[quote="Bosox1"]Why is being willing to kill each and every one of our enemies such a bad thing? [quote]

?????

Stony, you crazy.

BigPhish, you crazy.

Both of you ... just crazy.

.....

Osama has stated, straight out, what his plan behind 9/11 was: he wanted to bring the US into an un-winnable war in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, we would lose a long, slow, painful war of attrition fighting in the mountains. Just like the Russians did. (Yes, he thinks of the USA today and the Soviet Union of the 1980s as the same sort of beast.) Once the US invades a country like Afghanistan, we end up fighting against people who can just hit-and-run on us, disappear into the mountains when they need to. Our massive advantage in firepower is just negated.

The USA made a really good decision: our invastion of Afghanistan did not depend in large measure on American troops. We used locals, we used air power, we basically did everything we could to avoid being seen as an invader or an occupier. We did not give Osama what he wanted.

Then we turned around and invaded Iraq, thereby giving Osama his absolute wet dream. Not only did we knock off Saddam, who Osama hated, but we also got bogged down in an unwinnable war, just like he wanted us to. Only the landscape we can't control is cities, rather than mountains. Otherwise, very similar situation to what he wanted.

He wanted us to be seen as the bad guys by the Arab world. He wanted the Arab world to become more radical. He wanted a fight to the death between "the West" and "Islam."

BigPhish wants to give him exactly what he wants. I think that's incredibly stupid.

The way we win this thing is by dividing the enemy, not uniting them. We should make clear that our enemy is only people driven by radical Islamist ideologies, who actually want to kill Americans. We should, at the same time, do what we can to appeal to everybody who does not already hold to that ideology, that we are the good guys. We should ... not talk about being pro-democracy, but actually be pro-democracy. We should absolutely, positively not torture anybody who hasn't already been 100% proved to be a terrorist. We should absolutely, positively not kill anybody who isn't already part of the enemy.

The problem with going into Iraq is we don't know who the bad guys are. We just don't have the intelligence on the ground, the knowledge of the culture, the knowledge of the language. We are outclassed in those areas.

Why does that matter? Because every time we kill an innocent man in Iraq, we turn his sons (and the rest of his family, and his friends) into our enemies. Every time our enemies kill an innocent man in Iraq, but manage to blame it on us, they make his sons and family and friends into our enemies. And because we have the massive disadvantages of not being part of the society, not knowing the language or the culture, it's very easy to blame us. We're not there to argue our case.

There are some people in Arabic countries who want to kill Americans. There are many millions more of those people now than there were before we invaded Iraq.

Osama got what he wanted. If we followed BigPhish's ideas, Osama would get even more of what he wants.

...

At the same time, I think it's nuts to go with Stony's idea that we let the bad guys determine what we do or don't do. We can't go around being worried that we're offending people for really bizarre cultural reasons. "Swedish bikini team" example is a good one. But it's more than that. Hard-core Islamic extremists are offended by women having the right to drive, to be uncovered in public, and so on. These are right-wing nutjobs, and there's no way in hell I'm willing to surrender one inch of public policy to their ideals.

We can, however, have the sense to avoid doing things that piss off everybody. If our culture and our freedoms upset you, that's too bad for you. We're not going to change who we are. Most of the Arabic world doesn't want us to change who we are. They just don't want us to threaten their very existence.

A United States with a declared policy of nuking random Arab cities, no matter what the provocation, will instantly earn the enmity of every single Arab in the world. And then we will have an epic war between the civilizations. Just like Osama wants.

What do I want, instead? I want a clear, careful focus on the actual bad guys, while avoiding harming anybody who doesn't already hate us. We need to make it clear that our enemy is a very limited number of people. Again, most people in the Arab world are not our enemies. Let's avoid making them our enemies, and keep the conflict as limited as possible.

One more thing that I would do. I would avoid drumming up fear at every possible moment. I would avoid talking about the various terrorist threats as being threats to our very civilization. I think that's giving these guys way more credit than they're due. I'm sorry, these guys just are not the existential threat to the West's very existence that the USSR was, or Nazi Germany before that. Let's dial down the dramatics. Let's turn Osama and our real enemies into objects of scorn and derision in the Arab world, rather than into heroes and martyrs. Let's make them ridiculous and tiny. Let's not talk about how scary they are, let's talk about how pathetic they are. Let's play out how al Qaeda has to hide in the mountains. Let's use rhetoric about our strength and their pathetic weakness. Let's make clear that their sad attempts to influence us can have no effect on our way of life. Let's make clear that we believe that almost everybody, given the choice, will choose freedom over radical Islamic religion, and so we really have nothing to fear from the few crazies who choose the opposite.

OK, my wife informs me that even she wouldn't read a post this long, so I'll stop now.

If everyone just stopped being religious dickwads everything would be OK.

Work on that, will ya please....

It is polite when a guest in someone else's culture to respect their cultural norms.

That said when you are an immigrant into a culture it is up to you to fit in - that means respecting the norms and customs of your host country and not expecting just to replicate your own culture on a foreign soil.

So it's a sliding scale - stuff like female circumcision, 'honour' killings, jew and homosexual hating just aren't acceptable

Are insisting on publicy funded separate bathing faciilities for men and women or on setting up your own faith schools or on teaching infants thru a Burkha?

Actually there are plenty of weird sects out there with very odd views (such as hasidic jews) that have been tolerated for a long time. I suspect the focus on Muslims at the moment is because of numbers and fear - no matter how weird I think the worldview of a Jehovah's Witness or Scientologist are, I'm still not going to view them with the undercurrent of fear that is almost inevitable in a post 9-11 world when I come across a beaded Muslim with a backpack on a train..

It's not acceptable to try to impose your cultural values on those of another country (though this has happened throughout history and will continue to happen). This is one of the things that pisses the RoW off the most about America.

I saw Prague change dramatically for the worse over a few years in the '90s as rich young Americans brought their money and lack of taste with them, turning ancient beer halls into shops by the dozen.

I've lived in Northern Nigeria when it was liberal Islamic, and on the point about Muslim women's dress I agree with redbarracuda. Islam stresses the importance of modesty and discourages ostentatious displays of sexuality or wealth, so it's obviously not going to appeal to "balla" dickheads who want to show off their pointlessly expensive watches in the (usually) vain hope of attracting some equally mindless young woman to sleep with them.

People may prefer the West's values, but should show a little more respect for harmless diversity (obviously I don't include female circumcision, Sharia law and other obvious breaches of human rights in this), that makes the world such an amazing place (if you ever get as far as leaving your own country, which in the case of most Americans happens, uh, never, hence the appalling ignorance and bigotry). Sometimes it seems like most Americans (or at least the most vocal) won't STFU until there's a MacDonalds, Gap and Starbucks in every town in the whole world.

Finally, a word or two from one of your own finest ever songwriters, a von Heebenstein New York can be proud of:

"Well americans dont care for much of anything
Land and water the least
And animal life is low on the totem pole
With human life not worth more than infected yeast

Americans dont care too much for beauty
Theyll shit in a river, dump battery acid in a stream
Theyll watch dead rats wash up on the beach
And complain if they cant swim"


PS Hampstead Heath's had a women only bathing lake for as long as I can remember. I don't recall any of Hampstead's numerous rich Americans ever objecting to this. Fuinny, that.