Over-Reactions

A group of men try to kill a couple of thousand airline passengers and their plan gets foiled, I write a post about it, and some strange reactions occur.

The post, Deja Vu Averted, got picked up by Melonyce McAfee in Slate's Blog roundup Thurday.  A moderate bump in traffic ensued, and I received a comment from Karla, and a link.  The comment in its entirety:

So tell me how US bombs will eradicate anything from "hearts and minds."

How many history lessons show that violence breeds murderous resentment and rage, that you can break someone's body far faster than his mind, that those who believe they're in a resistance movement are strengthened in their ideology when their women and children are also killed, whether intentionally or as collateral damage?

Did 9/11 make eradicate your commitment to democracy? Why do you think "strength and determination"--your euphemism for killing--will eradicate Islamists' commitment to their fundamentalism?

To Karla "strength and determination" means killing.  Interesting.  Of course, if I wanted to mean only killing I would have written "exterminate," or "annihilate," or any one of a number of other words.  My phrase is intended to encompass that option as well as others.  I specifically chose it for a different reason, however.  I wanted to eliminate one option from consideration, and that is capitulation.  We cannot give in to terrorists because we are either afraid of what they might do, or afraid of the consequences to both us and them of defending free western society.  There is a now old saw that states, "If we do _______, the terrorists will have won."  Well, if our options for defending democracy are limited in this way then the terrorists really will have won.

I'd prefer to continue disrupting their plans and arresting their members through intelligence work and law enforcement - which may require such things as NSA surveillance, for example - and to convince the nations where this ideology breeds that they need to help change the "hearts and minds" of their people.  But you cannot take military options off of the table entirely, because you will then be left short when a situation like the Taliban in Afghanistan, or Saddam's Iraq, or Iran under Ahmadinejad crops up.  Iran is fighting a proxy war against Israel through Hezbollah.  That may - may - require going to the heart of the problem - Iran - to ultimately stop it.  The negotiated cease-fire may hold for a while, but there is tremendous animosity bubbling under the surface.  Mr. Ahmadinejad has stated that Israel needs to be eliminated.  We ignore those words at our own peril.  Having a military option available can clearly change some "hearts and minds," as Mr. Ghaddafi's change in Libya after the invasion of Iraq demonstrates.

Karla has clearly accepted all of the anti-American stereotypes of the efforts in Iraq.  We're "killing their women and children," and maybe even intentionally!  We're bombing only, apparently, and not rebuilding schools, roads, and electrical infrastructure. 

She alludes to a long history of resistance movements strengthened by efforts to defeat them.  Name one.  Castro's Cuba?  Had we actually used the military against them, other than the weak and ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, I might be inclined to consider it.  The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia?  They were China-backed, and our withdrawal cost 2 million Cambodians their lives.  Let's not repeat that history, okay?  She wants to know whether 9-11 eradicated my commitment to democracy.  No, Karla, it didn't, but it apparently did so for you, as unwilling as you are to defend it.  Your comments smack of a paternalistic and racist belief that "some people" are just incapable of democracy.

I also got linked by Obscene Desserts, who quoted a portion of the post naming it one of the top six unhelpful reactions to the news.  Apparently he didn't read further for the suggested approach, so I'll reprint it here.

How do you do that?  With words for those who are reasonable and willing to listen, and with strength and determination for those who are not.

Again, Libya would be an example of the former, the Taliban an example of the latter.

Did I over-react?  I don't think so, but you may disagree.  Am I anti-Muslim?  Absolutely not.  My father was a Muslim from Turkey.  Am I a crazy and violent extremist who wants to kill them all?  Hardly.  But I lost a brother when Pan Am 103 was blown from the skies, so when innocent civilians are threatened by genocidal maniacs I get angry, and I want it stopped.  Giving in to the demands of these scum is not even on my list of options.  Do I want to eradicate Islamists committment to fundamentalism, as Karla states?  Only if part of that fundamentalism involves killing or converting all infidel non-believers.  If so, then yes, for those who believe such murderous nonsense, I do.

8/13/06 0900:  If you don't think the ultimate aim is to eliminate Israel, think again.

Comments

[jan see]

you clearly have no idea what you are talking about do you? talks with khadaffi started years before iraq. iraq had nothing to do with ghadaffi's capitulation.

whatever.

the simple fact remains that hezbollah had 20% support of the country (Lebanon) before israel invaded. support for hezbollah now is over 80%.

the exact same thing can be said for al quaeda and the united states. just after the 911 attacks, the u.s. had the support of roughly 99% of the world. al quaeda 1%. after the invasion of iraq those numbers are roughly equal.

if the goal is to reduce the number of people willing to do harm to the united states, the current policy has been a miserable fucking failure.

[Giacomo]

Look, if a terrorist organization that had gained a foothold in the government of Canada were openly and without recrimination lobbing missiles and killing American civilians, would you support America's right to defend herself by, if necessary, invading Canada and going after those lobbing the missiles? Doing what is popular is not the same as doing what is right.

My solution is to be friendly to those who are willing to be friendly, and unfriendly to those unwilling to consider friendship. And your solution is ...

I'm waiting ...

Enjoy wearing a hijab

[Giacomo]

Incidentally, before you opine on Libya and what led to their giving up their nukes, you may wish to read this article.

But a review of confidential government records and interviews with current and former officials in London, Tripoli, Vienna and Washington suggest that other factors were involved. Prominent among them is a heretofore undisclosed intelligence coup--the administration's decision in late 2003 to give Libyan officials a compact disc containing intercepts of a conversation about Libya's nuclear weapons program between Libya's nuclear chief and A.Q. Khan--that reinforced Col. Gadhafi's decision to reverse course on WMD.

While analysts continue to debate his motivation, evidence suggests that a mix of intelligence, diplomacy and the use of force in Iraq helped persuade him that the weapons he had pursued since he came to power, and on which he had secretly spent $300 million ($100 million on nuclear equipment and material alone), made him more, not less, vulnerable. "The administration overstates Iraq, but its critics go too far in saying that force played no role," says Bruce W. Jentleson, a foreign-policy adviser to Al Gore in the 2000 presidential campaign and professor at Duke University, who has written the most detailed study of why Col. Gadhafi abandoned WMD: "It was force and diplomacy, not force or diplomacy that turned Gadhafi around . . . a combination of steel and a willingness to deal."

"A combination of steel and a willingness to deal" - that sounds exactly like what I've suggested.