfortable cardigans and “funky” thick-rimmed glasses.
Maybe tomorrow, if they let us borrow the pots and pans from the faculty dining room.
Oh and Jeff its good to have you back. Articles like this one are invaluable to me as a tool for maintaining perspective and seeing the big picture when digesting the day to day flow of news and information.
Plus I love it when trolls come in and ridicule your punctuation. Something about self-styled free-thinking rebels coming in here demanding adherance to rules developed hundreds of years ago by old white guys just really makes me smile.
Examples of non-cooperation from countries previously inclined to cooperate? No, of course not. It did get Libya to give up WMDs, though.
Looks like it.
The stupidity of this quip demonstrated here.
Not that Timmuh will understand it any more than he did the Bell piece.
A concise overview of the reasons behind the Iraq war.
by Jeff G. back in August of 2005:
B Moe,
I never actually worked for Panic. However, I can see your confusion. I may have stated somewhere that I toured with them. In the vernacular of the professional Panic freak “touring” with them means following them around from show to show generally for at least weeks at a time. In my case it was seeing 50-60 or more shows per year.
Great post, Jeff. Comments spot on as well. Good to see PW back in typical form.
So it’s no big deal if we lose just a city or two, huh?
And the left accuses Bush of defining down success.
<blockquote>We could have just enforced the no-fly-zone and sanctions for the next 50 years.
We could have starved Iraq for soccer teams, palaces and weapons for the next 50 years.
We could have made Kofi Annan and his son, Bruce Sevan, George Galloway rich for the next 50 years.
It’s a perfect liberal solution:
It coddles the dictator, kills the innocents and leaves the problem wholly intact.
Posted by Gray | permalink
on 01/29 at 02:59 PM
Gray, your concern for Iraqis is sweet. Is your racism separate from your concern for them? Why don’t change the terms to “ragheads?”
As many times as you type the same bit about no fly zones, then people who don’t think Iraqis are “ragheads” or “sand ni—rs” can answer that yes, no fly zones worked: Saddam did not have WMD, there was no Al Queda in Iraq, and he was not a threat to his neighbors. Goddam World Policeman…
I’m so fuckin’ mad I could spit! I have a son over in Iraq doing his best to secure freedom at the potential cost of his life and these fuck-bubbles think it’s “no big deal.” Of course it isn’t when you’re sitting on your odious little academic ass navel gazing while your betters are doing the heavy lifting.
These cretins remind me of the mayor in “Jaws” – or is it the “Donohues” in the “Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death”. When faced with an assailant intent on killing their families, their first (and only) inclination is to try to convince the assailant that their family is worth saving rather than just killing the bastard.
Sorry about the desultory post, but I’ve had it!
” … it is important to remember that one of the goals of those attacks is to cow us into the kinds of social and policy concessions that will open the door to the slow but inexorable undercutting of our founding ideals.”
One of the goals. Perhaps. A more likely motivation for the 9-11 terrorists would be U.S. support for a corrupt, anti-democratic regime in Saudi Arabia and the presence of U.S. troops in the same country that said terrorists were working to overthrow.
Because “We Offer Our Lives In Order To Support Our Progressive Brothers In Their Effort To Rewrite The U.S. Constitution” just doesn’t have much of a ring to it.
Fuck you timmy, you lying ignorant cocksucker!
Did you read this:
The no fly zone was working? You fool, who is the fucking racist, those of us who are trying to free a subcontinent, or you worthless shitheads who want to build a fence around “them” and ignore “them”.
I am through trying to talk to this worthless sonofabitch. The rest of you can have him.
Karl, bold whatever you would like, but the good professor is discussing the number of war dead, not whether the policies are just. In fact, he doesn’t mention the invasion of Afghanistan, so I cannot speak for him. He does, however, make fun of John Mueller’s “containment” of the Japanese policy. One can infer that that comment means he would approve of the striking directly at the people who attacked us, but his article is silent on that. You are quite the gifted writer. Send him an email and ask him
Might want to avoid the ad hominem attacks you were nice to level at me, but I’m not gonna tell you what to do.
Lastly, Karl, and you might want to see where you dropped the sense of humor off, the “quip” is absurd so that it shows the absurdity of invading Iraq as a response to 9/11.
Jesus, I expect better
PS Negotiations between Libya and the Brits had been going on since 2000 and AQ Khan had not really gotten them up to speed (most of their stuff was still in the box). Essentially, we bought them out. It’s called negotiation
Where the fuck do you get that from?
no fly zones worked: Saddam did not have WMD, there was no Al Queda in Iraq, and he was not a threat to his neighbors. Goddam World Policeman…
Kofi and his Thug Son got rich, The French got rich, Saddam got his palaces, soccer teams and the Iraqis got starved.
So you’re saying your ‘OK’ with the cost in dollers, men and materiel for keeping the No-Fly-Zones intact for 50 years because they were successful?
See, even you agree–It was the perfect liberal solution: The dictator got coddles, the innocent starved and the problem remained intact.
B Moe, your witty uses of the word “fuck”, insults, and ability to argue through intimidation, half-truths, and bullshit will be sorely missed by me.
If Gray doesn’t want people to call him racist, then he shouldn’t refer to a billion people as “ragheads”.
Friggin’ clown. Go away and double the Prozac. Might help that temper.
Where do you get that from?
Wait—I though you guys were for realism now.
I need a flow chart.
Well, Gray, I get that for the multiple uses of the word raghead? I will ask again: Are there any other racial slurs you want us to use? Is the NAACP full of coons? Is Israel a bunch of kikes? Just want to know where it’s okay to be a bigot and where it’s not.
As to your laughable contention that “no-fly” zones, which barely cost any money, was some onerous burden to be done “for 50 years” I always assumed it was a joke, because I did not know you could tell the future. Who’s gonna win the Super Bowl? Or does your ability to tell the future only extend to the “raghead countries”?
He made it up like all the other horseshit he spews. You notice the only time he acknowledges me is after I get tired of him ignoring my substantive posts and start ridiculing him? He is totally unable to actually argue anything and stay on point, he just meanders around until people get pissed, then is apalled by the ad hominems. Fucking asshole.
The 50 times you typed it? Do I need to go back and cut and paste? Do I really need to do that?
AHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
When confronted with deciding between enforcing the sanctions and no fly zone forever and ever,
TimmyB doesn’t become The Decider, he melts down!
Geez, what a total fucking meltdown!
Hey TimmyB, I don’t really recally the “raghead countries” crack, do you think you could find it for me?
Or is the message here, you can feed ‘em into plastic shredders, you can starve ‘em, BUT DON’T HURT THEIR SELF ESTEEM!
Would you start a new branch of the Air Force to enforce the No-Fly-Zones in perpetuity? Or would you just write it into their budget every year?
So in Timmuhworld, expressly questioning whether the casualties in Afghanistan should be counted as deaths in the war on terror does not imply that he includes Afghanistan in his thesis, but his rejection of the total Mueller thesis naturally leads to the inference that Bell thinks invading Afghanistan was okay. Indeed, in Timmuhworld, the fact that Bell went out of his way to disagree with Mueller on Japan and not Afghanistan is proof that Bell disagrees with Mueller of Afghanistan.
The fact the Bell cannot logically reconcile a rejection of “containing” Imperial Japan with his own position regarding a similar attack to a civilian target clearly does not arise in Timmuhworld.
And invading Iraq had no effect on the negotiations with Libya.
Timmy, I’ve never gotten a ride from a Unicorn. Is it fun?
Yeah. You’re gonna hafta jog my memory on this one.
You notice how timmy keeps ignoring this:
Maybe if I put a bunch of FUCKS! in there he would notice, what do you think?
Ah, obfuscation, Karl. I’m proud of you, although I expected better than mischaracterization. Send the man an email, rather than speculate.
Gray (https://proteinwisdom.com/index.php?/weblog/entry/22207/P0/)
….
Geez, sorry we aren’t killing ‘ragheads’ fast enough to bring ‘peace’ for you.
Posted by Gray | permalink
on 01/25 at 07:05
Lee also has a nice use of the term in the Fisa Versa thread.
Gray,
Pretty sure ol’ Timmuh has you confused with someone else. More proof that reading is a skill he needs to work on. Also, if he doesn’t come up with a link—and I’m fairly sure he won’t, based on a quick Googling of the site—he owes you a big apology.
Pardon me for being pedantic, but I wouldn’t want to see the expression “velvet revolution” being used to describe the sort of anti-democratic action you describe in the final paragraph original post. The 1989 Velvet Revolution was a fine thing; I’d like to see them happen a lot more regularly.
As usual, B Moe, your “question” is non-sensical. That is why it is ignored. if you want to fight with trolls, go find Michelle and fight with her. I’m here for serious discussion.
Hannity wannbe with your “gotch” question. Tim, do you beat your wife. I don’t generally cite bin Laden for analysis of geopolitics, since he couldn’t figure out his organization would be largely destroyed by attacking us. Further, he tend to predict things like revolutions in Saudi Arabia and Caliphates.
If you consider him incisive, that’s more your problem than mine
I want to apologize to any and all cocksuckers out there for comparing them to timmy. I was out of line and am deeply sorry for the insult.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Feel stupid now!?
‘Cuz you’re really looking stupid after having that meltdown calling me a racist and a bigot and finding one highly ironical use of ‘raghead’ in ‘irony quotes’
C’mon–you try to impeach my argument ‘cuz I use the term ‘raghead’ all the time!
Where are allllllll the other times I used it, HMMMMM?
Peep the link, Karl.
If I get a response that proves me mistaken, I would surely apologize
It is your contention you used that “ironically”?
What I love about our precious little Tim is his unwavering ability to pull the latest prog response right out of his ass. Well Tim you were close. The first country the US invaded after Pearl Harbor was…………………………………………….wait for it…………………………………..French Morocco. Why? The question is rhetorical you don’t have to answer.
Another one. Which president committed more than 35% of his countries GDP to build weapons of mass destruction based on the council of just a handful of advisors?
Keep in mingd Tim that the reason for invading Iraq was that ole Saddam had the ‘potential’ to manufacture and use weapons of mass destruction. You might of missed that in your reading.
Hmm. I wonder what 500 tons of unaccounted for uranium oxide looks like. Does one 55 gallon drum weigh one ton, ya think? A thousand pounds maybe? That’s a lot of 55 gallon drums, isn’t it? Thats a shitload of yellow paint.
Gaseous diffusion or centrafuge? You decide.
So, Timmuh’s link is to a comment in which Gray is clearly being sarcastic—evidenced not least by the fact Gray put it in quotes. BTW where is that “The 50 times you typed it?” link. Still waiting for that one, but not likely to see it.
Timmuh accuses me of obfuscation, so I will return the favor and accuse him of projection. Here’s what Timmuh wrote:
Exactly so. And he included Afhganistan in the war dead. Expressly.
Timmuh is projecting his post-9/11 worldview on Bell’s essay. I’m not. But given his smear of Gray, I’m not surprised at the intellectual dishonesty.
There you have it, bin Laden himself is not an acceptable source for bin Laden’s own motives. Apparently timmy has a hotline to Allah himself for his geopolitical information.
I let my statement in context in that thread speak for itself. Dumbass.
C’mon. Where are all the other times? I use it all the time, right?
You’re digging this–being in High Racial Dudgeon, aren’t you?
Leaving aside the irony of “the wingnuts†being reduced to a simple, homogenized group…
Get out of your bunkers and join the majority of Americans on the Love Train!
RAGHEADS!RAGHEADS!RAGHEADS!
There, I said it. Hey, they can call me Kafir (nigger, essentially) I can say anything I want.
You know, like ‘timmyb is a goat felching rectum guzzler’.
Like that.
Coors Light is just plain awful.
PS: Shouldn’t alphie have placed that one under his “Neville Chamberlin” persona?
It’s “Peace Train,” alphie. And given where old Cat Stevens is nowadays, I’m not quite sure I like the route.
But go on, by all means, hop aboard! More pie for me.
Gray, I apologize.
I will accept your rationale (and also I had you confused with Lee, who used it on another thread). You do not have to accept my apology, of course, but from a discussion we had one evening (where you discussed clear, hold, build in a rational way), I expected better from you and was shocked when I persued that.
I believe your contention and apologize for getting you confused with Lee.
I DON’T KNOW HOW TO PUT THIS ANY MORE CLEARLY, I AM SORRY I ACCUSED OF SOEMTHING YOU DID NOT DO. I was wong
In the future I will strive harder to be more careful keeping up with the myriad of people who think I’m stupid (that is not an excuse).
I hope you do accept my apology.
PS look at the bright side. If you and I ever disagree again, you can throw this in my face. That has to be worth something.
Anyway, I’m out of words. Again, I was wrong and I’m sorry to accuse of that.
Now, if I get my hands on Lee….
Well done, Timmy.
I thought it was Soul Train.
So shocked that I couldn’t help but throw it in your face FOUR DAYS LATER when you were handing me my ass in another argument.
Fucking fraud.
There’s pie in the bunkers?
No wonder you guys want to preserve your own special version of multi-culturalism here in the good ol’ melting pot nation.
I was hoping to get some kind of conversation going with this thread, but I suppose it was too insignificant to find its way out into the world.
If only there had been some AP angle to it. Then it would have SOARED, baby!
I don’t live in a bunker, alphie. And pray tell, what is my own “special version of multi-culturalism” that I’m so desirous of preserving.
And more to the point, why not address the post? Must you constantly bore everybody with your ankle-biting snide asides?
I’m getting a bit fed up with the quality of troll in this place. I think it may be hurting my traffic.
Might have to just scrap this current group and start from scratch.
B Moe, if you checked on the thread, I challenged him there too.
That said, I brought it up like I bring your essential assholeness. It bothered me.
Are you saying the minority of Americans that want to use our military to solve all our problems don’t belong to a minority that doesn’t want to blend in with the rest of America?
They don’t want to remain geographically and ideologically isolated?
I tried, Jeff, but i got up in my mis-reading of a post. I addressed it in earlier posts.