Would it be better if Bush failed?

[0.1]

Looking at the current state of world affairs, it is without a doubt that the U.S. has reasserted itself in a major way on the global stage. Many would argue that this assertion of U.S. might is ultimately a very bad thing, as the U.S. manages to anger numerous countries ranging from traditional allies like the Canadians, the French, the Germans, all the way to places where U.S. influence was never really welcomed in the first place: i.e. the middle east.

But, like it or not, the assertion of U.S. military power has been more successful than what most people would like. Iraq as a country under Saddam was literally a house of cards, and although the situtation remains highly volatile, the military action in taking over the country was for the most part fairly successful. And as screwy as Afghanistan was, the campaign there was if nothing else worth the effort as it removed a base of operations for Al Qeada. And like it or not, these military actions while it might have alienated many nations has at least stabilized situations such as North Korea, where dialouge is at least happening. And there might even be a prospect (a slim one to be sure) for some type of deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

But, given that these successes are based largely on the flexing of military muscle and the more hawkish policy of the Bush administration. Would it be better in the long run if the U.S. or rather the current administration failed in its foreign efforts? For example, if the Palestinian/Israeli issue fell through once more, there would be quite a few nations that would be estatic behind the scenes at the public failure of American policy. After all, there is nothing like success to convince someone that a "flawed view" of the world is in fact the right one.

In other words, would it be better for the world if America fell flat on its face in the very near future, and the Bush administration is disgraced by failure. This might make future U.S. presidents more tractable and cooperative with the international community as a whole, and might improve strained relationships with alliess.

[Joe]

I should think not. Failure in foreign policy will likely do more harm than good, it's not something I would like to see. I should also add that if the next round of Israeli/Palestinian talks fall through (which they will), it will hardly be the fault of the U.S.

[Stormbringer]

But, given that these successes are based largely on the flexing of military muscle and the more hawkish policy of the Bush administration. Would it be better in the long run if the U.S. or rather the current administration failed in its foreign efforts?

No. By and large that would simply be getting the worst of both worlds. A pissed off world and a US that is hamstringed internationally.

What would be a far better thing is if Bush has been moderated by our allies abroad. I think his cabinet and Prime Minister Blair should have done more to check Bush's blundering if they really supported him. While I still believe the war with Iraq was the right thing the diplomacy could have been handled much better.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

In other words, would it be better for the world if America fell flat on its face in the very near future, and the Bush administration is disgraced by failure. This might make future U.S. presidents more tractable and cooperative with the international community as a whole, and might improve strained relationships with alliess.

Only if the Euros want to fight götterdämmerung with the Islamofascists without our help.

[Patrick Degan]

In other words, would it be better for the world if America fell flat on its face in the very near future, and the Bush administration is disgraced by failure. This might make future U.S. presidents more tractable and cooperative with the international community as a whole, and might improve strained relationships with alliess.

Only if the Euros want to fight götterdämmerung with the Islamofascists without our help.

Oh, PuhLEEEZE! They haven't the capability to do jack shit except send out a few deluded suicide bombers or blow up the odd building or two. The world isn't facing civilisational collapse at the hands of the Big Bad Islamofascists™.

The Muslims aren't interested in taking over the world. They want us the fuck off their land.

[Nathan F]

Oh, PuhLEEEZE! They haven't the capability to do jack shit except send out a few deluded suicide bombers or blow up the odd building or two. The world isn't facing civilisational collapse at the hands of the Big Bad Islamofascists™.

The Muslims aren't interested in taking over the world. They want us the fuck off their land.

So, I guess ridding the world of the "Evil Control by the Jews" isn't high on their list of priorities? Heck, we could give them all of south-west Asia and the extreemists would still hate the 'Great Satan' of the west.

[Z-Ha-Dum]

The Muslims aren't interested in taking over the world. They want us the fuck off their land.

Muslim extremists are claiming land that isn't theirs.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Oh, PuhLEEEZE! They haven't the capability to do jack shit except send out a few deluded suicide bombers or blow up the odd building or two. The world isn't facing civilisational collapse at the hands of the Big Bad Islamofascists™.

They have numbers, Patrick, and faith. Moreover, they certainly have the capability to development WMDs - Nobody can deny that at one point Saddam had Osirak, even if he doesn't have a nuclear weapons program now, and nobody can deny he didn't have chemical weapons and anthrax once, even if doesn't now: so certainly Arab countries have the capability to replicate these things if they desire. Also, Pakistan has a large fundamentalist element and is nuclear-capable and nuclear-armed. They are far more capable than "a few deluded suicide bombers" - who are not deluded, anyway, but fully understanding of precisely what they're doing, which is carrying out the will of Allah.

The Muslims aren't interested in taking over the world. They want us the fuck off their land.

Their own propaganda is quite clear. They want to conquer the world because that's what their religion demands. We are the infidel, the disgusting materialists who sin in every way. Our culture is based upon usury and the satiation of every sort of lust. They must conquer us precisely because of how our culture is organized and the principles we uphold. We would have to undo the enlightenment to hold them back, at the best--and the worst, the only thing to stop them would be conversion to wahhabism!

They advance in every direction, their numbers infiltrating western nations by way of those immigrants who hold a Salafi-based ideology, or those people who convert to one. Islam certainly cannot be condemned, as we must respect basic freedoms, but anyone who is rational and desires a world based on rational principles must realize that religion should be forever seperated from the State and that the realm of reason and the rational should triumph.

Until that triumph has occured over the whole world, we shall be at war against the forces of reaction. The religious reactionaries of the Middle East are precisely that--people who understand that their own beliefs are being undone by something powerful and threatening, and know exactly the stakes. They are the stakes between everything that our culture and our values stand for, the ethics of a liberal society based on rational concepts, matched against one mired in superstitious and faith in an absolute and all-powerful God. Ultimately the fear is made stronger by the realization among those who fight us that they are the weaker side - But they have one hope. Their hope, logical from their perspective but totally insane to us, is that, God, being all-powerful, can grant them victory if He wills it. This gives them the strength of fanatics and insures us a long and uncertain contest despite the disparity in material strength.

Quite simply, the Age of Reason must now be brought to the Mid-East by the bayonet, because the Mid-East has realized that modern culture and its love of Reason threatens their own reactionary and superstition-based society. So they will fight to preserve it, and fight hoping that God shall grant them victory; that is, fight from the context of the culture that they fight to preserve. We, threatened by such a moral strength of cause, which has so often made members of our species preserver against the impossibility of material odds, can only respond recognizing the threat to what we hold dear:

In every way our culture is superiour to their's. In enshrines rational analysis of events and scientific rigeur as being principles, that is to say, things worthy of respect and being disseminated. It has a respect for human life which comes out of our raising of humanity to our natural place as real and unique beings, sentient of thought but mortal of life, not the subservient creations of an all-powerful God who can be annihilated at His whim, and our ethics are the creations of recognized standards of conduct for the betterment and maintainence of a free and just society, rather than the absolute mandate of a tyrannical deity.

Because of this, the Islamofascists know they must destroy us utterly for their own culture to survive, and so they shall attempt to do. They shall attempt to turn every part of Islam against us, and we must stop them from fully corrupting Islam. They shall attempt to muster every nation of Islam against us, and we must stop them from gaining that full strength. They will attempt to turn every weapon of the world in all their horrors against us, and we must stop them in that as well. And against the ones who remain, the ones deceived into fighting this war, rational civilization against the forces of reaction? Kill them. Not in hatred, but in the calm of Reason: As a farmer strangles a chicken, a necessary task, we stamp them all out.

And if they succeed in what they attempt? Then we simply have a greater foe to fight, the task will be harder, and we shall have to be ever-more resolute. That is why we must act now, to strangle what is growing before it has reached the point where many, many will have to be killed to stop it.

It is indeed The Twilight of the Gods - For this contest shall decide the twilight of organized religion as a force which dominates the world, the final replacing of theocracies with liberal democracies.

[Axis Kast]

The Arabs simply want to be rid of the “rape mentality” pervading throughout the Middle East as a whole. Right now they blame the Americans – who incidentally represent the largest and most bombastic threat -, although were Washington to “back off,” many European nations would find themselves beset by angry threats within a good five years’ time.

Bush blundered, of course, but even soothing our allies would only have worked so well. Chirac and Schroeder didn’t care one way or the other about Iraq. They simply wanted an issue on which they could galvanize the whole of Europe and walk away having unleashed a regional consciousness as during no other time in the Continent’s recent history. Their pervading intention was the inception of political life in what had until then been a largely economic Union. With the help of Russia – who incidentally had its own money invested in Iraq and its own desire to see the Europeans shed American influence -, the French and Germans largely succeeded. Even Paris’ bullying of Turkey and the Eastern Europeans seems to have paid off. The Turks were reportedly more upset by the argument that American money was meant to bribe them into action rather than Belgium’s refusal to grant them security under the NATO alliance. Oh well. It was bound to happen anyway. Europe’s becoming too much its own power to live in our shadow contently much longer. In fact, without the Greens – which keep military budgets in Germany and elsewhere low on the basis of having American bases in-country -, the Rapid Reaction Force about which we hear so much steam would probably already have gotten somewhere. But that’s talk for another day. The real point I wish to make here is that for Bush, diplomatic punishment on a grand scale was virtually unavoidable. Nobody likes a “big guy,” least of all those in his shadow.

Osama Bin Laden wouldn’t stop if we left Saudi Arabia and the entire Middle East. His plan is global theocracy of the corrupted Islamofascist style. The countries of the Persian Gulf stake their very stability on channeling hatred outward – toward the U.S. and toward the West. It’s very easy for them to accuse any action by any outside power as “anti-Islam.” And in a way, it makes sense, since anything that degrades a Persian Gulf state’s own power is inherently anti-Islam. We’re talking about Muslim nations after all. And nobody likes to think that their own ethnic or religious group is being robbed of power in any way. It kept Europe’s wars going for centuries. It might have the same effect – albeit for decades – right now.

[Z-Ha-Dum]

Muslim extremists are claiming land that isn't theirs.

Damned. Bad editing.

[Vympel]

Moreover, they certainly have the capability to development WMDs - Nobody can deny that at one point Saddam had Osirak, even if he doesn't have a nuclear weapons program now, and nobody can deny he didn't have chemical weapons and anthrax once, even if doesn't now: so certainly Arab countries have the capability to replicate these things if they desire

So? Chemical weapons are a battlefield gimmick- explosives are capable of far more destruction. And of all the biological agents, you're much more justified calling smallpox a WMD than anthrax, which has a decidedly unimpressive record: see Sverdlovsk.

Also, Pakistan has a large fundamentalist element and is nuclear-capable and nuclear-armed.

Pakistan doesn't have the economic or military power to challenge the West- or even India for that matter, who regularly bitchslap them. This'll be the case indefinitely. Not to mention that the place isn't under the control of the fundies, and if it did fall under their control, much of the international support that keeps them treading water in their pointless losing race with India would evaporate entirely.

As to remaking the Middle East with the sword ... I don't think it can work.

[Axis Kast]

Saddam at one point possessed a functional nuclear weapon with the sole exception of fissile material, Vympel. Not to mention that if I remember correctly, Algeria and Egypt have their own nuclear power stations.

If Pakistan "went fundie," we'd have a serious problem, since then you might see unconventional weapons in terrorist hands. I'm not sure just how mobile any of their nuclear warheads happens to be, but I wouldn't take the chance they don't have biological or chemical weapons programs as well. Now everything would deteriorate with the Islamofascists in control, but that's not to say the capability wouldn't be there in the first place.

[Vympel]

Saddam at one point possessed a functional nuclear weapon with the sole exception of fissile material, Vympel. Not to mention that if I remember correctly, Algeria and Egypt have their own nuclear power stations.

It's not just a question of that- it's also minituarization (can you fit it on a SRBM?) and delivery systems. Establishing a viable nuclear capability isn't as easy as some people argue (the 'oh it's only 1940s technology' crowd). And without the conventional military or economic power to back it up, building a few nukes and not having anything to deliver them effectively isn't a threat to the West.

If Pakistan "went fundie," we'd have a serious problem, since then you might see unconventional weapons in terrorist hands. I'm not sure just how mobile any of their nuclear warheads happens to be, but I wouldn't take the chance they don't have biological or chemical weapons programs as well.

What would you do about it, besides what I proposed would happen anyway?

Now everything would deteriorate with the Islamofascists in control, but that's not to say the capability wouldn't be there in the first place.

Oh some have the capability to build nuclear weapons, I just think Marina overstates the threat to the West.

[Axis Kast]

It's not just a question of that- it's also miniaturization (can you fit it on a SRBM?) and delivery systems. Establishing a viable nuclear capability isn't as easy as some people argue (the 'oh it's only 1940s technology' crowd). And without the conventional military or economic power to back it up, building a few nukes and not having anything to deliver them effectively isn't a threat to the West.

Saddam can certainly build missiles. It’s still up in the air whether all of his SCUDs were actually stripped. And I think you’ll agree that it’s a substantial feat for any nation to build a functioning nuclear warhead in the first place – especially Iraq. Marina’s point stands: Saddam Hussein had access to nuclear technology and relevant data. There was always a potential for his “making good” on the experience in some way, shape, or form.

What would you do about it, besides what I proposed would happen anyway?

Not a whole hell of a lot – although your response deals with the conventional, not the unconventional.

Oh some have the capability to build nuclear weapons, I just think Marina overstates the threat to the West.

In Pakistan’s case? No. We’d see al-Qaeda with all kinds of arms and support real quickly if Pakistan “went fundie.”

[Vympel]

Saddam can certainly build missiles. It’s still up in the air whether all of his SCUDs were actually stripped. And I think you’ll agree that it’s a substantial feat for any nation to build a functioning nuclear warhead in the first place – especially Iraq. Marina’s point stands: Saddam Hussein had access to nuclear technology and relevant data. There was always a potential for his “making good” on the experience in some way, shape, or form.

I didn't think Iraq came under the Islamic fundie category. Saddam's access to nuclear technology and relevant data was largely made possible due to his cooperation with the West. And even Russia has agreed to oversight of Iran's nuclear reactor- which more properly comes into the fundie category, though whether they're actually developing nukes remains to be seen.

In Pakistan’s case? No. We’d see al-Qaeda with all kinds of arms and support real quickly if Pakistan “went fundie.”

Yeah, though it's also a question of can Pakistan go Islamic fundie (it already is, to a certain extent- see their outrageous religious laws), how Islamic fundie will it go (even Iran has been quiet since 1979 for the most part, asides from likely support to Hamas and Hezbollah), etc. I don't agree that the Islamic world wants to destroy the West. I just don't see it.

[Patrick Degan]

Oh, PuhLEEEZE! They haven't the capability to do jack shit except send out a few deluded suicide bombers or blow up the odd building or two. The world isn't facing civilisational collapse at the hands of the Big Bad Islamofascists™.

They have numbers, Patrick, and faith. Moreover, they certainly have the capability to development WMDs - Nobody can deny that at one point Saddam had Osirak, even if he doesn't have a nuclear weapons program now, and nobody can deny he didn't have chemical weapons and anthrax once, even if doesn't now: so certainly Arab countries have the capability to replicate these things if they desire. Also, Pakistan has a large fundamentalist element and is nuclear-capable and nuclear-armed. They are far more capable than "a few deluded suicide bombers" - who are not deluded, anyway, but fully understanding of precisely what they're doing, which is carrying out the will of Allah.

The entire military capability of the combined Islamic world doesn't add up to that represented by the Soviet Union of 1950. Furthermore, to successfully challenge a modern superpower in an all-out war requires equal or superior military capability. The capacity to produce a few dozen Fat Man-class atomic bombs with no ability to project power globally does not add up to a military threat capable of winning a world war. The Islamic world, moreover, lacks the industrial base necessary to build such a war machine.

Numbers and faith don't give you an edge over a modern, fully-capable war machine. Ask the Japanese about that one.

Could they intercept and destroy our warfleets? No. Could they stop our air force? No. Could they prevent a single weapon crossing into their territory and destroying whatever we targeted for destruction? No. Could they mount an invasion and conquest of any territory not contiguous to their own? Again, the answer is no.

If it really came down to it, worst-case, could they prevent us from incinerating the Islamic world with an SLBM barrage? No.

Could the Islamofascist hordes conquer the Chinese? Could they stop a Russian nuclear attack? Howabout even an Indian or an Israeli nuclear attack?

The Muslims aren't interested in taking over the world. They want us the fuck off their land.

Their own propaganda is quite clear. They want to conquer the world because that's what their religion demands. We are the infidel, the disgusting materialists who sin in every way. Our culture is based upon usury and the satiation of every sort of lust. They must conquer us precisely because of how our culture is organized and the principles we uphold. We would have to undo the enlightenment to hold them back, at the best--and the worst, the only thing to stop them would be conversion to wahhabism!

Their propaganda, Duchess? Or is that from whatever dementedly paranoid and alarmist screed you've made the mistake of taking seriously this week? Even in the most extreme of his pronouncements, Osama BinLaden never spoke of conquering the United States and setting up a Wahhabist regime in Washington. He only spoke of driving the Infidel from the Holy Land.

They advance in every direction, their numbers infiltrating western nations by way of those immigrants who hold a Salafi-based ideology, or those people who convert to one.

Unless their ingress into this and other Western countries is numbering in the millions, the even smaller minority which hold extreme views are hardly sufficent to successfully overthrow the sociopolitical establishment. Furthermore, generational assimilation operates to dilute the immigrant culture's influence on the children and grandchildren.

Islam certainly cannot be condemned, as we must respect basic freedoms, but anyone who is rational and desires a world based on rational principles must realize that religion should be forever seperated from the State and that the realm of reason and the rational should triumph.

Reasonable; though you may want to talk to a few Republicans who seem a bit confused on the issue.

Until that triumph has occured over the whole world, we shall be at war against the forces of reaction. The religious reactionaries of the Middle East are precisely that--people who understand that their own beliefs are being undone by something powerful and threatening, and know exactly the stakes. They are the stakes between everything that our culture and our values stand for, the ethics of a liberal society based on rational concepts, matched against one mired in superstitious and faith in an absolute and all-powerful God. Ultimately the fear is made stronger by the realization among those who fight us that they are the weaker side - But they have one hope. Their hope, logical from their perspective but totally insane to us, is that, God, being all-powerful, can grant them victory if He wills it. This gives them the strength of fanatics and insures us a long and uncertain contest despite the disparity in material strength.

In a war beteen the Past and the Future, it's the Past that's doomed. Not the Future. Religious Insanity doesn't alter that equation.

Quite simply, the Age of Reason must now be brought to the Mid-East by the bayonet, because the Mid-East has realized that modern culture and its love of Reason threatens their own reactionary and superstition-based society.

Words don't exist to describe how nonsensical you sound at this point. Do you ever actually think through the positions you argue?

So they will fight to preserve it, and fight hoping that God shall grant them victory; that is, fight from the context of the culture that they fight to preserve. We, threatened by such a moral strength of cause, which has so often made members of our species preserver against the impossibility of material odds, can only respond recognizing the threat to what we hold dear:

Maybe they just don't want McDonalds around the corner from the Kaabah? Maybe they just don't want to be turned into a branch country of the West INC? If the positions were reversed, would we not fight to prevent our own culture and traditions from being extinguished? You're talking about imposing Reason at gunpoint and don't even see how Unreasonable your entire premise is.

In every way our culture is superiour to their's. In enshrines rational analysis of events and scientific rigeur as being principles, that is to say, things worthy of respect and being disseminated. It has a respect for human life which comes out of our raising of humanity to our natural place as real and unique beings, sentient of thought but mortal of life,

Yes, I know the sales-pitch backward, thank you.

not the subservient creations of an all-powerful God who can be annihilated at His whim, and our ethics are the creations of recognized standards of conduct for the betterment and maintainence of a free and just society, rather than the absolute mandate of a tyrannical deity.

Again, I refer you to some Republicans who seem quite confused on this issue and, BTW, are a lot closer to the levers of power in this society than any Wahabbi Muslim will ever get.

Because of this, the Islamofascists know they must destroy us utterly for their own culture to survive, and so they shall attempt to do. They shall attempt to turn every part of Islam against us, and we must stop them from fully corrupting Islam. They shall attempt to muster every nation of Islam against us, and we must stop them from gaining that full strength. They will attempt to turn every weapon of the world in all their horrors against us, and we must stop them in that as well. And against the ones who remain, the ones deceived into fighting this war, rational civilization against the forces of reaction? Kill them. Not in hatred, but in the calm of Reason: As a farmer strangles a chicken, a necessary task, we stamp them all out.

Sometimes the comedy just writes itself, doesn't it?

And if they succeed in what they attempt? Then we simply have a greater foe to fight, the task will be harder, and we shall have to be ever-more resolute. That is why we must act now, to strangle what is growing before it has reached the point where many, many will have to be killed to stop it.

I see... To obviate the hypothetical threat of being conquered by a billion religious fanatics who outnumber us 5:1 and are becoming more radicalised simply by our mere presence on their land, your proposal is for us to conquer those billion religious fanatics who outnumber us 5:1 first, killing however many millions of them are required to secure that conquest in the process, extirpate their religion, and impose Western Rationality upon them at gunpoint. And somehow, this will not generate resistance and radicalise them against us, which in any Real World, would trigger off revolutionary terror and fanatically religious opposition against the occupying power and/or their puppets on the throne.

It is indeed The Twilight of the Gods - For this contest shall decide the twilight of organized religion as a force which dominates the world, the final replacing of theocracies with liberal democracies.

As I recall, a certain little German corporal with a Wägner fixation started thinking along those lines a little too long and hard. Became paranoid about phantom religiocultural conspiracies threatening Western Christian civilisation. After a while, he sort of lost touch with Reality altogether. So did his followers. Tragic story, actually. But instructive.

[Axis Kast]

I didn't think Iraq came under the Islamic fundie category. Saddam's access to nuclear technology and relevant data was largely made possible due to his cooperation with the West. And even Russia has agreed to oversight of Iran's nuclear reactor- which more properly comes into the fundie category, though whether they're actually developing nukes remains to be seen.

The scientists are still there. The information is still floating around. If we’re moving from Iraq into Iran, the nuclear fuels and reactors and technologies are all present. We’re simply talking about the pool of knowledge, experience, and equipment available in the Persian Gulf and North Africa.

Yeah, though it's also a question of can Pakistan go Islamic fundie (it already is, to a certain extent- see their outrageous religious laws), how Islamic fundie will it go (even Iran has been quiet since 1979 for the most part, asides from likely support to Hamas and Hezbollah), etc. I don't agree that the Islamic world wants to destroy the West. I just don't see it.

There’s still the chance for Pakistan to revolt. Not to mention that it doesn’t matter what the majority thinks; only that the crazies in power let their guard down a moment, pass on the wrong weapon to the wrong group, and initiate another wave of terror on the Western world and the United States in particular.

This all boils down to the fact that we’re too enmeshed to pull out of the Middle East now without damaging our economy – and our credibility – to hell and back. But then it’s a Catch 22, since as long as we remain dependant on the black gold, we put ourselves – as the United States – out front as the largest Western target for criticism, violence, and attempted intimidation.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The entire military capability of the combined Islamic world doesn't add up to that represented by the Soviet Union of 1950. Furthermore, to successfully challenge a modern superpower in an all-out war requires equal or superior military capability. The capacity to produce a few dozen Fat Man-class atomic bombs with no ability to project power globally does not add up to a military threat capable of winning a world war. The Islamic world, moreover, lacks the industrial base necessary to build such a war machine.

And this means what? First of all - I doubt that you should immediately ignore such nations as Pakistan and Iran. The Soviet Union of 1950 did not have a nuclear arsenal to speak of, as was Pakistan's, and in terms of population would be matched poorly overall against even those two nations - and especially their armoured forces, if not perhaps their divisional strength. A nice rhetorical flourish, but Islam can pose a real threat (And I'm totally ignoring the fact that the Saudis, Jordanians, and Egyptians, among others, all have American equipment of at least decent quality):

1. Economically. The world relies on oil for industry, and Islamic countries have oil in more than just the mid-east, if the majority of it is there. Though the USA is not dependent on Islamic oil, the world in general relies a great deal on it, and a major worldwide depression would result on their cutting off the supply. Operations against the Islamic world military would be hampered by constrained oil supplies, forcing oil rationing in the nations engaged in these operations - and thus, again, economies less able to support major military operations (which are, as has been discussed here, quite expensive).

2. Geography. Islam controls two major sealane choke-points at which a large part of the world's commerce has to transit. The effects of the closure of the Suez Canal are well-known on the world economy, and effecting the closure of the Canal again, along with interdiction by small craft and some submarines in Indonesian waters, could seriously effect trade. Most trade in absolute tonnage terms still travels by water.

3. Offensive operations likely to be of an unconventional nature, thereby limiting necessity of building up a really major industrial base. Sheer numbers, combined with fanaticism, possible WMDs, and existing military assets, makes for at least a credible defence - a platform from which to launch attacks of a covert nature intended to inflict maximum civilian harm.

Numbers and faith don't give you an edge over a modern, fully-capable war machine. Ask the Japanese about that one.

The Mad Mullah won at Gumburu - He had his men keep charging the British through their rifle fire until they ran out of ammunition, and then a final rush of spearmen broke the square. Victories like that are rare, but they can also happen. If you get yourself into a mode of thinking like they can't, that's when they usually do.

Could they intercept and destroy our warfleets? No. Could they stop our air force? No. Could they prevent a single weapon crossing into their territory and destroying whatever we targeted for destruction? No. Could they mount an invasion and conquest of any territory not contiguous to their own? Again, the answer is no.

The Iranian navy continues to improve in quality. In constricted waters like the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea there's always the threat of the modern equipment of the Saudis or the Egyptians being able to overcome us and halt us from local and vital regional targets. Air forces with modern equipment may do better than those we've so far faced, the cultural blindspots in warfare potentially being less severe towards aviation combat, which has always favoured the individual.

If it really came down to it, worst-case, could they prevent us from incinerating the Islamic world with an SLBM barrage? No.

If people like you keep us from doing what has to be done now, that's what we're going to have to do in fifty-odd years. That's been the general line of my argument all along.

Could the Islamofascist hordes conquer the Chinese? Could they stop a Russian nuclear attack?

Most of the Russian arsenal isn't working: They have enough to take out a lot of people and make things pretty odds-even for the laydown with Islam, even if the Pakis got a few through, which would be unlikely, one grants. The Chinese - No.

Howabout even an Indian or an Israeli nuclear attack?

India? That would be very unpleasant for both sides. Israel? The same, considering the situations in which they'd launch, and the revolt it would cause among the Arabs living in close proximity that couldn't be suppressed with nuclear devices.

But, Patrick, think about what you're saying now - You're asking how we can stop them with nuclear weapons. I'm saying: What can we do to keep it from getting that bad? And the answer to that, I contend, is impose democracy upon them now, before it does reach that point.

Their propaganda, Duchess? Or is that from whatever dementedly paranoid and alarmist screed you've made the mistake of taking seriously this week?

My sources are entirely Islamic. Sufis, or the rambling propaganda lines themselves, or websites. Here's a good one - Khilafah, or, "Caliphate":

Caliphate

A good section:

4. What is The Muslims Duty towards His Country?

Islam makes it a duty upon all Muslims to work to change their countries from Dar al-Kufr to Dar al-Islam, and this can be achieved by establishing the Islamic State i.e. the Khilafah, and by electing a Khaleefah and taking a bay’ah on him that he will rule by the Word of Allah (Subhaanahu Wa Ta’Ala) i.e. he will implement Islamic laws in the country where the Khilafah has been established. Then the Muslims should work with the Khilafah to combine the rest of the Islamic countries with it, hence the countries will become Dar al-Islam and they will then carry Islam to the world through invitation and jihad.

Unless their ingress into this and other Western countries is numbering in the millions,

Look at the demographic trend of Europe and Muslim immigration there. Also, because of the failure in Europe to successfully integrate the Muslim populace, they are dissaffected and more likely to turn extremist. In fact, that was the meaning of my first comment -- We'll be safe behind our oceans from the sort of large-scale Muslim immigration that Europe is getting through the Balkans and from North Africa, while they'll have to fight an enemy eager to conquer the Europe denied to them by Charles Martel, with a considerable Fifth Column to aide. That would be the result of a failure of the President's current efforts.

Reasonable; though you may want to talk to a few Republicans who seem a bit confused on the issue.

*sighs* A thousand times yes, indeed! We could have waged this whole thing so much better, I will confess that now - I have a friend, half Turkish, who regards the entire mess as a blunder, one of both sides, inexperienced and arrogant politicians stumbling into each other marvelously. It's happened before. I cannot respect the President, not after his promise to renew the Assault Weapons Ban if it were to be presented to him again (for that is the real bedrock of freedom, though we likely disagree on that as well) - But he must be supported. There is to much at stake in this war for anything else to be done, even with a sigh, and a shudder. Besides, we have the strength - if we act now - to succeed even if that strength is applied poorly.

In a war beteen the Past and the Future, it's the Past that's doomed. Not the Future. Religious Insanity doesn't alter that equation.

Barbarians have overrun civilization before. You're right, civilization inevitably still progressed even so. But how many thousands of years would it take for a triumphant Wahhabi Caliphate to restore all that western civilization has achieved? Inevitable? Yes. But I don't want to imagine how long it would take, and all the horror and mire of time that would occur--or the potential natural disasters that could befall humanity--while that barbaric state of our species endured.

Words don't exist to describe how nonsensical you sound at this point. Do you ever actually think through the positions you argue?

Yes. This position is the result of long, hard, and careful thought, and much debate and discussion, and countless amounts of reading and studying on the situation and the mid-east and the culture, following 9/11.

Maybe they just don't want McDonalds around the corner from the Kaabah? Maybe they just don't want to be turned into a branch country of the West INC? If the positions were reversed, would we not fight to prevent our own culture and traditions from being extinguished? You're talking about imposing Reason at gunpoint and don't even see how Unreasonable your entire premise is.

Reason was imposed at gunpoint on Europe. It was, for that matter, imposed at gunpoint on most of the world which we consider to be rational and modern today. Either by the government crushing revolts, or by violent revolution, or by war and conquest, or war and the spreading of institutions--violence has been the principle method of spreading liberal democracy, and its mirror alternative, communism, which for the most part has been discredited and resulted in liberal democracy, with a similiar foundation of rational thought.

So, no, I do not think it is merely about hating our culture and not desiring it inside of Mecca--though they certainly don't want it there, I agree with that! However, the problem is that it's simply inevitable. Capitalist, liberal democracy is now global. Islam is very near to global, and the two cannot coexist. One must triumph over the other. It's as simple as that. There are no more spheres of inhabitation. The modern world does not allow for isolation of cultures or peoples. The Islamofascists have recognized this and realize their only chance--ultimately, a chance that only exists in the context of their religious worldview, but a chance which does exist to them, and that's what counts, is to defeat capitalist democracy. And that, Patrick, is exactly what they're trying to do.

Yes, I know the sales-pitch backward, thank you.

It's also true. Cultures are ultimately the sum of their parts, and the parts going into Western culture are much better than those going into Islamic culture. At lot of this has to do with the fact that many of the parts going into Islamic culture are not real.

Again, I refer you to some Republicans who seem quite confused on this issue and, BTW, are a lot closer to the levers of power in this society than any Wahabbi Muslim will ever get.

Yes, I know what they do, and what those idiots say and suggest. But think about it for a moment, Patrick - Let's say you're religious, a religious fundie, even, but you're raised in a society which has seperation of Church and State, where the Theory of Evolution is taught in schools, where the Big Bang Theory exists. Where science is commonly accepted as an explanation for most things that occur.

...How dangerous are you in comparison to a religious fundie raised in a society ruled by, say, an Absolute Monarch, or worse, an Ayatollah, where in either case, the constitution is... The Quran? Where the creation story in the Quran is taught as fact in school with an alternate theory not even being mentioned as existing? (Let alone being given equal air time as those proposals in the USA have suggested!) Where the universe was created instantly at the thought of an almighty God? Where that God is attributed to be the cause of nearly everything that happens in everyday life?

Religious fundies in a rational culture are less dangerous than those in a religious culture precisely because they are going against the grain of the dominant perceptions of the culture they've been raised in.

And somehow, this will not generate resistance and radicalise them against us, which in any Real World, would trigger off revolutionary terror and fanatically religious opposition against the occupying power and/or their puppets on the throne.

A conquest can be properly had by analyzing the situation and taking the appropriate measures to secure that nation. We may succeed in Iraq as it is now. The same for Syria. Iran may fall without a shot being fired, the people willingly taking up western culture - The youth there are tired of the Ayatollahs and desireous of the West.

As for the KSA, the real heart of the problem? Bluntly, we've forgotten that if you kill enough people to cow the populace, break their spirit through the ferocity of your attack, and then rule the survivors justly--this has always worked. Caesar killed a million people in pacifying Gaul and sold another million into slavery. The province turned into one of Rome's most loyal and productive. Germany's former colonies in Africa today are some of the more successful nations there--the Germans conquered with extreme brutality, but in the wake of it could lay the foundations of the rule of Law and of their institutes deeply, and they have stuck, allowing for the British in turn to impart more concepts of parliamentary rule over that, and finally for some beginnings of true democracy to show through.

I show you examples from the beginning and the end of the western history of conquering and spreading our institutes and values. Throughout that entire span, though, the same general trends held true: we came, we killed, and in the wake of the blood, we left what we had innovated, a legacy of law and institutes which have only served to improve those regions in the long run.

It was a fickle whim of geography which allowed democracy to rise in Greece, most likely, but the culture that it has spawned, western culture, is one worth spreading--and in the case of the Mid-East, one we must absolutely spread. If we do not spread it now, the casualty count shall be far higher before this century is out.

As I recall, a certain little German corporal with a Wägner fixation started thinking along those lines a little too long and hard. Became paranoid about phantom religiocultural conspiracies threatening Western Christian civilisation. After a while, he sort of lost touch with Reality altogether. So did his followers. Tragic story, actually. But instructive.

It becomes rather clear that Hitler worried over Race more than culture. The Jewish race threatened the Aryan - And the Slavs were in the way of the propagation of the Aryans. So both had to go. Race, however, is a phantasm, a non-existant thing--and when you build an ideology on a phantasm, why should it do anything but plunge into mad fantasy? Culture is quite real, and so is the religion that can often drive it, but should no longer in the coming age.

This is not a war I am advocating. This is a war I am saying is completely inevitable. I am merely stating that if we fight it now we can minimize casualties on both sides. If the effort is stopped at this point, all that will be achieved is the plunging of the world into a bloodbath before the century is out. The world just draws closer together as we advance technologically, and as we do, the impossibility of Islamic culture surviving untainted is assured--and known to them. We can either undo the Age of Enlightenment, a truly impossible thing, or we can fight.

We can fight now, a swift work to finish what must be done, or we can meander in our self-pitying, contemptible self-hatred that is the malaise following the defeat of communism, and only find our enemy more powerful and more determined when the matter can no longer be put off and the accounts must be settled. There is no ignoring them, and there is no avoiding them. We meet head on, and of course we must be victorious: unless our own arrogance and our own self-contempt destroys us. This is what the progress of the world has demanded of us, and we must not come up short.

[Vympel]

Just some nitpicks.

The Iranian navy continues to improve in quality. In constricted waters like the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea there's always the threat of the modern equipment of the Saudis or the Egyptians being able to overcome us and halt us from local and vital regional targets. Air forces with modern equipment may do better than those we've so far faced, the cultural blindspots in warfare potentially being less severe towards aviation combat, which has always favoured the individual.

The Iranian Navy doesn't stand a chance against any Western naval fleet- it doesn't have the ships, the training, or the weapons to pose a remotely credible threat. It's a gunboat outfit. The best they have is Chinese anti-ship missiles. Without major surface combatant purchases and credible anti-ship missiles, that'll remain the case.

Most of the Russian arsenal isn't working:

Every major delivery system in the Russian arsenal is at high readiness (test firings of the oldest missiles in service have been consistently successful, continuing low-rate production of a new ICBM, the SSBN force having just emerged from a major series of refits and modernization, and the 36th Air Army (where the strategic bombers, Tu-95MS, Tu-160 are concentrated) reports over 90% operational readiness. That's the triad deterrent in a nutshell.

Just to make that clear.

[Darth Wong]

Duchess, I'll make you a bargain. Show me:

1. Your tits (just kidding; don't pick up that rifle!)
2. How the justification for claiming that Islam intends to overrun the world (based on analysis of their religious doctrines as opposed to actual capabilities and established precedent or present behaviour) could not equally apply to Judaism or Christianity.
3. How you can force someone to become logical at gunpoint.
4. Why we shouldn't clean house in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and the other Bible Belt states first, if our objective really is to forcibly bring the light of the "Age of Reason" to the world and wipe away the stain of religious irrationality.
5. How you can do something to the rest of the world (use military force to make people drop a religious belief) which would be considered a monstrous violation of human rights if it were done in America.

and then perhaps we won't think you've gone off the deep end.

[Sea Skimmer]

The Iranian Navy doesn't stand a chance against any Western naval fleet- it doesn't have the ships, the training, or the weapons to pose a remotely credible threat. It's a gunboat outfit. The best they have is Chinese anti-ship missiles. Without major surface combatant purchases and credible anti-ship missiles, that'll remain the case.

They can't beat a big western fleet, however they can last long enough to inflict tens of billions in direct economic damage and send world oil prices up to the 50 dollar a barrel mark.

As long as a single Kilo remains afloat they can keep the gulf closed to merchant shipping, ignorning the already massive cost of a few tankers snapping in half. And of course sweeping the pressure mines they brought from Russia would take quite a while, since its impossible to sweep a pressure mine. Each one has to be located and blown up individually. If they get smart and lay thousands of decoys the whole process could take months.

Meanwhile the whole Saudi oil pipeline network runs though a single point. Hit that with a couple bombs or a 5000 dollar cruise missile swarm and things get really nasty.

[Vympel]

They can't beat a big western fleet, however they can last long enough to inflict tens of billions in direct economic damage and send world oil prices up to the 50 dollar a barrel mark.

Excellent. The Russians will be pleased

Point taken though.

As long as a single Kilo remains afloat they can keep the gulf closed to merchant shipping, ignorning the already massive cost of a few tankers snapping in half.

The risk would be too great to take the chance and just do convoy escort, but I doubt those 877s would remain afloat for long against a canvasing of the gulf by the USN.

And of course sweeping the pressure mines they brought from Russia would take quite a while, since its impossible to sweep a pressure mine. Each one has to be located and blown up individually. If they get smart and lay thousands of decoys the whole process could take months.

Shit.

Meanwhile the whole Saudi oil pipeline network runs though a single point. Hit that with a couple bombs or a 5000 dollar cruise missile swarm and things get really nasty.

I doubt that they'd be able to pull that one off- it'd have to be a terrorist attack, and as for the 'Affordable Weapon'-esque cruise missiles, I doubt they'd have the range or accuracy of say Tomahawk or SS-N-21 SAMPSON/AS-15 KENT.

[Axis Kast]

How the justification for claiming that Islam intends to overrun the world (based on analysis of their religious doctrines as opposed to actual capabilities and established precedent or present behaviour) could not equally apply to Judaism or Christianity.

In Marina’s defense, we still have several major examples of Islamic fundamentalism or movements toward that end. The only remaining theocracies outside the Middle East are Armenia and Israel, each of that are themselves beset by disaster. Marina has also proven that many of these people believe in the need to eliminate the West in anticipation of their own destruction. You’ll find Christian fundamentalists and supreme Jewish Zionists, but never with the power and strength of the Islamofascist movement.

How you can force someone to become logical at gunpoint.

Generations and generations of occupation.

Why we shouldn't clean house in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and the other Bible Belt states first, if our objective really is to forcibly bring the light of the "Age of Reason" to the world and wipe away the stain of religious irrationality.

It’s ridiculous to assume that religious piety in the Southern United States is anything greater than the fundamentalism of the Middle East. Or anywhere near as dangerous internationally.

How you can do something to the rest of the world (use military force to make people drop a religious belief) which would be considered a monstrous violation of human rights if it were done in America.

She implies that we could make the rest of the world see it are we. Or that, in time, we won’t have to, because they’ll fight the same menace.

[Darth Wong]

In Marina’s defense, we still have several major examples of Islamic fundamentalism or movements toward that end. The only remaining theocracies outside the Middle East are Armenia and Israel, each of that are themselves beset by disaster. Marina has also proven that many of these people believe in the need to eliminate the West in anticipation of their own destruction. You’ll find Christian fundamentalists and supreme Jewish Zionists, but never with the power and strength of the Islamofascist movement.

You've got to be kidding. You really think the Islamofascists hold more real military power than Israel and the Amen Chorus in America? No offense to any members of Muslim nations, but militarily speaking, they're a bunch of half-assed losers. Israel is the only rogue state in the region which threatens its neighbours with WMD, and Marina is the only one here who is talking about using force to shove a system of thought down anyone's throat. Ironic, isn't it?

How you can force someone to become logical at gunpoint.

Generations and generations of occupation.

Let me know when it starts to work in Palestine, since 50 years of occupation have so far had the opposite effect.

It’s ridiculous to assume that religious piety in the Southern United States is anything greater than the fundamentalism of the Middle East. Or anywhere near as dangerous internationally.

Why? How has any Middle East country seriously endangered anyone outside the Middle East? Even if you include 9/11, we've killed far more of them than they've killed of us. And which nation is spending BILLIONS of dollars a year in order to propagate a religious agenda of Zionist ascendancy in Israel despite its destabilizing influence on the region? Oh yeah, the United States.

She implies that we could make the rest of the world see it are we. Or that, in time, we won’t have to, because they’ll fight the same menace.

The only menace that they are uniting to fight right now is America; hardly the intended consequence. Why doesn't the option of simply leaving the Middle East to stew in its own juices occur to anyone?

[Patrick Degan]

The entire military capability of the combined Islamic world doesn't add up to that represented by the Soviet Union of 1950. Furthermore, to successfully challenge a modern superpower in an all-out war requires equal or superior military capability. The capacity to produce a few dozen Fat Man-class atomic bombs with no ability to project power globally does not add up to a military threat capable of winning a world war. The Islamic world, moreover, lacks the industrial base necessary to build such a war machine.

And this means what?

What it usually means: strategic capability, or lack thereof. Far more basic to any equation of military power than paranoid fears regarding the Twilight of the Gods.

First of all - I doubt that you should immediately ignore such nations as Pakistan and Iran. The Soviet Union of 1950 did not have a nuclear arsenal to speak of, as was Pakistan's, and in terms of population would be matched poorly overall against even those two nations - and especially their armoured forces, if not perhaps their divisional strength. A nice rhetorical flourish, but Islam can pose a real threat (And I'm totally ignoring the fact that the Saudis, Jordanians, and Egyptians, among others, all have American equipment of at least decent quality):

Iran got its ass handed to it in their war with Iraq in the 1980s, who in their turn only failed to win due to their own military incompetence. The Pakistanis have not fought a war since the 1960s and according to the most recent assesments would likely lose in any conflict with India. A lack of successful military experience does factor into the capability to prosecute a war, and mere numbers mean nothing if those numbers are stupidly thrown away on the battlefield.

1. Economically. The world relies on oil for industry, and Islamic countries have oil in more than just the mid-east, if the majority of it is there. Though the USA is not dependent on Islamic oil, the world in general relies a great deal on it, and a major worldwide depression would result on their cutting off the supply. Operations against the Islamic world military would be hampered by constrained oil supplies, forcing oil rationing in the nations engaged in these operations - and thus, again, economies less able to support major military operations (which are, as has been discussed here, quite expensive).

The Islamic world depends on selling oil for its economic survival. They've got nothing else to bargain with and even more to lose by cutting off their own sources of revenue. Furthermore, the Russians would be most eager to fill in the gap with the rich Caucasus reserves under their control. If the Islamic world really attempted this strategy, we would not have to prosecute an active military campaign. We could let them starve themselves out. There might be some difficult months, but the world would adjust to the situation and with less chaos than what followed in the wake of the 1973 oil embargo.

2. Geography. Islam controls two major sealane choke-points at which a large part of the world's commerce has to transit. The effects of the closure of the Suez Canal are well-known on the world economy, and effecting the closure of the Canal again, along with interdiction by small craft and some submarines in Indonesian waters, could seriously effect trade. Most trade in absolute tonnage terms still travels by water.

Assuming this Grand Islamofascist Axis which seems to be at the root of your argument; Indonesia is the most militarily vulnerable and the easiest portion of it to neutralise or occupy, not being contiguous with the rest of the Middle East. The occupation of the four main islands and the Malay Penninsula would be sufficent to keep the Java Sea open for shipping, along with an antisubmarine task force augmented with hunter/killer subs. This, BTW, is part-and-parcel with the ability to project power globally which we have and the Islamic world lacks.

As for the Suez Canal, seizure of the peninsula and the zones on the canal's west bank will keep that highway open. Of course, this assumes Egypt's membership in this Islamofascist Axis of yours overriding their own need for the Canal's revenues.

3. Offensive operations likely to be of an unconventional nature, thereby limiting necessity of building up a really major industrial base. Sheer numbers, combined with fanaticism, possible WMDs, and existing military assets, makes for at least a credible defence - a platform from which to launch attacks of a covert nature intended to inflict maximum civilian harm.

It makes for the capability to wreak chaos on random targets. It is utterly insufficent to prosecute an offensive war with global or even regional conquest as its object. I will remind you that the Japanese had faith and fanatacism and plenty of manpower to burn in World War II. It didn't save them from defeat, however. Covert attacks on civilian targets will not stop an invasion force or an SLBM barrage. It will not eliminate the capability of the one side to wage war, without which the survival, nevermind the victory, of the other side can be guaranteed. The Laws of Warfare are not repealed by Religious Insanity.

Numbers and faith don't give you an edge over a modern, fully-capable war machine. Ask the Japanese about that one.

The Mad Mullah won at Gumburu - He had his men keep charging the British through their rifle fire until they ran out of ammunition, and then a final rush of spearmen broke the square. Victories like that are rare, but they can also happen. If you get yourself into a mode of thinking like they can't, that's when they usually do.

The Mad Mullah, however, lost the war. That's all that matters in the end.

The Iranian navy continues to improve in quality. In constricted waters like the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea there's always the threat of the modern equipment of the Saudis or the Egyptians being able to overcome us and halt us from local and vital regional targets. Air forces with modern equipment may do better than those we've so far faced, the cultural blindspots in warfare potentially being less severe towards aviation combat, which has always favoured the individual.

Naturally, of course, we will have no way to counter a navy which hardly equals a Sixth Fleet task group and mounts technology largely based on our own equipment and lacks air capability.

If it really came down to it, worst-case, could they prevent us from incinerating the Islamic world with an SLBM barrage? No.

If people like you keep us from doing what has to be done now, that's what we're going to have to do in fifty-odd years. That's been the general line of my argument all along.

I know it upsets you that people don't take the Gospel According to Lee Harris seriously. But most of us have to deal with the world as it actually is as opposed to the demented ravings of a think-tank paranoid who puts forth the ludicrous vision of a billion monolithic Muslims as if they represented a Pan-Arabic Borg Collective and on top of that goes on to argue that the one method to neutralise their radicalisation is to Westernise them at gunpoint which will somehow be feasible despite the alledged antiwestern religious fanatacism at the heart of a people who outnumber us 5:1 which makes them the Big Threat we should crap our pants over.

Could the Islamofascist hordes conquer the Chinese? Could they stop a Russian nuclear attack?

Most of the Russian arsenal isn't working: They have enough to take out a lot of people and make things pretty odds-even for the laydown with Islam, even if the Pakis got a few through, which would be unlikely, one grants. The Chinese - No.

The Russians wouldn't need "most of their arsenal" to do the job. Neither would we.

Howabout even an Indian or an Israeli nuclear attack?

India? That would be very unpleasant for both sides. Israel? The same, considering the situations in which they'd launch, and the revolt it would cause among the Arabs living in close proximity that couldn't be suppressed with nuclear devices.

The Indians would do it if it meant national survival was at stake. The same with Israel. Don't kid yourself on that score.

That's one reason why the Arabs haven't tried going to war against them since 1973.

But, Patrick, think about what you're saying now - You're asking how we can stop them with nuclear weapons. I'm saying: What can we do to keep it from getting that bad? And the answer to that, I contend, is impose democracy upon them now, before it does reach that point.

No, I was exploring the worst-case scenario and the least likely and therefore necessary one; also the one which ensures the ultimate check on the alledged global ambitions of your Islamofascist Borg Collective. Ludicrous it may be to consider strategic nuclear scenarios for the Mideast, but less so than the False Dilemma Argument with its very suspect premise you entertain as "reasonable".

Their propaganda, Duchess? Or is that from whatever dementedly paranoid and alarmist screed you've made the mistake of taking seriously this week?

My sources are entirely Islamic. Sufis, or the rambling propaganda lines themselves, or websites. Here's a good one - Khilafah, or, "Caliphate":

Caliphate

A good section:

Oh, this should be cute...

4. What is The Muslims Duty towards His Country?

Islam makes it a duty upon all Muslims to work to change their countries from Dar al-Kufr to Dar al-Islam, and this can be achieved by establishing the Islamic State i.e. the Khilafah, and by electing a Khaleefah and taking a bay’ah on him that he will rule by the Word of Allah (Subhaanahu Wa Ta’Ala) i.e. he will implement Islamic laws in the country where the Khilafah has been established. Then the Muslims should work with the Khilafah to combine the rest of the Islamic countries with it, hence the countries will become Dar al-Islam and they will then carry Islam to the world through invitation and jihad.

And this is your so-called "proof", eh? Read the New Testament, lately? I quote:

While they were with him they asked "Lord, are you going to restore the rule of Israel now?" His answer was: "The exact time is not yours to know. The Father has reserved that to Himself. You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes down on you; then you are to be My witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria. Yea, even to the ends of the Earth.

This little passage as well as a number of others helped form the basis for the Western Christian practise of Conversion By The Sword. It also is the basis for the more ideal practise of winning converts by intellectual persuasion. There is no command or formula in that text for war. Neither is there one in the above passage you cited, which can as well be interpreted as a formulation to work change through political participation and persuasion to bring about the Dar al-Islam. Nor does it provide meat and bone evidence for the alledged World Conquest Plan of the Pan-Arabic Borg Collective you've worked yourself into a lather over.

BTW, the term "jihad" means "intellectual struggle" as often as "armed struggle".

Unless their ingress into this and other Western countries is numbering in the millions,

Look at the demographic trend of Europe and Muslim immigration there. Also, because of the failure in Europe to successfully integrate the Muslim populace, they are dissaffected and more likely to turn extremist. In fact, that was the meaning of my first comment -- We'll be safe behind our oceans from the sort of large-scale Muslim immigration that Europe is getting through the Balkans and from North Africa, while they'll have to fight an enemy eager to conquer the Europe denied to them by Charles Martel, with a considerable Fifth Column to aide. That would be the result of a failure of the President's current efforts.

Bush's fumbling efforts will have no influence one way or the other on the matter, and the rise of the European Union will lead to the development of uniform immigration policy. Furthermore, the "large scale" migration is hardly greater than that of the waves of Algerian migrations through the post World War I era or the second wave migrations through the 1960s.

Furthermore, most Arabic muslims have settled into their adoptive countries and assimilated over the last eight decades. They are not devoting themselves to Wahabbism or any other part of the programme of your Pan-Arabic Borg Collective from available evidence.

Barbarians have overrun civilization before. You're right, civilization inevitably still progressed even so. But how many thousands of years would it take for a triumphant Wahhabi Caliphate to restore all that western civilization has achieved? Inevitable? Yes. But I don't want to imagine how long it would take, and all the horror and mire of time that would occur--or the potential natural disasters that could befall humanity--while that barbaric state of our species endured.

A common error in reading history. The so-called "Dark Ages" was not the downfall of global civilisation or even all European civilisation for that matter. Thriving and advancing cultures continued to exist in Asia Minor, Arabia, along the Great Silk Route, and in China. I am constrained to point out that it was Islamic civilisation in the 8th-14th centuries which preserved much of the knowledge of the Roman world, advanced mathematics and astronomy beyond the Romans, and provided one of the pillars for the European Renaissance. The time-lag in the recovery of the West was due as much to the very slow communication across great distances and the lack of technology greater than the water-wheel as plague, war, and the superstition of the Church.

For your "horror and mire of time" scenario to unfold would require destruction on such a scale that all technology past the water-wheel would have to be eliminated —which wasn't even projected for the worst-case scenario following an all-out U.S./Soviet nuclear exchange— and would require the operation of forces far greater than the Pan-Arabic Borg Collective you so fear.

Words don't exist to describe how nonsensical you sound at this point. Do you ever actually think through the positions you argue?

Yes. This position is the result of long, hard, and careful thought...

You'll pardon me for laughing, I trust.

Reason was imposed at gunpoint on Europe.

Bullshit.

It was, for that matter, imposed at gunpoint on most of the world which we consider to be rational and modern today. Either by the government crushing revolts, or by violent revolution, or by war and conquest, or war and the spreading of institutions--violence has been the principle method of spreading liberal democracy, and its mirror alternative, communism, which for the most part has been discredited and resulted in liberal democracy, with a similiar foundation of rational thought.

At this point, I must conclude that you really do not understand the meaning of the word "reason". Reason is a voluntary, cooperative process and you have rejected this tenet at its base and have indulged an even more ludicrous reading of history in the process. Liberal democracy never got started until people stopped shooting, put down the guns, and started hashing their problems out at the negotiation table. As example, I cite any comparison between the American and French revolutions.

So, no, I do not think it is merely about hating our culture and not desiring it inside of Mecca--though they certainly don't want it there, I agree with that! However, the problem is that it's simply inevitable. Capitalist, liberal democracy is now global. Islam is very near to global, and the two cannot coexist. One must triumph over the other. It's as simple as that.

False Dilemma Fallacy. I will remind you that we had no real problem with Radical Islam until U.S. troops took up permanent residence on Saudi soil. Before then, we had been a Muslim ally in the effort to expel the Soviets froim Afganistan (during which we "created" Osama BinLaden). Co-existance even with Iran was a reality in that period.

There are no more spheres of inhabitation. The modern world does not allow for isolation of cultures or peoples. The Islamofascists have recognized this and realize their only chance--ultimately, a chance that only exists in the context of their religious worldview, but a chance which does exist to them, and that's what counts, is to defeat capitalist democracy. And that, Patrick, is exactly what they're trying to do.

This from the Gospel According to Lee Harris?

Cultures are ultimately the sum of their parts, and the parts going into Western culture are much better than those going into Islamic culture. At lot of this has to do with the fact that many of the parts going into Islamic culture are not real.

Far more so than the things you're blowing your head off over, it seems.

Again, I refer you to some Republicans who seem quite confused on this issue and, BTW, are a lot closer to the levers of power in this society than any Wahabbi Muslim will ever get.

Yes, I know what they do, and what those idiots say and suggest. But think about it for a moment, Patrick - Let's say you're religious, a religious fundie, even, but you're raised in a society which has seperation of Church and State, where the Theory of Evolution is taught in schools, where the Big Bang Theory exists. Where science is commonly accepted as an explanation for most things that occur.

...How dangerous are you in comparison to a religious fundie raised in a society ruled by, say, an Absolute Monarch, or worse, an Ayatollah, where in either case, the constitution is... The Quran? Where the creation story in the Quran is taught as fact in school with an alternate theory not even being mentioned as existing? (Let alone being given equal air time as those proposals in the USA have suggested!) Where the universe was created instantly at the thought of an almighty God? Where that God is attributed to be the cause of nearly everything that happens in everyday life?

Dunno... sure sounds like the Jerry Falwell Plan for America, and he's far closer to power than your Pan-Arabic Borg Collective.

Religious fundies in a rational culture are less dangerous than those in a religious culture precisely because they are going against the grain of the dominant perceptions of the culture they've been raised in.

An argument we're not having on a point which has nothing to do with the question before the bar. Stick to the topic.

A conquest can be properly had by analyzing the situation and taking the appropriate measures to secure that nation. We may succeed in Iraq as it is now.

Except that we really haven't secured Iraq...

The same for Syria.

That assumes Syria's army will piss themselves and simply leave the field the way Iraq's army did.

Iran may fall without a shot being fired, the people willingly taking up western culture - The youth there are tired of the Ayatollahs and desireous of the West.

You're just a font of Wishful Thinking, aren't you? Doesn't this tend to contradict the vision of the religiously-monolithic Pan-Arabic Borg Collective you've been so desperately flogging throughout this thread?

As for the KSA, the real heart of the problem? Bluntly, we've forgotten that if you kill enough people to cow the populace, break their spirit through the ferocity of your attack, and then rule the survivors justly--this has always worked.

For a while. Only for a while.

Caesar killed a million people in pacifying Gaul and sold another million into slavery. The province turned into one of Rome's most loyal and productive.

Uh huh... And that example spurred the Germans to slaughter three of Augustus' legions in the Teutebourg Forest thirty years later.

Germany's former colonies in Africa today are some of the more successful nations there--the Germans conquered with extreme brutality, but in the wake of it could lay the foundations of the rule of Law and of their institutes deeply, and they have stuck, allowing for the British in turn to impart more concepts of parliamentary rule over that, and finally for some beginnings of true democracy to show through.

Would that by any chance include the Congo, which has had a legacy of dictatorship, corruption, and mass death from plague or disease which is endemic to Europe's former African possessions? And as for Britain's legacy... well, Robert Mugabe, I believe, is one of its heirs. So was Idi Amin.

I show you examples from the beginning and the end of the western history of conquering and spreading our institutes and values. Throughout that entire span, though, the same general trends held true: we came, we killed, and in the wake of the blood, we left what we had innovated, a legacy of law and institutes which have only served to improve those regions in the long run.

The peoples of Egypt, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, Nigeria, Cote d'Ivorie, and Uganda may want to have a word with you about that one.

It was a fickle whim of geography which allowed democracy to rise in Greece, most likely, but the culture that it has spawned, western culture, is one worth spreading--and in the case of the Mid-East, one we must absolutely spread. If we do not spread it now, the casualty count shall be far higher before this century is out.

Which you propose we do through the instrument of war.

As I recall, a certain little German corporal with a Wägner fixation started thinking along those lines a little too long and hard. Became paranoid about phantom religiocultural conspiracies threatening Western Christian civilisation. After a while, he sort of lost touch with Reality altogether. So did his followers. Tragic story, actually. But instructive.

It becomes rather clear that Hitler worried over Race more than culture.

In his mind the two were intertwined, and you are trying to pick gnatshit out of pepper.

Race, however, is a phantasm, a non-existant thing--and when you build an ideology on a phantasm, why should it do anything but plunge into mad fantasy?

This coming from the woman proposing a general war to spread the graces of our vastly more enlightened and superior civilisation before the Pan-Arabic Borg Collective takes over the world... Quite droll, I must say.

This is not a war I am advocating. This is a war I am saying is completely inevitable.

Only if we buy into the False Dilemma of "either McDonalds and Disney or the Pan-Arabic Borg Collective".

I am merely stating that if we fight it now we can minimize casualties on both sides. If the effort is stopped at this point, all that will be achieved is the plunging of the world into a bloodbath before the century is out.

You've got that quite backwards, actually. The Islamic world will not accept Westernisation at gunpoint any more than we would submit ourselves to the Pan-Arabic Borg Collective.

The world just draws closer together as we advance technologically, and as we do, the impossibility of Islamic culture surviving untainted is assured--and known to them. We can either undo the Age of Enlightenment, a truly impossible thing, or we can fight.

Again, the False Dilemma of "Enlightened Us or the Pan-Arabic Borg Collective"; "war or surrender".

We can fight now, a swift work to finish what must be done, or we can meander in our self-pitying, contemptible self-hatred that is the malaise following the defeat of communism, and only find our enemy more powerful and more determined when the matter can no longer be put off and the accounts must be settled. There is no ignoring them, and there is no avoiding them. We meet head on, and of course we must be victorious: unless our own arrogance and our own self-contempt destroys us. This is what the progress of the world has demanded of us, and we must not come up short.

I haven't read such overwrought horseshit since my last browse through Cold War propaganda. Do you ever fucking listen to yourself when you indulge in this spew?! Your entire position turns upon such a cartoonish view of an entire people (or group of peoples) that it beggars description. You assume a monolithic mindset among a billion human beings which has never operated in any culture in any period of human history, attribute to this monolithic collective powers and abilities far beyond those that have been observed to exist, and a unity of purpose which is also beyond anything observed in Arab culture in 1300 years. And entirely upon this rickety framework have you rested your hopes for a War of Salvation to save you from a new, global Wahabbist Dark Age which has no chance to unfold in any real world due to economic, military, and cultural factors you have not even bothered to consider in all your projections.

And from what I see, at the core of all this is only one thing:

Fear.

You try making a brave noise with that "nose to the grindwheel" farrago at the end of your post, but I don't see courage in hawking for an unnecessary war against a phantom menace. You're terrified, Duchess. You're scared right down to the marrow in your bones. A terrible way to apprehend the world.

To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, you've accepted fear in a handfull of dust.