ISIS and “understanding” evil
ISIS is the very personification of evil. But:
“We don’t understand real evil, organized evil very well,” said America’s former ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, in an interview with The New York Times. “This is evil incarnate.”
“People like [Islamic State commander] Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi have been in a fight for a decade,” he added. “They are messianic in their vision, and they are not going to stop.”
My question is: does anyone ever “understand” evil? I don’t think so. Evil’s very nature is to be inscrutable. Evil is altogether mysterious and altogether different from the way most people operate or could even imagine operating.
In all the biographies and histories that have dealt with Hitler, for example, who has ever really explained him? No one.
Religious people posit a spiritual origin for evil. Non-religious people tend to doubt its existence, until they look into its eyes.
If it were necessary to fully understand evil in order to fight it, World War II would have never been won by the Allies. What is necessary is to be able to recognize evil and see it for what it is quite early in the game. Those are the important first steps. The next steps are finding the will and the tools to fight it. Evil is very strong, because it doesn’t know the same restraints and limits as morality or good.
Regarding ISIS, Elizabeth Warren pipes up:
“It’s a complicated situation right now in Iraq and the president has taken very targeted actions to provide humanitarian relief that the Iraqi government requested, and to protect American citizens,” Warren told reporters. “But like the president I believe that any solution in Iraq is going to be a negotiated solution, not a military solution. We do not want to be pulled into another war in Iraq.”…
“The point is there has to be a negotiated solution in Iraq, but we don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Warren said. She said, “This is partially a question of whether the U.S. government negotiates or whether we have the Iraqi government doing these negotiations, and how we help support them as they try to maintain an integrated country, and a country that better represents all of the people who live there.”
We may not understand evil, but we’ve learned that negotiating with it is impossible. The very nature of evil precludes negotiations, and it can only be met with great strength rather than weakness. Elizabeth Warren doesn’t even understand that much. Or perhaps she understands it and is just pretending not to, because she knows that’s an atittude that pleases her base.
Ronald Reagan may have been our last president who understood evil—at least, that is, how to recognize, name it, and fight it. Jimmy Carter was a religious man, so you’d think he would have known evil when he saw it, but that did not seem to be the case. The Bushes, both elder and younger, fought it militarily but in the case of Bush I he didn’t finish the job, and in the case of Bush II he made too many compromises with it and ultimately ran out of time. And Bill Clinton didn’t think in terms of evil at all.
But Warren’s words seem positively nonsensical. Perhaps the most curious thing about the quote is that she says there has to be a negotiated settlement in Iraq, whether it’s the US or the Iraqi government participating in the negotiations. But why this must be the case is left unexplained. Does she really think that the ISIS lion is going to lie down with the lamb? Far from being obligatory, is it even within the realm of possibility? A group like ISIS can only be destroyed or it will destroy the good in its path. It cannot be reasoned with.
For myself evil is kinda like porn. It’s hard to define it but when I see it I’m sure of what I’m seeing.
Islam is evil. ISIS is pure evil.
‘…case of Bush II he made too many compromises with it and ultimately ran out of time.” Please s’plain, N-Neo. Thanks, NCS.
NeoConScum:
For example, calling Islam a “religion of peace.”
Not committing to more control of Iraq for the first years. And then, of course, in 2008 Obama became president.
My question is: does anyone ever “understand” evil? I don’t think so.
Given my track record on stuff, i have done pretty good
its not very hard… you just have to believe what you dont want to believe, and know that everything is possible if its possible, and nothing is limited but for ourselves that limit ourselves (For whatever reason)
it has to do with the CoGs beliefs…
The center of gravity (CoG) is a concept developed by Carl Von Clausewitz, a Prussian military theorist, in his work On War [now, how many times did i say to read that?]
The definition of a CoG is “the source of power that provides moral or physical strength, freedom of action, or will to act.”
you would be surprised what kind of books and things you can buy at barnes and nobels…
the point is that nothing is evil, unless you have an ideology that declares it so… its easier to look at the world and say, what can i get away with, without angering or making enough people move in opposition. in the 13th century, you could get away with murdering lots of people to literally bath in their blood (Countess Elizabeth Bé¡thory de Ecsed), today, not so much…
to those without self imposed limits, the ideal utopia is a society in which their status and place and the ideology and organization, enables their freedom to do such things, and enjoy them… (or use such to pay others)… the forbidden fruit seems to taste best to such people…
I think Squaw Warren believes her kumbaya bs. It never ceases to amaze me that so many ‘progressives’ believe its just a matter of addressing the imagined grievances of people who are for the lack of a better word Evil.
parker,
One of germany’s counterparts to Warren is Margo Ké¤éŸmann, the former head of the Evangelical (Lutheran) church, who left her office after being found guilty of DUI. A few days age, this idiot said she wants Gemany to give up its military. I haven’t heard that she’s heading to Iraq to negotiate with ISIS, nor for that matter has she seemed to have any luck with the Taliban, Boko Haram, Putin, Hamas, or any of the troublemakers in the world.
She probably figures that if any of these get too nasty, the Amis will handle it and she’ll have ample opportunity to tell us of our sinful ways.
Elizabeth Warren: “how we help support them as they try to maintain an integrated country, and a country that better represents all of the people who live there.”
We were on course doing that, except it was the military solution.
Liz Warren’s BS about negotiated solution sounds like some sort of stock boilerplate reply a pol will come up with on short notice. Stuff that means nothing and probably won’t get anyone into trouble. Unfortunately there seems to be little else but such trivia in her brain.
It follows she will be our next President.
N-Neo: Follow-Up to above query. I read your ‘tweked post at LegalInsurrection and see you added “…before the Surge..” and, see how that probably makes sense. Thanks.
i should have also pointed out that if you and your own have experienced naked evil of the most horrid kind, believing it is a lot easier.
now.. a mystery..
Dawood Ibrahim
D-Company
Just saw your response, N-Neo. I hated that “religion of peace” label early on in the fight, but took his intent to be for Muslims in the U.S. and possibly a few other places where we had friends. It gave me a rash anyway. ((-:
“negotiate?”
Ok ISIS has sent their terms and made them very clear. We WILL rule as an Islamic Caliphate … end of negotiation.
Neo: “Ronald Reagan may have been our last president who understood evil–at least, that is, how to recognize, name it, and fight it.”
Yes and no.
Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Jan 2009:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/16/AR2009011603721.html
Lebanon was on Reagan.
Did Bush do everything right? No. Has any war-time American President done everything right? No.
But whatever Bush might have got wrong, the COIN “surge” made up for a lot, including according to Crocker, Reagan dropping America’s gaze in the face of evil.
US military history is rife with error and failure, and many disasters. The Presidents who win, win because because they provided the will and kept open the time and space for our military to fail, then work the issues, get right to defeat the enemy, and secure the peace.
You know, if McCain had won in 2008, staying the course from Bush and getting Iraq and (if possible) Afghanistan right would have been personal for him, because getting them right balances the scales for Vietnam.
We don’t have to understand evil–just understand that it IS evil, and do everything we can to destroy it.
NeoConScum,
“Religion of peace” was the right idea.
Winning the War on Terror means winning the contest between ordinary Muslims versus Islamic extremists. The terrorists need to be alienated from the Muslim mainstream. That’s not the whole solution, but it is a key part.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/439953/a-time-for-introspection-2/
A key achievement in Iraq was ordinary Iraqis staking their lives to join the Americans against the Islamic extremists.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/06/world/middleeast/06military.html?_r=0
Sam L: “do everything we can to destroy it.”
Except waterboarding.
Including waterboarding and other useful if cruel methods. All tools, all, must be used in the battle.
Evil is not to be understood, and one cannot negotiate with a foe who is not understood.
Evil just is.
It is disguised as a religion, Islam, and as a political movement, Progressivism. Add your own sexist and racial evils to the list.
Wonderful post, so true in all respects.
4:19pm..Eric…Yep.
4:41pm..DonCarlos…Yes, indeed. Khalid Sheik Mohammad gave up vital information. He designed 9-11. I only wish he’d now be taken to a gutted-bloody pig grave and shot through his well deserving head and join said swine in the bottom. Oh, and photo the leavings pre-burial for all Radical Islamists to see on their cool apple computers. General Pershing was absolutely right. Baa-Daa-Bing.
I don’t think ISIS is evil, I think they are tribal. In tribal warfare no one takes prisoners, with the possible exception of men for torture or women and children for slavery. Islam itself is a religion with tribal roots and it shows.
“My question is: does anyone ever “understand” evil? I don’t think so. neo
There are two levels to ‘understanding’. Intellectual comprehension and the emotional comprehension, the empathetic “standing in another person’s shoes” and experiencing it yourself empathetic comprehension.
I think it’s fairly easy to grasp the intellectual comprehension of what evil is and that is why we can recognize it when we see it. Our recognition of evil is almost instinctual.
But I don’t think that any ‘normal’ person emotionally comprehends evil because to ‘experience’ it you have to be it. We could never fully comprehend an alien race because full comprehension requires experience. Just so with evil. Normal people possess the missing attributes, the empathetic shared humanity that evil cannot recognize because it has no basis for connection to others.
Evil people are by definition, divorced from their humanity. They’re “damaged goods”. At best evil people are indifferent to other people and the bonds of their shared humanity. At worst, evil people don’t regard others as people at all. With ISIS and every other totalitarian ideology I know of, humanity is something you gain (in their eyes) by becoming an advocate of the ideology and until you do, you’re not considered human at all but mere animal prey.
Which brings to mind an important point; evil is intelligent, for someone or something to be evil, it must have malicious intent or at least depraved indifference. But whether intention or indifference it is intelligent. It’s quite common for predators to start consuming an animal well before it is dead but there is no animosity.
I too believe that, at its core, Islam is evil but ISIS is NOT just acting solely as an agent of Islam. That is because ISIS is NOT allowing the Yazidis and Christians to pay the jizza tax, to live as second class citizens, which is the third ‘option’ offered by Islam. It’s convert or die. ISIS is IMO, pathological.
As for Warren, she is nonsensical because she is trying to please her base while discussing reality and her base is divorced from reality. Thus the cognitive dissonance.
From Eric’s link:
“The battle is primarily political. The perceived injustices perpetrated by the US, for instance supporting Israel against the dispossession and brutal treatment of Palestinians, are etched into collective memory. These issues of power inequities are long-term and will take generations to be fixed.”
As long as that is a majority view in the Muslim world, there can be no peace. It is the majority view in the Muslim world, and due to ongoing propaganda by Muslim organizations in the U.S, it is accepted by many of our citizens.
There is a story going around the internet that goes like this:
“A representative from Israel began: ‘Before beginning my talk I want to tell you something about Moses: When he struck the rock and it brought forth water, he thought, “What a good opportunity to have a bath!”
Moses removed his clothes, put them aside on the rock and entered the water. When he got out and wanted to dress, his clothes had vanished. A Palestinian had stolen them!
The Palestinian representative at the UN jumped up furiously and shouted, “What are you talking about? The Palestinians weren’t there then.”
The Israeli representative smiled and said, “And now that we have made that clear, I shall begin my speech.”
To understand what life was like for the Arabs and the Zionists in Palestine before WWII, you can’t beat “The Haj” by Leon Uris.
As to evil. I have seen it. I have experienced it. Just thinking about it makes my blood run cold. It turns on my fight or flight hormones. It makes me want to get the perps. To prepare for battle and make sure there is no doubt who will win.
Religious intolerance has spawned more evil action among men than just about anything I can think of. Fundamentalist Islam is the most intolerant and retrograde force in the world today. It would be wonderful if Islam could reform and adopt a policy of tolerance toward all. It isn’t happening. At least it’s not apparent. It’s not the so-called imperialistic activities of the U.S. in the last 60 years and it’s not just the U.S. support of Israel that angers them. It is their insistence that Islam is the only true religion and the desire to destroy all who won’t convert. It is a sickness of the soul.
Artfldgr at 3:21 pm,
“My question is: does anyone ever “understand” evil? I don’t think so.”
“Given my track record on stuff, i have done pretty good”
…”the point is that nothing is evil, unless you have an ideology that declares it so…”
Your second declarative sentence disproves the first.
A very young baby recognizes wrong, (just take away a toy it’s playing with) but cannot have yet been affected by societal conditioning, much less an ideology. Evil exists quite separately from ideology. Particularly vicious serial killers are unquestionably evil and many if not most are not ideological at all. Nor do those who recognize their evil necessarily advocate any ideology.
I guess that makes ISIS less bad than evil is, chuck, and I hope that distinction without a difference makes you and the Yazidis and the Kurds feel better about them. Tribalism, Si! Evil, No! We are all anthropologists now, which sure makes me feel first rate.
The Comanches used to do the same thing with their prisoners; and like the Muzzies, the Comanche did not keep their word. It was terrible to fall into the hands of Comanche women and their tortures. Their territory, Comancheria, ultimately became several States; they drove the Apache out of West Texas! On the TX frontier they gave birth to the Texas Rangers, who were charged with hunting down and killing all Comanche raiders no matter what the distance. From the Comanche experience came the expression, The Only Good Indian is a dead Indian.
Eric said…Winning the War on Terror means winning the contest between ordinary Muslims versus Islamic extremists. The terrorists need to be alienated from the Muslim mainstream. That’s not the whole solution, but it is a key part.
Thank you for that; it can’t be said often enough. Proclaiming all of Islam evil is definitely not the way to win that contest.
“I don’t think ISIS is evil, I think they are tribal. In tribal warfare no one takes prisoners, with the possible exception of men for torture or women and children for slavery.” chuck
Tribal warfare does NOT involve sawing the heads off children. It may involve killing children but it is done quickly. ISIS is doing this for the terrorizing effect but it takes an evil person to order it and it takes evil people to conduct it. It is NOT ‘business as usual’.
Eric at 4:19 pm,
“Religion of peace” was the right idea.
Winning the War on Terror means winning the contest between ordinary Muslims versus Islamic extremists. The terrorists need to be alienated from the Muslim mainstream. That’s not the whole solution, but it is a key part. A key achievement in Iraq was ordinary Iraqis staking their lives to join the Americans against the Islamic extremists.
It is never the ‘right idea’ to profoundly and counter-productively mislabel something the exact opposite of its true nature. The short-term benefit is greatly outweighed by the long-term costs.
Islamic ‘terrorists’ are Islam’s theological mainstream. Islamic ‘radicals’ willing to bring terror to the infidel are Islam’s most devoutly fundamental Muslims. Ask any Imam or Mullah but make sure they can’t dodge the question. Thus Islamic ‘extremists’ can never, in the long term, be ‘alienated’ from the Muslim ‘mainstream’. No offense intended but 1400 years of history should make that Islamic reality obvious.
Clearly you mistake the majority of Muslims unwillingness to conduct physical jihad against the infidel and their lack of faithfulness… as inherent to Islam’s ‘mainstream’, it is not. Just as American Catholics who support abortion (outside the mother’s health) do not represent Catholicism’s ‘mainstream’ but they are in the majority.
Ordinary Iraqis staked their lives to join the Americans against the Islamic extremists for their own reasons, Shias because the Bush administration made clear that the Shia majority would no longer be under the thumb of the Sunni minority and the Sunni’s because the Bush administration made clear that the Shia majority would have to respect Sunni minority rights. Once the surge happened, ordinary Iraqi’s joined in because being on the winning side made sense. There’s never really been any doubt in anyone’s mind that if America were serious, that no force could successfully oppose us and Bush, with the surge made clear he was serious and committed.
And because Islam itself is a radical totalitarian ideology deceptively wrapped within a facade of ‘religion’, every generation of Muslims will produce its faithful’ and they will repeatedly emerge out of the ‘mainstream’ to wage jihad against the infidel until triumphant, even if it takes another 1400 years, because… Allah wills it.
Geoffrey Britain,
Yes, evil is intelligent. You only have to look at how successfully the leaders play on the dissatisfactions and rebelliousness of young men to fully convert them to their evil cause.
The problem isn’t what people think they know about evil, the problem is that they lack the spine to kill evil when they see it.
““The battle is primarily political. The perceived injustices perpetrated by the US, for instance supporting Israel against the dispossession and brutal treatment of Palestinians, are etched into collective memory. These issues of power inequities are long-term and will take generations to be fixed.”” Eric
Not so. Not for the Palestinians at least. “the dispossession and brutal treatment of Palestinians” is the excuse and exaggeration they use, to justify their opposition.
By their own measure, “of the right of conquest by arms” they would have to yield the field to the Israelis. But they do not accept that their own measure applies to them as well and, the reason they do not is because of a theological imperative that supersedes, the right of conquest.
That theological imperative is Allah’s ‘commandment’ that once land is part of the Ummah, it remains so for eternity. That’s it in a nutshell, everything else is secondary and subservient to that consideration.
Many Muslims are not stupid and have arguably mastered propaganda but the truth of their actual motivation being a theological imperative would not play well in the West.
However… ‘unjust’ “dispossession and brutal treatment” is tailor made for Western sensibilities.
The Palestinians know full well that they can never beat the Israelis as long as Israel retains Western support but if that support is retracted… there is hope for Allah wills it.
IMO, the Palestinians and their actions cannot be factually understood from a POV that places the political above the theological. Everything Eric is not about politics.
}}} Evil is very strong, because it doesn’t know the same restraints and limits as morality or good.
Unfortunately, stupidity is even stronger than evil but it almost never fights on the side of evil… :-S
Leaving Good with a double disadvantage.
Geoffrey Britain,
JJ said Eric’s link, not Eric.
“When you stare long into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you.”
I have no desire to understand evil any more than is necessary to identify and kill it.
Warren’s idea that there has to be a negotiated settlement is childish. She thinks it must be negotiated because the only other alternative is war, and war is bad.
This is more liberal wish-fulfillment.
The only thing we need to know is that ‘moderate muslims’ will rarely confront or be willing to kill the rabid dogs that reside in every muslim community/society. That gives the rest of us infidels little choice but to rub them out. Unfortunately, it will take an horrendous amount of suffering on our part before we have the fortitude to do what must be done.
Eric @ 7:23,
My mistake and apology.
Geoffrey Britain,
No worries. Just an attribution error. I would like to see your response to the whole Raza Rumi piece.
@Don Carlos
I fail to see how a correct classification, supported by your own evidence, should make me feel good about events. It simply makes me appreciate civilization and the hard men who protect it from tribal raiders. Civilization vs the tribes is not a new problem, Huns, Mongols, and the initial Islamic conquests come to mind, but our current leaders have forgotten the hard earned experience of the past.
Elizabeth Warren: “We do not want to be pulled into another war in Iraq.”
Warren doesn’t do it specifically here, but she’s signaling to it – it is striking and disgusting the lengths Democrats will go to uphold their anti-OIF false narrative that they used to pull up to partisan political advantage. They’ll even stand down against monsters like ISIS and sacrifice the Iraqi people to uphold their anti-OIF position.
The Democrats made a deal with the Devil and they know they owe everything to it. So they’ll protect their anti-OIF position at all costs.
chuck-
sorry for my meandering earlier. My point was why Texans and other Westerners got to the idea of the good dead indian. We will need to treat Muzzies the same way.
Our “Leaders” have forgotten nothing. They know what they’re doing.
Ah, but we did negotiate a peace with a fanatical, suicidal cult. Remember Japan?
Of course it took a couple of nuclear weapons, capping off 4 years of attrition, to “get them to the table”.
For a religious perspective on the monumental evil we are discussing, it’s worth reading the latest from The Anchoress (Elizabeth Scalia).
She thinks we now lack the essential tool to battle what we are up against:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2014/08/09/the-west-lacks-one-essential-tool-to-defeat-isis/
“its not very hard… you just have to believe what you dont want to believe, and know that everything is possible if its possible, and nothing is limited but for ourselves that limit ourselves”
Well said, Artfkdgr.
I think that part of it is also refusing to recognize the existence of evil. Can’t see what you don’t believe exists.
So many on the Left have bought into cultural and moral relativism that they no longer accept such simplistic classifications of “good” and “evil” except in the most frivolous contexts. They will call the Koch brothers or Hobby Lobby evil for not supporting a progressive viewpoint, but would never dream of judging or spending any time contemplating the actions of ISIS, Hamas, Boko Haram (and what all of these groups have in common?).
To do so would require a shift their priorities, leaving the comfort of empty causes like the “war on women” and glibly denouncing people who turn the other cheek, to actually support uncomfortable things like staying involved in Iraq, taking and interrogating terrorist prisoners, etc. It’s messy, and they have a short attention span, and mean people suck.
On evil, see Augustine.
How far we have fallen. For 2000 years people knew what evil was, and who evil was. We are so “advanced” today that we decided not to teach about it anymore.
Evil, strictly speaking, is not a ‘thing’ or a substance. It is a perverted good; it is a privation of good; it is a something missing.
Obama, for example, is evil. What is lacking in him is love for the country he is to so-called president of. He is the same type of animal as all of the Isis people; he just lives in a different ecosystem and has slightly different organic habits. German shepherds and dobermans are both dogs. They only look “different” and they are “different” to a point.
Not to the point of not being dogs though. Isis, Obama, Liberals – all evil. Different breeds, different contexts is the only difference.
Ah, but we did negotiate a peace with a fanatical, suicidal cult. Remember Japan?
The person the US was negotiating with, unofficially, was the Emperor of Japan. If you were talking to the military leaders that had control of policy, you would never have gotten a peace, real or imagined, until Russia invaded. Then it would just be a fake peace.
As without an central authority in charge of Japan, the Japanese would fracture into city led groups of crime and military based gangs.
Ghenghis Khan had equivalent control over the Mongols, until his death. The Islamic Jihad does not have an equivalent leader. Even the Palestinians, their only nation state, do not only have supreme leader they obey.
Eric,
I read Rumi’s missive and the links he provided.
In a nutshell; he engages in a pure apologia for Islam and his rationale is rife with blatant distortions and false characterizations.
Here are the highlights;
”By placing Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) in the proper historical, cultural and spiritual context, their works have attempted to undo centuries of vilification.”
Neither Rumi nor the linked opinion pieces he links to mention any historical negatives regarding Muhammad. As we all know, they are plentiful and morally serious.
Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet
”[The book] not only speaks about the life of Muhammad but also discusses the relationships and conflicts between the Western and Islamic worlds. The book also discusses the effect that Western attitudes have had on the Muslim psyche and attempts to explain the diverse attitudes of many modern Muslims towards the Western world today.”
Again nothing negative and, it blames the West for the ‘effects’ that “Western attitudes have had on the Muslim psyche”. i.e. We are responsible for 9/11, as we ‘made’ them do it.
And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety, 1985 Anne Marie Schimmel
“In order to understand Muslim piety it is necessary to take into account the long history of the veneration of Muhammad. Schimmel discusses aspects of his life, birth, marriage, miracles, and heavenly journey, all of which became subjects for religious devotions. This is the first book in English to deal with all aspects of the veneration of the Prophet Muhammad.”
All aspects but pedophilia, murder, genocide and betrayal of treaties…
“we have increasing polarization between those who view freedom of expression as an absolute value, and extremists within Muslims who think violence is the only way to ‘save’ Islam from such attacks. Millions of Muslims are trapped between the two ends of this hate-spectrum.”
So in Rumi’s calculus, freedom of expression that in any way criticizes Muhammad is motivated by hate, rather than insisting upon historical accuracy.
“This is partly why the blasphemous video, [ Innocence of Muslims] once dubbed in Arabic, caused mayhem and resulted in the tragic deaths of US diplomats.”
The blasphemous video, [ Innocence of Muslims] resulted in the tragic deaths of US diplomats in Benghazi… right.
[Muslims inclined toward moderation] “are unable to articulate an intellectual and cultural response to the changing world.”
No mention of the primary reason for Muslims inability “to articulate an intellectual and cultural response to the changing world.” That reason being allegiance to a 7th century totalitarian ideology masquerading as a religion.
“al Qaeda: a loose ideo-militant network that is difficult to hunt, for it represents a certain mindset and not an organised force on the ground, which drones and missiles can ‘neutralise’ to use a US euphemism for senseless murders.”
So using drones to attack al Qaeda leadership is senseless murder…
“Al Qaeda and its local affiliates have had a field day due to the video and have seized the initiative. Moderate and pragmatic Muslim leaders across the world are dumbfounded at the recent developments and have little choice but to cave in.”
Little choice but to cave in… one video is equivalent to 9/11 and over 20000 Islamic terrorist attacks across the world since 9/11. Right.
“The battle is primarily political. The perceived injustices perpetrated by the US, for instance supporting Israel against the dispossession and brutal treatment of Palestinians, are etched into collective memory. These issues of power inequities are long-term and will take generations to be fixed.”
dispossession and brutal treatment of Palestinians… ignoring tens of thousands of rocket attacks, hundreds of jihadists bomb attacks… against Israeli citizens.
First he says, “there is little resistance to the imperialists within Islam”. Followed by “The battle ‘within’ Islam – for reformation, ijtehad and liberation from patriarchal, violence-preaching clerics – is a far more serious one.”
What ‘battle’ would that be and where is it? Somehow I missed all the protests, speaking out, articles condemning terrorism, much less vigilante actions against the ‘radicals’…
“The Prophet (pbuh), who entered into an agreement with the Jews in Medina, assured the Coptic Christians of protection and engaged with non-Muslims, has followers who have failed him. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia does not allow non-Muslims to worship freely. By law, you cannot have churches and temples there. The Iranian state’s persecution of the Bahai faith is a tragedy of our times. What are we in Pakistan doing to our small non-Muslim population?”
Pure dishonesty. Muhammad broke his treaty with the Jews of Medina and slaughtered them. It is universal Islamic dogma that Muhammad’s later violent Meccan edicts supersede his earlier peaceful Median edicts. Rumi knows this, so he’s outright lying. Taqiyya written for a western audience. The Saudi’s are treating their non-Muslims exactly as the Qur’an proscribes As for the Bahia, they have the utter audacity to claim that Muhammad was NOT the last prophet. So, as far as Islam is concerned their treatment is just. Rumi knows this to be true.
”reigning in the clerics who have no place in Islam to begin with.”
Wait. The clerics have no place in Islam? In what universe?
The only thing positive that I can say for Rumi is that he advocates for allowing Muslim women their due rights and enabling non-Muslim fellow citizens to receive the entitlements they deserve. However he fails to address what those deserved rights would be and according to the Islam that he fails to reject, Muslim women ARE receiving the rights they are due, which is essentially none. And Islam posits that any non-Muslim has NO rights, only the exchange of physical protection for paying the jizza tax and abiding by all Muslim edicts.
As for evil, it should help people to put their mind to this scenario of illustrated intent.
The Leftist alliance would rather have 6 to your zero, than have 8 to your 10.
Meaning, if you had something valuable, they would want to destroy it first, in order to have an edge on you. Even if that costs them a few resource points. They would rather be six points ahead of you, than 2 points behind you, even though the second scenario everyone is better off.
That is evil.
It’s not merely an unfortunate circumstance of poverty or lacking material goods. It’s a conscious choice between 2 or more options. It’s not based on necessity, survival, economics, or self defense. They don’t do what they do because they have no choice. They don’t do what they do to survive. That’s not the point.
Peter Drucker, who was Austrian, lived in Germany until 1933. In his memoir, he wrote about three men he knew who became at various levels Nazis or Nazi enablers:
—Reinhold Hensch (“the Monster”), who came from a working-class family, became an SS officer. He summed up his motivations to Drucker thusly: “Now I have a party membership card with a very low number and *I am going to be somebody*.”
—Paul Schaeffer (“the Lamb”) became editor of a major newspaper, believing he could influence the regime toward moderation. He disappeared when the front that he provided was no longer needed.
—An un-named professor, a distinguished biochemist and a “great liberal,” was expected by many to raise objections at the faculty’s first meeting with their newly-appointed Nazi watchdog. His main concern was about maintaining the level of research funding.
(Interestingly, Hensch had a Jewish girlfriend…he advised her to leave the country and asked Drucker to help her when they both went abroad.)
Knowing these people led Drucker to object to the Hannah Arendt “banality of evil” formulation:
“Evil works through the Hensches and the Schaeffers precisely because evil is monstrous and men are trivial…Man becomes the instrument of evil when, like the Hensches, he thinks to harness evil to his ambitions; and he becomes the instrument of evil when, like the Schaeffers, he joins with evil to prevent worse…I have often wondered which of these two did, in the end, more harm—the Monster or the Lamb; and which is worse, Hensch’s sin of the lust for power or Schaeffer’s hubris and sin of pride? But maybe the greatest sin is neither of these two ancient ones; the greatest sin may be the new twentieth-century sin of indifference, the sin of the distinguished biochemist who neither kills nor lies but refuses to bear witness when, in the words of the old gospel hymn, “They crucify my Lord.””
Nice “fisking” of Rumi, Geoffrey. I had neither the time nor your expertise to take it on. I did recognize his false statement about Israel and Palestine as being typical Hamas style propaganda.
Some posts back, rickl made a comment that Hamas was following the North Vietnamese strategy. They couldn’t defeat the U.S. militarily, but they managed to win through propaganda that sapped the public’s will to continue. Observing Hamas use of their own casualties as bloody flags to turn public opinion against Israel is an attempt to use the same strategy. Then there are articles like Rumi’s. If they keep at it, what with the way the MSM reports the news, they may eventually succeed.
Evil = adj: 1. morally bad or wrong; wicked 2. harmful; injurious. noun: 1. wickedness; sin. 2. anything causing harm, pain, injury, etc.
Mass executions, beheadings, putting heads on pikes, torture, rape, mutilations, and more all fit the definition. Additionally, most evil is spawned when men seek to impose their will on others by force. Convert to Islam or die is just such an act. History is filled with such acts. In Medieval times it was a part of Christianity’s modus operandi. The Spanish Armada sailed with the purpose of converting all of England to Catholicism. The Protestants were no better. The 30 Years War was fought with both sides determined to convert the other side or kill them. Then there were the Crusades and other Christian – Muslim wars. The human proclivity for imposing our will/belief on others for their own good is one of humanity’s least endearing traits. And the one that has wreaked havoc over and over again. If history is our guide, it is not going to end anytime soon.
We sit here in the most tolerant, liberal nation in the world. Yet our position is attacked both from within and without. I do like to point out that we have not wanted war with anyone, but we have been willing to defend against the spread of tyranny in the form of Nazism, Japanese Imperialism, and Communism. Now we are under attack from Fundamental Islamism. It does get old, but we will either rise to the challenge or go the way of Rome.
JJ,
It’s a competitive world.
Chuck:
The type of tribalism you describe is evil.
Civilization is good until it becomes corrupt, at which point it collapses into tribes.
Dibs on the Mountain Time Zone.
Geoffrey Britain,
Thanks.
You are right Eric. ““Religion of peace” was the right idea.
Winning the War on Terror means winning the contest between ordinary Muslims versus Islamic extremists. The terrorists need to be alienated from the Muslim mainstream.”
Winning the War on Terror meant avoiding turning the conflict into a bilateral religious war: crusade verses jihad. Why? Because the post-Christian post-Modern West is unable to fight a Holy War because of its ambivalence to Christianity; and perhaps more importantly, as history illustrates, such a Holy War could or would bring with it enormous destruction and casualties.
Pres. Bush conceived and framed the war on terror properly. What failed was our academic elites, our media and our human rights organizations who should have taken Pres. Bush’s lead and relentlessly focused their criticism, not on Islam directly, but upon the Islamic institutions of Jihad, Sharia, slavery and the Ummah and other Islamic human rights abuses. Instead our academic elites, our media and our human rights organizations relentlessly focused their criticism on Pres. Bush.
Islam is evil.
http://markdurie.blogspot.ca/2014/08/three-choices-and-bitter-harvest-of.html
From a low budget SciFi movie: “Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.”
Substitute “Evil” for “That terminator” and you have a statement about the world. While a definition of evil might be nice for the dictionary, for practical purposes we only need to be able to recognize it when we see it. What we do about it should be obvious given the (expected) result of doing nothing.
Mike O’Malley, I think you’re correct that the media, academia, and human rights orgs. did their best to undermine any attempt to separate the moderate Muslims (“cafeteria Muslims” – Geoffrey Britain’s term) from the fundamentalists who hate the cafeteria Muslims (apostates to the Jihadists) almost as much as they hate infidels. Thus, the Bush approach was undermined from the beginning. The cafeteria Muslims are, for the most part, like sheep. They just want to do their thing and not have to fight the wolves (Jihadists) that prey on them and infidels. We have tried to be their sheep dogs, but to them we don’t look like sheep dogs because of our ethnicity and religion.
IMO, we could try a program of intense communications with the Muslim world, pointing out that the Jihadists have declared war on us and that we must defend ourselves. We could ask that the moderates not let the Jihadists shelter among them, because it endangers their lives. We don’t want to kill moderates, but it can’t be avoided when the Jihadis hide among them. If they can help us by separating themselves from the Jihadis and pointing them out to us, we could make their life safer and more peaceful. It might not work, but it hasn’t really been tried.
The alternative is that we will eventually be in a war of survival between the West and all of the Muslim world. Such a war would be as bloody as WWII. What is worrisome is that the Jihadists are working feverishly to get WMD. Once they have them, they probably could not resist using them. That is when things go into the abyss rather quickly. For a more detailed discussion of that scenario read Richard Fernandez’s “The Three Conjectures.”
Bush tried to dampen vindictive acts against moderate Muslims because he saw them as the same way as people see “moderate” Democrats and Leftists. And just as he failed, so will people fail here at home when taking the same approach.
Because it takes a lot of allied resources to make it work. Bush didn’t have it, and neither does the US have it now.
If a moderate Muslim fears being killed by Islamic Jihad, and leads the death squads to your home, you may just kill all of them, without regard for who is “moderate” or not.
Same is true in the case of Democrats in the US when it comes to Civil War II. Does it matter? Well, does being a moderate Muslim matter to people here? If not, then why would it matter elsewhere?
If they can help us by separating themselves from the Jihadis and pointing them out to us, we could make their life safer and more peaceful.
After the US betrayed our allies in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and various other parts of the world, why should they believe in US=good?
Mike O’Malley (6:37am).. Amen, AMEN.
Throw into that fetid pile of twits the Democrats in congress, state houses, etc. The ones swooning at President Bush’s feet as he left the chamber after his inspiring post 9-11 speech. Senator Biden, never one to waste a national broadcast moment, planted a kiss on the president’s cheek as he moved down the aisle. Hillary…Big and Showy Support. John Boy Kerry… left saliva tracks in support. And on and on and on. Where o’ where did the moral midgets go?? Never mind.
This Bush revering Neoconservative will never ever forgive nor forget. Wouldn’t pi** on’um if they were on f***ing fire.
Ymarsakar: “After the US betrayed our allies in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and various other parts of the world, why should they believe in US=good?”
Excellent point. The Three Conjectures it is.
Thanks J.J.;
I have not read Richard Fernandez’s “The Three Conjectures” in many a year. It is sobering as is: “On War and Apocalypse” by Rene Girard and published by First Things in August 2009. The title refers tp Clausewitz’s “On War” and New Testament warnings about extreme escalating retaliatory violence.
I’ll quote:
Judaism has long separated itself from “the Ban” of Deuteronomy 13:15-17, Christianity from the Inquisition. We may find that Islam is unable to separate itself from Jihad and Sharia. What then? Rene Girard writes
Yes Eric:
Yes like General Ulysses S. Grant after the brutal battle of the Wilderness “even though Grant withdrew at the end of the battle, unlike his predecessors since 1861, Grant continued his campaign instead of retreating to the safety of Washington, D.C.” and thus Grant won the war.
Not Lebanon but the Tet Offensive of 1968 wherein Véµ Nguyéªn Gié¡p demonstrated that the American Left did not have the stomach to stick it out.
Someone mentioned comanches. They in fact swept through the southwest engaging in ethnic cleansing rooted in terror. They raped, tortured, mutilated and enslaved. And murdered babies and small children, often in horrible ways. Tribal warriors can be brutal.
As far as Bush and his unwillingness to call out Islam, I think that is the right decision for POTUS. You need to give “moderates” an out. It the “moderates” are actually not properly practicing their religion, and the radicals are, it isn’t the job of POTUS to inform them of this.
Tribal warfare does NOT involve sawing the heads off children. It may involve killing children but it is done quickly.
Plains indians would kill children, and not always quickly.
… and no just nomadic tribal peoples either. I think one will find comparable despicable cruel behavior among the Romans, Greeks, Mayans Aztecs, French revolutionaries, Stalinists, Nazis, Islamic jihadists, Saddam’s Iraq …
Tribes differentiated war, as from a blood feud, vs raiding, which was like a game.
So raiding is like what people do when they buy up businesses, they may take a few women and property, but they don’t want to destroy the target. They lack the will or resources for that.
A full war mobilization was something else entirely.
Sometimes you would get raided, to test your defenses. Then if you were found to be weak, they would declare war and drive you out, taking your stuff.
The oldest human law wasn’t Right Makes Might from America. It was Might makes Right. Or Divine Judgment from whoever won the battle.