Stop for a moment and listen to what I've said as well. There's no "cartoonish view of a group of peoples" - Look at the context. I'm sorry that you cannot comprehend the difference between western civilization and Islamic civilization as producing such a disparity, but it does. Not only do differences between cultures and civilizations exist, but they can be so stark as to preclude ready understanding. You prefer to imagine by study of what these differences create in the interaction as a reduction of some vague "enemy" into a propaganda set-piece character without real motivations, but rather ones I've projected upon it.Patrick Degan wrote:
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.
Why must you persist in this? Why must you confuse potential with reality!? The two are entirely different things! The culture of the Islamic world is one entirely attuned to what I have stated. I have outlined, in principle, the threat: not as exists but what we may face, and what the current enemies we face desire us to face. The argument is based upon facts which illuminate potentials; the demand, then, is for action which minimizes the consequences of the potentials.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.
There are considerable cultural factors which support it! There could have been a new Arab Caliphate under the Hussein family--there nearly was. The movement for one very much exists throughout the Muslim world, and is commonly seen as a solution to their problems. It is Osama's goal to restore the Caliphate, and their may be indications of his desire to do more--to proclaim himself Mahdi. Certainly another Salafi already has, despite their theology.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.
Your economic and military factors are based upon a rational calculus, which is reasonable. This calculus, however, only applies in the present day and to the present terms, however, and does not take into account the possibility of demographic trends affecting parts of Europe and their allegiance in such a conflict, which is a possibility by the end of the century, nor the potential for economic or military shifts.
Most importantly, the threat we are facing is ultimately irrational and likely to make an irrational calculus. The goal is to minimize the damage to our own interests, and secondarily to humanity as a whole (as an economic power, such a secondary concern usually follows as automatic). With such a goal we cannot allow their power to reach such a point that their defeat would require a great cost. It is better to act now.
Of course I'm afraid. I'm quite afraid of the consequences of the failure of this -- I look at the potential for the future and I shudder. There are times when I consider committing suicide because of the apparent hopelessness of our cause in the face of the blatant apathy of people like yourself.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.
I consider the treatment a person like myself would have under the rule of those we fight - and I am deathly, deathly afraid.
Emotions, however, must be set aside in the realm of the political. The rational pursuit of power--how can we improve the position of the State and of the People in the most efficient manner--is the only relevant consideration. So every emotion, every desire, must be set aside.
You have failed to do this in looking at this world. Many people on this board imagine that there is some higher morality to politics. You think that emotion or ethics or morality should even be allowed to influence politics. Politics is to cruel of a beast for that. I understand this, and you can be assured that my personal fear--and what I might desire to do to assuage it, which could be far more instinctive and visceral than an economical approach--is restrained in the calculus.
To quote:
(excerpt, Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations.)The individual may say for himself: "Fiat justitia, pereat mundus (Let justice be done, even if the world perish)," but the state has no right to say so in the name of those who are in its care. Both individual and state must judge political actions by universal moral principles, such as that of liberty. Yet while the individual has a moral right to sacrifice himself in defense of such a moral principle, the state has no right to let its moral disapprobation of the infringement of liberty get in the way of successful political action, itself inspired by the moral principle of national survival. There can be no political morality without prudence; that is, without consideration of the political consequences of seemingly moral action. Realism, then, considers prudence--the weighing of the consequences of alternative political actions--to be the supreme virtue in politics. Ethics in the abstract judges action by its conformity with the moral law; political ethics judges action by its political consequences. Classical and medieval philosophers knew this, and so did Lincoln when he said:
I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
And that really is the clarity of the matter. If I am correct, and a broad course involving further action to spread democracy, as I propose, is followed - We shall reap the bounty of many more democratic trading partners and in the long run our leaders of this time shall be remembered as great victors and liberators, while a dangerous threat is removed before it could rise to power.
If I am wrong there are many degrees of it: We could still see the bounty of victory, without the threat being removed, and it shall be for centuries a debate between you moralizers as to if those killed in the effort matched those who would have been killed by all the petty-tyrants of the region, and in the famine imposed by their grand projects and in the building of palaces and armaments.
Or if through hubris we fail and are thrown down? Then those who supported the course shall be thoroughly contempted and reviled for all time, I expect nothing less. But there is much uncertainty in this field, nothing can be known for sure.
Now, if the course often proposed here is followed? The same range of possibilities exist, if different ones--but, again, in failure you will only be reviled. Morality is no standard that someone in the political realm has ever been judged by, at least the successful -- It is a footnote for the failures and does not halt their condemnation, while for the successes it merely adds a bit to the shine of their accolades.
So, I can either apply this standard of abstract ethics, or the situation can be analyzed rationally and based on real and historically understood principles. Clearly, one can only do the later, for though the later is not sure success, it does offer a better chance of understanding the swirling mists of the political realm, to ride through them, than to try and cut against them by holding forth intractable principle. So this has been done and my conclusions have been made, to support the course which has been decided upon by our present administration, imperfect as it is but close enough to offer success by acceptable margins.
