[lit-ideas] Willie Pete's Role Reversal

  • From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 17:26:47 -0500

Judy: what happened to "we're better than the terrorists"?

Eric: We are.

Mike: ...he said, despite Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, despite the fact that Cheney is furiously attempting to keep it legal for the CIA to use torture, despite the fact that the U.S. already ships suspects off to Poland and Romania, among other locations, so that they can be tortured in all tranquility...

Surely such smugness is counterproductive.

Eric: Mike I think you've just shown that it isn't smug counterproductivity. Imagine that we are a group of terrorists, that I have just said that our Jihad makes us better than the Infidels, and that you then called me on my claim by writing

" ... he said, despite killing innocents, beheading women, murdering Imams, despite the fact that al-Zawahiri is furiously attempting to maintain a fatwa to keep it legal to conduct random slayings, use any WMDs we can acquire on Muslim and non-Muslim populations alike.

"Surely Sheik Yost's smugness is counterproductive."

All the other terrorists would go "Huh?" and do a double-take. It'd be time to drug you and chain you inside a truck full of explosives (with a remote detonation switch in case you chicken out) and set you rolling toward the Green Zone and your 70 virgins.

The very fact that you are crying "beams and motes" makes us better than the terrorists. And that's without even comparing the various claims and counterclaims. Guantanamo versus 9/11; Abu Ghraib versus routine beheading of journalists and innocent workers, etc.


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