| A strange loop.
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| A strange loop.
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A Matter of TimeAs long as the jihadis are adopting the tactic of attacking children by the hundreds (hat tip: Belmont Club), it's only a matter of time before we are fighting not against the jihadis, but against all Muslims. Protection of the children is a fundamental aspect of human behavior, and people will not long abide absolute monsters. Between the slaughter of noncombatant adults and the attacks on children, the jihadis are bringing us closer to genocide.
The only ways to prevent going over that edge are to defeat the jihadis utterly, or to reform their cultures to such a degree that they stop producing jihadis. Faster, please.
UPDATE: Bigwig makes the point better, and in the process says something crucial:
If [sic] fact, when it comes to the capacity for, as well as the sheer enjoyment of, violence and murder, the West is probably the most vicious culture the world has ever produced--a fact that, though fairly clear during the Crusades and in the 1630's, has been repeatedly forgotten in the centuries since--for in the centuries since, the West has repeatedly attempted to restrain itself.This restraint is habitually misinterpreted as emasculation by the foolish and ignorant of the world. They see only a fear of the night in the mild-mannered stranger sitting in the corner, and fail to perceive that it's because he's a werewolf. The ignorant do their best to push him out of the door, while he, handicapped by the fact that he refuses to give in to his dark animal nature, puts up what resistance he can. The foolish urge the ignorant on, reveling in the incremental progress made. Woe betide them both if the effort succeeds, for what was pushed out into the night returns as a slavering beast, and it will make no distinction between those who pushed it out, those who cheered the effort, and those who merely stood aside.
With every attack they make Islamic Terrorists inch closer to such a conclusion, and they fact that they claim to welcome it is proof only that deep down they don't believe in such a possibility. It is not faith, but madness, and the culture that tolerates such a lunacy risks being devastated by a much more potent insanity at a later date, an insanity that the world might now see sooner rather than later--if the Russians love their children too.
For some reason, people around the world (even many in America) fail to understand that our surface civility is a result of our deeper understanding, seldom expressed, that Americans are able and willing to slaughter without mercy or limit when pressed. If they could understand that, they'd be less likely to press us. Because eventually, when the mask of civility falls away (as it did in the Civil War and WWII), there will be hell to pay, and we will be collecting the tab.Posted by Jeff at September 1, 2004 12:32 PM | Link CosmosI fear we are near that point now. I feel it in my bones. How many more Daniel Pearls, how many more Nick Bergs, before America decides that it is us or them? And when we do, how many will graves will we leave behind when Johnny comes marching home?
Understanding why the jihadis hate so much would also help. So would honesly asking, "Do they have a reason for this much hate?"
In some cases, the answer is actually "yes".
I don't approve of the methods used, of course, but it's important to understand where the hate comes from and recognize when there's just cause for the hate. When there is, then it's time to do something about it.
Ask yourself -- how extreme would you become if the Russians invaded your town and wouldn't leave? Fight them for 10 or 15 years and see how desparate you become.
Neither you nor I have been there. We don't know what kind of desparation breeds after that long. So I think, "There but for the grace of god go I."
No, I'm not condoning the actions. But it's important to understand them.
Posted by: Joe on September 1, 2004 12:55 PMRattlesnakes and black widows have perfectly understandable reasons for being the way they are. They had no choice, it's the product of millions of years of abuse by the natural environment. I can't hold it against them at all.
But I'm still going to kill any of them that get near my kids.
Posted by: Karl Gallagher on September 1, 2004 01:17 PMWith all due respect, motives are irrelevant: only actions matter.
Here's the problem, though: what do you do with them? How do you stop the jihadis from killing? If the Russians were to pull out of Chechnya utterly, the jihadis would not go back to their homes and become peaceful and prosperous. They did not do so in Afghanistan or Algeria, nor anywhere else. In many cases, they come from countries which haven't been attacked from the outside (such as Yemen).
Understanding their motivation is not helpful, because their motivation is less outside factors than it is their radicalized and debased form of Islam, which commands them to kill kufr - that's you and me - anywhere they find them. Most of the jihadi combatants in Chechnya are not Chechens, but Saudis, Yemenis, Pakistanis and so on.
So what do you do? How do you solve the problem of jihadis killing non-combatant men, women and children? You either destroy them, or you change their culture so that they stop killing non-combatants, or you utterly wipe out the population in which they hide. The first two are preferable to the last. The last will come if a certain line is passed, and failure of the first two would make inevitable the eventual crossing of that particular Rubicon.
Jeff,
I, along with Wretchard and SDB have been making this point to folks for some time: unless the Muslim world wakes up, a vanishingly small percentage of them will force us to wipe the religion and ALL its believers from the face of the earth. My favorite short version of this is what Gold Meir said many years ago about the Palestinians: we will hate them for what they make us do to THEIR children. (wish I had a citation for this, the only one I found was a quote of mine on another blog)
Found the quote: a 69 press conference in London:
"When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arbs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons." She says it better than I remembered it.
Joe,
The Chechens and Russians have a long history of warfare together. It took approximately 80 years for the tsars to incorporate the Chechens and they even made trouble under Stalin.
Yet at no time from the Imam Shamyl uprising to the declaration of independence by ex-Soviet general and nationalist thug Zhokar Dudaeyev did the Chechens ever do something like this.
For that you needed Radical Islamism.
Posted by: mark safranski on September 1, 2004 11:22 PMYou said:
"And when we do, how many will graves will we leave behind when Johnny comes marching home?"
Not nearly enough. We never do.
