Barbarism in the Nairobi mall
I suggest you think long and hard before clicking on this link about the extreme barbarism with which the terrorists at the Nairobi mall treated their victims, because it contains some of the most disturbing information you will ever read.
I should also include a caveat that it has not yet been corroborated, and I suppose it could turn out to be false.
I would like for it to turn out to be false, because the alternative is exceedingly harrowing. But so far I will assume it is true, because I’m not sure what motivation the Kenyan soldiers reporting these details would have to lie about them, and because we’ve already seen a similar sadistic strain among some Islamic terrorists (slow beheadings,
The behavior of the terrorists in Nairobi conjures up an archaic past in which torture was commonplace: the Inquisition, the Roman Coliseum, the fates of other Christian martyrs, and all the many novel ways that ancient marauders had of massacring defeated civilian populations. It also brings to mind a more recent past, one that continues to haunt us to this day: the Nazi concentration and death camps.
What could be done to protect a population against predators of such savagery? When I asked myself that question, I came up with very similar suggestions as those of John Hinderaker, although I hadn’t yet read his article:
First, al Shabab should be destroyed. It would make sense for an international force to invade Somalia and hunt down all members of that group. Second, with hindsight, Kenyan authorities waited too long to take definitive action to kill the terrorists. They allowed the siege to stretch out over four days. That may have made sense on the assumption that they were dealing with a “normal” hostage situation, but in the future, terrorists should not be allowed to work their evil deeds for so long. Third, far more civilians need to be armed.
Will these things happen? I very much doubt it. The entire world seems to have become exhausted with the struggle and to have less energy for it than it had a decade ago.
Back in 2006 I wrote a piece about the barbarism exhibited by so many terrorists. It still seems relevant (alas), and so I’ll reproduce a portion of it here:
…[T]he…word “barbaric” caught my eye. Like many familiar words, ordinarily we hardly think about what it really means.
barbarian, barbarous, boorish, brutal, coarse, cruel, fierce, graceless, inhuman, lowbrow, primitive, rough, rude, tasteless, uncivilized, uncouth, vulgar, wild
The word is the essence of cultural non-relativism. Its origins are in antiquity:
…from Latin barbaria, from Latin barbarus, from the ancient Greek word βάÏβαÏος (barbaros) which meant a non-Greek, someone whose (first) language was not Greek. The word is imitative, the bar-bar representing the impression of random hubbub produced by hearing spoken a language that one cannot understand, similar to blah blah or rhubarb in modern English.
Many cultures traditionally have had terms for “the other.” Even if those appellations don’t start out as pejorative, they usually wind up that way. And so it is with “barbarian” and “barbaric,” which have come into general use to mean especially vicious, cruel, and sadistic.
It’s really that last definition–sadistic–that seems to be the most important element here. When a soldier kills, there is always violence, no matter how the killing is accomplished. But barbarism implies a gratuitous level of mayhem, a sort of overkill, which indicates an emotional element that drives the perpetrator towards inflicting the maximum amount of pain for personal enjoyment and sensations of power.
One of the hallmarks of jihadi violence has been this element of barbarism–or, perhaps more correctly, sadism. There is a practical and strategic goal as well, which is to instill fear. Sadism and strategy are not mutually exclusive, however; they can coexist, and both may be driving this particular behavior. No one who has watched the beheading videos–or even read descriptions of them–can avoid the sense that those doing the deed are reveling in their own barbaric power, unleashed…
The bottom line is that barbarism and sadism are possibilities for all human beings. But some societies and some historic times seem to encourage their fuller expression. And the task of a “civilized” military is to reduce the elements of sadism, while preserving the ability to kill.
I’ve written previously about how US soldiers are trained to kill without sadism, here. It’s not an easy task, but it’s the goal of the US military to reduce combat stress and make atrocities far less likely to occur (read the post for the details of how this is done). In contrast, the goal of the Nazis was to maximize the expression of sadism in their concentration camp guards. Likewise, this seems to be the goal of the jihadis, or at least many jihadi elements.
Another word for it, of course, is evil.
Slightly in advance of this, about a dozen people I know, none young, took a concealed carry class.
It’s one thing to have the license. It’s another to actually carry. My guess is the Nairobi atrocity will impell more carrying by the licensed.
And it will impell malls to double the number of “gun-free zone” signs.
While I would also hope that this is not true, I believe it. We are talking about people that are stuck in the year 700 as it is. Knowing your enemy is necessary so the number of people (especially in roles of leadership) that refuse to face the reality of how those attached to Political Islam behave is dangerous to our nation. In 2008 I was at the Monterey airport (like a private airport serving Carmel/Monterey) and I had a McCain/Palin pin on, given to me by our hosts that weekend. The sole person standing behind me while we checked our bags couldn’t resist commenting…badgering really. Included in her rant was, “there is no such thing as terrorists.” At that I turned around and asked her if she viewed the beheading of Daniel Pearl. I told her I had and therefore I know she is wrong. Pretty simple really. But reality, in general, is painful and involves suffering.
I do most of my shopping online and am seldom at a mall. However I do get my haircut at JC Pennys (ha!) Can’t deny that while I was there this week, I thought about the mall in Nairobi.
“The behavior of the terrorists in Nairobi conjures up an archaic past in which torture was commonplace . . . .”
(As always IMO) In Western civilized society, we tend to forget that this is the way the raw world actually is. The development of civilization has been a means to escape from and prevent precisely this on a wholesale level. Our much maligned Western culture has done this exceedingly well; better than any prior society in human history. It has marginalized such tribalism in favor of the great American melting pot. We forget this at our own peril.
Sadism gets a bad rap. Sadism is enjoying the pain you cause others, usually in a sexual manner. There is a flip side to Sadism, which is Masochism, and when a Sadist and Masochist get together life is good for both parties.
Cruelty and inhumanity are something much darker. The ability to not empathize with someone elses pain is much more evil than causing pain for your own enjoyment, because a Sadist must ultimately recognize that they are causing pain. The Nazi regime, and many other Fascist countries worked very hard to dehumanize their victims. So it wasn’t really people who were starving, just filthy pig Jews. Or filthy pig Bourgeois. Or filthy dog infidels. The inability to recognize humanity is below even your low view of Sadism.
Sadism needs no dehumanization and in fact requires a human partner (or victim if you want to assume non-consent). What the Nazis and Al Shabab do absolutely requires dehumanization. The other thing that they require is some sort of guiding vision, such as building the master race, or cleansing Dar al Harb and creating Dar al Islam in its place by waging Jihad.
There is no evidence that the Nazi’s or Al Shabbab got sexual pleasure. There is plenty of evidence they dehumanized their victims before murdering them cruelly.
Hinderaker asks, “what of root causes? Then states that, “The terrorists reportedly were an international group, with Islam the only common denominator.”
Rather than confront that fact however, he suggests a three-fold defensive strategy; an international force to invade Somalia and hunt down all members of that group, terrorists should not be allowed to work their evil deeds for so long and far more civilians need to be armed.
Firstly, a defensive strategy assumes that the opposition’s resources are limited, that there is only so much cannon fodder that Islam can throw at the West and that Islam’s financial resources are limited. Neither of which, in an asymmetric terrorist/guerrilla campaign is true.
Hinderaker thus avoids the central issue, Islam’s ideology commands ALL Muslim’s to wage eternal jihad against all non-believers. Nazism and Japan’s cruel Bushido code were essentially eliminated because the Allies belief (which they were willing to act upon) was that those ideologies were beyond the pale and intolerable.
Until the West reaches a similar conclusion regarding Islam, Somalia’s will continue to arise, terrorism will not only continue but increase and the barbarism deepen.
AM:
You are using the technical, narrow, and restrictive definition of sadism (the first definition here). It also has a more general definition, which is how I’m using it (the third definition).
Consider also Beslan. Consider the countless beheadings set to stagecraft, the acid attacks to women’s faces. Consider also the jubilation accompanying merely the reports of the deaths of infidels. Consider that Islam and its followers could be considered clinically anhedonic except for their one singular pleasure, the pleasure they derive from cruelty, their sadism. Consider that the barbarism emanates not from the human heart itself but from the evil it would entertain, i.e., Islam.
Islam is he greatest human borne plague in the history of mankind. Consider finally that no previous plague had ever demanded accommodation — and been given it.
I wonder how CAIR (now WTF) and other organizations will respond to this.
Islam and humanity cannot coexist.
I read the stories myself – and am still horrified, even though they haven’t been confirmed. It’s hard to top the atrocity of Beslan, but I do believe Al Shabaab has topped it.
CAIR/WTF will probably squeal some more about the horrors of islamophobia. I derive some mean-minded satisfaction from referring to them now as the WTFers. Juvenile of me, perhaps – but they richly deserve being laughed at.
I guess the response will be, We don’t CAIR. We need a new word o describe monsters–something like humanophobic.
The barbarism and sadism in the mall attack is incomprehensible.
What I also can’t comprehend is the West’s unwillingness to recognize that this is not a collection of random individual acts, but the behavior of a people who will stop at nothing to conquer us. How can they continue to whitewash entire regions rife with this kind of barbaric acts, and even go so far as to roll out the welcome mat for (likely) jihadi immigrants, and invite them into our government institutions, such as DHS and DoD, and our schools. How can there be such a level of denial? We’re witnessing a slow-motion cultural suicide.
I think the mall is Israeli-run. That probably explains why it was a target. Was the mall a gun free zone? If it was, then I would sue that company out of existence. They did not provide proper security. What is the saying, when seconds count, the police are only minutes away. Here we have a very clear example that the authorities are beyond useless. What is the proper response? Destroy Al Shabaab? OK but that is a reaction. I think the proper response is to arm people so that they are not defenseless. It won’t stop all attacks, but it will reduce the number. Islamists are cowards. That is why they attack unarmed civilians.
Steve:
Kenya has very strict gun control laws. And it seems the security guards were not armed with guns, either (magnetic wands??). It also seems (if you read the article I linked in this comment) that Kenyan authorities had tried to crack down on Somalis in Kenya recently–but perhaps indiscriminately and brutally. Of course, it’s hard to know what is the truth about that.
“barbarian, barbarous, boorish, brutal, coarse, cruel, fierce, graceless, inhuman, lowbrow, primitive, rough, rude, tasteless, uncivilized, uncouth, vulgar, wild”
Apt descriptions of prophet Muhammad.Please don’t take my word for it. Go directly to Islam’s source material available online (USC’s for one). Many respected Muslim scribes have written about the lives and times of the prophet. One outstanding example of such scribes is Muhammad ibn Jarir al Tabari (838-923), whose sa’heeh (authentic) hadith on the prophet make for agonizing readings.The ghoulish barbarity of the prophet and his sahabas-comrades described therein makes the reader feel like his guts have been ripped out. It also makes the Nairobi’s horrific Jihad more comprehensible.
Yet we will let them into our country and pretend that everyone in the world is innocent until they commit horrible guilty acts of murder and terror. If the two parties don’t start taking the threat seriously, shutting down immigration from dangerous countries and finally giving Islamists more scrutiny, then another party will. It may not be as ugly here as it would be in Europe, but it would be unpleasant for sure. The book that is cited in the Hinderaker article is about an attack on Mall of America. Recall the reports that three of these Kenyan terrorists were from the U.S. and I believe Minnesota. It does not take a lot of imagination to think that this could very well happen here with our welfare state and open immigration laws enabling it.
neo, just goes to show that terrorists do not obey gun control laws. I think this situation shows that Kenya needs to overturn the strict gun control laws. I still would hold the mall owners responsible for the safety of their patrons. From what I have read, once someone has a license in Kenya, no permit is required for concealed carry. The mall could have hired people with licenses for security.
I note a report today saying that our crack Attorney General Eric Holder was quoted as saying that “I’m not sure that the al-Shabaab terrorists have the capacity to do anything in the U.S.”
Man, am I relieved and reassured, particularly in light of the fact that several young Somalis who we have granted asylum here in the U.S, went overseas from Minnesota to fight for various Islamic terror groups including al-Shabaab.
Grossman wrote some about the power of atrocities in war and on cultures. Basically, those who use the power of atrocity to shock and awe their enemies, must keep on using it. The Nazi Hitlers were already getting rid of sub humans, so to them it was a logical step, as it would keep the rest of the Germans in line.
The Islamics use atrocities as a way to shock what they perceive to be weak Western will to fight.
Atrocities conducted by Westerners don’t work, because the limiters still exist and Westerners are more likely to give up the fight if their own side is proven to commit atrocities (lack of moral justification).
So humans need a reason or a drive to kill. For most in war, this isn’t about being killed or killing, but about finding ways to rationalize why we should go to an organized killing spree of the Other. The West’s reason is based on enlightenment and rights. The Islamic’s reason is not particularly constrained by notions of freedom, human dignity, or rules in war. This benefits the terrorists since rules in war would constrain them more than help them. As the rules in war generally used to protect their women and children, the West enforce no matter what happens.
On the other hand, atrocities tend to breed blowback and revenge, hardening the will and endurance of those who fight at the front lines, giving them a reason to kill with prejudice or indiscriminately. The limiters on Western use of military force is individual based and partially derived from corrupt government limiters. Once those are removed, for any reason, nations and their people tend to be obliterated. There won’t even be ash left.
Those on this planet that feel their will to fight weakened by this, is why atrocities exist, other than the personal ones. This is a tactic for a strategic goal.
In order to prevent irrational fear or anger from distorting a person’s judgment, and to shield a sane person from the effects of atrocities (insanity is contagious), conditioning, training, and desensitization methods are used.
For example, in studying the methods of interrogation and torture, I was given a front row seat concerning the objective benefits, detriments, risks, and rewards of such torture methods as depicted in the mall. The brain is forced to engage, using classical and operant conditioning, and the will to fight is hardened and trained, even as you see that which you do not want to see, even as you hear and feel that which you do not want to feel or hear.
In this fashion, is the killer instinct and the shield manufactured side by side, for the mind and soul.
Whatever they may have tried to do to humans in the mall, I have seen and researched things a thousand times worst. It cannot shock me. It cannot deter me. It cannot convince me to surrender or give up or go easy on them.
What people here are operating under is a false conception that terrorists are human, like other people around you. Thus if you hate them, they will hate you, which you think is bad. Thus if you try to kill them, it makes them hate you and try to kill you (9/11 Democrats asked, why do they hate us and what should we do about it), which few people want to be killed or hated by their fellow humans. Social cooperation is instilled in us deep and early by social conditioning and shackles.
But they aren’t human. So why worry about it? Evil is human? Perhaps, in the sense that people are its tools, but it’s pointless hating a tool or being hated by a tool. It doesn’t matter if a pen or a sword hates me. Since it’s a tool, not a human or self aware, it doesn’t matter what it feels like doing.
While it’s quite feasible to one up the terrorists when it comes to atrocities, since they haven’t even tapped 10% of humanity’s ancient knowledge on this venue, it’s generally not logistically sustainable if you fight for Western values of life and human dignity. Instead, we focus our hate and our retribution upon individuals, since our society revolves around individuals: greed, responsibility, virtues, vices, even political power is individual based.
So just kill more of their individuals. If they keep regenerating like Dragon’s Teeth, then kill them until their birth rates can’t cover them. If you have time to torture one terrorist, you have time to kill 2 clans of terrorists entirely. What the West may not recover in the shock value of atrocities for quality, we can do so in quantity, using merely drones and bombs, not soldiers that can be traumatized.
Burning alive and nuking several million Japanese did not particularly hurt anyone, psychologically speaking on a permanent level. Not even, perhaps, the targets (psyche evaluations of PTSD on firebombing survivors, lower than combat vets from Vietnam).
Westerners are considered as cowards by Arabs and terrorists for pushing a button and killing a bunch of people. They prefer more personal avenues of killing, which I agree with. The thing is, Arabs kill so many people, they have to restrict their power to personal vendetta and torture. If they just pushed a button and killed entire clans, Mohammed would never have been in power. The West’s reason for pushing a button and killing people is that the West actually cares about preserving life and dignity. It won’t push that button for just any reason.
Atrocities are useful and effective in a limited short term, but it always has the danger of making your enemy more fearsome, more determined, more willing to turn off their safety limiters.
A Western Civilization without safety limiters has the tech and will to kill a lot of people. Right now we have the tech, but not the will. As Democrats of the Leftist alliance weaken us more and destroy more human dignities and freedom, as Islamic Jihad allies with Democrats to take advantage of this weakness, humans will have to decide to kill or not to kill.
To be honest, Westerners are weak. Atrocities would not happen for a number of reasons if Westerners weren’t this weak. Even calling upon the government to “do something about it” is a sign of more weakness.
Hinderaker’s desire to attack the terrorist at their base is desirable. But with this President and this administration he must recognize that it is unworkable.
Obama lacks both the will and the ability to conduct the type of prolonged campaign that would be required to eliminate the threat.
His leftist base wouldn’t want him to engage militarily and conservatives wouldn’t trust him to do so.
There is no evidence that this President or this SoS have the ability to gather a multi-national coalition to successfully conduct such a campaign.
And lastly it assumes that the terrorist are going to wait passively in their current locations for such an attack.
While dehumanization is useful on a bureaucratic level to get Germans to terminate Jews, it’s not necessary.
A strong enough moral justification is good enough.
Also, such camps naturally draw in sadists who enjoy it. The PTSD incidence of holocaust camp survivors are extremely high, much higher than those who survived the firebombings in Europe.
While the Nazis had a good conditioning program to make Jews sub human, even then there were Germans who refused to personally execute Jews. Even though the penalty was death and treason.
So conditioning programs do not always succeed, at least not if the subject resists.
The idea that anyone can be conditioned to kill as the Nazis killed, as the Islamic terrorists kill, is not entirely correct. While people can be conditioned and trained or even forced to pull the trigger, they cannot kill in the same fashion. Because the Nazis and Islamos enjoy it, have no conscience, and do not feel guilt. They don’t need to be conditioned that what they do is right, they have already convinced themselves of this without any conditioning whatsoever.
Neo,
Not too long ago I had a discussion with a young guy (hipster, large infestation here in Austin) that went thus. “These terrorists wouldn’t want to kill me, they’d know I’m a peaceful dude. It’s people like you that hate them they that want to kill.”
My reply: “True they wouldn’t kill you, they’d slaughter you for they despise you for what you are. Me they would try to kill for they fear me.”
Evil is exactly what they are. And they believe we are a nation solely of sheep. It may seem that way to others, but I do not believe that and they shall discover this to their surprise.
Nicely said, GM, about Hinderaker. Do you agree with his New York Post on Cruz?
I hope you caught my apology? It wasn’t you that set me off. It was fear, the very thing I was railing against. Fear of another narrative being accepted.
My apology is that your position is rational and logical and obviously you are a person of good and noble purposes and intentions. I hope you accept it. I hope to explain my position with better and more acceptable arguments.
I’m watching a documentary now called “Fighter” featuring Arnost Lustig and Jan Weiner. It’s alot about the Munich surrender and then the Commuinist agression.
The socialists (Obamists) hate that narrative and trivialize it because 54 Chzeck divisions were immobilized and betrayed with Chamberlain’s acceptance of Hitler’s promise for world peace. The world little remembers those 54 divisions were an impossible barrier to Hitler if fought head on.
One thing has occured because of Cruz’es stand: Republicans aren’t so afraid to fight. Bullies are bullies for a reason: they have the fear and might on their side. Seemingly.
Cruz has taken a swipe, a good jab, and the forces have been sent reeling. All sorts of openings present. Boehner seems to have grown a pair on the debt ceiling. And the effect for electing Republican senators and congressman who will act on their promises has gone way up. The latter is just a guess on my part since it is in the future. But for 21 hours, Cruz pounded on “the narrative,” the “DC narrative,” and his status, popularity, electibility, and presidential hopes went through the roof.
We should give props to Senator Rand who demonstrated this with his anti-drone filibuster. The power of that action still drives events.
So, what if there was no chance for defunding? Why? Because the REPUBLICANS would not unite. If they had, we had an issue (Obamacare) upon which even the unions want gone. And the usual fearful beltway Republicans didn’t see the opportunity. It was beautiful. We missed, don’t you see, the Crossing of the Delaware.
“…But deliver us from evil”.
God helps those who first help themselves.
The decent, the un-craven among us, are gradually having their hearts hardened by the butchery inflicted by the evil ones. Once the dam of ‘decency and discretion’ breaks, I hope the wave of retribution to be terrible in its scope. That is perhaps the only good thing about the present awful slowness and feebleness of response to the nightmare that is Islam. The anti-Islam pressure continues to build behind the dam of passivity and cowardice.
Related: McCain has just hired disgraced Syria expert Elizabeth O’Bagy, and according to a recent WSJ article he has one (or more) Muslim Brotherhood on his staff. The chances that we’ll have a rational response to these terrorists (when terrorizing or subverting out liberties via CAIR/WTF type organizations) have gone down just a smidge more.
Ymarsakar,
Much of what you describe goes back to the way in which children are raised in these tribal cultures. They are used to further the power and status of the father; they are not taught basic values that the civilized world considers normal. When they are in a Western society, they are caught between living the more attractive Western life and following the rules set by the father. It is a thoroughly screwed up culture. And each of their young men will potentially use barbarity to prove his manhood.
‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.’
It is hard to believe in forgiveness when justice seems to cry out for ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’–literally in this case. What do we do with the terrorists who were captured?
Ymarsakar:
Actually (and I don’t recall where I read this, but it was a book that specifically dealt with this subject), the penalty for refusing to execute Jews was NOT death and treason. In most cases, the people who refused were simply transferred or maybe demoted.
I think the book may have been this one.
From the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum website:
“Will these things happen? I very much doubt it. The entire world seems to have become exhausted with the struggle and to have less energy for it than it had a decade ago.”
Absolutely, for now.
Can we state clearly what this obviously means? The “exhaustion” is not a matter of insufficient calories. It’s not that we are thinking too much.
The exhaustion is spiritual and religious – plain and simple and the rest is crapola.
Civilization has run out of the capital and wealth, in this case spiritual and dynamic, that OTHER people and OTHER germinations thtn ours have earned.
We never bothered to make deposits or even appreciate the spiritual wealth we had.
Now it’s gone.
What are we going to do? It’s called the desert. There are two way to go: Down to defeat, or down on our knees.
There is no third option. People who think there is a third option have already chosen the first option and they want company and not to feel bad about their choices.
The solution is simple: deal with barbarism in the same way it was dealt with in the past, especially in Africa and the Middle East.
Captured terrorists should be publicly executed in horrific ways.
It’s time to shed the veneer of civilized behavior and go straight to reciprocity.
Lizzy, it is pretty hard to have respect for McCain. O’Bagy is 26 years old. Padded her resume. Some expert. Isn’t she the one who arranged McCain’s infamous photo-op with Syrian rebel kidnappers?
The specific incident I was thinking of was this one, heard indirectly.
. . . And the Cost of Noncompliance
Glenn Gray notes what may have been one of the most remarkable
refusals to participate in an atrocity in recorded history:
In the Netherlands, the Dutch tell of a German soldier who was a
member of an execution squad ordered to shoot innocent hostages.
Suddenly he stepped out of rank and refused to participate in the
execution. On the spot he was charged with treason by the officer
in charge and was placed with the hostages, where he was promptly
executed by his comrades.
In an act the soldier has abandoned once and for all the security of the group and exposed himself to
the ultimate demands of freedom. He responded in the crucial
moment to the voice of conscience and was no longer driven by
external commands . . . we can only guess what must have been
the influence of his deed on slayers and slain. At all events, it was
surely not slight, and those who hear of the episode cannot fail to
be inspired.
Here, in its finest form, we see the potential for goodness that
exists in all human beings. Overcoming group pressure, obediencedemanding
authority, and the instinct of self-preservation, this
German soldier gives us hope for mankind and makes us just a
little proud to be of the same race. This, ultimately, may be the
price of noncompliance for those men of conscience trapped in a
group or nation that is, itself, trapped in the dead-end horror of
the atrocity cycle.
My interpretation of the inconsistency would be that the prisoners may not have been Jewish, but some other thing that wasn’t covered by policy.
Also, any officer or leader that will order the execution of innocents, probably doesn’t like somebody walking out of the circle and disobeying his commands. So if he’ll kill civilians, he might just find a way to kill his subordinate too. The inclination is there, if the policy does not cover him.
Also the stated ID of the soldier may have been wrong. He may have not been a German and thus not protected as an Aryan.
Or alternatively, the soldier agreed to be on execution squads, then refused to do so to pull the trigger, and that was counted as different than just merely disinclining the honor of the atrocity.
I do remember that Holocaust camps had a somewhat above average turn over, as there were some individuals that were kept getting transferred out for one reason or another. In that sense, I don’t dispute that the German high command had a policy concerning Jews.
However, I also can’t claim that the German policies covered everyone they executed or that there weren’t special exceptions for refusals.
The indirect quote’s from On Killing by Grossman.
Compare and contrast:
My Lai 4 , horror , terror, crazed GI murderers
Hue . NVA murders approx 5.000 people.. crickets
The hard bigotry of the Western Left
expat,
From my research, Arabs make their female children agree to help males in the family masturbate using their breasts or thighs. The extra sexually frustrated male members of the family may not take a girl’s virginity, so if he wants something extra, usually they go after the boys.
Thus Arab life conditions boys to human atrocities at an early age, making them consider it normal and part of how their family survives. The women support such things, because they consider it as part of the normal home and as the prerequisite to marriage. They are saving something special for their husband.
The one strange thing I have yet to hear recounted is Palestinian rapes of Israeli captured women, before they killed them. I wonder if it has to do with the propaganda that they are less than human. A lot of the time, they have time to rape the women, but they just go directly into torture, before or after they kill them.
Perhaps this is something gone unreported or perhaps Islam’s own prohibitions against extra marital sex has some kind of terrorism effect on male actions. Their only outlet is rage and killing, not the other things I generally expect from a war between rival tribes. Perhaps the promise of virgins tides them over for awhile.
One reason this probably doesn’t sicken me as it should, is because I can’t necessarily distance myself and my culture away from theirs. After all, HBO, US porn, US Hollywood acts in the same way when conditioning our girls and our boys. Just in different ways. If I got sick of Islamic practices all the time, I would not be able to function in our modern US “culture” any more.
Multiple horrifying attacks by Muslims on a monthly basis all over the world for the past three decades — and the liberal reaction is “you can’t judge all Muslims by the acts of some extremists.”
Someone claims they heard someone say “nigger” at a TEA Party protest — and the liberal reaction is “RACISTS! THEY’RE ALL RACISTS!”
DaveindeSwamp
It wasn’t bigotry. The North Vietnamese and the Russians backing them were the allies of the American Left at the time. Ayers and other Leftists were drinking champagne and giving a toast at the Fall of Saigon.
It’s not mere “bigotry”, not something as “easy” as that.
“It’s one thing to have the license. It’s another to actually carry” And its another thing all together to TRAIN. A loaded firearm, carried, is not a “good-luck charm”.
How does taking legal action after the fact, to a premise that prohibited lawful carry of firearms help any future situation? The problem lies in the people who have an agenda, one that we do not appreciate or comprehend, but must acknowledge.
More guns in the right hands are a start, but ultimately more guns in capable hands are the answer.
Want to reduce such acts in the future? You need to deal with these groups using their language, of “sadism”, or whatever you want to call it. Its the only thing they understand and respect. Most people, and governments don’t have the stomach for it.
That’s part of the reason why we have “rough men” who are willing to do things on our behalf. We need not know what they do, or how they do it. Accept it so that we can sleep peaceably at night.
Obama is too busy selling missile launchers to AQ so they can kill US SEALs to be worried about letting rough men handle AQ in Somalia.
Speaking for my fellow beloved Democrats and dear Leftists, what difference does it really make how the shoppers at the mall died?
I mean, whether they died to internal bleeding, gunshots, having their eyes gouged out and replaced with burning oil, or being burned alive, dead is dead right?
Right? Our leader leaders say it is so, so it is so, right?
This is a good site worth bookmarking for keeping up with Islam’s daily atrocities:
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
I don’t know that we can keep up with the tendency of people somewhere in the universe to butcher one another.
The Mexican drug war, a lot closer to home, is just as barbaric as the Muslim terrorist attacks.
Should we do something about that?
That’s a good point, ST. But the Mexican drug war is admittedly a problem. Islam, unfortunately, isn’t.
And there’s, from what I hear, a pretty big connection between the two in that Islam is one of the biggest drug suppliers and enablers even to the point of rivaliring (rivaliring!) the Mexican drug cartel. Along with North Korea.
Mexican barbarism against Mexicans is a Mexican problem. Muslim barbarism against Muslims (e.g. Sunni v. Shia) is a Muslim problem. Neither is ours to stop. The Muzzies and the Mexicans are perfectly able to deal with their own evils, should they ever choose to do so. It is when the Muzz and Mex kill/torture others for NOT being Mex or Muzz that becomes our problem.
ST raises yet another straw man.
I always thought “barbarian” came from “barba” = “beard”.
Like f’rinstance, Muslims. Bearded savages who have killed indiscriminately since The Psychotic One saw his first “angel”. “I am made victorious by terror,” declared the Holy {spit} Prophet {spit}.
Another thing about Islam: yes, the definition of Islam is “submission”. The OTHER side of that equation is “dominance”. Islam is all about who’s got power over who else (and demonstrating that power by bullying &/or humiliating those lower in the pecking order). The Nairobi mall scenario was pretty much the same as at Beslan: a bunch of jihadis ready to die (and happy to murder) for the Glory of Allah, and they’re holding a bunch of civilian hostages. While the authorities dither and plan how to respond, the savages have plenty of time to demonstrate just how savage they really are (I assume they tell themselves they’re “instilling terror in the hearts of the enemy”) by butchering, raping and maiming as many hostages as they can.
The lesson for the West, if/ when the Servants of Moloch strike here: Do not hesitate; assemble overwhelming force and attack them ruthlessly. The sad truth is, if you focus on “saving hostages” you’re probably condemning them to worse-than-death. The focus has to be “kill the bastards as quickly as possible” and hope that some hostages survive.
I think most Westerners are just scared (those who have any inkling of how horrific Islam is); the rest would rather Not Think About It. I think it’s that, more than exhaustion.
But I’m remembering some other things: the entire arena in Boston spontaneously singing the Star Spangled Banner at that hockey game after the Boston massacre. The way our nation, at first reluctant to go to war in Europe, united almost as one in 1941 after Pearl Harbor. The way even Leftoid NYC rallied in anger and fighting spirit after the 9-11 attacks, with even the Greenwich Villagers standing on the West Side Highway and waving Old Glory at the rescuers.
Yes, the LEFT clamped the steel lid on us soon enough, evil bastards that they are: but the spirit was there.
But if we win through this civilizational crisis and find the will to fight, it’s going to be (like the Duke of Wellington said of Waterloo) a close-run thing: the closest-run thing you ever saw in your life. Because we have Two enemies to fight: the Left, and Islam, and both are global tyrannies. Both have committed atrocities and plumbed the depths of human depravity.
We are still listening to the counsels of the Wormtongues among us.
Also, re evil acts in general: anyone who’s read history realizes that Western Civilization, post-Enlightenment, has given us almost an Edenic safety and peace for two centuries (in our daily lives). But “Hey hey, ho ho! Western Civ has Got to Go!” chant the idiots, and so it went. Wasn’t it Yale that received a million-dollar bequest to fund a professor’s chair to teach Western Civ — and they turned it down???
Walid Shoebat, among others, keeps warning us that islam is incompatible with the moral values of Christendom. Boy, is it ever. Even now, the moslems are mutilating baby girls in Paterson, N.J., and their enclaves in Queens, N.Y. No “ritual nick” to the clitoris, either: full-on excision. The American authorities turn a blind eye, just like they ignore the moslems’ rampant polygamy.
Filthy cowards.
Barbarism–Well, my reading of history is that the normal condition of the vast majority of human beings has, for something like 99.9% of our existence so far, been to be ill-nourished, cold, sick, brutalized, lacking of good food, clothing and shelter, pillaged and squeezed, bullied and ruled by some dictator/strong man or other, who could pretty much work his will on those he controlled, and he could pretty much, unchecked, torture and brutalize away.
How quickly we forget!
We here in the U.S. are too far removed from and insulated by a wall of plenty, ease, warmth and comforts from our early history and experience to remember, have even almost forgotten, now, the lessons of comparatively recent WWII. We are too pampered, too used to peace, and too conditioned against violence, and–so far–generally unprepared to comprehend and to fight against such barbarity as if our lives and our way of life depended on it–because they do.
The experience of Western democracy and especially ours here in the United States is an extremely rare, almost unique anomaly that stands in contradiction to that past, and an anomaly that ill equips us to understand just how fine a knife edge “civilization” walks, and just how close we are–minute to minute–to teetering and falling back into those normal barbaric human conditions, which still obtain throughout much of the world today.
Next, the Qur’an and the deeds and words of Muhammad command all Muslims to spread terror among the Infidels, what could be hard to understand about that?
Finally, I note that such barbarity has always been the hallmark of the Jihadis we are fighting, it’s just that the filters set up by our MSM–just to protect our delicate sensibilities, I am sure–almost never have allowed the “gory details” of, say, the treatment of our troops who were captured by Jihadis in Iraq or Afghanistan to slip through, or should I more properly say those who are attacking us, since–so far– we are not really putting up anything like an all-spectrum, all-out, no holds barred campaign to eliminate them and the threat they and their ideology pose to us and our way of life.
Should we do something about that?
Eric Holder already did something about that.
@ Shouting Thomas
Nice deflection of the issue. Classic method:
1. Cold Hard Reality stares everyone right in the face.
2. Find someplace else where something analogous (not the same but similar) is happening.
3. Presto and Cold Hard Reality disappears in the haze.
You Leftists are magicians of pure genius. If only you could make yourselves disappear….
@ST
“The Mexican drug war, a lot closer to home, is just as barbaric as the Muslim terrorist attacks.
Should we do something about that?”
Why yes Thomas we did. It was called “Fast and Furious”.
The Japanese in WW2 were following a later, perverted Bushido code that had been adopted in the 1920s and 30s as Japanese nationalism rose. The pre-Meiji Restoration original could never have been mistaken for the Sermon on the Mount, but it was a straight-up warrior’s code that lacked justification for the abject, wanton cruelty that many Allied captives experienced. In fact, Japan was noted for its scrupulously correct behavior regarding prisoners of war and noncombatants during both the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 and WW1, where it was on the side of the Entente powers. Islam, on the other hand, is just reverting to its roots in the Arabian desert of 1,400 years ago. The closer one gets to the actual text of the Quran and the Hadiths, the more one sees the blood-lust that forms the basis of Islam, with Mohammed a vicious, petty-minded tyrant obsessed with revenge. Keep that image foremost, and you’ll have a pretty good idea where al-Shabaab is coming from.
Shouting Thomas Says:
September 27th, 2013 at 9:34 pm
Do you mean if they kill and maim other murderous drug lords, or if they kill and maim innocents?
I would say we should do something about it either way. But what we do would depend on the moral status of who is doing and who is done to.
As in “Don’t fight back, I might get hurt”
The above pseudo-quote meaning “You shouldn’t defend yourself, because I don’t want to be disturbed”
A couple of years ago I came across a ruling by some Iranian mullah outlining the potential obligations incurred by men who buggered young children to the point they were permanently damaged and disabled – which was in his Islam informed view taking a permissible activity, i.e., the sexual use of children – to the point where some compensation might be required.
But I have never read anything related to that which you mention.
One would think that this would outrage the left to the point … well no, I guess one wouldn’t really think that, would one …
Anyway, got a cite?
I notice I made reference to limit tripping transgressions (“to the point”) and outrages that were not causes of outrage, three times in only one comment regarding Islamists and liberals.
It’s not just a matter of too much coffee and a lazy mind this morning … it’s the very phenomenon we relentlessly face: Associations with people who recognize virtually no moral limits to their behavior; and who in practice expect almost none from others.
It has one, or at least me, repeating the same formulations over and over again.
We’ve, those of us who are interested in bothering, gotta figure out a better way …
N-Neocon: 2-books, among the many available, worth your while on the subject of cruelty/brutality/mass death: “Kolyma:The Arctic Death Camps” (1978)by Robert Conquest and a nice ‘companion piece’ by Martin Bollinger: “Stalin’s Slave Ships:Kolyma,The Gulag Fleet and The Role of the West” (2003).
Adolf had nuthin’ on Uncle Joe for sheer mass death and cruelty. One of my favorite Stalin quotes:”Death solves all problems.No man,no problem.” And another:”To plot against one’s enemies.To reap an implacable vengeance and sleep soundly.Nothing is sweeter.”**
(**And those were his friends and colleagues he was talking about.Not the entire populations he destroyed.**)Dr.Conquest,the greatest scholar on the subject,believes the number of Stalin’s own who were obliterated by the Great Father of the Peoples,was about 40-million.
DNW, the resources I used are either unavailable for immediate posting or limited in some other fashion.
http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=Islam+sex+children+thigh+ing&d=4940240040036340&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=g0bUNt4owxnGj-Yc78HYVw94fWmQBsiR
The specific sources mentioned there weren’t exactly what I use, but they are close. What I used was triangulation off of independent accounts. Thus looking up the specific accounts wasn’t important. I didn’t need to know if Mohammed did it or the Iranians did it, I just needed to know if Muslims did it.
Whether people “believe this or not” won’t depend on the sources any way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RMUyAy9zU0
Some powerful Islamic accusations. Way more powerful than what Republicans are afraid of on MSNBC or the other retard enemy propaganda networks.
The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist.
I don’t know if it’s exhaustion so much as frustration that Western governments seem to be on the other side. At the very least, they are not on the side of their own people.
There are too many examples to cite. Way back in the 1990s the U.S. government intervened in Kosovo on the side of the Muslims, rather than the Serbians who had been dealing with that scourge for centuries.
In Europe, citizens who speak out about Islam are prosecuted for “hate speech”. Those who demonstrate against their countries’ immigration policies are branded as “fascists” and their peaceful protests are broken up by mobs of thugs calling themselves “anti-fascists”.
In Canada, Mark Steyn was hauled up on trial by the so-called “Human Rights Commission” for statements critical of Islam.
In the United States, shortly after 9/11 the media stopped showing footage of people jumping from the towers, and ran hand-wringing stories asking why the Muslims hated us. Members of the Saudi ruling family were quietly spirited out of the country at a time when all civilian flights were grounded. George W. Bush proclaimed that Islam is a religion of peace, and was later photographed holding hands with a Saudi prince.
Part of the U.S. government’s response to 9/11 was a massive reorganization of the bureaucracy, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration. Rather than singling out Muslims for special attention, they treat each and every American citizen as a potential terrorist. Wouldn’t want to be guilty of “discrimination”, you know.
More recently, a member of the U.S. military, Nidal Hasan, murdered unarmed fellow soldiers while shouting “Allahu Akbar!” It was officially termed “workplace violence”. He had a history of making inflammatory statements which were studiously ignored by his superiors because they were terrified of running afoul of the P.C. police.
In 2008, only seven years after 9/11, American voters elected a man named Barack Hussein Obama as President, largely because the media refused to inquire about his shady and mysterious past. Any criticism of him or his policies was automatically deemed to be motivated by racism.
Since Obama’s election, not only is the U.S. government arming terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda, members of the Muslim Brotherhood are being infiltrated into positions of power in American intelligence agencies. FBI training manuals dropped references to Islam, and Homeland Security famously declared that the main terrorist threats we face are from white conservative Christians, Constitutionalists, gun owners, and returning soldiers.
Meanwhile, attempts to disarm ordinary Americans continue. In England, self-defense is flatly illegal. Homeowners have been imprisoned for using force against burglars. In America, people who defend themselves from criminals are often persecuted and bankrupted by the legal system.
No, I don’t think ordinary people are “exhausted”. Many people on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly white people, are starting to realize that our own governments consider US to be the real enemy. We’re not exhausted; we’re hunkering down and trying to stay below the radar.
Neo-Neocon,
I apologize, I must have misunderstood that you were simply referring to sadism meaning only “extreme cruelty” when you wrote: It’s really that last definition—sadistic—that seems to be the most important element here. When a soldier kills, there is always violence, no matter how the killing is accomplished. But barbarism implies a gratuitous level of mayhem, a sort of overkill, which indicates an emotional element that drives the perpetrator towards inflicting the maximum amount of pain for personal enjoyment and sensations of power.
I do hope you understand why I was confused. I appreciate the clarification. I am a Soldier, and a sadist, but I take no sexual/emotional gratification from my employment.
For Christ’s sake man. Why?
Whether you believe God made me this way, or a random chance of genetics, or some societal influence in my upbringing, does it really matter “why”? Sadism (strict definition) is just another fetish, and humanity has an amazing collection of fetishes.
The difference between me and the Nairobi Mall terrorists is that they kill people expecting an eternal reward for doing so, and I don’t. What they did is not “sadism” so much as the same religious fervor that the Aztecs and Incas used to sacrifice other humans. Were those rituals sadistic? Maybe, I’m sure someone enjoyed them. Now, the actual Marqi de Sade was probably a true sociopath, but that is a seperate issue altogether.
On the flp side, sadism (strict definition) is evidently fascinating to American women as judged by the sales of the horrendous “50 Shades” series by E.L. James and the much better “Kushiel’s Legacy” series by Jacqueline Carrey.
Yeah, I think it probably does.
“Why” is what makes reality intelligible. Not that all persons concern themselves with intelligibility. But what moral community can there be between those who do and those who do not?
Which leads directly to the second aspect:
If it’s the result of some troubled upbringing, then a pathological taste for inflicting pain in a sexual setting could probably be eliminated. If it’s genetic yet not heritable, then we might find both the cause and a solution.
However, if it’s heritable and if there are in fact subterranean population currents of radically and congenitally unlike people inhabiting “this culture” (speaking as if there is a mainstream) then we all have some serious existential issues to consider as to the convergence and compatibility of life interests.
That isn’t to say of course that a society of sexual sadists, meaning a portion of human-kind, defined as a discrete lineage, which was genetically programmed to desire to inflict and receive pain in sexual situations, couldn’t form some kind of workable society for themselves.
Your jocular remark about the books, is well taken: we libertarian leaning types, of which you may be one for all I know, must inevitably wonder what the effect might be on our politics of millions of people, both women and men, who go to the polls secretly craving in their innermost beings to be dominated and controlled, even at the price of submission and degradation.
I believe that the “how” is much more important than the “why” of something in terms of reality when dealing with human behavior.
The “why” questions are usually asked by people who want to change reality in the future, asking such meaningless things as, “Why did this tragedy happen?” which is inevitably followed by “and what laws can we pass so this never happens again?!??!” as if passing laws had any affect whatsoever on the behavior of humans or nature.
The “how” question is much more important. The murderer came in through an unlocked door, in a house with a disable alarm system. Smart people then lock their doors and enable alarms. The “why” people seek to figure out why the murderer murdered, when it won’t change the reality that people are dead, and won’t make them any safer.
So why I am the way I am, is really immaterial unless you have some ideas about how to prevent people from becoming like me in the future. But since you can’t be everywhere all the time to make sure people comply with the law that says “don’t do this to your kid” or “people with these genes can’t breed” it will be ultimately futile. I don’t believe any government anywhere has any legitimate business trying to make people “better.”
And yes, I am a libertarian, bordering on anarcho-capitalist.
AM, I won’t copy your response, but the moment I deliberately decided to leave the term “why” in, I began wondering if you would decide to hinge your reply on the construction of an intentionally interpreted “why”, versus a descriptive” “how” distinction.
I do grant that all of us who begin to think critically at some point, and you are certainly one of them, notice that the words we habitually use in order to request information as an aid to our understanding, tend in general either toward the psychological, implying a context of motive or intention, or toward the “objectively” descriptive – be it mathematical or otherwise.
“Why” is one of those words often used to query after motive, and as such can be mistakenly thought of as peculiarly psychological.
But the definition of the word itself, includes the primary sense of aiming at causes as reasons, by what means, and not just subjective intentions or motives or ends whether those so-called motives or ends be yours, God’s, or the Great Blind Cosmos’.
I think that in this case then, a likely reading would not see my use of “why” in terms of some personal teleos be it subjectively psychological or grandly metaphysical, but rather in terms of the general principle of “intelligibility” I posed as the end of the question.
And, I think that I admitted that some people do deny that reality is, “in fact”, in principle intelligible; or have much interest in it
So, what teleos framework I might be forced to assume for the sake of biological intelligibility, is possibly the teleos of Mayr’s teleonomy, if that, but certainly no more.
We even could do the same “why” trick with the word “how”. We could ask like kids do, “how come?” (X’s masochism) and get back the answer, “just because”.
Now, here’s my point. In order to understand we must seek causes. We seek to understand so that we can reason effectively. We wish to reason effectively so that we can properly proportion and apportion on bases other than the momentary welling of urges, and the use of violence.
Even if the “norm” is no more than a statement of statistically derived proportionality within a population of some interest, intelligibility presumes the norm has itself causes, and that it produces certain large and small scale effects within and without the population itself.
I think that that’s probably a pretty unobjectionable point, except for will-to-power nihilists who also disbelieve in the intelligibility of reality; among whom I would not count you.
Hi Dejan,Have you seen the “seventh seal” by Bergman? A swedish film of the 1960’s. There, in a riohgetus rage ( of Vikings I think, it is so long ago), a child is killed in a horrible manner. That film encapsulated for me the tragedy of the human race, and how people, who in another environment may be good friends, can turn into fiendish behavior.I am not justifying these people. I am just saying that they happen to be Islamic in religion, and are expressing their rage in the impotent situation they find their culture in.Have you read Asimov, the three laws of robotics? ” and by inaction lead people to harm”. We have managed by our inaction, by our accepting these leaders and this mentality, that “our” country should have all the energy it needs, and that we are doing a favor to the middle east by plundering it and subjugating it. We have cornered these people into mentalities that grasp desperate and terrible means.