Comments Posted By Drongo
Displaying 141 To 150 Of 246 Comments
"NOBODY HERE 'CEPT US INCOMPETENT JIHADIS..."
"To recognize the threat is to engage in “scare tactics†about it whereas blithely ignoring it demonstrates reason, courage, and grace under fire."
See what I mean? He never suggests ignoring this threat, he is just trying to point out that the media excitment is all pointing towards this threat while ignoring other either more prepared and heavily armed groups, or actual attcks because they don't fit the desired narrative. The problem with this is that it leads people to form opinions on only a small subset of the available facts.
You only have to look at people who seriously anticipate a day when Southern Baptists will be forced by a covert Islamic army to convert to Islam to see where this leads. You end up with a populace convinced that eventually Islam will have to be confronted with nuclear fire or we'll all die, rather than one that can look at terrorism in context and say "Oh, you mean all political groups have their violent nutjobs, well maybe we should focus on the nutjobs, not the ideology".
I expect that sort of nonsense from Malkin and such like, but here?
Comment Posted By Drongo On 9.05.2007 @ 08:51
"And TRex has this thing nailed. Why get our panties in a bunch over these fanatics?"
I think that if you read his post you'll find that TREX was commenting on the fact that a bomb actually went off at an abortion clinic and a bunch of seriously deranged right-wing militia types were arrested with an arsenal of guns and bombs and the All-Jihad-All-The-Time rightwing blogs completely ignored them both. He was noting that every unattributed piece of terrorism (or terrorism looking activity) has been eagerly painted as Jihadi action (such as the VT massacre and the 'Ishmail' stuff) in short order, while genuine terrorist groups are ignored if they don't fit the evil ROP meme.
You must know this because following on from the quote you pasted is this;
"I guess the thing that chaps my ass about the whole thing is that there were two other major domestic terror plots uncovered last week, but what has Wolf Blitzer had to say about that? Nothing. Nil."
And he then goes on to detail them. Now you must have read that bit, you must have seen that he in no way suggested that shooting people in an Islamist fervour is a good thing, or that these nutballs shouldn't have been arrested. You must have got his point that there is a group of commentators who seem to want to promote any and all Islamic terrorists as the end of civilisation as we know it while ignoring the more extreme behaviours of the far right.
And since you obviously know this, because you read the posting, I cannot work out what your point is. Is it that it is absurd to imagine that Bush et al would never consider political issues when dealing with issues of law and order? Is it that a jokey tone is inapproriate when dealing with Jihadis so dumb that they think posting their Jihadi video to a shop for remastering is a good idea?
Honestly, I don't get it.
Comment Posted By Drongo On 9.05.2007 @ 08:32
IRAQI POLITICAL CRISIS THREATENS ALL
"People like that have to at least accept responsibility for confirming in the Muslim mind this utter falsehood."
I don't think that it is a falsehood. I think that you are being about as rational as a 9/11 truther here. I think that the desire to control access to the oil reserves of Iraq and indeed any aspect of our interest in the Middle East is driven exclusively by oil these days. If it weren't for the oil the whole place would be a meaningless desert full of wandering tribesmen.
"And don’t forget, what the Muslim fundamentalist despises the most is the social and moral debauchery of modern liberalism. "
Who cares? I'm in about as much danger from Muslim fundamentalists taking over my country as you are. Ie none whatsoever. Get a sense of proportion, please...
I mean, honestly, how do you see the invasion and conversion of the country going? At what point does the police force enforce Islamic morality? Where does the army of Islamic warriors come from?
"Where’s the outrage from leftist feminists and militant homosexuals toward the Muslim predation which increasingly targets people like them when they would be the first targets under an Islamic global caliphate?"
There's never going to be a global caliphate. I deplore their hatred of homosexuals and women. Again, I presume that this goes without saying. Maybe we all need to preface our posts with disclaimers. "People are responsible for their own actions" "I desipe people who hate other for their race, gender, religion or sexuality" "I want everyone to be at peace but failing that I am willing to defend myself". Do I need to carry on or can we assume that I am not lusting for the glory of Bin Laden?
"Instead these liberals consider President Bush and American conservatives their first and foremost enemies – an “enemy†that has exercised EXTREME tolerance toward those who have coarsened the public debates with half-truths and failed social prescriptions, and degraded American traditions and the social structure of this country with their destructive attempts at social engineering for the last fifty years. It’s true and you know it."
If you don't regard the government with extreme scepticism then I don't think you quite caught the whole idea behind your own country. Ditching Habeas Corpus, expanding detention without trial, increased surveillance, torture. These things are not the signs of an Executive that is headed in the right direction. How will you feel when these powers are wielded by Democrats? Or by anyone else who runs the country in the future. Freedoms are easily given up and hard won.
I don't get how people can't see this stuff. "EXTREME tolerance" eh? As opposed to what?
Comment Posted By Drongo On 9.05.2007 @ 17:00
"Drongo, your mired in false moral equivalences. "
No, the quote is. The reasoning in the call to arms simply places those who act above those who criticise those who act. It presumes "Worthy action" without making any attempt to tell you how to tell apart worth action from unworthy action. I would suggest that attempting something that has massive potential negative consequences and dubious returns is the definition of unworthy action, for all the claimed heroism of the actor.
" if you want to falsely equate taking out a despotic regime with terrorist attacks on a civilian target, then go ahead and live in that world of twisted nuance."
Of course I don't. The quote does though.
"As to your inability to blame the real perps who are blowing up moderate Muslims, then you’re the perfect apologist for jihadists."
People who blow up moderate Muslims are to blame for blowing up moderate Muslims. Happy? I haven't said it because it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain. I presumed it didn't need saying. If it'll make you happy;
"People are responsible for their own actions"
OK?
"As you well know, close to 98% of all moderate Muslims taken out since 9/11 has been the result of Muslim jihadists and that point should be made over and over to the “moderate†Muslim world. "
As you well know, that number is plucked out of the air. Nobody over there is reliably keeping track of who is killing who.
"Your kneejerk reaction in wanting to blame-Bush/blame-America/blame-the-troops by claiming we’re inciting jihadists to commit such heinous crimes against their own brethren is precisely the kind of attitude jihadists want to instill in their useful idiots in the free world."
I don't blame Bush for car bombers. I blame the car bombers for being ar bombers. I blame Bush for his part in making being a car bomber both more attractive and easier. I don't really blame the troops for shooting up cars because they thought that they might be suicide bombers, though recntly revealed attitudes amongst them casts some doubt on that position. I blame politicians for putting soldiers in a position where they will inevitably shoot innocent civilians.
Most of all I blame Bush for being as strategically deaf as a post, incompetent and just generally incapable of learning from experience. I mean honestly, this war has been and will continue to be for a long time, a strategic disaster. Surely this is indisputable by now?
"That’s like claiming the reason for gang violence and murder in America is because the existence of law enforcement incites them to do such things as blowback. Not a perfect analogy but a good one nonetheless."
Expand the analogy and you might end up with something. If the police and the state create a situation where you cannot trust the police, cannot protect your own property, see kidnap as a routine part of life, and have no way of making any money to feed your family, then you would have a state effectively manufacturing criminals from non-criminals.
People are responsible for their actions, that's sure enough, but when your options are limited to poverty, instability and terror or joining the gang and being somebody it is hardly surprising that some people choose the latter.
Comment Posted By Drongo On 9.05.2007 @ 16:42
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
That's just an argument for action rather than inaction. By this argument, the 9/11 hijackers are more worthy than the crowds chanting "Death to America" because they got off their backsides and did something brave about their beliefs. That's a rather Viking morality I'd say.
The switch point in the quote is here "who spends himself in a worthy cause". It begs the question "What is a worthy cause?" The only way to work out what is a worthy cause is by thinking, not acting and the only way to produce clear thinking is to embrace criticism.
Another flaw in this rousing call to arms is that, by the reasoning presented, if someone puts you all in when you have nothing but a small pair, you should call without hesitation everytime, and ignore the poker books because the day belongs to those who act. That's a good way to lose.
"But I believe its also true that many Americans refuse to see the elephant in the room, that is unless Muslim moderates begin to “take back their religion†as they promised they would do, Islamic fundamentalists will continue to flourish and continuing defining greater Islam in more fascist terms."
I'm only a lowly critic, but I think I would question whether the best way to ensure the victory of the moderates is to blow up large numbers of largely moderate Muslims, run an occupation that, even if not an accurate impression, leaves millions of Muslims convinced that the Christans are killing them to steal their oil.
That would tend to radicalise people I would imagine.
Comment Posted By Drongo On 9.05.2007 @ 00:43
Nicely put. The thing is, this political crisis may be coming to a head, but it has been the primary reason why the whole war failed in the first place. Very few people seemed to wonder about different groups would be motivated in a democratic society in Iraq until it had already happened.
As for what the US administration will do about it? Well, nothing except say how well things are going, how slow progress is continuing, how things will get better, all the usual bromides. They simply have no choice. There is nothing short of withdrawl that the Bush Admin can threaten the Shiites with (and remember that removing Malaki's administration is not really an option. The numbers are the same in parliament as they were 6 months ago so the leader will come from SCIRI or Dawa again, and exactly the same game will start up again.
As for ripping up the government and starting again with a US appointed Sunni coalition, well, there would go whatever remaining tatters of legitimacy still hanging onto the Iraqi state. The police and army would immediately revert to their open sectarian affiliations, and whether they obeyed any orders at all would be purely down to whether their sectarian leaders agreed. The big problem here is that the powers of the state have changed since Saddam's time. In Saddam's time the police and army would be loyal because (1) They got the perks, (2) They would get the pain if they weren't. There was some favouring of Sunnis over Shiites, particularly in the officer corp, but nowhere near as much as people think. It was more a case of people from the favoured tribes being Sunnis rather than the Sunnis being favoured.
Now, of course, thanks to De-Baathification, Shiite militas signing up, the intra-unit enforcement of sectarian division (you get Shiites brigades, Kurdish brigades, etc) that loyalty to the state is gone. They Police in particular are only as loyal as they are to the central government (and that isn't very much) is because their sectarian leaders are the ones giving the orders, and because they like those orders (run lucrative checkpoints, kill Sunnis, run extortion rackets, etc).
You replace these sectarian leaders with a bunch of Sunni secularists (and, as far as the average Iraqi seems to think, 'CIA tools' in the case of Allawi) and you will see how far that loyalty lies. The police and army could well rise up in response to any such coup seeing yet another betrayal of the Shiites in favour of the Sunnis by the US. And you've been training and equipping them (fortunately not very well by accounts). At least you haven't given them any serious airpower.
And as for the politics of it all, what is poor Malaki supposed to do? His religious leaders are telling him not to let any Baathists back in. He now knows (as a result of the security wall) that he has no actual political power and the only people left protecting him are his hardcore Shiite bretheren and the Kurds. The Kurds will abandon him at the first sign of actually giving the Sunnis what they want (and frankly the Kurds want the weakest of weak central government in order to suppress Kirkuk and annex it in the next year or so) and then he and his party will be toast.
We said, when the constitution was passed (if we could get a word in edgewise beyond the whooping and hollering) that the sight of massive rejection from the Sunni community, and promises of reforms and new referenda in the next few years was going to lead to a point where the whole political mess was going to fall apart. And here we are. No serious attempt was made to reform the constitution and the Sunnis have finally recognised that they were lied to, as they suspected.
What would have been a good idea would have been to construct the constitution at a leisurely pace, not shoehorning in long term disasters for the benefit of a set political timeline. The US electoral timeline and desire to see "turning points" was one factor that led us here, make no mistake.
The problem is the same as it always was. The three communities want opposing things, the Shiites want to be in charge and punish the Sunnis, the Sunnis want to be in charge and to not be oppressed by the Shiites, the Kurds want to leave all these people in their dust, put up some big fencing and have a state.
Of course the big gag is in imagining that the Green Zone government has any real power in Iraq anyway. You could replace Al-Malaki with my cat and the country probably wouldn't notice in any meaningful way. Well, that's not quite true. Re-election posters would be cuter.
Comment Posted By Drongo On 8.05.2007 @ 07:41
ECO-NANNIES DECRY "LARGE" FAMILIES
"It’s very similar to the abortion paradigm, one has to wonder how many modern-day Einsteins, Jeffersons, George Washington Carver, Beethovens, and other great men and women have been prevented from being born in the name of some left-wing social prescription."
This argument pretty quickly leads to "Every sperm is sacred" logic.
In other words, if every unborn human is a potential tragic loss, then we should be working as hard as we can to avoid missing these chances. Therefore we should all be having children at every possible opportunity.
Since this is obviously ridiculous, there must be something wrong with the initial premise.
(Of course one thing wrong with the premise is that for every Einstein there will be a Hitler, but that's not the only thing)
Comment Posted By Drongo On 8.05.2007 @ 01:20
Without wanting to defend trutherism, I would be interested to see a similar poll regarding political breakdown and belief in creationism.
People just ain't rational a lot of the time.
Comment Posted By Drongo On 5.05.2007 @ 15:56
DEMS TO VOTERS: "WE WERE ONLY KIDDING."
"“How do we salvage something out of the debacle in Iraq†rather than “How can we get into the White House in 2009†but there you have it."
Without expressing any great respect for the Democrat stand (I think they should stand with principle and damn the consequences. I think the time is right for such action) I have point out that a not unresonable view is that the only way to "salvage something out of the debacle in Iraq†is to "get into the White House in 2009"
Comment Posted By Drongo On 3.05.2007 @ 14:28
BUSH VETOES CONGRESSIONAL INVITATION TO AL QAEDA TO SLAUGHTER IRAQIS
"Now there have already been any number of people on this thread who have pointed out the tribalism of Arabs like the Iraqis as well as the sectarian hatreds of the Shia for the Sunni cannot be quelled and is in effect uncontrollable, all-is-lost!"
Not me. I think they can reach an accord as they have in the past once the occupation forces have left. Not instantly and not perfectly but certainly not until then.
"You rarely see the radical anti-war left spewing their bile and venom about the daily atrocities committed by Muslim fundamentalists around the world and particularly in Iraq except for some obligatory condemnation of a particularly heinous beheading like what happened to Danny Pearl or David Berg."
Not that I'm radical left, but what's the point? Once you've made it clear that you don't think that blowing up busses full of children is acceptable, and that those who perpetrate these acts are evil, what are you supposed to say?
They aren't going to listen to us anyway. On the other hand, in a democracy we might actually have a chance at changing the war-happy attitudes that we have at home.
"C’mon, Bush equals Hitler? 9/11 was an inside job? No War For Oil? All killing is the same?"
1) No he isn't, but he's certainly an authoritarian power grabber. I hope you like it when a Dem president wields all these surveillance, detention without trial, excecutive secrecy, unitary executive powers. He's hardly enhanced American democracy has he?
2) Yeah, well, conspiracies are as they do.
3) No, obviously oil had nothing to do with this war. Obviously. Our leaders were surprised to find ll this black stuff, that is vital to national security and while is being increasingly bought up by rival great powers, under their feet when they liberated the Iraqi people. To my mind saying "This war wasn't about oil" makes about as much sense as saying "9/11 was an inside job". It just contradicts blatantly obvious reality.
4) All killing is the same? It feels that way when it is your family being killed which is why it doesn't matter whether the civvy was killed as part of a murder campaign or by indifference. It all end up being blamed on the occupation. Yes, it is unfair but it is how it works.
Comment Posted By Drongo On 3.05.2007 @ 01:52
