The New Republic

Islam, like Communism, spreads by annihilating the opposition, including the intellectuals. No one is allowed to analyze or question Islam. Society is beaten into sullen submission.

- amidut

October 10, 2010 at 1:41pm

- Ah-ha! That explains why O'Donnell is advertising she didn't go to Yale (after she lied about attending Oxford, UK). Poor thing fears for her life.

- michaelg

October 10, 2010 at 2:23pm

I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror... Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it... I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us.

- CRS9TNR

October 10, 2010 at 4:18pm

CRS9TNR, what is it you are telling us?

- noga1

October 10, 2010 at 4:43pm

Noga - This is a quote from Apocalypse Now. Col Kurtz is deep into Cambodia as a rebel commander. His revalation here is the metaphor for the story. The US Army can not defeat a Khymer Rouge army that uses horrorible acts of terror. It's a little bit of Irony. We argue about whether the 'Enemy Combatants' in Guatanamo have the right to civilian courts or whether we should warn the Taliban before we attack to minimize civilian deaths. The Taliban kills anyone they want, disfuguring young girls and destroying schools and hospitals in revenge.

- CRS9TNR

October 10, 2010 at 5:34pm

Nothing can defeat the offspring of the marriage between absolute self-righteousness and the irresistible urge to do violence. Robespierre understood it well: “Par pitié, par amour pour l’humanité, soyez inhumains!”

- noga1

October 10, 2010 at 5:55pm

Noga - Nice.

- CRS9TNR

October 10, 2010 at 6:12pm

It's not irony, CRS9, it's simply that we have a different system of values and different criteria for judgment -- including about what's legitimate or not in war. It's ironic if, say, model A of behavior leads to a consequence more associated with model B, for example, but the mere fact of us going about our national business in a different way isn't.

- ironyroad

October 10, 2010 at 7:42pm

Irony - It is irony to me. The fact that you criticize me, before you will criticize the Taliban for killing a Doctor and Scholar. In your world, anyone who who stands up to Islamic Extremism is wrong. You might as well start teaching your kids to speak arabic and buy your wife the burqua.

- CRS9TNR

October 10, 2010 at 9:05pm

The Khemer Rouge were a lethal but local phenomenon. The Afghan Islamists are not merely a local danger. Their alliance with sectors of the Pakistani government make them a danger to all of us: "Pakistan's nuclear arms push angers America" "Pakistan has been secretly accelerating the pace of its nuclear weapons programme, infuriating the US which is trying to cap worldwide stocks of fissile material and improve fraught relations with a fragile ally in the Afghanistan war." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/8053775/Pakistans-nuclear-arms-push-angers-America.html

- jdyer

October 10, 2010 at 9:24pm

ironyroad: "it's simply that we have a different system of values and different criteria for judgment -- including about what's legitimate or not in war." One irony of the increased use of Predator drone "targeted" killings against the Taliban is that the Taliban sees this technology as cowardly, unworthy of a warrior because we use it to minimize risk to our soldiers, not to minimize collateral damage to innocent civilians. As to the Taliban assassinations of the Farooq Khans of Pakistan? It is not comparable to the Khmer Rouge, which was state sponsored genocide. OTOH, such internal terror today is the unintended consequence of the Pakistani government's creation of the Taliban more than twenty years ago. CRS9TNR: I believe "Extremism" is now officially reserved for Republicans, based on the email I just got from Organizing for America: "...After Election Day, either the extreme Republicans will be in charge, or we'll be. ..." I found that a rather intimidating message, using fear to motivate. It did not come with a bullet, but it is verbal terrorism.

- K2K

October 10, 2010 at 9:36pm

Irony is not entirely a subjective phenomenon, CRS9, and furthermore ascribing attitudes and opinions to me that I don't hold says a heck of a lot more about you than about me. If you can't handle some criticism in debate, why are you here in the first place?

- ironyroad

October 11, 2010 at 1:30am

"...and furthermore ascribing attitudes and opinions to me that I don't hold" Why would you be bothered by such a thing, ironyroad? Why, just in a neighbouring thread you have very magnanimously ignored such minor ascribings of attitudes as "arguments that have more to do with style than content" . :)

- noga1

October 11, 2010 at 7:24am

the clock is ticking for that inevitable India-Pakistan nuclear exchange. I only hope the US has the wisdom to support India while avoiding getting China dragged into it as well. noga, that is a nice line, I am going to steal it.

- blackton

October 11, 2010 at 1:01pm

Noga, I don't feel as if I can let pass the accusation that I personally believe that anyone "who stands up to Islamic extremism is wrong" -- something for which there is no basis in anything I've ever written.

- ironyroad

October 11, 2010 at 1:28pm

"As a general proposition, I think there's enough aplenty to argue and debate (and sometimes, mirabile dictu, agree) about what we've actually written without having to defend ourselves against what we haven't. " I second that malahat. But it does seem that this noble principle which is couched in the assumption that your interlocutor is arguing in good faith and from the best possible motives is often neglected. Therefore we have people accused that, for example, their criticism of Obama is symptomatic of deeper, darker and vile biases. I was only pointing out to ironyroad that maybe he should be moved to remonstrate even when such rhetorical tactics are employed by someone who shares his politics to a t against another who doesn't. But I can tell you here and now that even ironyroad, a sweet and wise guy without any doubt, is capable of not learning. And that in future he will again not exert himself to say the right thing at the right moment. He won't even notice the need for it. 99.9% of the time, persuasion fails. Even when you are equipped with facts, records, common sense, good arguments and deal with good and intelligent people. That's what I'm learning here.

- noga1

October 11, 2010 at 3:25pm

Irony - An apology for my shaper point and my accusation. I only had a few minutes blogging last night and was in a foul mood. I should have thought about it for a few more minutes. I try to avoid these personal attacks. I don't think they are very productive, and you are correct, your writing has not demonstrated that you have any problems standing up for what's right. I may disagree with your positions, but I do appreciate the arguments you build. Like TNR it helps one think a little more and appreciate another position.

- CRS9TNR

October 11, 2010 at 6:30pm

CRS9, no problem. I should say in the interests of full disclosure that I came within a millimeter of a much nastier response but I forced myself to read your comment one more time. And then it dawned on me that, in fact, apart from what I thought was a lack of knowledge of where I'm coming from in these discussions, your comment was tough but not illegitimate or out of order. I did indeed take issue with the use of the term 'irony' when in fact you were talking about more important matters, which in a way I simply ignored. And I've accused others myself on this site of deliberately ignoring the crucial issues to focus on the marginal noise -- many times, in fact.

- ironyroad

October 12, 2010 at 12:44am

Irony: "to focus on the marginal noise" How do you "focus" on "noise"? You can, presumably, focus sound waves - like any wave - and so you can, in principle, "focus [...] noise" - amplify it, put it in a parabolic dish and then focus it on your poor victims, but "focus on" noise? Are we not in Heisenbergian territory here? For, if you focus on a wave, it means you are actually looking at specific elements of it, and we know that one can determine the location of a wave-particle, and its speed, but never the two together. So, the moment you focus on noise, it stops moving, stops being a wave, stops being noise, and becomes a particle (or some such thing). And you have a logical and physical impossibility "to focus on noise". And while we are at it, what do you mean by "marginal" noise? Noise at the margins ... of what, exactly? What is the sound wave at which noise goes from the body to the margins? And is there a principal body of "noise" apart from which one can identify "noise" that is "marginal"? Isn't the term itself somewhat redundant, in the way you appear to mean it, when it is not too amorphous to have meaning? I could go on. Evidently, irony, not one of your most coherent, cogent, logical, accurate or better written posts. Sad, really sad, in fact.

- icarusr

October 12, 2010 at 10:50am

CRS and Irony: I should note that this outbreak of reasonableness is causing me to break out in hives; amidut should post some more to balance you two out.

- icarusr

October 12, 2010 at 10:52am

ick, while I admire your attempt to reproduce a TNR discussion thread version of Northrop Frye's literary criticism, I have to say that you're making heavy weather of a simple metaphor (indeed, it was barely metaphorical). Imagine, if you will, a conversation at a party in which three or four people are intensely discussing something fairly weighty (the Middle East, or the deficit), and there are a couple of other groups standing nearby talking about other, not so serious, topics. A potential sex scandal, for example. If I am one of the small group talking about the ME or the deficit, but I start to eavesdrop on that other conversation, desperate to hear an actual name, and take my attention more and more away from my immediate interlocutors' comments, then I am "focusing on the marginal noise." [flourish of trumpets, ironyroad looking smug as all get out]

- ironyroad

October 12, 2010 at 2:31pm

An interesting item of news that has just emerged: http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/study-pakistanis-actually-favor-cia-drone-bombings/19666696

- ironyroad

October 13, 2010 at 5:35pm

It's monumentally badly phrased, I'd be the first to agree, but I think the sense of it is that, although major screw-ups happen in which missiles kill or injure innocent civilians and obviously get publicized for that, the feeling among at least some of the population is that the drones are aiming at the right targets. That is, significant numbers of the local population do not believe that the U.S. is randomly attacking civilians.

- ironyroad

October 13, 2010 at 9:09pm

Ok, malahat, I just thought it was an interesting and perhaps counter-intuitive perspective. I can't judge the science of the polling. Maybe folks were just lying because they got to enter a raffle for a Prius if they said they were ok with the Predators. Who knows? I am not saying it's ok to kill civilians. If the rate was 2%, most people would be still saying the same things they are saying now. The Taliban and AQ have an interest in creating the impression that we are randomly attacking ordinary people. I assume 99% of the time every precaution is taken to identify a legitimate target. What I'm saying is that if we are in a war, and I believe we are, then Obama's approach of ramping up drone attacks may indeed be the one that ends up taking out more of the enemy. But it would be interesting if the real opinion on the ground was less sympathetic to the Taliban and AQ than often cited.

- ironyroad

October 13, 2010 at 10:40pm