Well, at least he’s not asking that anymore, is he? Even McL seems able now to grasp the elementary point that, if you’re a member of a faith group in the name of which dozens, even hundreds of the most violent atrocities around the world are being committed, and you don’t support or approve of this, the very least you should do is make that known. In fact, of course, the most basic common sense would tell you that those committing these heinous acts in the name of your beliefs represent a very serious threat to those very beliefs as you understand them, and need to be dug out of your midst, your communities, your schools, and your places of worship, root and branch, and exposed to the world as the heretical criminals they are — wouldn’t it? And is that what we see? Not quite.

You see, McL, words are cheap. I don’t doubt you could cherry-pick a book full of phrases and quotes purporting to show how this or that mullah denounced that or this particular terrorist group, act, or tactic. (I particularly liked the chutzpah of using the “spiritual leader of Hezbollah“, of all people, as an Islamic authority condemning the 9/11 attacks on the grounds that they were “in a distant land”!) But it would be easy to fill a book shelf, or entire libraries, with full-context rants from extremist mosques and madrassas around the world inciting believers to violence in the name of defending Islam. And the infamous “bloody borders” of Islam — from Nigeria and Darfur, to Chechnya, Kashmir, Thailand, Indonesia, and many others (not even to mention, of course, Israel, Europe, and America) — attest to the effectiveness of those words. And that’s the real nature of the problem — for any so-called “moderate” muslim at least as much as for anyone else.

The deeper problem may lie in the nature of Islam itself — for one that’s become so widespread, it’s a peculiarly brittle belief system, resistant to change and interpretation, prone to fundamentalist and literalist insistence. For such a religion, the emphasis on reason and the individual, and the consequent rise of secular science and technology that characterizes modern capitalist societies, represents an especially acute threat — and when such a religion has been historically ready to resort to violence as a means of dealing with threats, it’s little wonder that such a resort gains such ready following now. The question is whether the planet is large enough, any longer, to hold both such an Islam and the modern world? At this point, I don’t know the answer to that question, and I very much doubt anyone does. But we all need to be ready for the answer to be no.

Response: Lewis is all over the place.. one day he says X , the next he says Y… in any case, it’s not up to Lewis to say who is or isn’t acting according to Islam.. Al Qaeda is satisified that it is and thinks it is. It certainly isn’t motivated by any other identifible ideology.

Claim: This or that cleric says it’s wrong to attack innocent people, committ suicide , etc.

Response: Yes , it’s true there is a real difference of opinion in regards to the tactics used in the 3rd Jihad. But no one should be fooled.. Islamic language is not Western language… who we consider to be innocent people isn’t neccessarily who they think are innocent.

Plus most sunni scholars hold to the view that it is illegal to engage in Offenisve Jihad without the Khalifah being in existance.Only the Khalif has the authority to compell all Muslims to engage in offensive Jihad.

so yes, they may thikn AQ is wrong now to engage in war.. but they would be encouraging them with no problem if a khalif was here.

Plus many Islamic leaders have already sent us many many invitations to join Islam… that sort of invitation is really an ultimatum.. so we are not considered innocent.. since we have come into knowedlge of Allah and rejected the call to Islam.. thus we are at war with Allah.

Claim: The evidence is overwhelming: the vast majority of Muslims oppose terrorism.

Response: Unsubstantied wishful thinking. And if true. is irrelevent. When you have 1.x Billion people, all you need is a small minority and you still have millions of people on your side. Since the majority does nothing to restrain the jihadists , they are of no consequence.

Claim: The idea that Muslims at large do not oppose the terrorists in their midst has an odd currency within the right wing media.
You would think people who argue that democracy will thrive among the moderate Muslims in Iraq if and when Islamic radicals are defeated there would see the contradiction of then arguing either that moderate Muslims do not exist or that these moderate Muslims aren’t opposed to the extremists or, if they are, they’re too quiet about it.

Response: Well the hope is, the Iraqis will see the value in humane civil society after having seen the scorge of national tryanny and islamic terrorism.

That is the big gamble Bush took… can a third option from the other two dead-ends save from the Middle East from the most violent expressions of Islam. After the threats to Iraqis are gone.. we shall see how they react toward us.. will they revive their violence aginst us. or will they have learned to trust us and be friendly. I have my doubts.. but that is the great hope.

Claim: Vince P and his ilk are on the other side, of course, parroting bin Laden’s risible medieval claims that Islam requires fanatical violence.

Response: Pure Islam does require such. And the fact that Al Banna and Khomieni and others revived Jihad after a long period of it being dormant is proof that the doctrine will always be around waiting for someone to take it up .. like a reccessive gene.

Claim Their propaganda denying the existence or legitimacy of hundreds of millions of peace-loving Muslims is a rather cruel affront to the American soldiers sent to Afghanistan and Iraq based on the idea that the Muslim majorities there want nothing more than peace and democracy.

Response: It’s obvious our little ideologue didn’t read what I said carefully.. I’ll repeat this part:

“Muslims.. the people, span the entire spectrum of human experience. Most have no intention of doing any sort of violence but that isn’t because of Islam, it is in spite of it.”

We didn’t go to Afghanistan to spread democracy .. we went there to end the threat of the terrorist networks and are now stuck having to babysit the place again. and the way you wrote your last sentence screams “disingenious” to me.

Lewis writes:
“Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda followers do not represent Islam and their actions directly contradict basic Islamic principles and teachings.”

http://humanities.psydeshow.org/political/lewis.htm

Lewis develops this idea at length, while making clear that there are important aspects of Islam that distinguish it from other religions and which must be understood before attempting to understand what bin Laden means. As a conservative, he argues for a military response to Islamic radicalism, while destroying the notion that Islam itself is the enemy.

Contemporary Muslim clerics and scholars who have made public declarations of their opposition to terrorism include:

http://www.sullivan-county.com/identity/bin_laden.html
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Osama bin Laden is the true face of a billion Muslims, or the true voice of the Koran,” said Dr. Safir Akhtar, a research scholar at the Islamic University in Islamabad, a Saudi-financed institution that has long been a magnet for young militants from around the Islamic world.
Sheik Fadlallah, spiritual leader of Hezbollah, now 66, has been relentless in his condemnation of the attacks in America. He preaches that they were “not compatible with Shariah law,” the Koranic legal code, nor with the Islamic concept of jihad, and that the perpetrators were not martyrs as Mr. bin Laden has claimed, but “merely suicides,” because they killed innocent civilians, and in a distant land, America. In an interview with a Beirut newspaper, Al Safir, Sheik Fadlallah again accused Mr. bin Laden of having ignored Koranic texts.
Sheik Yusuf Abdullah al-Qaradawi, with a history of anti-American militancy even longer than Sheik Fadlallah’s, expresses a similar view. From his base in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, the 75-year-old sheik has issued Islamic fatwas, or decrees, on issues like the need for Muslims to boycott McDonald’s restaurants, But on the Sept. 11 attacks, he has used language similar to that of Mr. Bush and other American politicians. “Islam, the religion of tolerance, holds the human soul in high esteem, and considers the attack on innocent human beings a grave sin,” said. “Even in times of war, Muslims are not allowed to kill anybody save the one who is engaged in face-to-face confrontation with them.
More examples:
http://www.usembassyjakarta.org/lawmaker.html
Representative Joseph Pitts (Republican of Pennsylvania) in an October 30 speech to the House of Representatives quoted the Grand Shaykh of Al-Azhar in Egypt, whom he referred to as “the highest and most respected Islamic authority in the world,” on the types of acts forbidden by the Koran.
Shaykh Tantawi has stated that the Koran “specifically forbids the kinds of things the Taliban and al-Qaida are guilty of,” Pitts said. Shaykh Tantawi, Pitts continued, has said that the “jihad” Usama bin Laden has called for against America “is invalid and not binding on Muslims.”Pitts quoted the Grand Shaykh as saying, “Islam rejects all of these acts.” The Shaykh added that terrorism is un-Islamic, Pitts said.
“Killing innocent civilians is a horrific, hideous act that no religion can approve,” Pitts quoted the religious leader as saying.

The evidence is overwhelming: the vast majority of Muslims oppose terrorism.
The idea that Muslims at large do not oppose the terrorists in their midst has an odd currency within the right wing media.
You would think people who argue that democracy will thrive among the moderate Muslims in Iraq if and when Islamic radicals are defeated there would see the contradiction of then arguing either that moderate Muslims do not exist or that these moderate Muslims aren’t opposed to the extremists or, if they are, they’re too quiet about it.

Vince P asks:
“So who will dissuade the terrorists? How will they and their future recruits ever be dissuaded from believing they are doing exactly what Allah commands from them?”

The best persuaders are surely the vast majority of Muslim leaders in both the religious and secular worlds whose interpretation of the religion rejects the call to violent aggression.

Vince P and his ilk are on the other side, of course, parroting bin Laden’s risible medieval claims that Islam requires fanatical violence. Their propaganda denying the existence or legitimacy of hundreds of millions of peace-loving Muslims is a rather cruel affront to the American soldiers sent to Afghanistan and Iraq based on the idea that the Muslim majorities there want nothing more than peace and democracy.

Okay, fair enough. I take a different view, obviously, for the reasons we’ve already been over.

I will say, as a former lefty myself, that I understand your comment about leftist “idealism”, but I’d be cautious about using that as an excuse, especially for some of its more egregious excesses — many of those involved in the Hitler Youth, for example, might have been described as idealists as well after all.

And I’ll also say that I agree completely with the notion that war is or should be always a very reluctant option, but sometimes unavoidable nevertheless.

It’s probably too difficult to explain my views in a forum like this, but I understand where you’re coming from Sally, but it really doesn’t describe my political position. I am very passionate about my viewpoint, and when I support and oppose different policies I do so with a great deal of enthusiasm. It just happens to be the case that sometimes I end up fervently supporting a position the Democrats support, and sometimes a position Republicans support, and sometimes I have an opinion that neither party explicitly supports.

For example, while I do believe one should go to war reluctantly (not because I am a pacifist, but because I believe war is a very dangerous business and can backfire horribly — so you’d better do it reluctantly) — but when you do go to war, you should do it to win. Thus, I opposed the Iraq war — but even more, I opposed the half-assed way we went about it. IF we were going to go to war with Iraq I felt we should do so with far more troops, far more planning, particularly for the post-war reconstruction. So I totally agree with your comment about being run over if you’re in the middle of the road: but I think the Iraq war is a perfect example of this: we went to war, but half-heartedly.

So I suppose I categorically reject your characterization of my views as “avoiding making the hard choices.” I supported the Afghan war totally and wholeheartedly, and I had arguments with my leftist friends (who, despite what people think on this board, even though their views are politically extreme — are also idealistic people who want to help the world and certainly aren’t wanting the US to be destroyed) in which I strongly supported the Afghan war and disputed their view that it was both a mistake and would end in disaster. I had no reticence whatsoever to “making the hard choice” at least when it comes to my political view and what I tried to persuade my fellow citizens about.

But when it came to the Iraq war, I came to a different conclusion, and have argued as forcefully for that as I did the opposite with the Afghan war.

Everyone thinks God is on their side in a war. That is just how humans think.

However, history is only on the side of the victors, given that the defeated often times no longer exist anymore.

History, as Neo says, will judge us all, I suppose, in the end.

So long as you are alive and free, yes, it will.

Democrats cheered our (initial) victory in Afghanistan

Victory is the only thing that justifies warfare. When the Demos thought America and Bush was winning, they shut up. When they thought people were losing, they started kicking the man when he was down. This is how humans behave, Mitsu. There is nothing surprising or new about it.

And it doesn’t mean the Democrats think they can win by making America lose, either. It just means that victory quiets the opportunists and traitors, while defeat or uncertainty brings out the seditionists and ambitious generals.

most Democrats think that war was a mistake

All wars are mistakes. If humans did everything right, there wouldn’t be a war, is that not correct?

If you want war and if you want to beat the other guy, then you will have to accept making mistakes as well. Only a utopian socialist and perfectionist, like the members of the modern Left and Democrat party, would favor perfection on Earth to any improvement in the lives of real human beings in Iraq and America.

That things are going poorly does vindicate those of us who opposed the war, so there’s a natural reaction:

General Lee was in favor of freeing slaves, yet when his state went to war, he put his all behind it. Such were the men and women who built America up to what she currently is. You think the Democrats were anywhere close to Lee’s model of duty and honor?

note that most Americans agree with this at this point. I don’t think any of these people are “traitorous” — they simply want a nightmare to end.-M

Your analysis of “most Americans” and Democrats are the same as your analyses of NATO, European countries, and the international community. Which is to say, flawed.

That’s why I oppose precipitous withdrawal, even though I opposed the war in the first place.

You’re not in office Mitsu, nor have you been offered power, wealth, and status if you can make Bush lose the war in Iraq.

Obviously you would have more reason and motivation to not want precipitous withdrawal. Which just goes to show why people use the phrase “political animals”. They are not exactly the same as homo sapien animals.

They believe we are wasting money and American lives needlessly.

They believe the resources would be better spent on welfare for Muslims, Mexicans, and blacks. Just because such socialist policies would bring them to power, doesn’t mean that their alliance with the Islamic jihad isn’t traitorous.

Until and unless that happens, it’s natural to presume that the more extreme elements are speaking for the group.-OC

Organized violence by the few can control 10-100 times their number. Even more than that, sometimes.

I’d presumed any Democratic support for the Afghan war as an after the fact rationalization when it wasn’t a disaster, but I may have been wrong.

The situation wasn’t ripe in 2001-3 for Democrat dissent and sabotage. As things went bad, the Democrats made a choice. Now they support Afghanistan because they want to stop fighting in Iraq, so that the enemies of Iraq can conquer it and then send forces to kill Afghanis in Afghanistan. That is how the Democrats support the war in Afghanistan, Occam.

The funny thing is, this board is the mirror image of liberal boards where I hang out and everyone thinks Republicans are out to destroy the country, Bush should be impeached, etc.

Obviously, as with mutually exclusive philosophies, only one philosophy can be right, both can’t be. There is a small chance that both philosophies are wrong, but then America would be screwed anyways if that was what was going on.

They’re all decent people who want the best for America, as far as I’m concerned.

That’s what the Athenians thought, but they were the ones that used resentment to try and execute Socrates, one of the greatest philosopher of the Greek world.

I can tell you Democrats are not leftists.

They don’t have to be. All they have to be are members of the Left. The real Leftists are very happy to order the flock around.

Who knows how many of these Quislings are in our govt… COUP COUP COUP

Executions of traitors would prevent the need for a coup, Vince. Especially since Democrats do not yet control the Presidency.

No one should or does demand that American soldiers, for example, “disown” the obscene and fatal torture that took place at Bagram, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Nor should they.

Given that they already did, you’re just on a country road now.

Therefore, it’s preposterous to ask them to “disown” those despicable acts.

Given that the Muslim world promotes fathers that kill their daughters, it is quite a different thing than the United States Army not liking Hollywood parties going on at Abu Ghraib.

Sometimes, Mitsu, the middle of the road is a safe and reasonable place to be, and sometimes it isn’t — in those times, not only is it a discreditable attempt to hide under a blanket of banalities and cliches from having to make hard decisions or choices (metaphors getting mixed, but you get the idea), it’s also a place where you can get you run over in either direction.

That’s not to say I support anyone who wants to prosecute all Democrats for treason, and certainly not anyone who hopes the military will stage a coup — if the people themselves won’t save the country, after all, the military certainly can’t and won’t. But, life being short, we need to focus on scenarios, hopes, and wishes that are a more immediate concern, and, despite the paranoid fantasies of some on the left, those kinds of blog comments are too unlikely and unserious to merit much handwringing. On the other hand, the insidious spread of far left defeatist and even seditious (see, e.g., the Pilger piece linked earlier) opinion within one of the two major political parties in this country is a concern that’s both real and immediate. I don’t say it’s general yet — the success of the surge to date is having its expected effect on a party that is driven by opportunism — and I certainly don’t say there isn’t an important difference between principled disagreement over a war and mere defeatism or worse. But I do say that the combination of a leftist ideology virulently hostile to the capitalist West in general, and a political party willing to prey upon war fatigue as a route to power, is a nasty mix, and badly needs exposure at every opportunity. It may sound nice and “balanced” to be opposed to extremism on all sides, but it’s more important to be opposed to the bad extremism that is the immediate threat.

There are extremists in both parties. There are Republicans who openly call for the establishment of a theocratic Christian state, which I imagine perhaps some of you posting here might even agree with, but which to my mind is a wholly un-American, even traitorous idea which violates everything the Founding Fathers stood for, not to mention would require an overturning of the First Amendment. The fact is you guys are focused only on extremism in others but fail to even realize there is extremism in your own midst.

I personally am opposed to extremism on all sides — I can’t think of any extremists on the right or left, domestic or foreign, whom I agree with.

Points: About ten percent of Indonesians polled thought bombing the Bali night club was a good idea to defend the faith. That being, the faith was killing Christians in East Timor until stopped by the UN led by Australians. That was also the reason for blowing up the UN mission in Baghdad. So stopping a slo-mo genocide impressed ten percent of Indonesians as an attack on the faith.
About twelve percent of Canadian Muslims polled thought the plot to blow up Parliament was a good idea.
Why are Saudi-funded wahhabi mosques in the US not empty? Who is in them? What does that mean?
When a Muslim in Tulsa wrote a letter to the editor saying Islam must eschew violence, he was thrown out of his mosque and threatened with violence. Are the people in his mosque “moderate Muslims” or “moderates” in the sense we would prefer? Is there an exodus from the mosque of moderate people who are starting a new congregation? Dean Esmay banned me for asking. Anybody know?

If moderate Muslims in the US are moderate in the sense we would like, what are they doing?
Where do our domestic nutcases come from?
Some, perhaps many, are getting caught before getting going. Are moderates dropping the dime?
Do we know?
Outside of retroactively reading terrorists out of the faith (“Beslan is not Islam”), what is Islam doing? Any Not In Our Name marches after, say, the London bombings?
There was a Muslim soldier reported on in the Detroit papers who was such a good American and a good soldier that when he went home to Dearborn his neighbors called him an Uncle Tom. There’s more to that story than the example of a Muslim soldier in the US Army.