--- ritu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Gautam Mukunda wrote: > Because that seems to be normal group dynamics: > Isolate a group, treat > them with constant suspicion and act as if they are > all potential > terrorists and sooner, rather than later, there is a > ground swell of > support, within the same group, for the extremist > movements. I have seen > it happen in Kashmir, Punjab and the North-East. > An Irish friend of mine tells me that this is also > the pattern she saw > in Ireland.
But, here are two potential problems. One, we have a real security threat that has to be dealt with. India, despite its extended history of dealing with terrorism, has never faced anything remotely like the 9/11 attack, so we (the US) have one that is different in kind, as well as in scale, from that faced by other countries. Second, _the support is already there_. People in Muslim countries all over the world celebrated on September 11th. I've seen the videotape, and so have most other people. Opinion polls suggest that in much of the Islamic world, Osama Bin Laden is a popular and respected figure. So I am arguing that it's time to treat Muslims as moral actors - our moral equals. They have the ability to make moral choices - to choose freedom over tyranny, peace over war, civilization over barbarism. Large portions of the Islamic world have chosen to support groups that use terrorism in the pursuit of the vilest ends (we're not, after all talking about the ANC here, which used terrorist tactics for fundamentally just ends. We're talking about people who want to establish Taliban-like rule _over the entire world_.) That is their _choice_. We, as outsiders, need to demand that they choose differently. We certainly shouldn't accomodate it, make ourselves more vulnerable to it, or not impose consequences because of it when that choice impinges upon us. > Gautam, how many religio-political groups condemn > their own > lunatics/extremists loudly, clearly and constantly? > For that matter, how > many political organisations/groups do that? > Such criticism becomes even more rare when there is > a physical distance > between the atrocities and the groups. I can't > remember any Sikh groups > decrying the murder of innocents in movement for > Khalistan, can't think > of a single Hindu group which condemned the Gujarat > massacres last > year.......... They they should be condemned for it. Saying nothing when a group commits barbarism in your name is the same thing as accepting it. As Dan pointed out, plenty of groups _do_, in fact, condemn extremists who use violence supposedly in their cause. We in the US see it all the time - so often, in fact, that it can become a fairly major scandal when a group doesn't do that. Furthermore, it's one thing to fail to condemn, say, the Earth Liberation Front when it burns down a ski lodge. That's bad, and when environmental groups fail to do that it's a problem. It's another when Muslim organizations the world over justify the slaughter of innocents in Israel. But we see that over and over again. If Catholic terrorists were killing protestant children and the Vatican didn't condemn them, I would have a big problem with that. But the Vatican _did_ condemn the IRA. By contrast, over and over again prominent Muslim clerics consistently excuse and promote even viler terorrism against civilians all the time. If they turend against the terrorists, the terrorists would lose much of their popular support. But they will only do so when they have a reason to do so, and only the outside world can try to create that reason. When we fail to make demands on the Muslim world - when we constantly excuse them from making demands and choices like this, we act as enablers for what is rapidly becoming a culture-wide pathology. I mean this very seriously - that's why I argue about it so much. When the outside world (I'm thinking of much of Europe in particular) constantly fails to demand basic civilized behavior from the Muslim world, constantly making excuses and protecting it from the consequences of its _choices_, they act as enablers and allow the situation to continue. > Has the Muslim world ever stood up and said that the > blowing up of > Jewish infants is a good/acceptable idea? If yes, > then it is certainly > their responsibility to refute the statement and > make whatever amends > possible. If not, then do you think they might > resent our assumption > that all of them lack the basic humanitarian > instincts to be repulsed by > the death of infants? Quite a few very prominent and important Muslim clerics _do_ routinely support the terrorists. But even many of those who do not consistently fail to condemn them. It keeps happening, over and over again, and too much of the Muslim world keeps failing to condmen it. So after a while, maybe their resentment isn't an issue any more, because it starts to become a real question about those basic humanitarian instincts. As far as I can tell, as long as you're killing Jews and/or Americans, for portions of the Muslim world anything you do is _just fine_. As long as the moderate majority of the Muslim world that we keep hearing about refuses to turn against the extremists, then maybe they _aren't_ repulsed by the massacre of infants. There aren't many signs that they are. So they don't have any grounds for resentment. Again, people outside keep acting as enablers. Self-examination is hard. You have to have a good reason to do it. As long as the outside world keeps removing any reasons for that self-examination, it won't happen. A parallel from American politics would be what happened to the conservative movement in the 1950s and 1960s. The institutionalization of the New Deal under a Republican President (Eisenhower) was a catastrophe for American conservatives. They had lost, completely. The consequence of that was Bill Buckley founding National Review and explicitly dedicating himself to expelling the John Birchers and anti-Semites from the American conservative movement. The long-term result of that decision on his part was the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and, effectively, the triumph of American conservatism. But the reason Buckley did it was because no one was out there saying it wasn't conservatives responsibility to police their own movement and protecting them from the consequence of sheltering the lunatic fringe. It was because American society gave conservatives the choice of change or defeat and irrelevance that the change happened. > > We are the ones _being_ attacked, not the > > ones doing the attacking. Episcopalians aren't > > launching suicide bombing campaigns. It seems to > me > > that the burden to prove bona fides should rest on > the > > other side of the scales right now. > > Who's 'we': A country? A religious group? > Non-muslims? > Who's on the other side of the scales: muslims? > Extremists? Terrorists? At the moment it's pretty much the non-Muslim world, everywhere it comes into contact with the Muslim one, be it the Israel, the US, India, China, or Russia (with varying degrees of legitimate grievance on the part of the Muslim world). Islam's bloody borders, in Sam Huntington's very apt phrase. On the other side are what people in the blogger world have accurately named Islamofascists - radical Islamic groups seeking to impose radical Islamic rule over, first, Islamic societies, and then the rest of the world. The way the war ends depends upon the _choice_ of the rest of the Muslim world - whether it will decisively turn against the terrorist groups, or continue to turn a blind eye to their sins. Note - not the _outcome_ of the war. The outcome of the war is pretty much pre-ordained. If this becomes a full-scale war of civilizations (which is what Bin Laden wants, after all), then the _outcome_ is that at the end, we win. Period. But it can end happily for the Muslim world - with Muslim countries free, democratic, and wealthy. Or it can end unhappily - with the Islamic world effectively destroyed by Western military power. Which one of those happens is a product of choices on the part of the Islamic "moderates" as to whether to support the Islamofascists or not. Right now, they haven't made the choice. But the longer they are protected _from_ making that choice, the more they will do what they do now - tacitly accept the actions of the extremists without taking any actions to stop them. And the longer they do that, the higher the chances that it will end in that terrible conflagaration. > As for the burden of proving the bona-fides, well > what bona-fides do you > want them to prove? > When did they lose their claim to these bona-fides? > Who are they > supposed to prove the same to? > Also, what would consitute sufficient proof? To the people being attacked in their name. I want them to prove that they _do not_ want to convert the entire world to Islam by force, that they reject those who do want to do that, and that they will help us defeat those who do want that. They lost that claim when 40 years of Islamic terrorism produced support or acceptance, not rejection on the part of large parts of the Muslim world. Sufficient proof would be these societies turning on the terrorists, rejecting them rhetorically (no more claims that 9/11 was a Jewish conspiracy), rejecting them financially (no more financial support for Al Qaeda), rejecting them in every way and shape until the terrorist organizations have been destroyed. > I look forward to your answers to my above > questions. > > Ritu This war will be decided within the Muslim world. We in the outside world need to stop being enablers of the pathologies that have allowed the terrorists to flourish so far. As long as the outside world continues to do so, the Muslim "moderates" will not act, because they won't have any incentive to do so. Our responsibility is to stop being enablers. Since September 11th of 2001, the US and its allies have taken up that responsibility. It's time for the rest of the world to do the same. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
