[lit-ideas] Re: National Symbols
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 15:27:46 -0800
Well, John, as I've said a number of times, I'm not afraid of Iran. What I
am is informed about Islamism. Islamism is also known as Militant Islam.
The ideologues who set the doctrines in modern concrete were Sayyed Qutb for
the Sunnis and Ayatollah Khomeini for the Shiites. Iran is Shiite and had a
sort of revolution in 1979 and Khomeini took over.
There wasn't room in the Mideast for two gunslingers like Khomeini and
Hussein so they had it out. Now we didn't precisely fear either one of
them, but they were both capable of enormous trouble. We chose to back
Hussein as the lesser of two evils and that was probably wise. Had Khomeini
been permitted uninterrupted control of Iran he could have more thoroughly
indoctrinated it with his brand of Islamism, but there was a great war and
by the end of it Khomeini was terminally ill with prostate cancer. Not
every Iranian was left as true a believer in Islamism as he would have
liked.
But his doctrines live on. Insofar as his enemies are concerned he and
those who follow his doctrines can be considered mad. He and his doctrines
are inimical to the West -- the same as madness from the Western point of
view. Islamism isn't going to go away by itself. Left alone it will
declare victory after victory and raise up the warriors Khomeini wanted. It
must be defeated. You cannot make peace with a madman and you as an infidel
can find no common ground with an Islamist. One or the other of you must
submit.
Yes that is what they believe. They will tolerate infidels if they submit
and become second class citizens. If they don't submit they may be killed.
Militant Islam needn't be feared as long as it is recognized for what it is,
but it must be defeated.
You say I fear Islamism and I say I believe in defeating it. You think
letting it alone will eventually make it go away. I say letting it alone,
like a cancer or some other virulent disease will only make it grow
stronger.
I personally like the idea of a force capable of interdicting WMDs. We
can't afford to invade every country as we did Iraq; so let's send our Force
to Iran using planes, helicopters putting special forces on the ground, and
knock out their nuclear facilities and any other WMDs we know about and then
let's go home. If the Iranians who resemble Andreas neighbors take that
opportunity to throw the Mullahs out, so much the better, but our goal
should be the interdicting of WMDs.
Either we're serious about this or we aren't. Either we are prudent and
take out the WMD plants before Iran is in production or we wait for them to
use their WMDs. We do have a habit of waiting. We waited for the Japanese
on December 7th and for Al Quaeda on September 11th. In both cases
historians produced evidence to show we might have anticipated these attacks
-- if we were paying attention. There is no reason not to anticipate Iran's
future attacks, whether the sending out of Terrorists, the direct attack of
other nations (they are building missiles for that very purpose) or
attacking America's representatives or troops in the Middle East. There is
no reason not to know that they will use nukes to intimidate their neighbors
and blackmail their enemies. There is no reason not to interdict Iran's
WMDs as soon as possible.
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of John McCreery
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2006 2:53 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: National Symbols
Lawrence,
I didn't dislike the analogy. I called it idiotic, as any analogy that
reduces interactions between nations composed of tens of millions of
people in a context that includes billions of people and a good many
other interested parties (nations, coprorations, that sort of thing)
to two men sitting at a table is sure to be.
The man with the already loaded gun could shoot the madman who is
still loading his weapon and, the analogy seems to say, walk away with
his problem solved. Or, if an honorable sort, he might try first to
say to the madman, "Give me that gun or I'll shoot you," though, given
that the other is, we are lead to believe, mad, this amounts to little
more than sugar coating the shooting.
MAD says, you are mad, I'm mad, too. The difference between us is that
I don't just have a gun, I have a whole huge arsenal, and even if you
manage to shoot me first, the sure and inevitable result will be the
obliteration of you and everything that you hold dear.
Besides, while we wait, all sorts of things may happen. According to
Garette Mattingly, Elizabeth I made it a point to temporize whenever
she could, knowing that most problems would simply go away. She
prepared her country for those that wouldn't, and, when at last, the
Armada came, the Armada was soundly defeated. For four decades of Cold
War, we lived and, truth be told, thrived under threat of nuclear
annihilation. Then the Soviet Union collapsed, the Berlin Wall came
down.
Why are you so frightened of a country that surely poses a much
smaller threat than the USSR or Red China did? Their leader is mad,
you say. So were Stalin and Mao. Their warriors are fanatics, you say.
The sons and grandsons of the kamikaze are now, largely peace-loving
wimps. Given nuclear power and lots and lots of consumer goods, the
mullahs' descendants will go the same way.
Worst case. They kill a few tens of thousands of us. We utterly
destroy them, but still come off looking like the good guys. We have
the moral upper hand and a very credible threat, indeed, for the next
round if, God forbid, there is one.
Get a little ice in your veins. Get over the cowboy bullshit.
John
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
Yokohama 220-0006, JAPAN
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