Annan backs UN demand for G.B. closure
Just for you, jj. (sound warning)
Ziggurat
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Where's the evidence that such anger is building? Seems like the only really reliable indicator in that respect was the 2004 elections, which were an endorsement for the way things were being done. Seems more like this is partizan wishful thinking than any real analysis of the situation.
Minh had limits to his goal. He never really cared about what happened beyond the borders of Vietnam. And so it was easy to convince people in the US that the costs were too high, because the public believed that if we did disengage from Vietnam, we wouldn't bear any additional costs. We have no such luxury here. Islamofascism is inherently expansionist, and we CANNOT let in win in just the middle east either, because the region is far too important to the entire global economy. Those distinctions matter quite a bit if you want to try to convince the public that they can give up at little cost.
But what is it, really, that would get the US public really mad? Is it small incursions on civil liberties? No, not really, most of the public isn't too concerned. What the public DOES worry about is dead people. The public doesn't like our soldiers getting killed (though there the equation is also different from Vietnam because there's no draft), and it especially doesn't like American civilians getting killed. The terrorists would love it if the public's fear of another 9/11 would make us leave them alone. But restrictions on civil liberties ALSO help make people feel that such an occurance is less likely, which makes that harder to accomplish.
As I already said, you can debate all you want to about how exactly we SHOULD balance security concerns and civil liberties, and certainly it's possible to push that balance too far in the direction of security. But that decision has got to be based on what we want for ourselves, not the terrorists' opinions of that balance. Because in the end, they really DON'T care about that. They care about actually changing our behavior with respect to THEM, not with respect to ourselves.
Nyarlathotep
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Just because it isn't happening, that doesn't mean that's not what they want. I want a gold-plated Ferrari, I'm not getting that, either.
Ziggurat
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Wait, ... WHAT?
Are you trying to argue that because we're restricting civil liberties, and people are getting angry because of that, that governments which are known precisely for their VASTLY more repressive strictures are therefore benefiting from that anger? How do you figure? If you don't like the idea of the US government possibly spying on your contacts with suspected terrorists, does that somehow make you more favorably inclined to a chinese communist regime which is not only probably spying on you, but also has quite the record for actually imprisoning large numbers of people for purely political opposition? Or how about Chavez: does not liking the idea of warrantless searches by the US government make you more inclined to support his actual SEIZURES of private property? Or North Korea: does opposition to indefinite detentions for unlawful combatants somehow translate to supporting executions for starving civilians who try to leave the country?
If that is, indeed, the operative logic going on, then you'll pardon me if I decide that I don't really mind it if we ignore the opinions of such people.
Ziggurat
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But even in that sense, it's irrelevant what people want until they're actually willing to make sacrifices to get it. I'd like a gold-plated Ferrari too, but I'm not willing to put in 80-hour work weeks to get one. Some people are. How much do people want more civil liberties than they have? Not that much, as far as I can tell. You can argue that people SHOULD want them more, but that's a rather different argument altogether.
And of course in this thread we're talking about the "civil liberties" of people picked up during a declared war on a foreign enemy. There has never been a circumstance where a country has been expected to release such persons while hostilities are ongoing. Literally never, in all the thousands and thousands of years of war.
Removing the subjective palliatives and reversing the sentence, please let me know if you agree with the following statements.
Radical muslems hate us because our mere existence threatens their existence.
We hate radical muslems because their mere existence threatens our existence.
By the way, you had not said anything about other governments and other islamists. Also, you have more or less said the same thing as in the sentence I highlighted before by saying "Whether or not our government "does anything wrong" has absolutely nothing to do with the existence of this conflict." I assume "this conflict" refers to your statement about radical islamists vs. more moderate ones. The other parts of your initial statement I didn't have much of a problem with. It was that sentence that struck me.
An argument that the paper sidesteps by asserting that, contrary to US law, the AUMF does not constitute an instrument of war and - if it does - only applies to Afghanistan. According to the paper, any other legalities must be sorted out under agreements in place under the auspices of the International Court of Justice.
Ziggurat
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I agree with the first statement. I don't agree with the second one. There is indeed an asymmetry to the relationship, and that's why there are no churches in Saudi Arabia but there are plenty of Saudi-financed mosques in the western world.
But because of that first statement, the Islamofascists have set themselves in conflict with us. This was a choice THEY made, and while I don't think it yet represents an existential threat to us, it is still a serious threat, we ignore it at our own peril, and there is nothing we can afford to do that could appease them.
Yes. Happily, the ICJ is a little too busy sorting out the UN's concerted continent-wide campaign of child-****ing to pay much mind to that.
Oh, wait. They're not paying any attention to that at all. Darn.
Ziggurat
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No, I'm refering to the conflict the Islamists have with moderate muslims AND to the conflict that the Islamists have with non-muslims. The cartoon protests are a good example of this: people are getting killed for the actions of a few cartoonists, not because of the actions of a government. Rushdie didn't have a bounty put on his head because he was a government official, or because the UK as a state did anything. Barbie and the bible aren't banned in Saudi Arabia because of a trade dispute. Government action didn't start the conflict between Islamists and non-muslims, and it can't prevent the conflict either. But it does need to play a role in winning the conflict, because maintaining the government monopoly on the use of force that the west practices (but much of the muslim world does NOT) is still, I believe, an important value.
This whole thing resulted from the question as to who was winning. What you've said here simply provides more evidence that indeed Bin Laden is winning. He managed to get the US to act hastily and become the enemy in the eyes of many in the world. As a result of all that has happened, the US is in a much weaker position.
So you don’t see the cartoon conflict as a riot from the buildup of public discontent for what they perceive to be attacks on Muslims. Washington seems to think it is. They are investing a great deal to control public opinion. They have also condemned the publishing of more Abu Graib photos for aggravating the situation. Also, what do you think of the LA riots, or many others? Many of these were not by radicals. You seem to make a distinction between moderate and radical Muslims, yet you discount the possibility that many of those Muslims rioting are not radical.
Is it a unique event? So we don’t come to the conclusion that the Cartoon Jihad is a unique event.
The Paris Riots of the Fall of 2005
Cite Soleil Riots in Haiti
The 1992 Los Angeles Riots
The 1965 Watts Riots
University of Paris Strike
The 12th Street Riot
Hong Kong 1967 Riots
The Brixton Riots
Singapore 1964 Race Riots -- Between Chinese and Malay’s. This time they were celebrating Prophet Muhammad's birthday, not a blasphemous cartoon.
That's only half of it, bin Laden's actions have supported the Bush administration, which has been unquestionably shown to be a repressive religious regime, albiet one that is so far limited by constitutional issues.
bin Laden has won, I think, more than he could have possibly imagined. He's seriously damaged the entire US legal and political system, he's endgendered public support for religious totalitarianism in the USA, and he's gotten the USA to act in an irresponsible fashion that has badly damaged the US's reputation overseas.
Ziggurat
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Sorry, but I don't see it. It's not enough for people to not like us. Hell, the French have been not liking us for a good two centuries now. Ultimately it comes down to power, and the Islamists have less power now than they used to. They lost a country they controlled almost completely in Afghanistan, they lost a sponsor in Saddam (you can claim he had no ties to Al Quaeda, but he had obvious and proven ties to other Islamist terrorist organizations), they're becoming less, not more, popular among arabs as their violence turns more visibly against their fellow muslims. They're currently freaking out about a bunch of cartoons. CARTOONS, for Ed's sake! You don't freak out about cartoons because you're in a position of strength, you do it because you're desparate.
What about the US? Well, is the world really turning away from us? The countries you listed were basically opposed to us for their own domestic reasons, and wouldn't be our allies regardless of what we did in Iraq or any other part of the war on terrorism. So let's look at our nominal and actual allies. How have the politicians who backed Bush been doing? Blair? Record third term. Howard? Also re-elected. Koizumi? Not only stayed in power, but led a successful revolt from within his own party. Berlusconi? Hanging in there. The only real defeat was in Spain, on the heals of a terrorist attack (and one of the only ones to which I can attribute an actual political victory for the terrorists). On the flip side, how have politicians in the west who opposed Bush been doing? Martin? Tossed out on his ear. Schroeder? In the end, his anti-americanism couldn't save him. Chirac? He's been taking such a beating, and is facing such a stark problem with Islamists in his own back yard, that he's starting to wave his own nuclear stick around in a threatening manner that even cowboy Bush never did.
So tuning out the noise, I don't actually see the US as being any more isolated politically, and I don't see the Islamists as having any more power than they did before we invaded Iraq OR before 9/11.
By the way, you lost me in the boldface. Can you rephrase it, please?
Ziggurat
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No, I don't, because that propaganda doesn't actually square with the facts. The protests started months after the cartoons were published. Hell, they were even published IN EGYPT well before the protests started. And it's no coincidence that the embassy burnings happened in Syria (where nobody has a protest without government approval) and Lebanon (where Syrian proxies still exert enormous influence). Syria is under incredible pressure because of the Hariri assasination investigation, and this is a nice pressure release valve. But it's completely staged. Here's Amir Taheri (an Iranian expat) with more on that:
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/19313
I've often been unimpressed with the State Department. So? But it's also always hard to tell whether they're toeing a line because it's just the path of least resistance, or whether that's really their assesment of the situation.
Correct. Many of them were just criminals. That's why there was a whole lot of looting that went on during those riots.
Why would I need to believe that the rioters consisted of anything OTHER than radicals? As Taheri points out in the column I linked to above:
"The Muslim crowds that have demonstrated over the cartoons seldom exceeded a few hundred; the Muslim segment of humanity is estimated at 1.2 billion. And only three of Denmark's embassies in 57 Muslim countries have been attacked."
Sorry, but I really don't get your point here. Is it that riots happen throughout history? Sure. Are you trying to point to some common thread throughout them that's relevant to this thread? Damned if I know what it is.
Ziggurat
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The conflict between islamofascists and non-muslims is not purely a military conflict, but there are military aspects to the conflict. They're trying to kill us, and we will, on occasion, be required to kill some of them. The government properly plays that role: it is the government which must attack their bases and kill their fighters. And it must be the government because in the west, governments have a monopoly on the use of force. Only governments are allowed to hunt people down and kill them - a non-governmental entity doing that is vigilante justice, and we don't accept that.
Much of the muslim world, on the other hand, DOES accept non-governmental use of force. That's exactly what terrorist organizations are: non-governmental entities waging war. They also often have significant "militias", which are essentially non-governmental police forces. These distinctions should be fairly obvious, even if the terms I'm using are unfamiliar.
What may be slightly less obvious, and I didn't make totally explicit, is that if governments FAIL in their duty to use force when needed, then people are going to start doing that themselves. If people don't feel like their governments are protecting them, they'll try to do it themselves, and we'll see the creation of radical groups in the west who attack muslims indiscriminately. This would create some more symmetry to the conflict, but it doesn't play to our strengths. And it would, in the long run, be a very bad thing. Governments didn't start this conflict, but they need to fight it anyways, because if they don't, the war will be much bloodier, much more costly, and much longer.