Jim

My ten year old woke us up this morning to say something terrible had happened.

(edited to join sentence fragments:) I think these proposals are more about a card. If there was a unhackable card which was linked in an interconnected national database in which a record was noted every time basic transactions occurred and computing power is applied to determine threatening pattern, in such a grim world (think Cruise trying to go off the grid in Minority Report), there is no question our security would be enhanced. At what price, though?

Excellent point Pangloss. Boiled down, the goal of Radical Islam/Islamofascism/Islamism is to gain power. The danger of this movement is directly proportional to the sincerity in a belief that God wills them to have power.

I agree that some of the leadership is probably cynical in some respects. I'm not sure about the young people they are targetting for indoctrination. We also do not know how this will play out in the long term. If a majority of Europe becomes Muslim and they come to share the beliefs evidenced in the poll of British Muslims all bets are out the window.

We should be held to a higher standard BUT, at the same time, we have to be realistic so that we do not create such a high standard as to paralyze the nation when action is required. Every war has failures, SNAFUs and atrocities on both side. There is something in play bordering on racism to think that our guys cannot make mistakes or torture. Of course they can and of course it will always happen in every war. In another thread, Severian wrote how "incompetent" the US is because they had friendly fire on British troops. Obviously, friendly fire is more of a problem for the more lethal forces. The US military has had obvious success in having an obscene ratio of casualties to kills and in toppled a force that stood up to Iran for years, What, then, is the motivation for the desire to label it inept? I never will say and do not even think that this is a lack of patriotism. I think there are two factors in play for the press. First, let's face it, you win a pulitzer or "punch your press ticket" not by writing a glowing report of US success. No one who does this is going to have Robert Redford play them in the movie version of events. Second, I do think that some are fearful of a successful US military policy. By this, I do NOT mean that they want US troops to die. I mean that they fear the military industrial complex and the dynamic of a nation at war and they know that if we have unmitigated success future "adventures" are more likely. I share this feeling in many respects.

Can we at least put one myth to rest? That Saddam would not have run circles around the international community until eventually he acquired, reimported, unearthed, or restarted a WMD program? From the less than Bush-friendly NYTs:

What the left and Bush also ignore is that the children of illegals are not going to be willing to do this kind of work for a pittance. It's not possible to grow up in America without some sense of entitlement. This is merely a temporary solution to providing cheap labor.

I didn't have the heart to start another thread on this news: "UK police arrest 16 in anti-terrorism raids" Thousands?

I would bet with you on this one. The reason there are 12-20MM illegals in the country is a rare alignment of the interests of politicians of both parties, business and surburbia.

We are nearing a point of complete agreement. There are glaring difference between Islam as a whole and the Nazis. However, their is a subset of Muslims who can fairly be compared to the Nazis in their methods and objectives The question for our century is whether they will come to completely dominate Muslim culture and government as the Nazi's came to dominate Germany. You can see the danger: The Nazi's started with a small minority in the population but appealed to broad mystical notions of prejudice. They came to dominate Germany and then Europe. The Islamist "nazis" (for want of a better world) want to persuade 1/3rd of the world's population as a stepping stone to making Islam the one religion allowed on the globe. The methods are different. THe ideology is different but the danger is very real. For me, it was a defining historical event to see the Islamic world erupt over a silly but basic expression of freedom of speech in liberal democracies. The British poll suggest these attitudes are not anecdotal. The solution is not for us to be namby pamby in our words or to in any way self censor. We should be running a daily cartoon that offends until Muslims learn that they cannot deter us from our own freedoms. The world's leaders should be clear in the problems that exist within Islam, even as they practice healthy introspection. If they kill us for our honest expressions of opinion, that is a reflection on them and we will have defined the problem further. Merely letting this thing percolate is no solution. Phi, I've never thought you were anything less than 100% sincere. These are difficult questions on which universities accross the country are struggling.

The entire "the problem is Islam" vrs "Islam is in no way part of the problem" debate is premised on a false dichotomy. I think either position is uncessarily extreme. Islam is a part of a larger picture and there is no reason to think it is completely the problem any more than there is reason to think that has nothing whatsoever to do with the problem.

You're not talking about United 93?

Exactly. This is the concern not that we add the ability to strike quickly from a distance. OTOH, I'm sure the tracking ability does include a projection of where the missle will land. Still, it will put the world on edge to have a missile fire from a silo in Nebraska and start to head over the Atlantic. I wonder if using a ICBM for a conventional payload is cost-effective. What it gives us is the ability to react immediately instead of having to move ships into position to launch cruise missiles.

Can you explain this apparent non sequitur? Bush could have had a much easier term of office if he had played it safe. Bush, IMO, is painfully idealistic.

When should a group be held accountable in some fashion for the actions of its members? If white America sits back for 200 years and doesn’t stop the South from continuing to enslave African Americans, at some point a failure to act can support the use of the word “honky” by blacks. Even those who purport to oppose slavery could rightly be tarred with the same brush. If Islamic radicals drag the planet towards Armageddon and the mainstream Muslim population is more concerned about “persecution” against themselves than they are about the festering underbelly of their own religion, some frank talk is required. We have a collective responsibility to help moderate the radicals in whatever group to which we belong. I am shamed, to a degree, by the Tulsa race riots which occurred before I was born. I am shamed, to a degree, by Abu Ghraib. It is in this sense that I am critical of Muslims. I think they have a responsibility to worry more about the trajectory of their own culture than they do about “persecution” at the hands of cartoonists. The response, "it's not the religion" is as unhelpful as it is fatuous.

I'm still in search of what lines have been drawn by the moderators. Could Victor Davis Hanson's post this article on this forum without censure? Note the bigoted use of the term "Islamists" by this racist who purports to know something about history.

I see you are seizing on the KKK analogy, having ignored my answer to your Gang analogy. I don't blame you for seeking surer footing. Yet another criteria with which we many censor ourselves: the level of specificity and detail of the statement. What if a poster makes a conclusory post, e.g. "Islam has a problem" but also has a history of expressing the background behind that opinion? As a general matter, every person deserves to be judged on his or her own merits. However, at a policy level, sometimes decisions have to be made with respect to groups. Many people like Richard Dawkins are anti-religion, period. They believe that religion in general is unhealthy to our species. If Richard Dawkins could post here (a question you ignored in your rush to talk about the extreme example of the KKK) that there is a problem with all religions, why can't I post about a specific religion that was founded and expanded with violence, does in its text not recognize the separation between church and state and has a recent history of not successfully curtailing it's fringe elements? If I can be prejudiced against religion in general, why not against a particular religion?

Yes, but I thought you were against discrimination against any group? You touch on the real issue here. Not whether it is ever appropriate to deal with a group on a collective basis, of course it is sometimes appropriate, but when is it appropriate? THis is an issue which has not been analyzed on this forum but is behind the "yes, it's Islam; no it's not; yes it is" discussion. You make yet another strawman while ignoring almost all of my entire post which states what I do believe. Perhaps you could clarify. Strawman #2: That I said the forum shouldn't discourage racist or personal personal attacks. I refer the right honorable gentleman to the answer I gave a post ago. Strawman #3. I'm not sure if this is strawman #4 or just an extremely weak slippery slope argument. It depends on the actual statement. If it is something like, "all Muslims are mentally inferior to white Okies," yes. If the statement is, "there is a problem with Islam," I do not think so.

You raise a good point: If all discrimination in our comments is to be banned on this forum, can anyone here be critical of the KKK? I assume so but do not know why. Could Richard Dawkins post here?