Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Just Another Infidel · 04-12-2003, 09:37 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by David M. Payne

Shrub called this a "crusade" early in his discussions about this war on terror in Iraq. I think in his heart he thinks this is a "just crusade" against Islamic terror. I think that he has millions of Christians around the world who agree with him in their hearts. Many millions in Islam think that Bush meant just what he said, it really is a Christian crusade against their religion and way of life. These guys are still mad about the last crusade. (1095 to the mid thirteenth century.) I don't worry so much about a war of a few years, but this could end up in an unconventional worldwide terrorist war that lasts for decades. And a war with chemical, biological perhaps even nuclear WMD.

Humanity had, in the last few centuries, moved most of the world wide religious conflicts that had resulted in wars to secular conflicts among different political ideologies. That�s pretty much gone with the dominance of capitalism and democratically based governance. Well religious conflict is back big time as 9/11 and Afghanistan and Iraq show. (Though I think it got hot again for us in Beirut in 83 with the barracks bombings that killed over 300 American and French troops.) As the old saying goes, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. This time I fear the religious zealots will have WMD, and some of the really fundamentalist zealots wouldn't mind wiping out every other person on the planet who disagrees with them. And of course God is on their side and will protect them, just ask them. With the advent of computerized biological weapons labs small enough to fit in a large bedroom or the back of a truck, and still big enough to develop something like the SARS virus, I fear the long-term biological danger more than anything else.

David,

I've just completed Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism. His original article which served as the seed for the book is here (The American Prospect).

Berman asserts that Islamism is nothing more than another form of totalitarianism and includes a "cult of death" similar to the totalitarian movements of the European Fascists, Soviet communists and, of course, the German Nazis.

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The antiliberal movements took root in Europe and in small degree even in the United States. As the years went by, though, those same movements spread to other places and eventually to every remote spot where Western culture had also spread--that is to say, almost everywhere. The antiliberal movements flourished in several different versions, sometimes in versions that seemed utter opposites of one another. The Communist insurgency in Russia, dating from the world war itself, was merely the first. Then came Italian Fascists, German Nazis, the Spanish crusade to re-establish the Reign of Christ the King, and so forth, each country producing movements of its own based on local mythologies and customs. Antiliberal movements of the left and the right saw in one another the worst of enemies (except when they saw one another as allies and brothers, which did happen). Yet each of the movements, in their lush variety, entertained a set of ideas that pointed in the same direction.

I don't believe it is inaccurate to characterize the war against Islamic terrorists as a religious war, but in the final analysis their goal is world domination. To create a world order which forbids diversity or competing ideas.

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The present conflict seems to me to be following the twentieth-century pattern exactly, with one variation: the antiliberal side right now, instead of Communist, Nazi, Catholic, or Fascist, happens to be radical Arab nationalist and Islamic fundamentalist. Over the last several decades, a variety of movements have arisen in the Arab and Islamic countries--a radical nationalism (Baath socialist, Marxist, pan-Arab, and so forth) and a series of Islamist movements (meaning Islamic fundamentalism in a political version). The movements have varied hugely and have even gone to war with one another--Iran's Shiite Islamists versus Iraq's Baath socialists, like Hitler and Stalin slugging it out. The Islamists give the impression of having wandered into modern life from the 13th century, and the Baathist and Marxist nationalisms have tried to seem modern and even futuristic.

But all of those movements have followed, each in its fashion, the twentieth-century pattern. They are antiliberal insurgencies. They have identified a people of the good, who are the Arabs or Muslims. They believe that their own societies have been infested with a hideous inner corruption, which must be rooted out. They observe that the inner infestation is supported by powerful external forces. And they gird their swords. Their thinking is apocalyptic. They imagine that at the end they, too, will succeed in establishing a blocklike, unchanging society, freed of the inner corruption--a purified society: the victory of good. They are the heirs of the twentieth-century totalitarians. Bush said that in his address to Congress on September 20, and he was right.

I don't care (or desire for that matter) that this war will take generations. I fear it will. I don't want to leave a world for my children and their children dedicated to the principle of "Islamic Truth."

JAI

David M. Payne · 04-12-2003, 10:50 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Just Another Infidel
David,

I've just completed Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism. His original article which served as the seed for the book is here (The American Prospect).
Berman asserts that Islamism is nothing more than another form of totalitarianism and includes a "cult of death" similar to the totalitarian movements of the European Fascists, Soviet communists and, of course, the German Nazis.
I don't believe it is inaccurate to characterize the war against Islamic terrorists as a religious war, but in the final analysis their goal is world domination. To create a world order which forbids diversity or competing ideas.
I don't care (or desire for that matter) that this war will take generations. I fear it will. I don't want to leave a world for my children and their children dedicated to the principle of "Islamic Truth."

JAI

Hi JAI. I couldn't agree with you more on your last sentence, there is no truth in Islam or any of the other Abrahamic religions, they are all based on myths and the desire to control people, and I said as much here. I think Berman is right, I think the problem is authoritarian systems in general, be they based on secular or religious ideals.

What I worry about the most is biological WMD in the hands of fanatics that would use them for whatever purpose. This isn't a new worry for me as an older story of mine, The Mensa Flu clearly shows.
I think that some elements of Islam are getting ready to plunge the whole world into the abyss of a terrorist world war. Shrub is doing the right things in confronting Islamic terrorism, but by cloaking it in the Christian religion, he is setting us up for a religious conflict that could last for decades, even centuries. As a Vietnam vet, I know just how long an unconventional war could go on, and this isn't good for the survival of humanity. It is somewhat of a dammed if you do, dammed if you don't problem though. I hope that the powers in the secular world can prevent this religious conflict from occurring, we will see.

David

Me and Me · 04-13-2003, 07:53 PM

How was sept 11 unique in the world?

David M. Payne · 04-13-2003, 11:25 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Me and Me
How was sept 11 unique in the world?

Quote:

One year ago, the world witnessed a unique kind of broadcasting - the mass murder of thousands, live on television. As a lesson in the pitiless cruelty of the human race, September 11 was up there with Pol Pot's Mountain of Skulls in Cambodia, or the skeletal bodies stacked like garbage in the Nazi concentration camps. An unspeakable act so cruel, so calculated and so utterly merciless that surely the world could agree on one thing-nobody deserves this fate.

Get it now J.M&M ?

David

Ultron · 04-14-2003, 03:01 AM

9-11 didn't provoke a war? What was Afghanistan, a picnic? I'm sure the Taliban would be suprised to hear America did nothing as a result of their attacks on the WTC and Pentagon.

Boro Nut · 04-14-2003, 09:34 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ultron
I'm sure the Taliban would be suprised to hear America did nothing as a result of their attacks on the WTC and Pentagon.

I think the Taliban would be surprised to hear anything about anytning at the moment. If they're not dead then at least their eardrums are fucked.

Boro Nut

Amen-Moses · 04-14-2003, 10:11 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Warwick
Could you please elaborate on this point? I thought the US was always against the IRA.

Why would you think that? Could you maybe point to any acts by the US government which would lead you to that conclusion, maybe point to a few arrests or deportations of terrorists funders, maybe show me a news item about the closure of IRA fund raising organisations, anything like that would do!

It is only since 9/11 that the US government has begrudgingly taken a negative stance on the IRA as it has with many other organisations that it used to either directly support or turn a blind eye to in the past. To have not done so would have been too hypocritical even for Bush & Co.

Amen-Moses

Monkeybot · 04-14-2003, 10:42 AM

I've actually read this article before -- I think it was posted to II a few months ago.

Quote:

Originally posted by David M. Payne
How many democracies are there in the Middle East, or in the Muslim world? You can count them on the fingers of one hand - assuming you haven't had any chopped off for minor shoplifting. I love America, yet America is hated.

How many democracies has the U.S. supported in the Middle East? Saudi Arabia? Oops. Iran? Er... Money for the Taliban? Um, forget about that.

In all of these cases, the US supported corrupt, brutal regimes. In all three cases, there were terrorist acts in retaliation -- half of the 9/11 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia, we had a hostage crisis in Iran, and 'nuff said about the Taliban.

Honestly, I agree with people who said we should look at our Middle East policy in light of the 9/11 attacks. I am certainly not claiming that the US "got what it deserves" or any such nonsense. But obviously, these people are angry at us, and I think it's only *tactically* smart that we look at what we may be doing to engender such feelings. I think it's cold, hard reality that the US may have had a hand in creating the conditions that spawned the terrorists. Our support of the brutally inefficient Saudi regime is case in point. SA's unemployment rate is something like 30 percent. 30 percent! Think how many young men that is, sitting around, broke, angry and disenfranchised. Thomas Friedman points out that with the advent of globalism, not only are these people poor and powerless, they can see other countries where this is not the case. That adds up to a deep sense of disempowerment and frustration.... and what comes along promises a way out? Islamic fundamentalism.

Again, I am certainly not saying this is completely the US' fault; there are lots of factors going on here that are not related to us. To be honest, I can't think of a graceful way to get out of that situation, so I would be willing to give an administration the benefit of the doubt. But the fact that we support their government does make us, to some degree, responsible for what goes on over there.

I got to see Tom Friedman give a speech a few weeks ago, and he brought up a really interesting point -- that ME countries with the most pro-American governments tend to have the most anti-American populations. We make an easy scapegoat for these regimes' failings; partially because it is always easier to blame the outsiders, and partially because we're the ones writing the checks to these regimes. We can't really do much about the former, but the latter is well within our grasp.

Me and Me · 04-14-2003, 01:08 PM

So it was unique because it was on tv?

David M. Payne · 04-15-2003, 11:31 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Me and Me
So it was unique because it was on tv?

Jeeze J.M&M, It was unique in that the targets were civilian (except the pentagon) and the weapons used were civilian planes full of people who had nothing to do with any grudge Osama bin Laden had, save they were Americans. It was apparent that the plan was to have the second plane hit the other tower AFTER the strike on the first one was being televised. Obviously the plan was for a big media event, and it doesn�t get much bigger than mass murder live on TV, does it?
As for why this is such a terrible act, if you can't figure it out on your own, then I can't help you in your search for your own misplaced sense of compassion for the deaths of these innocent people. If you can't see the parallels between this act and what Hitler and Stalin among others did, then you need to look into your own mind and try and discover what allows you to ignore the monstrosity of this act, and why you can't see it for what it is.

David

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04-13-2003, 07:53 PM	#13
Me and Me Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: California Posts: 600	How was sept 11 unique in the world?

04-14-2003, 03:01 AM	#15
Ultron Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: here Posts: 738	9-11 didn't provoke a war? What was Afghanistan, a picnic? I'm sure the Taliban would be suprised to hear America did nothing as a result of their attacks on the WTC and Pentagon.

04-14-2003, 01:08 PM	#19
Me and Me Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: California Posts: 600	So it was unique because it was on tv?

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