[lit-ideas] Re: A Movie [longish]
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 15:17:35 -0700
Paul,
I just turned on my computer and was surprised to find 36 notes in my
Lit-Ideas inbox, this note (your initial note) and 35 following. I
appreciated your note and read it twice. I didn't appreciate the notes
following that attempted to take things off on a tangent or quibble about
how many people you want to destroy. You adequately describe them as "OBL
and his ilk." I too have read the ball-park 30% figure but it was 30% of
the 300,000,000 Arabs and not 30% of the 1.2 billion Muslims; however that
is just someone's guess. We don't know how many Muslims comprise Militant
Islam. As I mentioned in regard to Francis Fukuyama's America at the
Crossroads, Fukuyama and his sources for this view, Olivier Roy and Gilles
Kipel believe that the actual number that comprise "OBL and his ilk" is
small. None of them say how small but small enough so that Fukuyama
renounced the designation "Neocon" (that he helped initiate) because it had
come to be considered synonymous with the "Bush Doctrine" of preemption.
Fukuyama didn't believe preemption was necessary because there were just a
few Muslim "Jihadists" out there causing all the trouble.
My own reading doesn't support the optimistic viewpoint of Kepel, Roy &
Fukuyama. Everything I've read, every evidence I've witnessed suggests the
Militant Islam (OBL and his ilk) is huge. I challenged Omar on several
occasions to show me Moderate Muslims speaking out against Militant Islam
from within the Middle East and he wasn't able to do it. The Moderates I've
read all live outside of the Middle East. Those who in the past tired to
speak out from within the Middle East fled soon after their effrontery, if
they were lucky enough to get out before they were assassinated. The number
of radicals who actually engage in terrorist activities like OBL is probably
relatively small, but there is a huge number of "ilk" who agree with OBL and
support him and send him and like-minded organizations money and new
members. I didn't see the movie you refer to but probably most of the
people you saw jumping up and down shouting "death to America, death to the
Jews" were the supporters and not the OBL-type activists. But the activists
come out of the supporters; so where do we draw the line? Should we draw
the line?
As to what should be done about Militant Islam, I agree that it should be
neutralized. I see that I define it more broadly than you do to include
Pan-Arabism which is also militant. Pan-Arabism included Saddam's Iraq
which has been neutralized and Bashar al-Assad's Syria which has yet to be
neutralized. The other member of the original advocates of Pan-Arabism,
Egypt, neutralized itself.
I don't think it is necessary to go after all of the supporters of Militant
Islam because no Arab nation is capable of fielding an army that can compete
with a Western army. Only the US and Britain have the capability in modern
times of projecting a competent Army to a distant foreign nation and
fighting a war on the enemies grounds. France has projected peace-keeping
forces to some of its formal colonies, but it couldn't fight a major war in
a hostile nation. Russia used to be able to fight wars in foreign nations,
but gave that up after Afghanistan and now no longer has the means. We can
take comfort in the fact that no nation sympathetic to Militant Islam can
project an army very far, and that none of them has a competent army in the
modern sense of the military concept. We know how far and how effective
they are because they have, several of them, attempted to project them into
Israel. We know the results.
So Militant Islam is blood thirsty and murderous but they are over there and
not over here. This is small comfort to Israel which is also over there;
but we have sold Israel weapons over the years (ironically selling Israel's
enemies even more than we sold Israel) and they do have a modern Western
army, and they can defeat any if not all of the Militant Islamic armies over
there. From my point of view we should treat Israel as an ally on the
front-line of the war against Militant Islam and quit selling their enemies
weapons. Forget all the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic propaganda. It has no
validity. It is the sort of thing Militant Islam would say against us. We
know it has no validity in regard to us. Why think it has any validity in
regard to another of Militant Islam's enemies? You used the term "OBL and
his ilk." Hizbollah fits into this definition precisely. Hizbollah is an
activist organization just like OBL's Al Quaeda. Israel is fighting against
them now, and if they needed our support, which I rather doubt, we should
give it to them.
Perhaps it was Al Quaeda who attempted to use flights taking off from
Britain to bomb the US, but whoever it was, that is the sort of thing OBL
and his ilk can attempt in order to threaten us directly. We should keep on
doing whatever we have been doing to thwart such attempts.
Bleeding-heart-liberals who want to protect the rights of Militant Islamic
representatives and sympathizers over here are not only working against us
but against the Militants they are trying to protect. How so? If we can't
protect ourselves from the ones who come over here, then we are going to
eventually have to deal with them over there. That isn't good for us and it
isn't good for them. We should do like we've done in previous wars and "for
the duration" give our authorities whatever powers they need to do their
job. Worry about the assassins' rights later on when the war is over.
If we panicked at the prospect of Saddam Hussein with nuclear weapons, how
much more should we be concerned about Iran having nuclear weapons? We
should not allow this Militant Islamic nation to have these weapons. If
they do not respond to the diplomacy then we should do to their nuclear
facilities what Israel did to Osirak.
Pakistan is a major concern, but a longer-ranged concern than Iran. They
already have nuclear weapons, but they are preoccupied with India more than
with the US or Israel, and their leadership wants to remain friendly toward
the US. Still Pakistanis are represented in "OBL and its ilk," and we may
one day, should a Militant Islamist succeed Musharaff, have to deal with
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
We should content ourselves with keeping Militant Islam over there and at
bay unless it turned out that we could not thwart the attacks like the one
that was thwarted today.
Lawrence
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