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Wednesday, August 10, 2005

A Leftist Blogger Takes Issue With Me

My friend BP has commented (negatively) on my post The Religion Of Peace Strikes Again from 08/10/2005. BP says:

I'm sure the irony is lost on you... in your own post, you call their religion a culture of death, and yet "We need to destroy them at any cost." I guess two cultures of death is better than one, now?But, you've probably lost track of the numbers. I doubt you're paying attention to the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of innocents we've killed in Iraq already (that link's just representative, feel free to just google around appropriately.) Those are just the deaths. What about all of the emotionally damaged people we've created through this campaign?How, exactly, do we convince the fringe of them bent on death and destruction that it isn't worth their time, when we're killing 100x or more of them for each of us they kill, in a war *we* started? The problem with terrorism is that an "opponent" (I use the term loosly) can enact as much damage for a tiny fraction of the cost. If we continue to attack them, are we willing to spend 1000x as much to accomplish ... what? Killing off all the Muslims of the world? Is that even an *improvement*? I shudder to think at how many people out there share your outrage, while simultaneously sharing your lack of ability to contemplate the consequences of the actions you promote. The only difference between the terrorists/insurgents/folks you'd like to have killed and you is that you're part of the more powerful side, and, thus, you plot their deaths openly.
My reply:

First of all, "we" did not start this war. It was started by islamo-fascists long before 9/11, we only began to take it seriously after that cowardly attack. And we will finish it no matter what the cost.
So BP, you think we should fight back, but not with force because that would piss off the people who started this war. I don't follow. The use of force in our defense is acceptable and necessary. The tolerance of intolerance is intolerable. Defending ourselves is not adopting a "culture of death." We abhor violence; force must be used when called for. We aren't committing "wide spread acts of violence", we're engaging in a military operation against terrorist targets.

Just out of curiosity, how would you fight the terrorists, a couple of valium and nice long chat about their distant fathers and domineering mothers? While you're trying to understand them, they are trying to kill you. You cannot reason with the unreasonable.

I have news for you. The theo-fascists aren't pissed off because we've invaded them - they're pissed off because we are a free and democratic society. In their view-and all you need do is read their websites-our very existence threatens them and justifies their attacks on us. It isn't our response that brings their aggression, it’s our existence.

As Irshad Manji (a queer Muslim woman working to reform Islam) says: As Westerners bow down before multiculturalism, we anesthetize ourselves into believing that anything goes. We see our readiness to accommodate as strength - even a form of cultural superiority (though few will admit that). Radical Muslims, on the other hand, see our inclusive instincts as a form of corruption that makes us soft and rudderless. They believe the weak deserve to be vanquished.

As for the myth of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians being killed by the Coalition, please head on over the very un-conservative, hardly pro-American website iraqbodycount.com. They disagree with you. According the Iraq Body Count website, and as shown daily on the Irish Anti-War Movement's website, the actual count of non-combatant civilians killed in Iraq is under 30,000, most killed by islamo-fascist's car bombs, suicide attacks, beheadings, kidnappings, and executions. Not the Coalition.

As for the "extremists" as you call them, I'm sure they hate us, and that is a good thing. But according to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, most Muslim publics are expressing less support for terrorism than in the past. Confidence in Osama bin Laden has declined markedly in some countries, and fewer believe suicide bombings that target civilians are justified in the defense of Islam. You can check out the poll results first hand at Pew Global Attitudes Project.

Said Augustus Richard Norton, a Middle East specialist at Boston University: "Muslims, like non-Muslims, are plugged into the world. . . . It is one thing to be caught up in the supposed glamour of attacking the superpower or global bully, but it is quite another to have to pay the consequences economically, politically -- not to mention personally. This is what has happened in places like Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey, where many people now see extremist Islam as a threat to their lives, not a fantasy game of kick Uncle Sam."

By the way, the Pew Global Attitudes Project is co-chaired by Madeleine Albright and John Danforth-neither of whom could be described as neo-cons.

War sucks, its hell, its never desirable. It is unfortunately a necessary evil.

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