To begin with, President Bush should invite John Kerry to the White House for a confidential discussion on how to bring the world wide threat of terrorism to an end. Kerry will have no choice but to accept the invitation; and the press will be fed tips from high governmental officials that the meeting between the two men will have the profoundest historical consequence. Bush will have earlier issued a statement that, at this dangerous juncture in history, there can be no hint of a partisan divide on our nations' approach to the problem of terrorism; and that it is imperative that any proposal coming from the current administration will be backed one hundred percent by the opposition party.
The above is just plain dumb for two reasons. One, it assumes that Kerry has no choice. Of course he has a choice. Just as Daschle made his choice at the beginning of this presidency when invited to the prayer breakfast’s. Kerry could go to the White House and stay for a hour or two, and ten come out and politicize everything, just as the Dems have done for over two years. The second reason, is that there should be partisan divide now. We – the United States of America – were attacked for the umpteenth time. This time it was not some outpost overseas that our citizens have no connection to. It was here – at home – and affected millions of us. The last time this occurred, it united over 90 percent of our nation and we mobilized to take on and defeat the two most powerful military juggernauts in the world. And we did so when our military men and women realized during the war that the Nations we were fighting against were mad dogs, with no ability to negotiate rationally. Within a week of 9/11, we had prominent individuals in the media complaining about too many flags, jingoism, and the embarrassment of being patriotic.
This is what the joint statement, when it is finally released, will say:
"The United States had decided to open negotiation with Islamic terrorists, including Al Qaeda. Our only demand is that the terrorists must formally state their demands to us in a written document, and this document will become the basis of any future negotiation. These demands may be for cutting off all support for Israel, or for banning American presence from the Middle East, or for the mass conversion of all American citizens to Islam. Everything will be open for discussion."
This proposed released statement is beyond ludicrous. When you are confronted with an animal that has rabies – a mad animal – you do not attempt to tame it or get along with it. You put it down! Any human or groups of humans that kill women and children, babies, non-combatants; that contemplate and perform the actions of 9/11 are mad, insane. You do not negotiate with murderers and crazy people. You put them down so that their madness is not catching and to prevent them from causing more harm. The day we start to negotiate with these terrorists, will be the day we have already surrendered.
Now how can the terrorists -- or their American and European apologists -- ask for more than that?
Another idiotic statement. Refer above to my last comment. We are not dealing with rationale individuals – either the terrorists or the apologists. These people are mad and need to be treated as such.
In fact, there are two very minor conditions.
People may consider this nit-picking, but he states two conditions then goes to list three. This shows to me that he does not take the time to proofread his own work. Shoddy thinking!
First, it must be possible for the United States to comply with the terrorists' demands without the aid of a time machine. They are therefore barred from requiring us to "do over" episodes of history that are over and done with, such as American defilement of Saudi Arabia during the First Gulf War. However, the United States will be happy to consider paying compensation for all such misdeeds in the past.
Time machine! Get your head out of the sci-fi novels buddy! Unless he means to correct actions we took in the past, this statement is too far out there for the average Joe. If he means correct actions we made in the past, than say so. The vast majority of the citizens will read this and throw the rest of the article in the trash. The last part of the statement, all I can say is he sure is generous with the citizens tax dollars!
Second, the various terrorist organizations must unite behind one common front. This may be Al Qaeda or Hamas or what group the other terrorists decide to let represent them in their negotiations with the United States -- it makes no difference to us. All that really matters is that there be one clearly identifiable group that is authorized by Muslim terrorists everywhere to speak for them.
Why have them unite when we can divide and conquer?
Third, the list must not be a laundry list of complaints or grievances. It must be expressed in a form of ten priorities, ranked in accordance with their importance to the Muslim terrorists; and again, it is essential that all the Muslim terrorists will agree on the ranking of the relative demands -- there can be no argument about which demand has to be met first.
It does not matter what their grievances or demands are. Again, you do not negotiate with mad dogs! You put them down!
Now by this point I expect that many of my readers will be convinced that I am advocating virtual surrender to the terrorists. But in fact I am urging precisely the kind of policy that Otto von Bismarck adopted -- to create a trap in which your enemy will irresistibly fall, simply because he will have no clue where the trap has been set.
Need I say again, no negotiations with mad dogs! Also, somebody tell this guy that Germany lost their major two military campaigns in the same century to the same nation – US! At one point he acknowledges that we are not fighting a conventional force but then wants us to adopt conventional wisdom to stop insane people.
Consider the only two responses that the Muslim terrorists can make in such circumstances.
Again, you are making a dangerous assumption. Remember, you are dealing with insane people, they do not have to nor will they act in a logical manner. You cannot have two sets of rules for fighting any type of conflict. This is the main lesson we should have learned from Vietnam. Fight the enemy on their terms, using their methods.
The result of this bickering would almost certainly be an orgy of mutual slaughter -- just the kind of thing that happens to gangs when they are trying to establish their dominance over each other. Each would be competing with the rest to be allowed to represent the Muslim world in its negotiations with the United States.
This naïve idiot does not seem to realize that the various Muslim groups have already decided on a common goal – the destruction and/or submission of non-Muslims.
Otto von Bismarck could have done such a thing. We probably can't. And yet by simply contemplating such a scenario it becomes instantly clear why the crisis we are facing is so different from any crisis in our past. Every war in our past could, in theory, have been capable of a solution had we been simply willing to give up enough to those who were our enemies. Had we abandoned the Pacific to the Japanese, that would have appeased them; had we kept out of the European war, Hitler would have been fine with us. Had Wilson simply accepted the German sinking of our ships on the high seas, as William Jennings Bryan had urged, we would have never gotten involved in the First World War.
Here he is actually advocating appeasement. Give them a little of what they want, and they will perhaps leave us alone. It is never enough! Had the European powers – back in the mid 1930’s when Germany started to rearm in violation of its treaty obligation – swiftly went in and crushed the Nazi’s, WW II would never have happened! The same goes with Iraq. People say it is stupid to compare Saddam to Hitler. But what if we never kicked him out of Kuwait? Allowed him to take over other Mid East countries? Then we he cut off the world’s oil supply, is that when we would have gone in? Appeasement never works – whether it is giving up your lunch money to bullies or ceding territories to insane leaders!
In our current situation, however, the mere willingness to yield to the demands of the enemy is not enough to bring about a definitive solution, simply because while we have enemies, they are not even close to being organized enough to constitute something that we could plausibly call the enemy. Indeed, let us suppose that, instead of trying to open negotiations, we simply decided to flat out surrender. To whom would we surrender? And if we surrendered to terrorist group A, how could we be sure that we were not thereby embroiling ourselves in a war with terrorist group B, who might decide to insist that we surrender to them instead, and to underscore this insistence with terror strikes of their own?
To even contemplate this nation surrendering to anyone at anytime is contemptible!
As long as a handful of people in the Muslim world believe that they have a grievance against us, and are willing to use terror to express this grievance, it will be impossible for us either to achieve a negotiated solution to the problem of terrorism, and equally impossible for us even to surrender. This means that even the most peace-loving dove must accept the fact that we have no choice but to fight -- and to fight with whatever weapons come to our hand. Either that, or just to stop caring when hundreds or thousands of human beings are brutally murdered for no reason at all.
You took the above statement that I have in bold and used it to suggest the author is not offering surrender. But you took that statement out of context. Read below.
In H.G. Wells' novel, The Time Machine, the hero is transported into a far distant epoch of man's future. There he is astonished to discover an innocent and carefree race of beautiful and child-like human beings, called the Eloi. Yet, just at the moment when the hero believes he is seeing the return of the Golden Age, an incident happens. A beautiful girl suddenly loses her footing and falls into a river along which she and her friends had been walking just moments before. The girl screams as she falls into the water, but her companions merely give her a glance, and then casually, as if nothing had happened, they continue their way, utterly unaffected by their friend's desperate shouts.
Wells' hero immediately sees his duty, and does it, jumping into the river to save the drowning girl, but, as he does so, he asks himself, How could human beings possibly reach such a point where they thought nothing of the death of their friends and companions?
Since we cannot negotiate or surrender, even if we wished to, our only realistic alternative to fighting our enemies is to adopt the attitude of the Eloi, and to ignore the deaths of those of us whom they kill, and to go our merry way as if nothing had happened to them.
The last paragraph of this idiotic piece is the author’s suggestion in dealing with terror. Just get along with it. If they start blowing up our train and bus depots, our airports, our restaurants, our schools, our day care centers, just walk along as if nothing happened and nothing can be done. This in itself is a type of surrender, a surrender of the soul, the right to call yourself a caring and loving person, the acceding of your rights as a citizen in the nation. For writing this tripe, my suggestion is to strip this individual of his citizenship and ship him post haste to a country where he can practice his beliefs. I know that you will disagree with all I have said. If you agree with this author, than I suggest you move to a country where you can easily practice such appeasement and surrender.
Since we cannot negotiate or surrender, even if we wished to, our only realistic alternative to fighting our enemies is to adopt the attitude of the Eloi, and to ignore the deaths of those of us whom they kill, and to go our merry way as if nothing had happened to them.
Did you for a second thought that it is what he advocates? He got you. He assumed that any reasonable person would be appalled with such alternative (you did of course), but it is the ONLY reasonable alternative to fighting. He assumed (he made a mistake with you) that his own position is clear.
He does not have a fight with you. His fight is with Leftists intellectuals who unwittingly (lets be charitable) help the enemy.
You also went with some personal attacks.
Too bad. If you can't read anything more complicated than propaganda, don't read Mr. Harris.
The alternatives he poses--and they are alternatives--such as accepting regular and random mass murder of our citizens are not the type of alternatives that rational folks would contemplate (not to say that hard-greens and Noam Chomsky wouldn't contemplate them with relish).
Certainly he does not endorse the Eloi alternative. He illustrates that the Eloi alternative is the only alternative to fighting the war to its bitter conclusion.
Think of it as being a little like Johnathan Swift's famous treatise, "A Modest Proposal," in which Swift apparently advocated solving a bunch of problems England then had by killing Irish infants and using them as food. He wasn't really advocating killing Irish infants. He was making another point entirely by posing the slaughter as such a ridiculous and repulsive alternative to the conclusion he wanted the reader to draw.
I'm pretty sure from your post that you and the author agree on most everything about the WOT, except about styles of rhetoric.