This, from comments:
You are calling for a witch hunt.
Yes, yes I am. Darn betcha.
However, what I am calling for is a witchhunt by what I am assured is the vast majority (at least here in America) of moderate Muslims against (what I am again assured is) the tiny minority of jihadist radicals sheltering among them. A few public condemnations of acts like the Ft. Hood murders are not enough. Muslims themselves must destroy this cancer growing in their breast. If they do not, the rest of us will, out of sheer self-defense, and the mastectomy will be radical.
As for “all first hand accounts” — Actually, no, there are many reports of the murderer’s longstanding, and increasing, Islamic fundamentalism over the past several years, including reports of him delivering Jihadist lectures during grand rounds; of him wearing the traditional white robe of a shaheed, a martyr to be; of him handing out copies of the Koran, and even giving away his furniture in the days before the attack. There are several links between mosques he attended and Wahabist clerics in Saudi Arabia. (Once again, yes, I’ve done my damn homework; you do yours. These reports are not at all hard to find.)
I’m sure he was stressed over being sent to the Middle East — but that stress arose from his conflict between his military oath and mission, and his religious fundamentalism.
He chose to betray his oath, his country, and his fellow soldiers. He chose sides, and became the enemy.
That must be stopped, and there only two ways: People like him, and the clerics who encourage them, can be rooted out by other Muslims, or the rest of us can do it for them.
Choose sides. Soon.
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Related:
Carol Gould’s scolding of Michael Moore for his claim that there really isn’t a significant terrorist threat; it’s chock full of links to the contrary.
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[update]
Another quick, but highly relevant link:
I believe it was Derb a few months after 9/11 who said that for this new struggle our watchword was “Better screwed than rude.” Major Hasan represents the institutionalization of that attitude. Thirteen people are dead, dozens more will live with their injuries for the rest of their days, and a lot of families have had a great big gaping hole blown out of their lives because of it.
Anwar al-Awlaki and his chums have bet that such a society is too sick to survive. Watch the nothing-to-see-here media driveling on about pre-post-traumatic stress disorder like gibbering lunatics in a padded cell, and then think whether you’d really want to take that bet.
Read the whole thing. Absolutely.
Via Cold Fury.
Tags: Jihad, Terrorists
Now before I say anything else, let me address your request that I do my homework. I did my homework; it was just assigned after I made my last post. By that I mean that the reports that he had tried to contact Al-Qaeda-related people (true, as it happens) hit the news AFTER I made my last point. So settle down. Your more-homework-y-than-thou attitude is ironic considering that you still haven’t said anything refuting my point that Islam is ACCORDING TO ITS SCRIPTURES (not the extremists’ interpretation) tolerant.
“Choose sides. Soon.” Your fundamental error is in making the Muslim community at large a separate side from the rest of America. They are not somehow separate from the rest of us; there is no Muslim American Society to organize them in their own government. Muslims are Americans just like the rest of us, be we Christians, Jews, Atheists, Hindus, Deists, or whatnot. And there are people of every religion who kill the innocent because they think that God told them to. Hell, there are people who steal cars and say that God told them to (weird news item recently).
If you knew jack diddly about Islam, you’d know that getting all the Muslims in America to organize as one would be tricky because they are nowhere near being one cohesive group; ethnicity and nationality aside, Islam can be divided into two main groups (the Sunni and the Shi’a), a rift that dates back to the death of Mohammed. So don’t act like Muslims have their own little secret organizations.
I think I’ve given you the basic education required to understand what I’m going to say next. Done with the education, now to the schooling.
You now say that the witch hunt is to be carried out by Muslims, but what you said before is that the best way to get rid of radical Islam “is to make America a very uncomfortable place for Muslims generally”. You’re changing your story, Dave. Naughty, naughty.
While we’re at it, let’s make America uncomfortable for Christians so that the moderate Christians will root out the radical Christians who preach violence and ostracization against homosexuals. We’ve been dealing with religious homophobia for decades but still no pressure on the Christian community at large.
“The rest of us can do it for them?” Really? How do you propose we do that? Run through Muslim neighborhoods and take into custody anyone we find who seems a little too zealous? Make laws restricting the practice of Islam? It’s intensely impractical, not to mention ethically wrong and unconstitutional.
In summary, you think that if we oppress the Muslim community in America enough, they’ll realize that it’s the fault of the zealots who attack the innocent, and themselves suppress such sentiment. Well, that has been more or less proven not to work. When Hezbollah attacked Israel, Israel made that same blunder and rained down death on Lebanon’s cities, hoping that the Lebanese would act to shut down Hezbollah to avoid further reprisal. Did it work? No! All it did was cause massive suffering of innocents and turn the opinions of the Lebanese firmly against the Israeli government as a result of Israel killing and displacing those whose greatest crime was to be in the same place as the militants at the same time. When you oppress or kill innocents, you lower yourself to the level of the terrorists. Should we terrorize a multitude of our own loyal citizens for their perceived guilt-by-association? To do so, as you suggest, would lower us to the level of the terrorists. You would drag the (already tattered) integrity of this great nation through the mud of savagery.
Why not listen to the appeals of the bereaved:
“You can’t blanket a whole group of people. There’s extremists in every religion, and there’s extremists all over the world. And I don’t think that we can blanket a whole group of people when this man obviously was ill, I think.”
“The death of our father, or any of these victims, shouldn’t be an excuse or reason to begin to hate an entire group of people.”
Those are statements made by Kerry and Keely Vanacker, respectively, daughters of Michael Cahill, who was a physician’s assistant and was killed at the base.
Do you think that the Founding Fathers would have wanted us to exact vengeance on an entire group of people because of the crimes of a few? You rail against the conception that our leaders are actually smarter than the rest of us (true in many cases, in my opinion) but you seem to think yourself smart enough to pass judgement on all the Muslims in America (without knowing much of anything about their religion, I might add).
Chúpalo,
venomlash
P.S. I noticed your use of a breast cancer motif. WTF?
P.P.S. In my search for ideological ground common to both of us, I’d like to hear what your stance is on abortion and on gay rights. Off-topic, I know, so I put it in the postscript. Feel free to respond (or not) in whatever medium of your blog.
Breast cancer: Because the alternatives were brain cancer, or colon cancer, or prostate cancer, and “mastectomy” is such a lovely word with such visible results.
Abortion: Roughly, my argument is that citizens have the right and the
power to make life and death decisions, up to and including abortion, within certain limits. I’ve posted about it before, do a search. (Where you will find I link abortion rights with the right to keep and bear. It’s all one.) Caveat: Since I began to read actual conservative, pro-life views, rather than liberal restatements of same, I’ve come to understand that the best of those views are rooted in the reverence for life, and a commitment to personal responsiblity, not in the desire to oppress or control women. And far too many “pro-choice” advocates I’ve run across are marked by an abdication of responsibility, or by outright abortion advocacy, which I think is an abomination. (And I’ve run across a lot of them, having done clinic defense on the clinic side of the line.)
Ditto gay rights; I don’t care who you sleep with. I don’t think the government has any business whatsoever regulating any such thing. In any case, I think homosexuals are such a small segment of the population that, all other things being equal, letting them marry each other would have no effect. Again the caveat, though: far too many “gay rights” advocates also seem to advocate bizarre, irreponsible lifestyles, and even seem to press “gayness” as a desirable thing in and of itself. I’ve had people tell me in so many words that I’m broken because I’m not at least bi. And there are certainly women out there who tell anybody who will listen that I’m obviously evil because I have a penis. Won’t be having any truck with the likes o’ that. (I had a girlfriend once who wanted me to read a book about how wonderful the world would be if there were no men, and how technology was going to make that possible in our lifetimes. She couldn’t understand why I had a problem with that, and was disgusted when I tried to turn the argument around to eliminate women. She was no ignorant dummy, either, just blindspotted.)
I’m still ambivalent about gay marriage. I think the male-female marriage tradition is deep-rooted in biology, and I’m very, very shy of messing with that without very damn good reasons why we must. On the other hand…see my post a while back about the woman who was kept from her long-time lover’s deathbed, along with their adopted children.
And again, “I want to see gay closets filled with assault weapons.” Or something to that effect, can’t be arsed to look up the exact quote. That poor kid who got tied to a fence? What if gays went about armed, just like everybody else? See the Pink Pistols.
I’m not prepared to cite evidence or make extended arguments here, though, I’m very pressed for time. I’m just stating my positions, no more. Take it or leave it. (However, do a search for “zombietime”. Zombie lives in Northern California, and takes photos at local political rallies and street demonstrations, where extremely bizarre behavior is often on display.)
And a freebee: The War on Some Drugs is a War on the Bill of Rights and a War on Citizens. It’s broken and bad and evil as few other government programs have ever been. As bad as Some Drugs are — and some of them are indeed terrible — enforcing the laws against them does far, far more damage.
Always, always, always, my North is personal sovereignty — and this is why I’m so suspicious, downright terrified, in fact, of jihad: the jihadis want to control everybody’s behavior, down to tiny details. Again, not the time or place for detailed argument — just stating my position.