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There is an undercurrent in our nation right now that we should do something to prevent people from "provoking" the Muslims by engaging in behavior or speech that is critical or disrespectfal of Islam. The argument is "It's rude anyway, I certainly wouldn't want to make a movie like The Innocence of Muslims or burn a Koran, so why should we face
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However, I worry that thanks to globalisation, there is a danger of crowdsourcing our diplomacy and strategy. Sometimes you do need to suck up to lunatic regimes or to exponents of odd expressions of the religious urge. In the past, this meant getting the ambassador to play nice, or - in our case - shunting over a minor royal. Now it's all or nothing.
All that said, the people who deliberately set out to provoke the Jihadis are for the most part not the ones being shot at. This makes them arses.
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Down this path lie the alternatives of anarchy or authoritarianism, and most likely authoritarianism after a period of anarchy. Down this path definitely lies the destruction of liberal democracy.
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For example, it looks as if it's going to be impossible to do any kind of hearts and minds in religiously sensitive cultures - you just have to assume that some dick back home will publically burn a koran.
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We did not accept false surrenders and then forgive the fighters: when the Japanese started making false surrenders on the battlefield and then grenading their would-be captors, we responded by simply shooting down their soldiers when they tried to surrender. When the Japanese showed their capacity for atrocity by murdering their prisoners, we fire-bombed their cities from the air. When they showed willingness to fight even after we fire-bombed their cities, we escalated to atomic weapons.
We did not accept any limitations save our own physical capabilities on the level of violence that we were willing to do to the Japanese until they surrendered. As far as I know, had the Japanese ( ... )
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It behooves us to put the Muslim world on notice that in America we have the right to offend Islam, and that they must take it for granted that some Americans will choose to offend Islam, and that if the Muslim world seeks to do anything by way of punishment or deterrence then whatever faction attempts to do or does this will shortly be made very sorry, by the business end of American guns, missiles and bombs. And we must be willing to kill and kill and kill as many Muslims as it takes to drive this message home -- because if we don't do this, then we will eventually begin yielding our freedoms to Islam ( ... )
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Thus, you guys have a Right to burn Korans or any other religious text.
However, that doesn't make you Nice. (In fact, if you are setting out to deliberately provoke, rather than merely enjoying a right for its own sake, that makes you an Ass.)
My concern is how we are going to navigate the resulting diplomatic environment in which anybody who can be provoked will be provoked.
Is shoot lots of people and bomb them the best you've got?
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However, that doesn't make you Nice. (In fact, if you are setting out to deliberately provoke, rather than merely enjoying a right for its own sake, that makes you an Ass.)I am guessing that the people who burn Korans do it as a symbolic rejection of Islam. This is not Nice, but then, why are they under any responsiblity to be more Nice to Islam than to Christianity or Judaism? The answer -- "because Muslims will respond with violence," if accepted means that you have just handed every other religious and philosophical faction in the world an incentive to become more violent so as to gain more respect -- or at least fearful forbearance from criticism ( ... )
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Thinking about this as a general question, when some other Power or Powers are determined to enforce something unendurable upon one's own people, "shoot lots of people and bomb them" is the best that anyone has got. The only other alternative is surrender on the principle, and I think that this is a principle on which we cannot afford to surrender.
The exception would be if the other Power or Powers making the demand were stronger than us, in which case the indicated strategy would be temporary surrender, while building up to fight again another day. And yes, I'm perfectly aware that this is exactly how the Muslim Powers would view yielding to us now -- which is why I don't think in the long run we'll be able to tolerate the existence of self-governed Muslim Powers, unless they culturally advance to a superior degree of tolerance than that which they possess currently ( ... )
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However, I'm just trying to work out how this will go in the real world.
E.g. how do we stop the zero tolerance approach handing medium term geopolitical and economic advantage to countries who prevent their populations offending the crazies.
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E.g. how do we stop the zero tolerance approach handing medium term geopolitical and economic advantage to countries who prevent their populations offending the crazies.
Strike hard and decisively enough that those Powers which base, shelter, support and refuse to incarcerate -- or worse, are run by -- their crazies, are no longer of much diplomatic, economic or geopolitical importance.
A good first step with regards to the resource which makes the Mideast strategically-relevant would be to really fight "wars for oil" -- which is to say, when we win, we sequester the oil production for decades in advance for "reparations." In the case of countries without significant oil, we could impose other penalties upon their defeat. Egypt, for instance, has run the Suez Canal long enough, thank you ...
General point: we have to get serious about these wars. We have to start seeing them as the wars for survival that they are, long-term, and stop seeing them as "wars ( ... )
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The requirement to curb freedom of speech represents a violation of Natural Right; like all such violations, it reduces the efficiency of the society as a whole. Specifically, it makes it more difficult for such societies to have peaceful, liberal-democratic debates about how to deal with the problems posed by Muslim immigrants, increasing the likelihood that resentments on the part of non-Muslims and natives will be allowed to build unanswered to the point of what Fjordman terms an "extraconstitutional excursion" of some kind: rioting, fascistic coups or risings, or actual civil war.
Furthermore, once one has submitted to the first outrageous demand, new outrageous demands will follow, and continue either until the society has accepted dhimmitude, or until the society finally ( ... )
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We may need to step up and bomb them...
...or we may simply need to drill on our own soil, withdraw from the market, seek penalties through the UN against those who buy from terrorist countries, and watch these corrupt economies collapse under their own bloated weight one by one.
At least, it would make a good start, and it would give us time to build up our own military and weaken the enemy should a direct strike become necessary.
I think it would be a good first step.
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Um, THEIR response to "someone said something mean" is "kill people and blow shit up." Our response to them killing is to kill them back ( ... )
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