[lit-ideas] Re: What should we call this war?
- From: "Stan Spiegel" <writeforu2@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 13:33:05 -0500
Lawrence: To a large extent the message train, "who do you support in this
war?" didn't result in a serious discussion. After 9/11 I discussed at
excruciatingly great length how we were at war with Islamists and not
terrorists. The old-timers are intimately familiar with that discussion and
are bent on jerking me around rather than respond seriously. If I get
side-tracked into saying again what I said back in 2002 then I won't keep
asking them who they are supporting in this war. The discussion has moved away
from my question into a quibble.
SS: The problem is your question wasn't a question. It was an indictment.
Asking "Who are you supporting in this war?" is an insulting question. It
doesn't merit serious discussion because you act like you're the only
thoughtful person and patriot here. You even have the audacity to call people
who disagree with you "anti-American." Is it any wonder why this became a
shouting match?
You once admitted that you haven't paid much attention to what's going on on
the domestic front. Unless you pay attention to both, you won't understand some
of the reasons why many of us are against this war. This White House has
drained the federal treasury -- pushed the poor, the disabled and handicapped
off their welfare programs, cut benefits for veterans, cut education (the
biggest cut in its history), ravaged the environment, set up an RX pgm for the
elderly which is largely a welfare program for pharmaceutical companies, lies
to us at every turn, makes decisions without consulting with Congress (the
Dubai Ports deal, for example), yet continues to make massive tax cuts for the
very wealthy. Our country, our civil liberties, our freedoms are at risk
because of this president and this war -- which is an excuse by conservatives
-- as I see it -- to transform the federal govt into a single-purpose entity:
war and defense. All the other programs are going down the drain from FDR's
programs to the Great Society.
And you're not paying attention to that?
How can we all have a serious discussion with you when you have such a limited
perspective?
Stan Spiegel
Portland, ME
----- Original Message -----
From: Lawrence Helm
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 12:29 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] What should we call this war?
To a large extent the message train, "who do you support in this war?" didn't
result in a serious discussion. After 9/11 I discussed at excruciatingly great
length how we were at war with Islamists and not terrorists. The old-timers
are intimately familiar with that discussion and are bent on jerking me around
rather than respond seriously. If I get side-tracked into saying again what I
said back in 2002 then I won't keep asking them who they are supporting in this
war. The discussion has moved away from my question into a quibble.
The quibble is interesting, but it deserves a different title; so I've given
it one.
The Bush administration probably didn't want to declare War against Militant
Islam, aka Islamism, aka Fundamentalist Islam because it would sound too much
like we were going to war against a religion. The Islamists could declare, as
have anyway, that we are taking up the Christian Crusade once again.
The Islamist ideology is well known. I described it recently (once again)
and so won't do it in this note. The Shiite Islamists using Khomeini's
ideology want to export their "Revolution" until they achieve a Pan-Muslim
ummah; however the element not to be compromised (for Shiite Iran) is a strong
Iran. If Iran becomes strong enough then the Revolution can be exported in
accordance with Khomeini's original intent.
The Sunni Islamists are also taking what they can get in the Middle East but
their goal is the World and not just an Ummah in the Middle East; at least that
is the goal that Sayyid Qutb voiced.
My impression is that Iran while hoping to export their revolution, is taking
a stance like Stalinist Russia. They have a nation they feel they can make
strong. If they can get nuclear weapons then no one will have the courage to
thwart them; they can then concentrate more securely on exporting their
Revolution. They understand the lesson of Saddam quite well. He made his
move toward a Pan-Islamic State before he got his nuclear weapons and the U.S.
stopped him. Iran has been much more cautious.
The Sunni Islamists strike me as taking a Trotskyite approach. For them,
there is no one nation to be preserved, no mother Russia. For them there are
no national boundaries, only the ummah and they have the ability to launch
attacks from many parts of it.
The tactic the Islamists (both Shiite and Sunni) use is asymmetric warfare.
They use modern explosives and inexpensive true-believing transporters to
deliver their weapons. They cannot deliver serious attacks against military
installations, but they can terrorize civilians in virtually any nation. And
the civilians pay for the wars their militaries fight. The civilians are far
more timid than the military; which is something the Islamists have long known.
They will be the ones begging their politicians to put a stop to the attacks;
whatever it takes. We have seen the effects. For example, a hard-line Spanish
leader was removed from office because the Spanish civilians wanted the
Islamists to quit attacking them. The new Spanish leader was much softer on
Islamism.
Something like this went on during the Cold War. We said we were fighting
Communism. We were fighting the ideology that inspired the Communist
revolution in Russia, and we were fighting against a similar sort of tactic.
Communists would infiltrate a nation, contact the Wretched of the Earth, and
attempt to get them to overthrow their government. This sort of revolution, an
Islamist Revolution, was to be the first step in creating a unified Ummah, but
it only succeeded in one nation, Iran. The Islamists had high hopes for other
nations, but nothing else has succeeded. So the Islamist Revolution has not
gone as well as the Islamists of either hue had hoped.
But days are still young, and the confused decadent West may allow Iran to
get its nuclear weapons. Iran is prepared to show the world that they know how
to use them. I don't mean they will actually use them. They will use them to
force the West to leave them alone while they engage in some serious Revolution
exportation. They aren't hurrying to get their nukes with any hope of matching
the American arsenal. All they want is to follow the North Korean plan. They
feel nukes will make them invulnerable to American interference. They are in a
very different environment from North Korea, however, which is an Asian pariah.
Iran is not a pariah. It is in the midst of significant sympathy - lots of
Arab Islamists who share similar views, and since Khomeini, Iran has been
downplaying the difference between Shiism and Sunnism. Iran has the means and
experience to export their Revolution big time if only they can keep the U.S.
from invading them the way they invaded Iraq. So this war is against Islamism
in the same way the Cold War was against Communism.
Another similarity with the Cold War is that our press has been preempted.
It has taken sides with the enemy, but with far less justification. In the
West there was a love affair with Marxism and the Soviet state that epitomized
the Marxist ideal. Many retained that love even when Stalin destroyed it for
most Western intellectuals. It was transformed into a more acceptable form,
that emotion, during the Vietnam War because there was no need to demand a love
for Communism, only a hate for the opposers of Communism. That hate, perhaps
was not based on anything capable of analytical justification and so remained
available. It could be reawakened by this new opponent of the West, the
Islamists.
The propagandists don't need a coherent argument that stands up to analysis.
They just need an event that puts the West in a bad light. They can then
promote the event as though it stands for the entire West, its attitudes, its
mores. We have seen the same approach being used for the Islamist cause: the
flushing down the toilet of a Koran, a few soldiers messing with prisoners in
Abu Ghraib, a few cartoons. It is enough . . . but is it? The Abu Ghraib
business was in keeping with the Communist cause celebre, but a Koran going
down a toilet in Guantanamo and some cartoons in Denmark? The old Leftists
can't really get their teeth into cartoons. The burning of embassies over
cartoons is too alien for even the most confirmed Leftist. The Islamists may
be hurting an important part of their base with such tomfoolery. Unfortunately
for the Islamists, they can't help it. They were converted to Fundamentalist
Islam and they are now True Believers. Such matters as the cartoons may
eventually cause the Leftists to give up on them. We shall have to wait and
see.
Like the writer of the "Gramscian Damage" article, I think the West will
eventually win, but it is much too soon to be sure of that. We have a bunch of
weapons we can't use, and the populace is verrrrrryyyy slow to recognize that
we are at war. And the War we are fighting isn't like the old wars so they
don't like it. And the Leftists among them never accepted the anti-Communist
view; so that parallel does more harm than good. This populace is well-fed,
spoiled, petulant and not at all cooperative. Who are these Islamists? We
don't see any stinking Islamists? We don't believe there are any. It might
take a long time to get past all of that. Thus, the Islamists have a chance -
not a very good one - but a chance.
So what should we call this war? We should call it the War against Islamism.
They have banged much more than a shoe against a table as they promised to
bury us.
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Teemu Pyyluoma
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 1:17 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Who are you supporting in this war?
Let's start with some definitions, as the discussion
is too muddied.
War
a) War is a military action.
b) State of War means that the government has powers
not available to it in peace time. At a state war,
rights can be suspended, citizens may be enlisted to
fight the war, property like trucks and ships can be
placed under military command and so on.
Both are necessary but neither alone is a sufficient
condition for war.
Terror
a) Violent attacks, usually on civilians.
b) Designed to spread panic, terrorize, and thus
sometimes called an attack on the mind.
Once again both are necessary but neither alone is a
sufficient condition for terror.
So war on terror is a total war that will not be won
as long as terror exists, meaning that the war will
never end. Which means that exceptional government
powers will become the norm.
So the question that should be asked is whether
terrorism is the kind of threat that requires
permanently altering the society and removing safe
guards on government power?
People often evaluate threats based on either
intentions of would be attackers or the potential
impact of the threat. This is wrong in both counts,
wrong as in trying to fit a square peg in a round hole
and not as in cheating on your wife is wrong.
That there are people hell bent on destroying this or
that civilization is inevitable and irrelevant. The
question to ask is whether they are capable of doing
that. AQ may want to invade Andalusia, but can they
take on the Spanish army and the entire NATO in a war
of invasion?
Furthermore, it shows lack of imagination to fixate on
a single potentially devastating threat. Once we get
to very low probability scenarios (like a nuclear
attack on Manhattan), the scenarios multiply
correspondingly. Manhattan could also be destroyed
by an industrial accident, say a catastrophical
chemical leak on a ship in East River, ebola outbreak,
massive fire, earthquake, tsunami, meteor strike,
riots, etc. Safety regulations and authorities,
medical systems, fire department and fire safety
regulations, intelligence services and police, exist
to counter these threats and mitigate the damages, and
are (should be?) provided resources accordingly.
One ought to remember that as a cause of loss of human
life and other damages, terrorism probably ranks well
below lightning strikes. Thus a total response, a war
is not justified by it.
One more thing about preventive strikes. That
counter-attack is by far the most effective defense is
obvious and well understood. Should for example
President of USA discover that there is a terrorist
training camp in Algeria, there is no question that he
should order an attack on it, preferably in
co-ordination with the Algerian government. But the
problem with the doctrine of prevention is that it
takes for granted that there are targets, it is like
insisting that your opponent show up 9 AM on third
Monday of the month to a battlefield of your choice in
case they want to fight a war.
The strength of small scale, low budget terrorism is
that it is very difficult to detect the terrorists in
advance. A discussion on whether we have the will to
strike at them when found is completely beside the
point, which is can we find them?
Yours,
Teemu
Helsinki, Finland
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