What’s Wrong With The World Part XV—Craven
Posted on 20 August 2010
Craven
The third glimmering that came to me that the rot was deeper than it seemed came in the year 2001 after September 11th.
The World Trade Center attack, and many others of its kind, were acts of war by the most dishonorable and despicable enemy in the history of warfare: an enemy indeed that not only was unwilling and unable to face our fighting men in combat, but which went out of its way to attack the weakest, most helpless, and most inoffensive of victims, women, children, and civilians—and even then was not willing to attack the weak in a face to face match, but only attacking by surprise and ambush, without warning or parley, at targets chosen only for propaganda value, not military value.
To add Orwellian dishonesty to dishonor, the enemy refers to their gruesome henchmen, who violate their own religious law by committing suicide, as ‘martyrs’ — a word that among sane people means someone who is the victim of violence, dying at the hands of oppressors rather than repudiate his faith; the word does not mean an oppressor, driven mad by hate to the point where he destroys himself merely to mar a non-military target and wound the innocent.
Having been soundly and deeply bored and annoyed by the super-hyperbolically over-exaggerated accusations of the Moderns that an utterly imaginary boogieman Theocracy was hounding and persecuting them, I confess I was curious (once 9/11 brought the Jihad sharply into the public view) at how the Moderns were to react to an utterly real and undeniably present Theocracy, who both announced and carried out acts of terror in order to hound and persecute them.
Conservatives are accused of oppressing women on the grounds that we don’t want women to murder babies in the womb. Some Conservatives are even so bold as to dare suggest that both sexes are happier when each side fulfills their traditional roles, roles which are based on rational and practical, if not biological and psychological, considerations of the strengths and weakness of each. Some conservatives argue that a society that encourages pornography and fornication and no-fault divorce ends up exploiting and demeaning women by demoting them from wives and mothers into Heffnerian sex-bunnies. Such is the extent of conservative oppression.
One would think that the modern fascist Mohammedans, who actually do oppress women, not only by opposition to prenatal infanticide, but also by dressing them in head-to-toe trashbag-looking garments, by beating them, by mutilating female genitalia in order to deprive their daughters of the possibility of sexual pleasure, by stoning adulteresses, by murdering rape victims, by murdering victims of scandal, by murdering wives and daughters for any other reasons, or by dismembering women them for wearing nail polish, by killing women for reading books or visiting soccer games, and so on and so on, would be subjected to excoriation of all those same feminists who excoriate the Conservatives. The modern fascist-style Mohammedans actually do what Christians are accused of doing, and do many other barbarisms and brutal acts against women no Christian man ever contemplates.
I awaited the outpouring of outrage from the perennially outraged.
Instead I heard crickets chirruping.
Instead I heard handwringing over whether or not it was right to fly the American flag, and I heard self-righteous condemnation of flying the American flag, as such signs of patriotism in wartime were divisive and provocative. Instead I heard that George Bush and other world leaders rushed to Mosques on 9/12, to assure the world that they admired and respected Islam, and all of the (alleged) contributions to world peace and world progress that savage religion boasted. Instead I heard that the head of NASA had a new job; instead of shooting rockets into outer space, his mission was to build up the self-esteem of Muslims by pretending the Middle East had made contributions to the aerospace sciences. To fly the flag or to fail to pretend Muslims deserved praise for utterly imaginary accomplishments would be to create more terrorists and may provoke violence.
Instead I was regaled by the oft repeated tale that the Coalition forces marching against the terror masters in the Middle East were merely stirring up more enemies, creating the problem. I was warned that opposing the enemy may provoke violence.
Instead I heard that the Danish Cartoon riots inspired book publishers and television producers to accept the de facto Islamic censorship of images, words, and programs, rather than stir up trouble. Opposing the censorship may provoke violence.
Instead I heard the Michael Savage, radio talk show host, is not allowed to travel into Great Britain, for the same reason that Geert Wilders, Dutch PM, is not allowed. To speak honestly about Islam is “too controversial” and may provoke violence.
Instead I heard that the Spain was pulling out of the Coalition, because her trainlines had been bombed; the that British government was busily cautioning Her Majesty’s loyal subjects to pull down statues of Florentine Boars in Derby, and to cease flying the Union Jack, not to do and not to do whatever else the hair-trigger sensitivity of Muslim madness might demand. It may provoke violence.
Instead I heard that to fight the war was to provoke the enemy, ergo our only safety lay in immediate surrender, indeed, pre-emptive surrender. (The fact that surrender was to be proffered to a foe who has publicly and repeatedly announced he does not want our surrender was unworthy of notice. The reality-based community was unwilling or unable to notice that the Jihadists are not the Danes. They do not want the danegeld. They are not fighting us to get something out of us. They are fighting us to kill us.)
I listened for the outrage of the eternally outraged to condemn, when it happened in reality, at Muslim hands, what these eternally Outraged eternally but baselessly claimed to fear from Christian hands. The Boy Who Cried Wolf had cried wolf so often, that when I real wolf appeared, I expected to hear the Boy cry even louder.
Instead I heard that the Beltway Snipers were angry white males, not Jihadists. Instead I heard that the Fort Hood shootings were prompted by pre-post traumatic stress disorder, and that to blame Major Hasan’s religious leanings for the act of Jihad will only create more victims and may provoke violence. Instead I heard that the failed attempts by the crotchbomber and the Time Square truck bomber were no doubt perpetrated by Tea Party Members, angry white males and not Jihadists.
I was more than utterly aghast to hear this endless litany of utter unreality coming again and again from the pens and lips of the Left. This is not the Far Left, either, not the ultra-Marxist extremists: these entirely psychotic yet delusional ravings come from the leadership of the Democrat party, men of sober and responsible character. They were constitutionally and perennially unable and unwilling to recognize their avowed enemies.
When confronted by the enemy, the only enemy they perceived or could perceive included George W. Bush, the sinister Republican Party, the even more sinister Tea Party movement, and the most sinister Theocracy.
How could anyone one innocently mistake the enemy, not once, not twice, but forever and aye, so that no matter what the Jihadists do or say, the only enemy the Modern mind sees is the angry white male?
What in the world could make a sober and sane man utter such utter inanity, insanity, asininity, bosh, blather, tripe, twiddle, twaddle, piffle, puke, prate, jabberwocky, fiddlefaddle and flapdoodle?
The phenomenon of utter disconnection from reality is complex, and has many causes, some psychological, some political, but one of them, the primary one, is merely craven and loathsome cowardice.
The punks are afraid.
These Left-leaning so-called self-congratulatory “warriors bold” of liberty who are always willing to insult Bush or shout out a swearword in order to stick it to the Man and to encourage the cause of Freedom of Speech and Liberty of Conscience, are, in the final analysis, lard-assed pushovers, wimps, and sissies.
In the most powerful nation on Earth, protected by the most deadly and efficient and destructive military in world history—indeed, the most deadly military imaginable, since the US arsenal includes sufficient nuclear and biochemical weapons to render the biosphere uninhabitable—the cowards are afraid.
They are too afraid even to name the name of the enemy.
Even when confronting acts which are merely symbolic, and form no real threat, such as, for example, the insolent insult of building a Mosque at Ground Zero—the Mohammedans always erect Mosques at the site of their victorious battles—the Modern man cannot summon the intestinal fortitude, the patriotism, the cultural confidence, the balls, the brass, the grit, the gumption to meet the smirking perpetrator of the insult with a calm and curt “No.”
“No, you should not dare to desecrate the memory of our honored dead; no, you should not dare to spit on our flag or trample the crucifix; no, we will not forget that you seek to hand the enemy a propaganda victory in war— especially in this war, a terror war, which by its nature consists of no military victories, but only of propaganda victories.”
How hard is that to say? For a coward, infinitely hard.
In case you think I am slandering them, let us read the words of TIME Magazine on this very issue: “… a national political fight conducted on [these] terms … will lead to a chain reaction at home and abroad that will have one winner — the very extreme and violent jihadists we all can claim as our true enemy.”
(http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2010923,00.html#ixzz0wtKwq61X)
In other words, the enemy, if denied a propaganda victory, will be provoked.
It does not seem to occur to these enlightened pacifists that the enemy is already sufficiently provoked to commit acts of terror-murder worldwide. To those who actually hear what the enemy publicly announces, the provocation has nothing whatsoever to do with this generation or any of its doings: the enemy is provoked due to military losses in Andalusia in 1492, before the New World was even discovered. The enemy is provoked by Moses. The enemy is provoked by Christ.
And what do we hear instead of a calm and curt “No” to the foe? The self-righteous have decided that to oppose the Ground Zero Mosque is bigotry. (These are the same people who said that to enforce boarder security in Arizona is bigotry, to amend the Constitution of California to define marriage as marriage is bigotry, to join the Tea Party and object to government overspending is bigotry, and to demand government regulation of semi-governmental banks and lenders such as Freddie and Fannie is bigotry.) Ad hominem ad nauseam.
The argument that fighting a war might provoke the enemy was often disguised as the argument that, even as Athens was driven to ruin by overreach when she assaulted Syracuse while engaged in a war with Sparta, so also America while engaged in a war with the Taliban dared not provoke allegedly moderate Muslims. The argument, if true, assumes that there is a group of moderate Muslims willing to attack us or aid our attackers if our firemen fly the American flag or if the British park service maintains an ancient statue of a boar in Darby, who are unwilling to attack us or aid our attackers if we avoid such provocations, but instead flatter the nonexistent Muslim aerospace accomplishments and praise the nonexistent Muslim contributions to the writing of the US Constitution, and have our Christian presidents go to pray to Mosques, and have the Muslim call to pray ring out over the burnt and bloodstained bits of bone left in the ground at Ground Zero from a nearby Mosque.
Obviously, the peace and goodwill of creatures willing to attack us if we fly the flag yet willing to live in peace with us if we trumpet their god’s call to prayer over the innocent dead murdered in the name of their god is peace and goodwill only a craven coward would seek, by our own repeated displays of weakness, to purchase.
I can only speculate as to the ultimate causes of nationwide and eon-long lack of fortitude. Perhaps it is that with no belief in an afterlife, and no loyalty to anything grander or larger than their sexual organs, the Modern secularists live in utmost terror of death. Spoiled brats, they live in anxious fear that their lives might include the discomforts, privation, terror, pain, not to mention the selflessness and sacrifice of war.
But since the Jihadists actually threaten them with death, I cannot explain why the Modern is and continues to be possessed of hair-pulling, voice-hoarsening, eye-rolling, convulsions of fear and terror of the Theocracy of the Judo-Christians, and not only unafraid of the Jihadists, but willing to spill national security secrets to help them, willing to send over human shields to guard their bomb-sights, willing to work tirelessly and without pay for the eventual victory of the world Caliphate and the imposition of Muslim law, including laws abolishing abortion, sodomy, adultery, and intoxication, including laws abolishing all the civil rights and privileges the Moderns allege they defend.
Ayn Rand offers a very simple and clear explanation: they want to die. The useful idiots of the political and social Left are eagerly seeking a way to destroy civilization, the economy, their freedoms and yours, because they seek death due to an un-admitted, subliminal and secret death-wish.
While this indeed does fit all the facts — (there are still Liberals today who defend the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss, agents of a Communist Empire devoted resolution to the death of all Liberals worldwide; there are countless Liberals whose loyalties are as self-destructive and self-defeating as those of a German Jew fiercely loyal to the Nazi Party) — I dismiss the Randian explanation as both facile and non-disprovable. I do not think it is merely death, bodily death, that the Modern Minds seeks. They fight too bravely in the cause of the enemy for that. I speculate that the Moderns want the destruction of their very existence, their souls, their essential selfhood.
I suspect, quite simply, that the Modern man wants to have no center, no heart, no mind, no soul.
The Modern man is not even as dignified as a hedonist or an epicurean: those philosophers at least recognized that short-term, vain and destructive pleasures must be eschewed in order to seek pleasures rightly understood, which are moderate, long-term and self-sustaining pleasures. No, the Modern is a sub-epicurean: the pleasures he seeks are the short and self-destructive ones, precisely because self-destruction is the goal.
I part company from Ayn Rand only in that I think the self-destruction craved is spiritual, not physical, which is a category Ayn Rand’s philosophy does not recognize.
Haunted by guilt and shame, these Moderns are uneasy around anything that exposes them for the bullies and cowards that they are. Haunted by the knowledge that they are foolish and ignorant, they are filled with discontent and helpless fury when anything and anyone who acts like an educated, intelligent, or responsible adult in the public eye.
Hypnotized, drugged, and enamored by airy visions of ecologically safe gender-neutral socialist Utopia on Earth, days when all men shall be as long lived as the inhabitants of Shangri-La, and as stuffed with wealth and ease as inhabitants of Cockaigne, and as peaceful and pure and blessed as the inhabitants as Eden, the Modern man is repelled by any talk of reality, of necessary evil, particularly that horrifically real and necessary evil called war. Modern man is hence addicted to visions.
When one is addicted to unreality, one is allergic to reality: even a small whiff of reality will set off the weeping and sneezing fits of mindless rage and content-free sarcasm which passes for ratiocination among intellectuals. The fit lasts until everyone in range is called a bigot, and then it subsides until next time. Like all allergies, ever smaller whiffs of the pollen or cat hair trigger the rash.
The cowards do not want to be brave, do not want to have fortitude nor stoicism nor dignity nor forbearance. They want to be cowards. They want to be afraid.
Philosophy, neither the studies of Aristotle, nor the hortatory of Epictetus, nor the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, has anything to say to those who do not believe that the subject matter of their studies, exhortations nor meditations exist. These ancient philosophers believe that there is such a thing as the virtue called fortitude, and that it was both served the duty of man and served the happiness of man to find and practice fortitude. The idea that cowards want to be cowards, and would be encouraged and lauded and applauded for this defect, was one never in the contemplation of any of these noble pagan sages.
Why do moderns want to be cowards? It is because they want to be victims; they think victimhood grants them moral superiority without the effort or practice of virtue. You cannot tell a coward that bravery will increase his long term chances of survival and happiness if he despises happiness and seeks not to survive. His unhappiness gives him the right to complain, as if from the stance of moral superiority, about his people more moral than himself. That is his true goal: to assume the high ground of moral superiority in order to quell the whisper of the conscience.
Cowardice is a vice, an ingrained habit of the passions, not something that a man can be talked out of. It is not a matter of a wrong conclusion, but rather a matter of wrong habituation. It requires not just years, but accumulated centuries of custom, law, peer pressure, not to mention the sanction of religion and the respect for the heroic dead, to ingrain into the selfish heart men naturally have that selflessness called courage: and it requires a more than ordinary strength of character to maintain that quiet and longsuffering form of courage known as fortitude.
A society that despises its saints and heroes and admires its sinners and villains cannot teach its young the art of courage.
[...] What’s Wrong With The World Part XV—Craven [...]
Good sir, your sharp tongue of intellect and reason pierced through my own hypocrisy just like a needle would a wool.
Most despicable? Do you remember when we fought Germany and Japan?
Wait a minute… Athens, Syracuse…
John C. Wright is really Dan Simmons!
Anyone who has read Thucydides knows the tragic result of the Athenian attempt against Syracuse.
“The World Trade Center attack, and many others of its kind, were acts of war by the most dishonorable and despicable enemy in the history of warfare: an enemy indeed that not only was unwilling and unable to face our fighting men in combat, but which went out of its way to attack the weakest, most helpless, and most inoffensive of victims, women, children, and civilians—and even then was not willing to attack the weak in a face to face match, but only attacking by surprise and ambush, without warning or parley, at targets chosen only for propaganda value, not military value.”
In other words, an enemy who behaved exactly like Winston Churchill, who sent strategic bombers on night attacks on population centers with incendiary weapons, and whose strategic-bombing commander despised the United States for sending its strategic bombers against quasi-legitimate industrial targets.
I agree that Churchill was a terrorist (although the same is true of Hirohito, FDR, Hitler, Mao, and, above all, the worst murderer and genocidaire of the 20th Century, Josef Stalin), and I hope that you will agree — or else that you will be careful how forcefully you accuse your enemies of the crimes your side commits.
Nor has the habit stopped in recent years: look up how Clinton won in Serbia, cravenly refusing to commit ground troops and instead bombing civilian targets, especially civilian infrastructure, until Milosevic surrendered to save his people.
Are you equating acts of war committed by men in uniform as part of a recognized chain of command so ordered by a democratic government pursuant to a public declaration of war with acts or terror committed by spies and saboteurs, not in uniform, not part of a chain of command, not part of a democratic government, attacking by surprise without a declaration of war?
A man who sees no difference between sheepdogs and wolves, policemen and pirates, cannot be reasoned with, and merits no further attention. Your comment is worthy of contempt, and the selfrighteous tone in which you deliver it is worthy of laughter and derision. Please be serious. We are discussing a serious topic here.
I equate war crimes committed by soldiers in uniform with war crimes committed by non-soldiers. And I get significantly angrier when it’s the forces of Western civilization, the defenders of international law, who violate international law than when it’s that international law’s explicit and self-professed enemies.
There is a difference between sheepdogs and wolves: sheepdogs are not expected to eat the sheep.
“I equate war crimes committed by soldiers in uniform with war crimes committed by non-soldiers. ”
This is why no serious discussion can take place between us, sir. You don’t know the basics of what you are talking about.
“And I get significantly angrier when it’s the forces of Western civilization….”
And this is why I cannot take you seriously. You have a double standard. By holding the West to a higher standard, you hold the enemy to a lower standard, which, in effect, excuses their crimes, for it equalizes misdemeanors of ours with felonies of theirs.
The equation you make between Churchill and Stalin and Osama bin Laden depends on using three different standards for each. But your comment concerns the injustices of war; and yet you seem not to notice that justice presupposes a fixed standard, and injustice is a violation of that standard.
The Axis powers, as well as the Allies, abided by the laws of war. For example, Hitler could have avoided the Fire Bombing of Dresden by not invading Czechoslovakia in the face of British protest, because Britain would not have attacked without a declaration of war; or Tojo could have avoided the atomic bombing of Nagasaki by not attacking Pearl Harbor without a declaration of war, because America would not have dropped that bomb in peacetime, nor had a non-uniformed saboteur smuggle it in. On the other hand, the innocent civilians in the Twin Towers, many of them not Americas nor Jews, could not have avoided 9/11. Another example is that the Axis and the Allies did not engage in gas warfare or germ warfare during WWII, because of the accords and agreements between them. Even Nazis, even Imperial Japan, even Fascist Italy fought in a fashion honorable enough to clear the standard we are discussing. The terror masters deliberately offends those standards insofar as is humanly or diabolically possible.
The purpose of the laws and usages of war is to minimize civilian casualties and limit the scope of war. That is why soldiers wear uniforms and why nations issue formal declarations of war. Acts of war are committed for the rational reason of overcoming the enemy will to resist. Sheepdog. The purpose of terrorism is to maximize civilian casualties. That is why terrorist hide among innocent civilians and kill innocent civilians, and why they strike from ambush without declaration and without negotiation. Acts of Islamic terror are committed for their own sake, not to achieve any political end. Wolf. You say you know the difference between a sheepdog and a wolf, but then you cannot (or do not) tell the difference between a sheepdog and a wolf. You do not seem to notice what the laws and usages of civilized warfare or for, or you would not equate them with their absence.
Pray excuse me, but I am not willing to have a discussion on these grounds. If you wish to discuss any other topic, or to discuss this one in a sober fashion, I am of course at your service; but the line of accusation you are making now is beyond the pale, and I am under no obligation to treat such accusations with respect, or answer them: albeit the respect I owe you as my guest here is, of course, undiminished.
I think that the double standard you speak of here is a single standard, but one not seen very frequently: that I’m most keenly affected by people who vary furthest from the role they were cast in. Continuing sheepdogs and wolves, that means that I get angrier about a sheepdog eating one sheep than a wolf eating four — because at least you could see the wolf coming, especially if you were a sheepdog. (Of course, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, bin Laden-style… I see where you’re coming from.)
Still, as you say, this isn’t worth continuing at this point. You have a very good point that the Axis fought in a much more civilized fashion than bin Laden does, but I’m going to have to weaken my own case and strengthen yours, in the interest of making a complete case: both Hitler and Hirohito violated the laws of war when they could get away with it. Hirohito used poison gas in China, and Hitler treated his Russian POWs no better than Stalin treated his German ones. (Stalin, of course, is so far outside the pale that I frequently fail to talk about him — or rather, I would, except that he tried to present himself as virtuous, and succeeded at least with certain audiences.)
Regardless, I agree that ending the discussion here is a good idea. I got off on the wrong foot — I get livid very quickly when I hear certain subjects discussed in certain fashions, and on your side I’ve read enough of your blog to realize that the pool I’m standing in has been peed in by Will le Fey, and probably others. (Why I didn’t realize that before I posted: again, anger.)
In the future, I’ll try to avoid hitting the “Post” button until I’ve finished collecting my thoughts; or, better, remember that “someone is wrong on the Internet” is well on its way to becoming a proverb.
I’ve said some prayers for you — 15 of the Prayer of St. Gertrude the Great — to be applied in whatever way they’re most urgently needed (which probably has nothing to do with politics); I’d appreciate it if you’d pray for me, on the same terms.
I also have a few comments to add in http://www.scifiwright.com/2010/09/st-james-matamoros-pray-for-us/ — I’ll see you there, on much friendlier terms.
I cannot decide whether or not to ban Will Le Fay. If his presence here is deterring you from commenting here, then perhaps I should. While you and I might disagree on certain points, at least you make an argument I can respect. He is merely obnoxious for the sake of obnoxious.
Banning him isn’t going to change that he peed in a few valuable pools. I think he might be entertaining to counter-troll, but he doesn’t really seem to add much to the discussion — and even when he does make a valid point, the fact that it’s straight from the mouth of a troll does not make it more convincing. (Who was it who observed that the nastiest way to argue for a lie is to argue the truth unconvincingly?)
So, I’d advise banning him. “Obnoxious for the sake of obnoxious” is an excellent description, and he forces people to waste a lot of time on long posts to which he replies with dismissive one-liners that don’t even address the subject. Better to save the efforts of people who are discussing things in good or semi-good faith. He’s not deterring me from posting — I only discovered this blog a week or so ago — but I’m sure there are people he is.
And, of course, ignore any argument he might make in favor of free speech. The Bill of Rights — the most valuable part of the Constitution, in my humble opinion — is intended to restrict the federal government, not the states and certainly not private citizens in free association for the pursuit of a shared goal.
Will does produce a few moments of unintentional comedy, but that they’re unintentional means that they’re not to his credit; and I have no reason to believe that this is a comedy blog.
Thank you for your kind words regarding my position and the character of my arguments, too. I’ll try to be much less sarcastic than I was in my first post here, in the future.
I considered this further, and I think I owe you a better response — having started the discussion, and having failed to adequately defend myself previously.
>> I equate war crimes committed by soldiers in uniform with war crimes committed by non-soldiers.
> This is why no serious discussion can take place between us, sir. You don’t know the basics of what you are talking about.
Can you prove that a war crime is one thing when the perpetrator is a member of a military, and another when it’s not?
Whether one party is guilty of a given action is irrelevant to the question of whether another party is guilty of a different action. “Not guilty because he killed my brother” is not an acceptable plea in a murder trial.
>> And I get significantly angrier when it’s the forces of Western civilization…
> And this is why I cannot take you seriously. You have a double standard.
I have, as stated, an additional standard of “not a hypocrite.” Stalin and Churchill were hypocrites; bin Laden isn’t, and Hitler… well, actually Hitler was, but he was really bad at it.
My main test is “count the number of innocents killed,” which can be lowered by non-hypocritical belief in a cause and by the innocents being killed collaterally instead of deliberately. Collateral deaths can reach terrifying numbers, but they’re not as bad as smaller numbers of deliberate targettings of civilians — so the USAAF may have killed more civilians than the RAF in Europe, but was not nearly as bad in that theater regardless of body count.
Once someone gets far enough into the “villain” bucket, well, there’s not much point in talking about them anymore — except to hold them up as anti-paragons of a sort. If you ask me, bin Laden is there — but because of his routine use of torture more than anything else. (And, of course, you can have degrees of evil within the unequivocally villainous, just as how a murderer of ten men is worse than a murderer of one.)
> By holding the West to a higher standard, you hold the enemy to a lower standard, which, in effect, excuses their crimes, for it equalizes misdemeanors of ours with felonies of theirs.
I said that Churchill was a war criminal, because he committed war crimes; but I will also say that Hitler was a worse war criminal, because he committed worse war crimes, and Stalin was an even worse war criminal, because he committed even worse war crimes.
Additionally, what about the bombings of Hamburg or Dresden make them misdemeanors, where September 11th was a felony — despite the deaths of 3,000 civilians on September 11th versus somewhere north of 100,000 in Dresden? If this is on the theory, which you more or less endorsed before, that a state actor cannot commit any offense as serious as a non-state (rebel, paramilitary, pirate, etc.) actor, though, I suppose there’s nothing I can say apart from the numbers.
> The equation you make between Churchill and Stalin and Osama bin Laden depends on using three different standards for each.
In case you’ve forgotten: “above all, the worst murderer and genocidaire of the 20th Century, Josef Stalin.” “Worst” means that no one else was as bad. Note that Churchill never committed genocide, at least not beyond an unruly tribe or two — on the list of war criminals of WWII, he’s actually the least bad (or maybe second-least after Mussolini), but he did deliberately attack civilians.
> Hitler could have avoided the Fire Bombing of Dresden by not invading Czechoslovakia in the face of British protest, because Britain would not have attacked without a declaration of war; or Tojo could have avoided the atomic bombing of Nagasaki by not attacking Pearl Harbor without a declaration of war, because America would not have dropped that bomb in peacetime, nor had a non-uniformed saboteur smuggle it in.
We could also avoid the killing of hostages by giving the hostage-takers what they want, or avoid terrorism by not drawing Muhammad, intervening in the Middle East, quoting Byzantine Emperors, and/or generally existing.
I prefer to hold all parties responsible — even parties which claim that they are acting on my behalf and/or representing the cause of freedom.
> On the other hand, the innocent civilians in the Twin Towers, many of them not Americas nor Jews, could not have avoided 9/11.
Hitler was not personally harmed by the firebombing of Dresden, while innocent civilians were personally harmed, including individuals who didn’t vote for Hitler in 1932 (like 2/3 of the country), who voted for him without fully supporting Naziism (like how Hamas got elected), were born after the election, or didn’t have a vote.
> The purpose of the laws and usages of war is to minimize civilian casualties and limit the scope of war. That is why soldiers wear uniforms and why nations issue formal declarations of war.
Indeed it is. In the Second World War, aerial bombardment was treated as a variety of artillery bombardment, governed by the following three articles of the Fourth Hague Convention:
Also potentially relevant are two provisions of article 23:
> Acts of war are committed for the rational reason of overcoming the enemy will to resist.
> The purpose of terrorism is to maximize civilian casualties. That is why terrorist[s] hide among innocent civilians and kill innocent civilians, and why they strike from ambush without declaration and without negotiation. Acts of Islamic terror are committed for their own sake, not to achieve any political end. [emphasis mine]
We are treating an alien civilization possessed of the hostile and fundamentally incompatible ambition to impose Shari’a Law on us as if it were a religious denomination rather than a millenarian totalitarian [b]political movement[/b]. [emphasis mine]
Bin Laden is quite explicit about his goal of re-establishing the Umayyad Caliphate (presumably with himself as Caliph).
Acts of war and acts of terrorism are both about imposing one’s will on those unwilling to accede to it; the differences among an act of war, an act of terrorism, a crime, a verbal argument, a propaganda piece, etc., are in means, not ends.
> You say you know the difference between a sheepdog and a wolf, but then you cannot (or do not) tell the difference between a sheepdog and a wolf.
Would you agree that the difference is that a sheepdog is a faction with legitimate jus ad bellum, while a wolf is a faction without one? That’s the definition that I thought we were agreed on.
> Pray excuse me, but I am not willing to have a discussion on these grounds. If you wish to discuss any other topic, or to discuss this one in a sober fashion, I am of course at your service; but the line of accusation you are making now is beyond the pale, and I am under no obligation to treat such accusations with respect, or answer them[.]
I hope that this is both more sober and more detailed.
> [T]he respect I owe you as my guest here is, of course, undiminished.
Your status as “host” is the status of sharing a browser window; there are no physical pleasantries or courtesies involved, so I hope that your respect for me as a guest will extend to answering this post, and addressing the points contained in it.
My courtesy will extend to asking you a single question: when you say “Can you prove that a war crime is one thing when the perpetrator is a member of a military, and another when it’s not?” please tell me what you will accept as valid proof? You quote the Hague Convention — if I quote back to you the Geneva Conventions and older laws and treaties and written documents, will you accept that it is proven fact that men in uniform, by the laws and usage of war, are treated differently and merit different treatment than spies, saboteurs, or domestic criminals performing the exact same acts?
My courtesy will also extend to conceding the point that the aerial bombardment of World War Two was a violation of the laws and usages of war up until that time. However, the enormity would have been fundamentally worse, and legally and morally different, had Hitler and Tojo and Churchill manned the planes with man not in uniform, and struck without a declaration of war, and denied the act was done with their command and support.
That men not in uniform and lacking a command structure cannot surrender nor be trusted to surrender, and cannot be killed without killing innocent bystanders is one of the many reasons why men fight in uniform, and why it is treated different in law and in morality from other acts of violence.
Your complaint that not everyone in Germany voted for Hitler is so otherworldly and frivolous a comment, that my courtesy does not extend to responding further, unless you show more willingness to restrict your comments to reality. Criticizing Churchill for indulging in aerial bombardment against civilian target is a reasonable argument, whether true or not: criticizing Churchill for making war at all is not a reasonable argument, and cannot be true everything in support of your case were granted.
> My courtesy will also extend to conceding the point that the aerial bombardment of World War Two was a violation of the laws and usages of war up until that time.
This is all I wanted to hear. I’m not going to respond to anything else in the post, because as near as I can construct it, we are agreed on the following two points:
1. Your point that Bin Laden’s wartime conduct, if it can even be called wartime, is abnormally heinous and perfidous — even by the standards of the Axis Powers, to say nothing of the Western Allies. I never disagreed with this, but I failed to adequately convey my position.
In particular, my statement that both Churchill and bin Laden attacked civilians gave the impression that I thought there was nothing to choose between them (or between either of them and Stalin). I would choose Churchill over bin Laden, for the same reason I would choose Churchill over Hitler or Stalin: the lesser of two evils, in all cases by a large margin.
Bin Laden’s body count is very low, but that’s because his resources are five thousand followers and a cave. His ambitions, should he ever get the means of achieving them, are perfectly capable of making the Third Reich and the Soviet Union look like a pair of little old ladies at a tea party.
I think the odds of his achieving his goals are very low, but I know better than to imagine that they will necessarily stay that way. Arab Muslims are not known for their industriousness, but if bin Laden or any other Muslim radical ever got his hands on a more industrious population to tax — like the populations of England, Germany, and France, for example — the result would be the Ottoman Empire with nuclear weapons, and I think we both know enough history to know what that means.
2. My point that deliberate attacks on civilians are always wrong, including when the Western Allies did them. Does this make the Western Allies the moral equivalent of everyone else who has ever attacked civilians? No, but it does mean that they attacked civilians. It looks like you’re more consistent than I thought you were, though — agreeing with me that an attack on civilians is always a violation of the laws of war.
If you would care to discuss anything further, though, please let me know; I’d be happy to continue. I have some questions about, and objections to, your most recent post, but I left them out here, since all of them are on points raised after the initial one, and if we’re in agreement on the main question it makes no sense to fight over secondary matters.
Besides, you have a blog to get back to, and a voice crying out off-key in the wilderness is vastly preferable to no voice in the wilderness at all. The real issue of our times is abortion, not Winston Churchill; and keeping a lid on Islamic militancy is also a very urgent task.
Theodore Dalrymple suggests that radical Islam is a reflection of a civilization trying and failing to resist assimilation to the West — pointing out how even bin Laden appears in Western dress in his videos, with the sole addition of a turban. This does not mean that his actions, or radical Islam’s actions in general, are justified; but it does suggest that there might be a light at the end of the tunnel, this side of the conversion of all of the Islamic world. On the other hand, Dalrymple also points out that Islam is becoming the Marxism of our time, the radical ideology du jour for the young, privileged, and rootless… so the end may not be arriving just yet.
Our Lady of Fatima, as well as St. James Matamoros, pray for us, and for them.
I am embarrassed that I answered you so scathingly. It seems we agree on the major points, and differed only in wording, emphasis, and so on. The minor points we can discuss later, if you like. I hope you will accept my apology. I have been doing a lot of apologizing lately, and I am afraid people will think this is because I don’t really mean it, or that it is a meaningless formality. No, not at all: I apologize a lot because I do a lot that is wrong, and the humiliation is good for my overweight pride-stuffed soul.
Yes, Churchill was wrong to bomb civilian targets; Bid Laden is much wronger, because he has put himself into a position were we are forced to kill civilians to get at him (because he is hiding behind them) and harass innocent civilians with security checks to keep the peace. Their deaths are his fault, not ours, and will be laid at his feet when he meets Allah on Judgment Day, and discovers to his horror that the Koran told the truth, and the Allah is the God alike of Christian and Jew and all the sons of Abraham.
“Theodore Dalrymple suggests that radical Islam is a reflection of a civilization trying and failing to resist assimilation to the West”
I am delighted you read this wise and cynical prison doctor. Reading him is like plunging into icy cold water. He reminds me of Virgil in Dante: he is a good guide, in his agnostic way, for everything underneath heaven’s dome, but he cannot reach above it.
The chic of the Leftists allying in spirit with the Jihad is indeed a modern version of Marx. I would propose to you that Marx is merely the latest version of the heresy of Joachim of Flora, or of the Cathars, or of the Pelagesians, or of the Gnostics. The parallels between modern Leftwingery and ancient Gnosticism are striking and alarming. These people are rooting for the Serpent, and think that by indulging in evil we will become as Gods.
To begin with, I have my own apology to make: in the future, I’ll do my best to calm down before posting, and avoid inflammatory and contemptuous language.
And I’m glad to have confirmation that we’re on the same page. Seeing what you’ve been doing in the materialist chess game thread, I think I understand why you’re not doing too well elsewhere; keep up the good fight, but I’m concerned that you’re fighting too much on his ground. If the world were deterministic, I think he might be right — which is probably why he changed the subject when you tried to make him engage with the Apostles and the miracles of Lourdes!
It’s also good to know that we’re both Dalrymple fans.
So, we’re agreed: attacking civilians while in uniform is both legally and morally wrong, but attacking civilians while not in uniform is both legally and morally worse — and hiding behind civilians, attacking without distinguishing marks, fighting under white flags, torturing and falsely claiming to be tortured… I hope that even Hitler and Stalin, wherever they are now, are disgusted with the way bin Laden and the Islamic militants fight.
One last thing: I left out the apology in my first paragraph. I apologize for putting beliefs into your mouth, for provoking you, for wading in with inflammatory language, and for recklessly neglecting to clarify my own beliefs.
And thank you for keeping up the fight past our first posts; I’ll remember in the future both that I should make my own positions clear, and that I should give my opponent the chance to make his (or her) positions clear as well, before savaging someone for something they’re probably not guilty of in the first place. I’m often frustrated with the associative and imprecise style that English often produces… so the last thing I should do is to employ it myself.
Unfortunately, there’s no option to edit my previous post, but I noticed another assumption in your comment: that an organization’s status as “men in uniform as part of a recognized chain of command so ordered by a democratic government pursuant to a public declaration of war” as opposed to “spies and saboteurs, not in uniform, not part of a chain of command, not part of a democratic government, attacking by surprise without a declaration of war” is relevant to the question of whether the acts they committed did or did not constitute war crimes. The quality of an organization’s jus ad bellum can be an aggravating factor to the quality of their jus in bellum, but not an extenuating factor.