In #Three above you write “Other issues, however, are often less opaque.” Did you mean “more opaque” or “less clear”? Or am I being obtuse?
This is a very good, and necessary, reminder.

Sorry about the double comment.

Why do we justify the vile rants of Coulter and her ilk? Is it excusable because they direct the bile at liberals? We sully our own reputations–and disgrace our Lord–by associating ourselves with such hateful speech. The sooner we shun them the sooner we can return to the path of serious discourse.
Joe, wouldn’t we be better served by focusing on “shunning” people who spew their bile from the pulpit? I for one am more offended by John Hagee’s anti-Catholic rants from the pulpit than I am by Coulter’s anti-liberal rants on O’Reilly (I assume she is a guest there). If we want to claim to be the “Religious Right”, shouldn’t we focus on getting the “Religious” part right first and the worry about the “Right” part?
That is, I can’t work up the outrage you have over waterboarding, because that IS what we’re talking about here, right? You did not start writing about this subject until waterboarding came up. It’s good to have the discussion. But to imply that most of us on the religious right are in favor of torture because we don’t agree on waterboarding is unfair and harmful to the debate.
I’m with you here, jd. The debate on torture is not about thumbscrews, the rack, and red hot pokers; it is about loud music, stress positions, and waterboarding. I think it is disingenuous for Joe and his ilk to not make that distinction.

ucfengr,
If we want to claim to be the “Religious Right”, shouldn’t we focus on getting the “Religious” part right first and the worry about the “Right” part?
That’s pretty close. We are first Christian.
We would/should likewise oppose the excesses of capitalism as well as the abuses of Marxism.
Collin
http://evangelicalperspective.blogspot.com

“Ann Coulter does not generally hate the targets of her scathing satire. Quite the opposite — she is actually showing them the respect of holding them to a high standard. She makes people look foolish only by holding a mirror up to their own words and behavior.
I think that if you fully understood that, you wouldn’t have such a big problem with what she says and writes.”
Great comment, Matthew. I think you described her (and Joe’s apparent lack of understanding) perfectly. Fred Phelps spews hate, Ann Coulter spews satire. The first makes the speaker look foolish, the latter can make the listener appear a fool.

I’m not too conversant with Coulter but I think it really depends on what she is saying. I would shun Phelps and his ilk because he portrays himself as a person of God, speaking for God. If Coulter does this then I would be on board for shunning her. If she is just generally rude (satirical I suppose many of you would say) then I couldn’t care much less about what she says; I’ll just choose to continue ignoring her.

Regarding Matthew’s defense of Ann Coulter (above):
“She is actually showing them the respect of holding them to a high standard.”
We ought to do the same for Ann. The highest standard I can think of would be Holy Scripture, which has clear ideals by which we can evaluate our behavior.
For example, in the second chapter of Titus, Paul writes that “Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the Word of God may not be reviled.”
The standards of Scripture are lofty, and no one can live up to them perfectly, but I don’t even see Ann making any effort at all. Let’s not give her a free pass just because she’s funny.
Have you ever thought about why Ann Coulter gets so many invitations to appear on secular, anti-Christian TV shows? It’s not because she’s a winsome ambassador for Christ, but because she’s an public embarrassment for Christianity. Non-believers can defend their stereotyping of, and hatred for, Christians by pointing to the Ann’s unapologetically savage words. Because she ignores the commands of Scripture, the Word of God is reviled. And for this you defend her????
I’ve read most of her books, and she comes down on the right side of many issues, but I agree with Joe, we need to stop slurping up the poison she spews.

That’s pretty close. We are first Christian.
Then complain to Joe; I was responding to him and that was the term he used.

That’s pretty close. We are first Christian.
Then complain to Joe; I was responding to him and that was the term he used.

ucfengr,
I wasn’t (x4) complaining.
It was a compliment.
Collin

I am glad to see a post that I can largely agree with. I still have a fundamental disagreement with your implication that laws in this country should somehow be in line with the Bible. If we could all agree on the simple (and thoroughly American) premise that the government should neither encourage nor discourage any religion or irreligion, we would find a great deal to agree on. Just as it is not the government’s job to broadcast prayers or post religious commandments, it is not its job to enforce biblical marriage rules.
Christianity Today posted an excellent article yesterday on this very subject of separation of church and state. The article is by Steven Waldman, author of the new book “Founding Faith.” He makes a good case for looking to James Madison instead of Patrick Henry.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/marchweb-only/113-22.0.html?start=1

“Tim, so morally you think it better to allow, say, a thousand people to die than give a terrorist some momentary discomfort? Interesting…”
Yes, Christianity is interesting. You should study it.

Yes, Christianity is interesting. You should study it.
It’s a strange view of Christianity that would allow you to kill someone to prevent him from setting off a bomb (I assume you wouldn’t have a problem with that), but wouldn’t allow you to “waterboard” him to do the same thing.

Wow, the intellectually lazy are sure out in force today.

BTW Joe, I like the way you auto-link Bible passages to Bible Gateway.

I think Darius’ witty remark was aimed at me, though I noticed that neither he nor ucfengr answered my questions. Where would you draw the line on torture in order to save innocent lives?

Benedict XVI may not be intellectually lazy, but he is morally repugnant if he believes that it is better that a thousand people die than one person feel MOMENTARY discomfort.
As for your appeal to two logical fallacies… just because you make ad populum and ad verecundiam (authority) arguments doesn’t mean your opinion is right or BIBLICAL. Mind giving us a Scriptural-based reason against even minor “torture” rather than appealing to the beliefs of the leader of an anti-biblical heirarchy? (oops, that just opened a can of worms).
Again though, I think you’re missing the point. The main topic is waterboarding and similar interrogation methods. Are they ALWAYS wrong? Or, on occasion, are they ethically-viable means to save lives?

Oops, sorry for the double posts.
Ex-preacher, you asked your questions in such a sarcastic manner as to imply that you didn’t expect or want an answer. But since you now appear interested in an answer… methods of interrogation should only include “harm” to a KNOWN terrorist/evildoer, and never harm to innocent parties (thus children of terrorists are off-limits). The “harm” involved should be proportional to the KNOWN danger to human life. If we have a terrorist in custody who is DEFINITELY a part of an IMMINENT plot to kill 200,000 people, then almost all interrogation means are on the table. If we have a possible terrorist who MIGHT know a little information about a bombing that will only kill a few people, then severely limit the discomfort he could feel.
Now the obvious retort to this is that it is so highly subjective… yes, that is correct. That’s what the human quality of ethical discernment is for. We don’t punish a shoplifter the same as a rapist. So rules like the one attempted to be passed through Congress recently which would have outlawed waterboarding in ALL situations are just plain immoral. Who knows when waterboarding might be a necessary option?

I’ll answer the question after you do, Marvin. If you are a Christian, I’d be interested to know the biblical justification for your position on torture. After I give my answer, I’ll give my rational justification.

Ex-preacher…
If you are really an ex-preacher, then you should know that the Bible doesn’t specifically address whether “torture” for the cause of the “greater good” is acceptable. Christian ethics in general is in fact quite nuanced (and I do hate using that word). There are a great many host of issues that are not specifically addressed in the Bible, but that doesn’t mean that the a Christian can’t take an informed position that seeks to be true to their faith. Take for example Deitrich Boenhoeffer. He was a German pastor and theologian during the rise of the Third Reich who wrote many essays on Christian ethics. He was also a pacifist. However, by the time things were done, he was a member of the resistance movement that was nearly successful in the assassination of Hitler. His role in the assassination plot led to his arrest and death in a concentration camp.
As for where to “draw the line” on torture, what constitutes as torture must itself be defined. My definition might not be the same as yours. I think that anything that leaves permanent physical damage is off limits, i.e. severing of fingers, crushing toes, lacerations, etc. But harsh interrogation tactics that seek to break down the will of the interrogatee are OK. Things that wear on the person mentally. That is what cops do, they will play good cop/bad cop for hours on end with suspects. That could be considered tortureous or abusive.
That is what makes waterboarding so appealing for the ticking time bomb scenario. Time is of the essence and the long drawn out methods are simply not viable options. Waterboarding is a mental form of torture with no physical damage done. Not to mention that it has been demonstrated to work in the past with the most hardened of America hating thugs. I am not advocating the widespread use waterboarding. But I also think that it should be left on the table for the extreme doomsday scenario.

Huh. I know lots of them. I guess we move in different circles of Christians.
So a Christian can’t be a cop, a soldier, or a Marine? Guess that leaves me out. Though on the plus side, my Sunday mornings will be free.

So a Christian can’t be a cop, a soldier, or a Marine?
It’s not currently the major interpretation, but throughout Christian history, there has been a significant minority of Christians who do indeed believe (usually based on their interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus’s other teachings) that Christians shouldn’t be cops, soldiers, or marines.
In my denomination, a major controversy in recent years has been the issue of whether congregations should be allowed to accept as members a) “practicing” homosexuals or b) soldiers. I would guess that more congregations accept a) than b), but lots of them would accept neither. Cops seem to be a bit of a grey area.

Great post. Ann Coulter does need to go because she claims to be one of us. Not just a conservative but also a religious conservative. Her statements are not loving and are hateful. I will never attend a conference in which she speaks at.
Keep up the great work!

Interesting. A Christian congregation where neither David nor Cornelius would be welcome.
Nor Gideon, nor Sampson, nor this guy.
I’m curious what inventive eisegetical arguments are used to get around the problematic existence of faithful men of war in both the Old and New Testaments.
Me too.

ucfengr:
Mennonite Church USA, so the Amish guess was in the right ballpark.
Confession of Faith is here:
http://www.mcusa-archives.org/library/resolutions/1995/index.html
Articles 22 and 23 are probably what would create problems for an active duty soldier
doulos tou theou:
If you’re interested, there are several hundred years of theological reflection out there. More recent and easily accessible works from an anabaptist perspective would include the books of John Howard Yoder.
More specifically, with regard to Cornelius, one might argue that Jesus is unambiguous in his commands regarding how we are to treat our enemies, but Scripture is silent on what Cornelius did after his conversion (some church traditions say that he became a bishop, presumably leaving the Roman army). With regard to David and Sampson, one could argue that God calls different peoples at different times to do different things. Old Testament Jews were called to follow the law. New Testament Christians are called to follow Christ’s commands. Perhaps that’s too “inventive,” but there you are.
In any event, I wasn’t seeking to start an argument about pacifism. I was just following up on ucfengr’s comment that he doesn’t know any Christians who think that injunctions against killing mean, you know, don’t kill. I merely sought to point out that the Christian population is rather more diverse than his comment implied.

In any event, I wasn’t seeking to start an argument about pacifism. I was just following up on ucfengr’s comment that he doesn’t know any Christians who think that injunctions against killing mean, you know, don’t kill.
I actually said “I know very few” which is quite a bit different from claiming “I don’t know any”. I am aware that there are pacifist sects in Christianity, but they are not the norm, which is why I said “very few”. So, you responded to something I didn’t say.
In my denomination, a major controversy in recent years has been the issue of whether congregations should be allowed to accept as members a) “practicing” homosexuals or b) soldiers. I would guess that more congregations accept a) than b), but lots of them would accept neither.
You really think more Christian denominations are accepting of “practicing homosexuals” than of soldiers? You must move in some odd circles indeed.

Darius your attitude towards others is pathetic! You should apologize but I have a feeling thats not in your nature. I see that for you, being a Christian is having a certain set of beliefs and going to church. Talk about interesting.
You can rationalize torture all you want. You can make up situations of “to save a 1000 lives”. (Where are these situations by the way?) But as a Christian, it is imperative that you do ONE thing. That is, if you confess Jesus as Lord, you must follow his examples and obey his teaching above all others. (e.g. Phil. 2:5-8; Eph 5:1-2; Jn 15:10, 14). “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching,” (Jn 14:24). And “Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did” (I Jn 2:6).
As my pastor has wisely surmised from the examples of Jesus.
Jesus chose to love, serve and die for his enemies rather than engage in “justified” violence against them. He chose to be killed rather than to kill. Followers of Jesus are called to mimic this attitude and behavior towards their enemies (1 Pet 2:18-23; 3:15-16; Heb. 12:2-3). Moreover, Jesus (and the rest of the New Testament) consistently taught that we are to love, bless, pray for and do good to our enemies (Mt.5:44-45; Lk 6:27-36). We’re to never retaliate or use violence in self-defense (e.g. Matt 5:38-39; Rom. 12:17-21; I Thess.5:15; I Pet 3:9 ). No where in the New Testament is this example or these teachings about non-violence ever qualified. No where do we find any exceptions to the commands to love and do good to our enemies.

“Nick writes:
So a Christian can’t be a cop, a soldier, or a Marine?
It’s not currently the major interpretation, but throughout Christian history, there has been a significant minority of Christians who do indeed believe (usually based on their interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus’s other teachings) that Christians shouldn’t be cops, soldiers, or marines.
In my denomination, a major controversy in recent years has been the issue of whether congregations should be allowed to accept as members a) “practicing” homosexuals or b) soldiers. I would guess that more congregations accept a) than b), but lots of them would accept neither. Cops seem to be a bit of a grey area”
The way I see it:
Technically, based on how Jesus treated soldiers, etc., there is no restriction. The problem is that you as a Christian, can be placed in a position that is not loving your enemies for example, by situations that arise from being a cop or soldier.

The problem is that you as a Christian, can be placed in a position that is not loving your enemies for example, by situations that arise from being a cop or soldier.
Do you show love to people by allowing them to commit evil deeds? Take school shootings (been in the news a lot lately) as an example; could a Christian use violence (understanding that violence can result in death) to stop a school shooter or must he restrict himself to trying to reason with the shooter and if that fails waiting until he gets tired or runs out of ammo? Or is it okay for a Christian to sublet his violence to a police officer or must the Christian try to restrain the cop as well? In other words, IYO does Christianity require that I sacrifice the lives of the innocent to “show love” to evildoers. Does my obligation to protect the innocent trump my obligation to “show love” to my enemies or is it (as you appear to believe) the other way around?

Great post, Joe (tho I haven’t read all 55 comments yet, maybe later tonight.)
What about a #11 — Focus on the Family; Christians need to learn how to support marriage that lasts between real men and real women in the real world. It seems that divorce rates for Christians are about as high as for non-Christians.
While my view is that pre-married folk need to understand how hard a good marriage is, and how much compromise is needed, I’m not certain I’d be the best at helping to prepare folk. Nor at helping folk solve their marriage problems. But in our fairly secular society, Christians, pastors & priests & lay people, need to find better ways of keeping wedding vows as sacred.
(Yeah, McCain looks worse than Romney here, and even worse than Obama, though perhaps less hypocritical than Clinton.)
and #12 — gov’t solutions are ALWAYS solutions based on force. Where the credible threat of force is a form of force. Peace & love are voluntary. Gov’t “doing good” is never charity, because of the force.

Tim, like most Christian pacifists, you seem to confuse INDIVIDUAL instruction with commands to governments.
1 Peter 2:13-14 “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.”
Yes, you are correct, you and I as individual Christians are to love our enemies. But a government is supposed to keep order and punish evildoers. Keep the two straight.
So what you’re saying is basically it is more loving to not give any discomfort to an evildoer than to save 1000 innocent people from dying? I have a hard time believing you’re that morally confused, but it seems you are.

You always get swamped in comments, and then I feel silly commenting myself.
Anyway, your bald assertions didn’t particularly contain any new idea – sort of stand-bys that I mostly agree with. But your introduction… sheer genius.

Tim, I do want to adamantly affirm what you are saying regarding INDIVIDUAL conduct towards one’s enemies. You are correct, we should love our enemies. I wish Christians would follow that command much more closely than we do. Christians sue others in court over frivolous things, Christians hold grudges, Christians don’t help homeless people (though helping homeless people has to be done with wisdom). That has gotta stop!
However, we’re not talking about that. You can go have a conversation in some other post that is more appropriate to that topic, but here we’re discussing what a government should be able to do to protect innocent life. Thus, it is entirely CONSISTENT to be anti-abortion and pro-war and pro-harsh interrogation tactics.

To divide between an individual’s obligation to treat enemies with kindness and the government’s authority to punish evildoers is to play games with the Bible. This interpretation was easier to maintain in Paul’s day when no Christian was in the government or had any role in choosing the government.
What happens when an individual Christian (soldier, FBI agent, bureaucrat) is ordered by the government to do something that plainly violates a biblical teaching? I guess the easy thing would be to close his/her eyes and obey or to just look away while someone else does the dirty work. Should a Christian vote for someone who will order individuals to violate Christ’s commands to individuals? Isn’t the government made up of individuals? Are there two sets of laws?

Ex-preacher,
Using your logic (and I hesitate to call it logic), the death penalty is anti-Biblical. And any Christian taking part in it is sinning. The only one playing games with Scripture is you (and Tim). The rest of us have a clear understanding of what real morality means, and it’s not your simplistic, 3rd grade ideas.

This interpretation was easier to maintain in Paul’s day when no Christian was in the government or had any role in choosing the government.

I don’t think you know what you are talking about here Ex, please cite your sources for this assertion that no Christian was in the government of Rome.

Mind giving us a Scriptural-based reason against even minor “torture” rather than appealing to the beliefs of the leader of an anti-biblical heirarchy?

Odd statement that, considering that all of the authors of the New Testament were members of the ‘anti-biblical heirarchy’… and some of them even the leaders of said heirarchy.

My point is that Christians were not running the government. There probably were some low level government officials who were Christian, but they did not have real power.

IOW, by today’s standards, soldier, FBI agent, bureaucrat… so how did that make it easier to maintain the interpretation of the divide between an individual’s obligation to treat enemies with kindness and the government’s authority to punish evildoers back in the day?

Boonton, Coulter did NOT call Edwards a fag, but what she WAS doing was ripping on the politically correct environment that requires people like Isaiah Washington to go into counseling when they do call people fags. It’s over your head, I know, but that’s what she was getting at. If you would have lived in Jonathan Swift’s day, you would have wanted him burned at the stake, wouldn’t you?

Darius, Darius, Have you read the Bible at all?
“Mind giving us a Scriptural-based reason against even minor “torture”
Well, how about this?
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them [a scholar of the law] 20 tested him by asking, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it: 23 You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
or this:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, 4 for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the waterboarders, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Those passages probably aren’t too familiar to you but I assure you, that with one ironic alteration, those are indeed biblical passages. From the Source, I might add.
Joe Carter is right. Torture needs to be uneuivocallly condemned.
“Again though, I think you’re missing the point. The main topic is waterboarding and similar interrogation methods. Are they ALWAYS wrong? Or, on occasion, are they ethically-viable means to save lives?
1. Yes, they are intrinsically evil. This main point was addressed to you but you failed to comprehend the difference between objective morality and consequentalism.
This is a fundamental yet common misunderstanding of Christian teeaching.
2. No, they are not.

Man, we’ve got moral nitwits on here. Again, unapologetic catholic, for the LAST time, why do you (and your pacifistic brethren) apply rules and statements to INDIVIDUALS to governments??? Mind giving some references from the Bible you claim to know so well?
Seriously, it’s like banging my head against the wall on here.

Unapologetic Catholic, none of the verses you cite explicitly condemn the use of coercive interrogation techniques, I don’t think they even implicitly do. Let’s look at the words of Jesus, in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37):
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
He answered: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
The expert in the law replied, “The ones who had robbed on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
Now, that’s not really what the expert in the law said, but essentially that is what you are arguing, that our neighbors are the people who rob us and leave us for dead. I don’t think that is what Jesus intended.

You know, a good movie to show this contrast between INDIVIDUAL morality and a government’s role as punisher of evil doing is “Munich.” In the film, Spielberg confuses the two as well. The main guy, who is sent by Israel to assassinate the terrorists involved in the planning of the Munich Olympic Games plot, feels strong feelings of guilt afterwards. Spielberg twists those feelings into implying that the whole mission was wrong. However, that is completely not the case. It was JUST and right for Israel to pursue the death of these men (though bringing them to justice via a court system was preferable perhaps, but that’s a side issue) so. It is completely understandable that the assassin feel conflicted over his personal role as a killer, but that doesn’t mean that the government was also wrong for trying to protect its citizens.

I suppose the world would be a much better place if calling people fags was accepted as polite conversation.
Kind of like your side calling people racists, bigots, amongst other highly inflamatory rhetoric. Just ask Mumon.

Darius, If you want to use a movie as the basis for your ethics, try watching any movie about the Nazis (say “The Nuremburg Trials”) and look for the “I was only following orders” defense. Wrong is wrong whether the government orders it or not. I seem to recall also a passage in Acts about whether one should obey God or man.

Hey ex-preacher…you never did answer my question as to what just how far you would go to protect the life(s) of those you love dearly.

“Odd statement that, considering that all of the authors of the New Testament were members of the ‘anti-biblical heirarchy’… and some of them even the leaders of said heirarchy.”
Mind explaining how that is even close to true????

All authors of the New Testament were members of the Church of Rome, which eventually became known as the Roman Catholic Church, of which the Pope is head. Saint Peter, the first bishop of Rome, was the first Pope. So if you are going to call the Catholic Church anti-biblical, you must not forget that the New Testament is essentially a collection of works by Catholic authors.

“All authors of the New Testament were members of the Church of Rome, which eventually became known as the Roman Catholic Church, of which the Pope is head.”
Are there any historical documents that substantiate this claim?

ucfengr,

I’m with you here, jd. The debate on torture is not about thumbscrews, the rack, and red hot pokers; it is about loud music, stress positions, and waterboarding. I think it is disingenuous for Joe and his ilk to not make that distinction.

Au contraire. Waterboarding has traditionally be recognized by Christians as a form of torture, and was used extensively by the Spanish Inquisition. It was called “la toca” sometimes, but the name “la tortura del agua” was also commonly used.
What about waterboarding makes it not a form of torture to you? Is it because it doesn’t leave physical harm on most of the people that it is used on? If someone were to engineer a way to make your brain simulate the sensation of having your flesh burned off, would that be torture or “politically incorrect interrogation?”

All authors of the New Testament were members of the Church of Rome
Nonesense. There was no “Church of Rome”.
There were gathering of saints in Ephesus, and Phillipi, and Galatia, etc.
But they were all members of the Church of Christ. That is to say, they were all members of his body.
So in effect you are making a circular argument with your assertion. The scholars of the Bible were all members of Christ’s Church. Christ’s Church, the true Church, is the Catholic Church. Therefore, the authors of the Bible were all Catholic.
Look up the word “fallacy” before you continue with the silly assertions.

Suppose you’re President of the United States. And a black ops group has captured a mastermind who’s about to nuke San Francisco in a matter of hours. And the only way to get the information in that short a timeframe is to torture the person. Whaddya gonna do? Let the people of San Francisco get blown up? Or do you authorize any and all means necessary to get the information to stop the nuclear bomb from blowing up San Francisco?

You allow them to break the law, and ask for forgiveness later. This is part of the reason why the President has the power to pardon people. Yes, I know, only bleeding liberal and/or corrupt presidents use the pardon, but it is a situation where the pardon was intended to be used.
If you legalize torture, ever, it will become policy rather than something that may be justified after the fact and pardoned because it actually did some good that outweighed the act.

Au contraire. Waterboarding has traditionally be recognized by Christians as a form of torture, and was used extensively by the Spanish Inquisition. It was called “la toca” sometimes, but the name “la tortura del agua” was also commonly used.
MikeT, did you read my post before you ‘cut and pasted’ it? Where did I say that waterboarding is or isn’t torture? What I did say is that we need to distinguish between waterboarding and things like hot pokers and thumbscrews; things that are more generally accepted as torture, as opposed to waterboarding, whose status is more ambiguous.
What about waterboarding makes it not a form of torture to you? Is it because it doesn’t leave physical harm on most of the people that it is used on?
That is certainly one of the things that distinguishes it from thumbscrews, pulling out fingernails, hot pokers, etc.
If someone were to engineer a way to make your brain simulate the sensation of having your flesh burned off, would that be torture or “politically incorrect interrogation?”
I’m already working on something like that in my basement. Would you care to be a test subject?
What a despicable comment. Would you stoop to the level of the terrorists?
Rob, I really don’t understand how “torturing” a terrorist to prevent a terror attack is the same as committing the terror attack yourself. Do you also equate US soldiers killing terrorists with terrorists killing school children?

Nonesense. There was no “Church of Rome”.

Church of Rome is just one of the nicknames given to the Catholic Church, mostly because the seat of the Holy See was established there long before it was moved to France and then back again.

There were gathering of saints in Ephesus, and Phillipi, and Galatia, etc.

And Rome… the very first book in the New Tesatament by the Saint Paul is the letter to the Romans. Or did Protestants throw that one out?

But they were all members of the Church of Christ. That is to say, they were all members of his body.

Indeed, and they still are despite being labeled anti-biblical.

So in effect you are making a circular argument with your assertion. The scholars of the Bible were all members of Christ’s Church. Christ’s Church, the true Church, is the Catholic Church. Therefore, the authors of the Bible were all Catholic.
Look up the word “fallacy” before you continue with the silly assertions.

If I am making a circular argument, you are helping. And also according to some people, I shall go to Hell for continuing to follow the fellow they called the Anti-Christ at the head of the Catholic Church. If you are offended by my calling the Catholic Church the Church of Rome, then this Papist apologizes… for whatever that might be worth to you.

I would like for our nation to show the world how a civilized people behaves.

We tried, and ended up with a crater in Manhattan as payback for our attempts.

It is not enough to simply baptize the conservative agenda; our political beliefs must be derived from our Biblical worldview. Doing that, however, requires developing such a worldview and knowing how to derive political policy prescriptions from the principles.
Why not just start with your political beliefs and derive your Biblical worldview from that? That’s what everyone else does. If you did what you are proposing, then you’d have to develop a policy for witchcraft. Does not the Bible say “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”? What have you Christian Conservatives done lately to stem the tide of witchcraft?

And finally, number ten — America is not a “Christian nation”
Halleluia!

MikeT You allow them to break the law, and ask for forgiveness later. This is part of the reason why the President has the power to pardon people. Yes, I know, only bleeding liberal and/or corrupt presidents use the pardon, but it is a situation where the pardon was intended to be used.
If you legalize torture, ever, it will become policy rather than something that may be justified after the fact and pardoned because it actually did some good that outweighed the act.
I tend to agree with that sentiment. It’s just all the holier than thou posturing from the usual suspects here that is troublesome. Read the comment by Rob above to see what I mean. He is more angry about my “despicable” comment here, on a blog, than, for example, the “not so despicable” million and a half abortions a year that are legal.

RobertDuquette What have you Christian Conservatives done lately to stem the tide of witchcraft?
Personally, I voted for Obama in the primary. That ought to help.

Why is it wrong? Those 6 million Jews would be dead one way or another anyway; what difference does it make if they died in a gas chamber or if they died from cancer? Deads dead.
It matters that they were not accorded the full natural extent of their lives to find meaning and happiness. It matters that they were subjected to such inhuman and unjustified suffering and pain. It isn’t immortality that gives life dignity and meaning.
I could argue that it is the immortality of the afterlife that makes Earthly life meaningless. What is the point of extending an earthly life when an immortality awaits?

Personally, I voted for Obama in the primary. That ought to help.
That was a good first step. But what will you do about this?

Wrong is wrong whether the government orders it or not. I seem to recall also a passage in Acts about whether one should obey God or man.
I’ve done a lot of study of Romans 13 the past year or so. The traditional biblical response is: It’s more about submission than obedience. Submit to government authorities. Follow your conscience and obey God. And if doing so leads you to break the law, than accept the legitimacy of the punishment or the civil system that punishes you (i.e., don’t rebel against it). If you don’t like it you may work within the system to change it.

Joe,
You wrote:
“Nine — Our beliefs are often informed by tradition and sacred texts. This does not, as our ideological opponents often claim, make them invalid. But it does make it necessary to ?translate? them when we bring them into the public square. I firmly believe that the Bible is true and authoritative for both the Christian and the non-believer. But premising a political argument on “Because the Bible says so?” is rarely effective or convincing.
Fortunately, God also gives us general revelation-conscience, rationality, empirical observation-which is often more effective in expressing His foundational principles in a way that non-believers can accept and understand. We must use these tools to make obvious the connections that are often overlooked. For instance, we can use logic to show how same-sex marriage affects religious liberty or use empirical research to show how family structure influences poverty. It is not enough to be right. We must also be persuasive.”

Well that reminded me of the following which I recently read:

“This brings us to a different point – the manner in which religious views should inform public debate and guide elected officials. Surely, secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square; Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr. – indeed, the majority of great reformers in American History – not only were motivated by faith but repeatedly used religious language to argue their causes. To say that men and women should not inject their “personal morality” into public-policy debates is a practical absurdity; our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo Christian Tradition.
What our deliberative, pluralistic democracy does demand is that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals must be subject to to argument and amenable to reason. If I am opposed to abortion for religious reasons and seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or invoke God’s will and expect that argument to carry the day. If I want others to listen to me, then I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”

So, it turns out Joe, that you and Barack Obama agree on something. That quote is from “The Audacity of Hope” (p218-219 Paperback edition).
Scott

Why would it matter? If water boarding isn’t torture then an enemy using it on captured US troops would be no different than an enemy, say, playing their annoying foreign music rather than letting them hear MTV.
Number one, I haven’t said that water boarding is or isn’t torture; what I have said is that it is a coercive interrogation technique. Number two, I have not said that I thought water boarding appropriate in all situations. In comment 28 I outlined my beliefs on water boarding:
“I feel the same way about “waterboarding” and other coercive interrogation methods. For the most part, I think they are wrong, and I don’t think we should “waterboard” every captured terrorist or even most, but when innocent life is at imminent risk, protection of that life should take precedent over our desire not to “waterboard”.”
I am not a moral absolutist on “water boarding” etc.; I am moral objectivist; IOW I believe that when we have conflicting moral precepts, protection of innocent life takes precedence.

ucfengr,

things that are more generally accepted as torture, as opposed to waterboarding, whose status is more ambiguous.

I read your comment, which is why I posted the link to the Spanish Inquisition and waterboarding. The fact is that waterboarding has been regarded by the West for hundreds of years as a real form of torture, without “ambiguity.”
If it is ambiguous to you, then perhaps that’s a sign that you are having a hard time accepting the fact that torture is a form of interrogation that relies on pain to extract information out of a target. Torture has traditionally only been used to make people suffer and to get false confessions.

I have no problem calling waterboarding “torture,” and if that is the case, then not all torture is always wrong.
Scott, you are completely wrong about the usefulness of harsh interrogation. As ucfengr linked to in his comment, waterboarding has been quite successful. You are correct, terrorists will tell the interrogator anything he wants to hear to stop the waterboarding. What you seem to forget is that the terrorists know plenty, and thus have plenty to say that the interrogator wants to hear.

The fact is that waterboarding has been regarded by the West for hundreds of years as a real form of torture, without “ambiguity.”
Well, apparently some ambiguity has arisen, else wise we would not be having this debate.

You are correct, terrorists will tell the interrogator anything he wants to hear to stop the waterboarding. What you seem to forget is that the terrorists know plenty, and thus have plenty to say that the interrogator wants to hear.
This is a bit of a misunderstanding of what happens during an interrogation. Before a person is ever subject to interrogation, the interrogators have been provided with a lot of information from other sources. This makes it hard for the subject to lie because he doesn’t know what his interrogators know, and since it his lies that instigate the harsher techniques, he has a lot of incentive to be truthful. Modern interrogation is not just throwing a suspect in the dungeon and going to work on him.

Darius,
I’m a conservative evangelical. This blog attracts a good number of people who are not. Thus the starting presuppositions will be different in your interactions with those who don’t profess Christ.
It’s challenging, to put it mildly. I don’t have the time for such challenges; yet I’m glad that there are Christians who do.
God bless.

However, even if it could be proven to be effective, I still think it crosses an unacceptable line, even in the most extreme of circumstances.
Scott
It is easy for you to take your “moral high ground” stance. You aren’t responsible for protecting the lives of the citizenry. Walk a day in the life of a president. Feel the weight of the burden, knowing that hundreds of millions lives are your responsibility to protect. Compound that with living through the tragedy that was 9/11. Get the daily intelligence briefings that will inform you of far more horrific plots than you could fathom.
Once you do that, then tell us that you would think that it is always unacceptable, even in the ticking bomb scenario.
I will pose the same question to you that I posed to someone else who agrees with your sentiment. Make it personal. If you have a child, your own flesh and blood, and that child is abducted by a pedophile. The pedophile is captured and confesses that after he had his way with your child, he left your child for dead, but still breathing, a short time prior to capture. You are left alone with the pedophile. How far would you go to make him tell you where your child is located, knowing full well that as each hour passes, the clock is ticking on the life of your precious child?

Good point, Truth Unites.

Thats a different question, however, from what our public policy should be.
Scott
Is it really that different though? Instead of one individual life at stake, with the ticking bomb scenario, there could be hundreds of thousands of lives at stake. All those lives are precious to someone. They are all someones son/daughter, mother/father, bother/sister.
As to your question about whether it would be contrary to God’s law, ponder this. If God saw fit to subject his only begotton Son to brutal torture and execution for the sake of the greatest good, that is the salvation for those who believe; then why is it so hard to conceive that maybe, just maybe, God would see the greater good in doing some harm to a thug for the sake of protecting hundreds of thousands, maybe millions?

Marvin,
You, ucfengr and Darius need to face up to the fact that the sort of Jack Bauer moments where torture is going to be clearly justified are going to be statistically insignificant. What will be statistically significant if you allow torture, including waterboarding, is having it used wherever the government feels it will do some good. The lot of you are working from the very ivory tower that Darius complained about earlier when you think there won’t be serious mission creep if torture is allowed as policy.
The reason the President has the power to pardon is to allow for mercy in cases where it is called for. It would be called for if someone used torture to save hundreds of lives, but if allowing it becomes policy, it’ll eventually slip down into mundane policy.
You’re too caught up in Christian notions of mercy and grace to realize that God still demands vengeance through the state for those who break His laws in ways that are not justified by the gospel. I, for one, would take no pity on a government agent who tortured the wrong person to save a life. If they want grace, then they have to get it right, otherwise God’s justice demands that the state shed the blood of the agent who committed violence against an innocent party, even if it were in good faith on the agent’s part.

MikeT,
I agree with you that waterboarding is torture. Indeed, just playing loud noise or music could, under certain circumstances, also constitute torture.
Inflicting severe pain, discomfort, and/or fear and distress in the goal of breaking someone’s will to resistance, their will to withhold information, is a deeply serious and disturbing thing to consider and to do.
Moreover, waterboarding or any other kind of torture would never be justified as to either punish a crime or to satisfy a sadistic urge for revenge.
However, as far as we know, we have only tortured three high-profile terrorist prisoners in the past six and a half years. We have only tortured them to get vital, life-saving information that was otherwise unavailable. And, as far as we know, the torture was effective or at least partially effective in getting life-saving information.
One could try to dismiss this successful use of torture as “statistically insignificant”. But what does “statistically insignificant” mean?
We have no way of knowing how many lives were saved by the information produce by the torture. So allow me to ask a hypothetical: what number of lives saved could have possibly justified the torture that we inflicted? 100 million, 1 million, 10 thousand, 1 hundred, 5 or 6?
I don’t know the answer. But I suspect that when it comes to a person whom we know is actively plotting to kill thousands or people, if we strongly suspect that waterboarding that person could save even one life, than I think that would be a sufficient justification.
If I am wrong, I am ready to hear you explain why.

The “Torture Is Always Wrong, No Exceptions” people are torturing me with their pseudo-logic and emotive rants.
Follow your own advice and stop torturing me!
;-)

I don’t understand how supposed Christians can approve of torture
This is another strawman. I don’t approve of torture in general. No one on this thread has advocated that. What the Christians here are saying is that in some rare instances, it (by it I mean waterboarding) is justifiable.
Using your logic, if I kill someone who breaks into my house with the intent on harming me and my family, then I am guilty of murder, on par morally with a pre-meditated slaying because killing is wrong no matter what the case may be. There is no such thing as a justifiable homicide if I apply your reasoning on “torture” to the above scenario.

Darius said:
“ucfengr, I don’t think the moral simpletons on here understand moral objectivism. If a Nazi would have asked them where some hiding Jews were during WWII, they would have told them since lying is wrong.”
Rob responded:
Nobody believes this, Darius, not even you, because no one here is quite that stupid. I’m not as willing as you are to assume others are simpletons.
Nobody believes this? I am not sure, because it is not clear that you have given any serious thought into how to resolve these moral dilemmas. It’s easy in the abstract to say that “we should never torture”, but what happens when real lives are at stake? Then the moral calculus changes and real people have to make hard choices. Would you have them sacrifice you or your family to your ideals? I wouldn’t, not only would I not be willing to sacrifice my family, but I wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice yours either. If you think that makes you better than me, that’s your problem. I can face my Maker with a clear conscience, at least on that matter.

The next high-profile terrorist we capture, just lock him in a room for four or five hours with Ann Coulter!
Curse you for thinking of this before me. Damn you to Heck, Matthew Goggins. Damn you to Heck.

William F. Buckley’s “Conservative Movement” Still-Born, Dead-On-Arrival, Decades Ago, Because It Was Godless, Against Christ, Ignored God’s Word
“Except the Lord build the house they labour in vain who build it.” — Psalm 127:1..
By John Lofton, Editor
The Lord Jesus Christ did not build the “conservative movement” house. Thus, it was a house built on sand, it fell and great has been the fall of it, a recent example of this fall being the “conservative movement’s” support for President of George W. Bush who has given us the most Godless, unconstitutional, debt-ridden, big spending Federal Government in our history.
Even though most of its “leaders” claimed to be Christians, the “conservative movement” was dead-on-arrival because, from the beginning, it’s political plan was Godless, against Christ, and ignored the Bible. This “movement” vainly imagined succeeding without honoring Christ, succeeding through bread-alone, flesh-and-blood-only-politics when God tells us the REAL battle is a spiritual war which must be fought in the full-armor of God (Ephesians 6:10ff).
An example of the Godlessness I allude to occurred when I was on Bill Buckley’s “Firing Line” program June 24, 1987. Referring to him having told Malcolm Muggeridge that he (Buckley) did not believe there was a Christian means of organizing society, I asked Bill: “Wouldn’t God’s Laws, wouldn’t the Laws of Christ be a means of organizing a society?” Buckley said: “No. Noƒ.The consent of the governed in societies ruled by the people is the ultimate source of authority.”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was once asked how just a few Communists could take over his country when it had a thousand years of being Christian? He replied: “We forgot God.” The leaders of the “conservative movement,” politically-speaking, forgot God. They forgot that the Lord Jesus Christ is Lord over ALL, including politics. They forgot that He is King of kings, Lord of lords, with ALL power in Heaven and on earth. They forgot Psalm 2:12 commands: “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”
I know all of what I say here is true because, from the inside, I ran with this “conservative movement” from the mid-1960s to 1980 when God, by His grace alone, raptured me from among this Christless crowd Ð something for which, literally, I will be eternally grateful
To hear much more on this subject, please click here to hear the latest “The American View” radioshow 145
http://www.theamericanview.com/dictator/media/997/show_145.mp3
If you’d like to interview John Lofton, you may reach him by calling: 301-873-4612; 410-760-8885; or by email: JLof@aol.com.
Press Release Sent to the Christian Newswire; for release March 3, 2008; 7 am EST.

“Oh, that’s right, you think the crater in Manhattan was our fault.”
When all else fails, set up the straw man. Give yout opponent an outrageous opinion he has never expressed and, in fact, does not hold. You must like the new guy, Darius. He claims that he isn’t sure whether I’d lie to save a Jewish family because I wouldn’t torture a terrorist, as if no distinctions could be drawn between the two actions.
How phony can you get?

When all else fails, set up the straw man. Give yout opponent an outrageous opinion he has never expressed and, in fact, does not hold.

Strawman? Naaah, it would have to be an argument for that label to apply. No, that was just a snide remark in response to the implication that unless the U.S. advertises to terrorists that we will never use agressive interrogation techniques, the terrorists will never consider not torturing and maiming people for pleasure, and nothing else the U.S. could do applies to providing a good example of civilized behavior. Of course, if it really mattered to you, you could clarify the impression your misguided remark left instead of insinuating that I was even attempting to debunk some sort of non-existent argument you made.

“Actually I am not a ‘new guy’”
ucfengr: I am aware of that, having posted since ’04 under my full name. I no longer do that as it led to problems for me with certain others. I was referring to Darius, and it was his comment about lying to save a Jewish family that I referred to. And the crater comment was smmtheory’s; I don’t know why you thought I was addressing my comment to you.
“So, how do you reconcile your absolutist position on torture with relativistic position on rebelling against God?”
First off, I am an atheist, so biblical precepts get no special treatment from me. I like some of them, though. For me, it just makes good sense for our government not to torture. I think it hurts us more than it helps us.
Darius: “If you can’t be harsh to a known terrorist to save thousands of lives, how could you lie to save one or two lives?”
Several distinctions can be drawn between these two scenarios. First, when I lie to protect the Jewish family, I am not acting as an agent of my government. My action will not reflect poorly on my nation or adversely affect world opinion. Second, I consider the “torture to save thousands” scenario to be very farfetched. I think our policy should aim to work as effectively as possible within certain acceptable moral parameters rather than hedging a long-shot bet. I’m quite willing to risk the farfetched scenario by doing the right thing. Life is full of risks, and we have to choose our risks wisely. I think we risk more by allowing our government to sanction torture than we do by simply saying we will not do it under any circumstances.
I’m always dumbfounded when people try to personalize these issues. That is exactly the wrong way to think about these things. Emotion is quite often the enemy of reason. If someone killed my family, there is no telling how I would respond in my rage and anguish if I thought I could get away with it; maybe I wouldn’t even care if I could get away with it. I don’t want the behavior that I myself might be tempted to adopt to be considered acceptable in our society. That is exactly the sort of response I think our government should avoid. Our government serves many millions of people. We need to put our risks and losses in perspective. We don’t need to wreck the car because a bee is inside it.
It isn’t waterboarding or fighting in Iraq that keeps our country safe; I think these things add to our risk rather than ameliorating it.

First, I am not sure that, even in the short term, invading Iraq has increased our risks. Libya was disarmed, Iran was intimidated for about a year, Saddam and his regime were deposed, the North Korean/Pakistan nuclear network were exposed — these things are all huge in themselves.
Lybia’s decision to disarm was the result of a long diplomatic front that climaxed around the time of the invasion. It’s easy to assume the two were related if you didn’t bother to dig too deeply into the story.
I’m not sure how North Korea was ‘exposed’ by the Iraq invasion. It was well known that NK was going after a nuke before the Iraqi invasion and it’s possible they have one today.
Pakistan tested its first nuclear weapon in 1998, long before an Iraqi invasion was on anyone’s radar screen.
Iran does not seem to have been intimidated at all. They seem to have almost as much influence in Iraq as the US does. The object lesson of the Iraqi invasion was the best insurance policy for a ‘rouge nation’ against US invasion is to quickly finish a nuke.
However, those jihadis will not be so inflamed if we win in Iraq, where winning means we set up a successful, moderate, terror-hating democracy that can survive on its own two feet. Most jihadis will have the wind taken out of their sails by such an outcome.
Doubtful, Iraq was never very fertile ground for jihadists to begin with. Unlike Saudi Arabia it has a religiously diverse population and it does not have so much oil wealth that it can support a large class of idle rich who can afford to make supporting radicals a pet hobby. The civil war that we seem to be spending a lot to keep a lid on doesn’t seem to be between civil minded citizens and terrorists but different ethnic gangs who use terrorism to win terrority and influence. A stable, democratic Iraq would be a great thing but face it, the neoconservative dream of turning Iraq into the Middle East’s America is long gone at this point. Even if it did happen, it’s doubtful it would directly impact actual terrorist groups. There are moderate regimes in the Middle East such as the UAE and even democratic ones like Turkey. That hasn’t had any noticable impact on the tiny bands that want to dedicate themselves to terrorism.
We lived in a fairly racist world prior to World War II. After the Allies defeated the master races of Germany and Japan, the adherents of racial superiority went into shock and decline, and have not recovered since. Is there any reason to believe that we can’t do the same thing to jihadis if we commit ourselves to victory?
Once again, and hopefully for the last time.
WWII != The Iraq War
Nazi Germany != Iraq
Hitler != Saddam
Imperial Japan != Iraq
9/11 != Iraq or Saddam
We aren’t fighting ‘racial superiority’ in Iraq. We are nation building and at a time when we have to be fighting terrorism plus doing a lot of other important things it’s not at all clear this was a good investment.

If we lose in Iraq, don’t you think that will be very bad news for the UAE and for Turkey?
Depends on what you mean by lose. While a civil war always means instability it doesn’t follow that the UAE or Turkey would be any worse off because of one in Iraq.
But you are right, Turkey has been a democracy for many decades. Why hasn’t that prevented the rise of the “tiny bands” of terrorists?
I’m not clear why Turkey being democratic would have prevented bands of terrorists congregating in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan. Likewise, I’m also unclear why Iraq being democratic will stop bands of terrorists? We’ve had bands of terrorists in the UK, Spain and Germany and they are all democratic countries.
Another part of the answer is that the terror masters who recruit jihadis rely on a narrative of a historical movement whose time has come, a movement that seems to have an inevitable and invincible momentum attached to it.
They’ve been scraping together a string of victories, some major, some minor, some merely symbolic, against the various Satans of the world for 30 or 40 years now. If they have to suffer a major setback now in Iraq, coupled with a permanent, thriving anti-terror Iraqi regime as a permanent counter-example to their hateful ideology, then the damage to their cause could well prove irreversible and fatal.
You’re making a dangerous assumption here, namely that there is some unified terrorist ideology that can have setbacks (or, the opposite, steps forward). There isn’t. Out of nearly a billion Muslims, we have maybe a thousand cases of true terrorism at best. A lot fewer if you subtract out cases where terrorism is used as a tactic in some larger conflict (Paliestinians vs. Israelis, various factions in Iraq against each other, Sunni’s against Iranian influence in Iraq etc.). Needless to say, if you start looking at non-Muslim terrorism (again back out cases that are clearly related to some known conflict like the IRA, Kurdish separatists, Basque terrorists etc) and the following picture emerges:
There are two types of terrorism:
1. Terrorism related to some larger conflict. Here the solution lies in resolving the underlying conflict if possible or at least containing them. Democracy in Iraq would not have prevented the Libyans from bombing the Lockerbie flight in the 80′s, nor the IRA from its activities.
2. Terrorism related to the fact that a fraction of human society will be populated by nutcases. Most of the time nutcases tend to cancel each other out but sometimes enough of them can get ‘in sync’ to cause trouble. The cult in Japan that attacked the subways was so detached from reality it isn’t even sensible to ask if the problem was lack of democracy. Some attempted to excuse Tim McVeigh because he was supposedly avenging gov’t abuse at Waco but when push came to shove he and his helpers were only slighlty more in touch with reality. Two very different agendas but both share a common element where a random idea just happened to catch the right nuts and line them up so they could pull off blowing something up.
Every now and then someone asks what does Al Qaeda want? Well the answers are out there. They want a mix of a few remotely possible things (removing US troops from Saudi Arabia, which I believe they actually got) with the absurd (‘restoring the caliphate’ is quoted often but exactly how would that come about when it appears Iraqis can’t even choose a single mayor of a city without a half dozen factions killing, kidnapping and bombing each other? now tell me how you would apply that to all of the middle east?) with stuff that just makes you scratch your head (not passing campaign finance reform in the US, not signing Kyoto).
You can scratch a little less if you realize it is because Al Qaeda falls more into #2 than #1. As such there is nothing you can do directly about the problem. A fraction of us will always be nuts. You can try to disrupt the nuts from gathering together and getting on the same page (when that page is destructive) but since nuts are by definition disconnected from reality you’re not going to solve the problem by altering reality. Socio-engineering Iraq to become the first Muslim nation capable of hosting a season of MTV’s Real World may be possible assuming total willingness to tolerate any financial and human cost but it fundamentally misses the point.

Boonton,
I forgot to add something in my last comment:
Democracy in Iraq would not have prevented the Libyans from bombing the Lockerbie flight in the 80′s, nor the IRA from its activities.
As I documented in comment 161, democracy in Iraq (actually, the videotape of a shabby Saddam being yanked out of a hole in the ground by a U.S. infantryman) did have a remarkable effect on Libya’s behavior.
Here’s the link again, for your convenience:
“The Libyan Surprise”, by Peter Valenti.

But saying the UAE or Turkey wouldn’t be worse off from an Iraqi civil war is like saying poverty and drug cartels in Mexico have no impact on the United States. It’s just not true, not even a little bit true.
While we’re at it, I’m sure drug cartels aren’t doing anything good for Turkish democracy. Nor is Chinese oppression in Tibet. I’m a bit at a loss to understand why Iraq must be made perfect no matter what the cost but everything else can be ignored.
On the other hand, Islamofascism is clearly a global movement with global ambitions. The reason you can currently dismiss it as a ragtag network of “tiny bands” of terrorists is because we have been remarkably successful in both our tactics and our strategy since the devastating blow of 9-11.
Nutcases can indeed be global. Just to come back to that Japanese cult, they had offices in multiple countries. Ditto for that cult that committed suicide because they thought a UFO or something was coming for them. I would suggest a little less patting ourselves on the back here. We haven’t had another 9/11 because Islamofascists lack the manpower to do it, not because we’ve done such an amazing job. You are reverting to an old paradigm, pretending Al Qaeda is Nazi Germany or the USSR with so many divisions, ships, planes etc…..if you take them out they can’t wage war. One guy, a few bucks to buy some propane tanks at Home Depot and a little bit of basic wiring skills is all that’s needed to kill a hundred people at a shopping mall or other ‘soft’ target. Spending a trillion dollars trying to pick one group of Iran backs Shi’ites as the good guys in Iraq doesn’t make that go away.
Since I know how you love World War II analogies, let me compare Islamofascism to the rise of anti-democratic forces in the 1920′s and 1930′s.
I don’t love them, especially here. They are forced and quite frankly not very impressive and they are carrying less and less weight as Iraq goes on and on.
Look at how many terror attacks they have in their database for the following countries:
Don’t back out Islamic based attacks but do back out attacks that are clearly a tactic in some local battle or conflict. There’s a distinction between what, for lack of a better description, we can call sane terrorists and insane ones. Sane terrorists are applying a tactic. They are essentially a scaled down version of a nation-state that launches an attack on civilians in a country they are at war with. Insane terrorists are applying a tactic for a strategy that is disconnected from the world we actually live in. Hammas is attacking Israel as part of the larger dispute between Palestinians and Israel. A perfectly democratic Iraq has as little to do with that than the fact that Turkey has been democratic all along has stopped a single suicide bomber in the West Bank. Like all tactics they sometimes work and sometimes don’t (in Israel they haven’t, in Pakistan they seem to have had some success)
Likewise insane terrorists are already disconnected from reality. A democratic Iraq makes as little difference to them as a democratic Turkey made.
While we are on the subject of the insane, do you really think making the ‘existential threat’ comparisions to WWII or the pre-WWII era is particularly helpful? Al Qaeda was and is many things but it never was or will be an existential threat to even a two-bit Arab dictatorship let alone to ‘the west’. Unlike the anti-democratic forces of the 1920′s and 30′s they have no practical agenda, no leadership that can move beyond cult, no serious manpower (go ahead and read up on just how much Bin Laden and his men really helped in the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan).
What the whole ‘existential’ thing does do, though, is play right into the enemy’s hand by reinforcing the delusion that they are capable of changing the world. That they are really fighting a war. That they are something more than what they literally are which is nuts who live in caves with the equilivant of My Space pages. Mockery would be an effective weapon but we are denied its use because some would have us keep pretending George Bush is Churchill who saved the world.
What easier way to label someone a nutcase than to call them a “nazi” or a “fascist”? Yet they were powerful ideologies in their day with tens of millions of adherents and followers
This is only because those ideological fads have been long out of style. A vigerous supporter of absolute monarchy would likewise be viewed today as a nutcase (but probably an unharmful one) yet at one time not too long ago that too was a powerful ideology that had more than a few defenders. I’ll grant you that there’s a bit of a spectrum here. The Nazis were disconnected from reality in many cases but they were connected enough to actually run a country. Al Qaeda is not. But if you insist I’ll grant you that they are more connected than the UFO cult was or the Japanese subway bombers.
My point, though, is that ‘nutcase terrorism’ is almost by definition random. Crazy people are essentially unpredictable. Who knew that a botched law enforcement effort against a wacked out cult in Texas would result in the Ok City bombing a few years later. Who knows if tomorrow a thousand are not going to get killed in some major city because a self-styled prophet thinks he is getting messages from the neighbor’s dog?
While there’s little that can be done against ‘lone nuts’ we can take precautions against nuts getting ‘in sync’. But that does not involve throwing money and blood down a nation building program that is going to make the Great Society look like the local Elks fundraiser. Nor does it involve making the world a perfect place out of the delusion that nuts exist or ‘sync up’ because reality is not perfect. By definition nuts aren’t connected to reality!!!!
Of course, your point is that if you drain away the root causes of terrorism, the underlying conflicts, then all you have left are the isolated and relatively harmless nutjobs, as opposed to the highly motivated and well-organized nutjobs who pose the far greater threat.
Not quite. Terrorism that’s related to a conflict is either going to be resolved with that conflict or contained to it. It’s hard to imagine, for example, the IRA going on a bombing spree in Turkey. Yes it’s nice that the UK seems to have come to some settlement with Ireland but even if they didn’t it was mostly a problem between the UK and Ireland. While I would say the US should do some things (don’t let the IRA raise money in the US, IRA bombers hiding in the US should be deported out), they would mostly be in line with keeping the conflict contained and keeping the US out of it.
But that is what President Bush has been doing since 2001: he’s attacking the root causes of Islamofascism and jihadism. He’s saying, we tried the realpolitick of “stability” in the Middle East and it didn’t work, so now we’re going to try something different: depose Saddam, and build a democratic Iraq.
Essentially we’ve spent a trillion dollars and four thousand men to double the size of Iran. That, BTW, is the ‘stable’ scenario.

Boonton,
What the whole ‘existential’ thing does do, though, is play right into the enemy’s hand by reinforcing the delusion that they are capable of changing the world. That they are really fighting a war. That they are something more than what they literally are which is nuts who live in caves with the equilivant of My Space pages. Mockery would be an effective weapon but we are denied its use because some would have us keep pretending George Bush is Churchill who saved the world.
Like I said, we’re trying to engage Islamofascism now, so that we don’t have to deal with it when the threat is so clear even you will have to admit it exists.
And yet… although the threat is currently not up to the Boonton existential standard, the truth is that a nuclear-armed Iran could field a terrorist threat that could, either intentionally or unintentionally, bring down civilization as we know it. If that ain’t existential enough for you, then I think you are talking yourself out of the conversation to a certain extent.
By the way, it’s not for President Bush’s sake that you should feel inhibited about mocking Islamofascism. It’s for your own — mocking Islamism in public is something that is generally acknowledged to be not very conducive to one’s health and well-being.
My point, though, is that ‘nutcase terrorism’ is almost by definition random. Crazy people are essentially unpredictable.
Yes, and Al Qaeda is more random than not, so we shouldn’t worry our heads about them.
Or at least they would certainly become the random kind of bugger if we would just leave them alone and stop invading their turf.
Or they would be if people stopped converting from Islam to other religions and thus called down the wrath of Allah on their apostate heads.
Or they would be if we just stopped publishing those stupid, provocative, insensitive cartoons. How can we keep the level of Islamist moonbats down to a reasonable level when we insist of fetishing freedom of speech and freedom of the press?
So let’s just leave the Islamists, and the Islamofacists, the jihadis, and the mujahadeen alone in their own little world. Everything will be all right, then, more or less. For the most part.
Because the alternative, trying to reform the Muslim world, is just pie-in-the-sky, a waste of precious lives and resources. We’re just giving them what they want when we fight them, ’cause they’re all just nutcases at heart.
Well, Boonton, you can’t convince me of all that, since it’s not true, not yet anyway. But it is good of you to try, though. If you keep repeating this nutcase-terrorist paradigm of yours often enough, you may one day at least persuade me that you yourself believe it.
As it stands, I can only half swallow the idea that you really believe all the stuff you write about Al Qaeda. It sounds too much like wishful thinking, whistling past the graveyard. You seem like way too smart a fellow to believe your own propaganda points, especially the more half-baked ones.
Listen to me, please, Boonton. Islamism is a fantasy ideology. I agree with you. But it does make sense on its own terms, and 1.5 billion people, due to their religious affiliation, are at risk to succumb to its twisted logic. You discount the power of Islamfascism at your peril, and ours.
Fighting Islamofascism by refusing to pay attention to it seemed to make sense, more or less, before 9-11. Now it’s time to acknowledge that denial was a policy that had reached the point of diminishing returns. If you don’t like the Bush doctrine of pre-emption and spreading democracy, you can’t just turn back the clock to “Nyah, nyah, nyah, I refuse to pay attention to those dopey terrorists” — you need to come up with a new and improved alternative.
The Democrats did that in 2006: they campaigned for more troops on the ground in Iraq. And then Bush fired Rumsfeld after the November mid-terms, only to have the self-same Dems tell us that they didn’t really mean what they said.
They proved they weren’t serious, and you’re just seem to be following their lead. I wish you could do better, amigo.
Essentially we’ve spent a trillion dollars and four thousand men to double the size of Iran. That, BTW, is the ‘stable’ scenario.
If you’re shooting for clever snark, I’ll award you a couple of points.
But the truth is Iraq is not as you characterize it. And it will never be a client of Iran as long as we are willing to watch the back of the Iraqi government.
You are so concerned about four thousand dead troops and several hundred billion dollars. But you never weigh the costs against the actual and potential benefits, and you never weigh the costs against the costs we have had to bear in other wars, or even during peacetime in the late 1970′s and early 1980′s, when we had many thousands of non-combat fatalities. And you never consider the cost of leaving Saddam in place with the consensus to maintain the U.N.-backed sanctions regime poised to collapse.
In short, your words seem to calculated for effect, and not for the hard work of digging at the truth and figuring out what we need to do.
If Iraq is such a quagmire for us, then what has it been for Al Qaeda, who has also lost thousands of fighters? Does that not count for anything, or is everything just black and white in your view: Iraq, bad, withdrawal, good?
Boonton, at the end of comment 163 I wrote:
There are two rival points here, and they are in tension with each other. The two points are in a precarious struggle or tug-of-war with each other.
The first point is that the Iraqis need our help, we are in an excellent position to give them our help, and it is in our overwhelming self-interest to see the Iraqis succeed, if such success is in fact possible.
The second point, which is your point, is that the war in Iraq is expensive, both in blood spilled and other resources spent, and we need to make sure that we’re are getting a good return on our investment.
For example, it could be that today it makes sense to continue the surge, but that three months from now, things could be falling apart and it makes sense to stop what we are doing and pull out. In other words, the situation is dynamic, and the end result has yet to be written in stone.
The point which I firmly believe that you are missing is that the two points above both exist, and they both matter, and that to consider one without the other would be negligent and tragic in the extreme.
The above excerpt summarizes what I feel to be missing in your analysis. Yes, it is possible that we have succeeded in marginalizing Al Qaeda to a large extent. But that’s really changing the subject. The question is, what do we do in Iraq? And unless you see and acknowledge the points I make in the passage above, everything else is just so much hand-waving, and irrelevent hand-waving at that.
All the best,
Matthew

Boonton,
Let’s be clear what existential means, it means existence.
Well, Boonton, maybe you are right. Maybe Islamofascism is not an existential threat, and maybe it never will be.
But what kind of threat is this: link to “One Story, Two Comments” by Andrew Stuttaford?
And what kind of threat would it be if Iran, either directly or through a proxy, exploded a nuclear bomb in Tel Aviv? Is that an existential threat? If not, why not? If not, then what exactly is it?
And ‘Islamofascism’ is a different subject than Iran seeking to go nuclear.
No, it isn’t.
I said it before, Iran’s foreign policy is so deadly rational Henry Kissenger could have been a consultant to them.
Hmmm, so jihadis are nutcases, except when they aren’t. Has anyone else on this comment thread been making this point? Let me see… hmmm, hmmm, — ah, yes, I do believe that would be me, Mr. Existential-Threat-Monger!
Anyway if this is going to be the newest metric then our policy is an even deeper failure.
Yes, you are right again. If we leave Iraq in the lurch, our policy is an even deeper failure. It’s strange how things fail when you give up before finishing them. What could possibly be the reason for such an outcome?
Iran has been empowered by Bush’s policies.
Arguable. Would Iran be empowered by a stable, terror-hating Iraqi democracy as well?
Even if the invasion caused some brief hestitation it has now become clear the US is mired in Iraq and does not have the resources to commit to additional nation demolishing and rebuilding efforts.
Thank you for acknowledging the “brief hesitation”. Quite magnanimous of you, actually.
But let’s say we see Iraq through to the end. Let’s say we get really lucky and the democracy project works out in Iraq. Wouldn’t that free up a lot of resources for additional nation demolishing and rebuilding?
Likewise the spike in oil prices has further fueled Iran’s economy and helped cover up its domestic problems from running a partially socialized economy.
True.
Finally, a democratic Iraq essentially means an Iranian ally whereas before we had a road block to Iranian influence in the rest of the Middle East.
If Saddam was a road-block, then the cure was just as bad as the disease.
When you refer to a democratic Iraq as “essentially … an Iranian ally”, you seem to by implying that Iraq would be a menacing Shiite client state of Iran, or even a full-blown Islamism-exporting theocracy, like Iran.
But neither one of those possibilities could happen now unless we allow it to happen by withdrawing our troops. It could have happened back in 2006 and early 2007, when the Congress was pressuring President Bush to pull out while a civil war was being fought in Iraq, but a mini-Iran in Iraq is no longer in the cards.
As it stands now, a democratic, terror-hating Iraq would be our most effective ally in the region, even more so than Israel.
Iraq is still in danger of turning into a Shiite theocracy allied with Iran, but only if we leave before we finish securing democracy there. The very policies you advocate (immediate withdrawal and/or partition) are the ones which could lead to the outcome you want to avoid.
Since nutcase ideology is essentially random there’s no way to craft policy to either address their concerns or counter their ideology.
Their ideology is not random, it’s the opposite of random (although their specific demands are often, as you point out, a meaningless smokescreen).
Their ideology is that liberal democracy is anathema to the will of Allah. Muslims (according to the Islamofascists) have a duty to overwhelm, by war and/or demography, all democratic regimes and install Sharia law.
There is nothing random about that at all. It’s all very clear and very straightforward, and it’s not even something the Islamists bother to hide.
Hitler advertised his goals in Mein Kampf. But the Islamists are as multi-media as they come: they blare out their agenda in literally thousands of mosques, madrassas, universities, T.V. shows, and websites on an ongoing basis all the time.
The only reason it seems random to you is because you want it to be random, and because the Islamists are smart enough not to field armies in battle order against Israel and the U.S.
Once again, perhaps you are right that the Islamist threat is not existential. But to say their ideology is random is not a tenable position. You, sir, are an ostrich.
What is wrong, then, is the implication that nutcase terrorism can be stopped by ‘fixing things’. Either from the left wing POV of fixing poverty, lack of education etc. or from the neocon POV of fixing the corrupt gov’ts in the Middle East. There are merits to doing these things on their own but like all benefits they a have to be weighed in relation to their costs.
Hmmm, I actually agree with you, no sarcasm here.
But you’re leaving out how we can stop terrorism: by fighting, defeating, and killing terrorists in Iraq or any other country where they choose to make a stand.
You make it sound like it’s a bad thing the terrorists are fighting us in Iraq. But it is probably the best thing that could happen for us in terms of overall counter-terrorism strategy: the nation of Iraq has been converted to staunch anti-terror, and we have gotten to actually fight Al Qaeda in the most effective way possible, with guns and bombs.
A preacher might be very persuasive when he tells some poor Muslim sucker that jihad is the path to heaven. But if jihad only leads to defeat and death, then the best preacher in the world is not going to be able to mount any jihadi crusades.
Here is the problem with your line of thinking. Your insistance on treating this as the next WWII or Cold War belies the fact that it isn’t. Al Qaeda may have lost thousands of fighters but because they are a collection of nuts it doesn’t matter. 9/11 demonstrated you can do just fine with a dozen.
Hold that thought: killing thousands of terrorists “just doesn’t matter” because they “can do just fine with a dozen”.
Furthermore, the more you make things unstable the more you open the doors to new terrorists.
But wait — you just said that the number of terrorists “just doesn’t matter”. Who cares then, if things are stable or unstable? That’s not our problem, they can’t touch us where it counts.
Or is it the other way around now? They can touch us, no matter what we do, so just leave them alone? Hmmm, I’m getting a little confused here!
As far as the nutcases go, we are opening the door for more trouble. IMO, the worst thing you can do for nutcase terrorists is to play into their fantasies that they can really change the world by blowing something up or killing a few dozen or even a few thousand people.
But if we are creating Sunni and Shiite terrorists in Iraq, why in the world is that the worst thing we can do? You’ve just explained that killing thousands of terrorists just doesn’t matter, so why does creating thousands of terrorists suddenly matter? And if the terrorists are not connected to reality, then how are can our policies and our invasions be creating terrorists? And if none of this could never, never be an existential threat in any case, then what the heck do we care at all? Why shouldn’t we just invade any damn country we want (Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt) and let all those nutcase terrorists just sort it out among themselves?
In short, your “analysis” is the most incoherent, self-contradicting piece of nonsense; you make the Bible look like a treatise in logic by comparison.
If I wrote what you wrote, you would tear it to pieces, and rightly so.
Of course, now Iraq really is a place where you can secure yourself a seat at the table by doing this or if you’re not so inclined it still offers plenty of training opportunities should you aspire to be an international nutcase.
And that just doesn’t matter. Or it does. Yeah, that’s it, now it does matter: in this part of this paragraph it does matter now, I can tell from the contextual clues “plenty” and “really”.
But if it doesn’t matter, you’ll let me know, right? I’m trying hard to get this straight.
I mean, the training opportunities matter if we don’t kill them, but then they don’t matter if we do kill them, because in that case, we’re only killing people who wouldn’t have been there if we weren’t there. Although if we weren’t there, then Saddam would still be there, but he has nothing to do with terrorists; except that if he does, those are the terrorists who don’t matter, unless, of course, when we choose to fight them, because then they do matter — except of course when we fight them and succeed in killing them, and then they don’t matter any more.
I’ve got it right, now, right?
Option 1. Simply set a date and pull out leaving behind a few bases to attack terrorist cells should they start forming.
Option 2. Divide the country into three sections for Suni, Shi’ite and Kurd with a shared section to manage oil revenues and national defense etc. Kurds, it would appear, can more or less stand on their own. Have other states manage their respective populations (Iran for the Shi’ites, perhaps Jordon, Syria or Saudi Arabia for the Sunis). The US would guarantee external security (no country could invade Iraq just as the US ended Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in the 90′s.
I appreciate your paying me the respect of answering my questions.
I disagree with your recommendations, but I acknowledge the reasonableness of what you propose.
My opinion is that both of your options would lead to disaster, but I do understand why you think otherwise. Only time will tell which of us is correct about Iraq.
Twenty or thirty years from now, history will render its verdict on the Bush doctrine, and at least one of us will have been proven wrong.
Good day,
Matthew

The analogy I would use is bacteria. You have bacteria which is all over the place. You get a cut there’s automatically bacteria in it and you try to keep it clean but you don’t go out trying to kill all bacteria because such an act would be worthless.
Then there are superbugs. Superbugs are more rare but they are undesirable because they are unpredictable & when they do pop up they cause a lot of unexpected damage. (A normal cut is expected to get infected to some degree and measures can be taken to deal with the expected problems that brings, infection by a superbug, though, can lead to all types of unexpected problems).
When you get all scraped up and wallow in the dirt you are going to have a small riot of bacterial activity going on. Some hydrogen peroxide and maybe some antibiotics, though, will kill trillions of bacteria.
So if we wanted to have a war on super bugs should we get ourselves all scraped up and dirty? The bacteria hawk will declare that we are doing great because we’re killing billions of bacteria and even some superbugs and, of course, if we are killing them then that’s all the fewer of them to kill us! Right? That’s wrong, though, because unleashing a lot of normal bacterial activity increases the chance that a mutant bacteria will get formed in that choas and come back to bite us. Your ‘war on superbugs’ would have made a better use of resources monitoring routine infections, trying to develop new antibiotics and a thousand other little tasks.

Iran has an Islamofascist national government. After the fall of the Taliban, Iran and Saudi Arabia are the world’s two leading Islamofascist regimes.
I knew from prior exchanges that you don’t like the term “Islamofascism”, but your question does explain a lot: it seems we have been talking past each other to a large degree when it comes to Islamofascism.
I don’t like the term because it explains too little. Iran and Saudi Arabia are like oil and water. Using the same term to describe them is helpful ONLY if their similiarities are more important than their differences, if the opposite is the case then using the same term leaves you with an inaccurate picture.
Iran’s authoritarian theocracy could not indefinitely withstand the living, breathing flouting of their ideology and repression right across the border in Shiite-majority Iraq. The mullahs would eventually have to embrace reform or ignominiously perish.
You have a remarkable degree of faith, even after seeing the current President of Iraq plus his Shi’ite competitors seek blessings from Iran’s President.
Iran is the premier Shiite theocracy, and arguably the largest sponsor of jihadis on the planet today. Jihadi terror is their second most important export after oil.
OK so why again was Iraq #1 on the invasion list?
Hitler & Japan
Two competing master races were able to become allies, but two strains of Islam can’t?
Actually the Axis did not coordinate their military strategy as much as they should or could. The racism of Germany inhibited cooporation that could have made the military situation better.
But here’s the way to look at this analogy. Contradictory ideologies can work together if they are sperated by long distances & do not run up against each other. If Israel existed in 1930 and ruled by a Jewish fascist I doubt Hitler could have allied Nazi Germany with her.
If Hitler was anything, he was anti-Communist. His mortal enemy was Joe Stalin. But even they were able to sign a non-aggression pact and co-ordinate an invasion of Poland together.
And Iran worked with Israel on the Iran-Contra deal.
Germany was a weak, dispirited country when the Nazis took over. It wasn’t a real threat to any one of major powers at the time. Yet less than a decade later, Hitler was ready to take over a substantial fraction of the planet and almost succeeded in imposing his will on all of Europe.
Germany was weak because it was being purposefully handicapped by the other powers. It was being handicapped because it was a superpower before and was a superpower after WWI. Iran, though, does not fit the bill nor are any other countries in the Middle East.
But your point is taken. Islamofascism is not as flexible and accomodating as liberal democracy.
Actually my point was that communism was not as flexible and accomodating as Islamofascism. A superpower ideology needs to be better than a fundamentalist ideology.
I understand you don’t agree with me 100% about all this, but would you admit that war with Iraq was inevitable, whether we invaded or not?
I would agree that instability in Iraq was inevitable (Saddam would have died at some point if he wasn’t deposed) but its laughable to assert war was inevitable. Saddam’s Iraq was a shadow of what it once was and while he did cheat as much as he could on the sanctions there was no threat against any other Arab nation in either the short or medium term.

Mike Toreno,
It is possible that things will turn out as you describe.
In fact, if a majority of Americans demand a quick withdrawal, and the next president responds by cutting our troop strength too much and too soon, then that would greatly increase the likelihood of what you describe.
In short, if enough people listened to you and/or agreed with you, your worst-case scenario would become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Fortunately, your debating style is not well-suited to winning converts, so I don’t think Iraq has much to worry about from your rhetoric.
Peace,
Matthew
Boonton,
I don’t like the term because it explains too little. Iran and Saudi Arabia are like oil and water. Using the same term to describe them is helpful ONLY if their similiarities are more important than their differences, if the opposite is the case then using the same term leaves you with an inaccurate picture.
Labels are a double-edged sword.
They remind us of salient features, but they also, even when used properly, over-simplify and allow a certain lazy complacency to sneak into one’s thinking.
That said, are Saudi Arabia and Iran Islamofascist?
Well, they are both authoritarian theocracies. They both aggressively export their respective Islamist ideologies. They are both anti-semitic regimes, and one gets the sense that at least part of the Saudi Arabian oligarchy would like to be as anti-American as Iran if it weren’t such a dangerous line for them to pursue. And they both persecute and oppress women, homosexuals, and various other minorities.
As such, I feel justified in using the label. And no, I didn’t glom it from any Republicans; I stole it from a Trotskyist (Chris Hitchens) and a “conservative” drama queen (Andrew Sullivan).
You have a remarkable degree of faith, even after seeing the current President of Iraq plus his Shi’ite competitors seek blessings from Iran’s President.
I do have a lot of faith in the power of Iraqi democracy. The problem is, it hasn’t been established yet, although it seems to be putting itself on a firmer basis every day.
As for the great influence of the Iranian government on Iraqi politics, right now it does have way too much influence, thanks to the extra-legal militias that it supports. Hopefully that will prove to be a temporary problem and not a permanent one. It is certainly a very good reason why we should think twice or three times before bugging out of Iraq.
OK so why again was Iraq #1 on the invasion list?
Saddam may not have been the biggest threat – he probably wasn’t – but he certainly was the lowest hanging fruit. For example, he was more intensely hated by more of his subjects than any other Arab or Muslim tyrant; he was thumbing his nose at the U.N. and had been for twelve years; and we were already in a state of war due to his cease-fire violations.
Actually the Axis did not coordinate their military strategy as much as they should or could. The racism of Germany inhibited cooporation that could have made the military situation better.
Quite right.
But here’s the way to look at this analogy. Contradictory ideologies can work together if they are separated by long distances & do not run up against each other.
Yes, that would seem necessary. But what actually brings the cooperation about in the first place is the combination of a common enemy and a crisis.
The United States and her allies are the common enemy of the Islamofascists; so far, we’ve been able to avoid or defuse any potential crises that would throw the Shia and Shiite and nihilistic Islamofascists into a hard, formal alliance.
If Israel existed in 1930 and ruled by a Jewish fascist I doubt Hitler could have allied Nazi Germany with her.
Well, Hitler’s alliance with the original Islamofascist, the great Mufti of Jerusalem, was only a little less bizarre, if you think about it. The levantine arabs are a semitic people, after all.
Germany was weak because it was being purposefully handicapped by the other powers. It was being handicapped because it was a superpower before and was a superpower after WWI. Iran, though, does not fit the bill nor are any other countries in the Middle East.
I guess the Persian empire doesn’t count in this context. But Iran doesn’t have to be a superpower in order to be as destructive as Hitler. All they need is a willingness to be ruthlessly evil, either directly or by proxy, combined with a stockpile of WMD’s.
If Hitler had atomic weapons, he might not have lost World War II. As it was, he come close to knocking Britain out near the end just with his newly developed V-2 rockets.
I would agree that instability in Iraq was inevitable (Saddam would have died at some point if he wasn’t deposed) but its laughable to assert war was inevitable. Saddam’s Iraq was a shadow of what it once was and while he did cheat as much as he could on the sanctions there was no threat against any other Arab nation in either the short or medium term.
I don’t want to get into a long discussion about this, so I will just agree to disagree. Or as Mike Toreno puts it, I’ll just leave my unsupported assertion out there for you to bow down before or reject.
Have a good weekend,
Matthew

Mike Toreno,
Ever since the rise of the insurgency in 2004, there have been about 50 million Americans who have consistently supported the war, about 50 million Americans who have consistently opposed the war, and about 50 million who have swung one way or another around the middle, depending on how well events on the ground have been going.
If you think that any of these people are lunatics, irrational, wanna-be warriors, or cowards just because they agree or disagree with some position on the fighting, then you are one very sorry puppy.
I respectfully suggest you get a life, sir.
Cheers,
Matthew

Matthew, I wasn’t talking about various groups whose opinions we don’t know in detail, I was talking about you, whose opinions and claims we do know in detail. We have an abundance of evidence that you are a worthless coward seeking to conceal (and hide from) your worthlessness and cowardice by urging risk and sacrifice for others, at no cost to yourself. The way for Boonton to respond to you is not to refute your claims, but to ignore them and work to put the Responsible Plan into fruition.

Matthew, there was no need to “uncover” your worthlessness and cowardice, it’s right there on the surface.
It’s true that a worthless coward can still speak the truth, but you haven’t spoken the truth about Iraq. I am not pointing out your worthlessness and cowardice in order to refute the various dishonest claims you are making, and the various dishonest and clumsy sleights of hand to which you resort. I have already refuted your claims. I said doing what you desire (to commit U.S. resources, at no cost or hardship to you, to an interminable mission in Iraq) is not going to cause the sky is not to break open and rain down ponies.
My purpose in pointing out that you are a worthless coward is to explain to others why you tell the lies that you tell and why you are impervious to the truth. My purpose in pointing out that you are a worthless coward is to make the point that argument with you will be fruitless because the facts don’t matter to you. What matters to you is hiding the fact that you are a worthless coward.
Therefore, it is a waste of time to refute your dishonest points one by one; you will simply repeat the same dishonest points, come up with new dishonest points, and put up more links to wingnut websites. Your claim that whatever points you pretend to make are worthy of engagement should simply be ignored with the contempt that they (and you) deserve.

Matthew, I feel great about myself, what I feel bad about is cowards like you who advocate war so long as it costs them nothing, and because it costs them nothing, who mischaracterize the positions of their political opponents, who seek to define patriotism as including their on viewpoints and excluding others. You share responsibility for the deaths of 4000 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Now I know that among wingnuts, that’s unimportant and what really matters is that war opponents don’t frame their arguments in the way that war advocates desire. But here in reality land, being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and continuing to advocate the deaths of still more thousands, is morally repugnant. You are morally reprehensible because of your grossly immoral acts. My recognition of that fact is not a psychological deficiency, no matter what Soviet-style analysis you use to frame your political opponents as defective.
Again, it doesn’t matter whether you take my arguments seriously. You won’t take them seriously, because you don’t care about reality, you only care about playing soldier.

Michael,
I feel great about myself
Thank you for letting me know. I was truly concerned. If you say you feel good about yourself, I’m willing to take your word about it.
And thank you for sharing your thoughts about all this. You seem to think that I am just ignoring your arguments, but I have considered what you said and responded to the best of my ability. If you are disappointed in my response, then I recognize that as your privilege.
Now I know that among wingnuts, [their responsibility for death and destruction is] unimportant and what really matters is that war opponents don’t frame their arguments in the way that war advocates desire.
Well, this particular wingnut thinks that what is going on in Iraq right now is something that really matters.
Would you like to respond to my question about Karmah?
Here is the link again: link to “The Liberation of Karmah”, by Michael Totten.
Our work in Karmah, is it something we should be doing or not?
Thanks again,
Matthew
P.S. For your convenience, here is the link for part 2 of the Karmah story: link to “The Liberation of Karmah, Part II”.

Michael,
You claim that continuing the occupation in Iraq is going to cause the sky to break open and ponies to rain down, well, it’s been 5 years and no ponies.
One reason war should be used only as a last resort is that war is extremely costly and deeply devastating and cruel.
Another very important reason to avoid war is that war is very unpredictable. In a war, we will have a strategy and a plan, but most plans, even successful plans, get overtaken by events very quickly, and strategies need to be very flexible and accommodating.
People who were dead set against the war in March 2003 made predictions that turned out to be just as off-base as ponies-from-heaven.
If we all knew ahead of time how wars were going to turn out, we wouldn’t have to fight them in the first place: the losers would just surrender to the winners without going through the pain and expense of actually losing.
You claim that if we “succeed in Iraq”, that is, if we are able to cause a rain of ponies, this success will demoralize our enemies.
Which is actually what happened for a while when we were able to topple Saddam’s regime so quickly. Moreover, in past wars, defeat has ordinarily led to demoralization of the losing side.
This is not a pie-in-the-sky proposition. It is, rather, a simple observation about how wars turn out when one side is able to pull off a decisive victory. If we are not able to pull off a decisive victory, then you are correct, our enemies will not be very demoralized.
… therefore we must be willing to commit infinite resources (so long as I don’t have to contribute) to Z activity, so that X outcome will be achieved.
That is a devastating criticism — of someone else’s argument.
I’ve argued that we should not be willing to commit infinite resources. I’ve said that we must be careful to monitor our progress continually and decide, based on what is going on, whether it makes sense to continue or to stop.
Your argument does not demonstrate how Z activity causes X outcome or how X outcome leads to Y outcome. It also does not consider whether other, less costly alternatives to Z activity exist.
If you have specific questions that you would like me to answer about how X, Y, and Z are supposed to be related, or about alternatives to Z, then please go ahead and ask me.
For example, engaging Iran to broker negotiations with the various Shiite militias over which they have influence in order to bring stability and avoid slaughter of Sunnis would be vastly less costly and destructive than our present course of action, which is to arm various militias and pay them off in order to (temporarily) avoid attacking us.
Once again, it is possible that you are right.
We should probably be reluctant to embrace the course of action you recommend, however, because it seems impossible to truly engage Iran when her interests are so divergent and contrary to our own.
We are working to build a liberal democracy which separates church from state. Iran is looking to exploit Shia demographics to install a repressive theocracy in Iraq.
Our collaboration with the militia-type groups of the “Awakening” seems to be working very well for the moment. Time will tell if such tactics are wise or foolish in the long term.
However, these acts are unattractive to worthless cowards like yourself, because they do not involve the idea that you are part of a glorious, apocalyptic struggle.
You know, I’ve engaged anti-war people in discussion, in person, over the past 6 1/2 years, and I’ve never talked to or met anyone who has tried to personalize disagreements the way that you do. You are truly a special, if not unique, person when it comes to insults and vitriol.
I would like to hope I am the first person you have ever unfairly assaulted, but I doubt that that is the case. Even if you do feel good about yourself, you should seek out counseling anyway. You are one very angry dude, and you are channeling your anger on the wrong target(s).
Do you get anywhere near this upset with the psychopaths who belong to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups?
I took a look at the wingnut article you cited.
And Michael Totten is a wingnut because?
Let me get this straight. You are asking me if causing the creation of Al Qaeda in Iraq, driving them into a small, relatively undefended town where they commit mayhem, and then clearing them out after much bloodshed, is something the U.S. should be doing.
We created conditions in Iraq that Al Qaeda in Iraq took advantage of. I’m not sure, however, what we should have done to prevent them from establishing themselves in the post-Saddam power vacuum.
People like yourself would say we shouldn’t have invaded in the first place. Others say we should have had more boots on the ground, and yet others say we should have installed our own strongman to keep such troublemakers in line. And there are those who say we should have just left and allowed the chaos to run its course.
I don’t know what kind of plan we should have had in place ahead of time to deal with these nasty murderers, or what kind of policies should have been implemented in response to the terrorists and the insurgents. Even with the benefit of hindsight, the armed resistance seems an intractable problem with no totally satisfactory solutions.
I understand why you and Boonton and so many others have found this situation to be reprehensible and deplorable. (I find it reprehensible and deplorable too — but I don’t blame our coalition for the activities of the people we’re fighting against.) I don’t know how to answer your objection other than to point out that war has always been a horrible business, and this one is no exception.
All of the alternatives that might have been available for us to pursue had their own costs and unintended consequences. It seems to me that the course we did follow was justified by our understanding of things at the time.
Maybe a decision had been made in Washington to use Iraq as “flypaper” to attract terrorists and kill them on a terrain that was favorable to us. That would have been a deeply immoral decision; I hope that was not how things actually transpired.
What I think probably happened is that we were not prepared to imagine just how deeply vicious and evil our enemies would turn out to be. We were caught off guard by the willingness of so many people to kidnap, maim, torture, and kill innocent victims. We were guilty of not pre-judging our enemies and their capacity for pure ruthlessness.
Well – no. What the U.S. should be doing is preventing bloodshed.
I agree. Good answer.
And yet… if for whatever reason we fail to prevent the bloodshed, we shouldn’t flinch from doing what is necessary to end it.
Why don’t you try once to argue in an honest way, rather than through clumsy slight of hand tricks like the false dichotomy you resorted to here?
According to you, asking a question is “resorting to a false dichotomy”.
Now that is a good one. Of all the insults you have thrown against the wall in my direction, this is the first one that I recall which displays a bit of cleverness.
I’m going to want to remember it: resorting to a false dichotomy. I wouldn’t use it myself, unless I was really face-to-face with a genuine false dichotomy. But it’s amusing to apply it to ordinary questions the way you have done.
Thanks very much for responding to my question about Karmah.
If you decide to respond one more time to my latest comment, I would like to issue you a challenge: Can you respond to me without any name-calling or insults?
I know you are capable of doing so, because you are not dumb and because you have actually responded to me in another comment thread in a civil manner. But it would still be nice if you could do me the courtesy of a clean and respectful comment.
Thanks,
Matthew

Michael,
Matthew, after you get back from your tour of duty in Iraq, you’ll have proven that you are willing to make the same sacrifices you urge on others, so you will have proven that I was mistaken in calling you a worthless coward. In the absence of such evidence, therefore, all I have is your self-important pronouncements about how destructive war is but how it is necessary that “we” keep fighting. In light of such evidence, there is no reason for me not to point out that you are a worthless coward.
1) Just in case you really don’t get this: calling people “worthless” and “coward” is very rude and insulting. I’m not sure what exactly it might be, but there is definitely something wrong with you that you feel free to deal with other people in a way that seems calculated to hurt or discredit them. If you don’t understand this, you should, as I have said before, seek out a counselor who can help you figure out your issues.
2) Your point seems to be that someone who hasn’t served in the military doesn’t have the moral authority to support the war and encourage others to support the war.
Yet consider Michael Totten.
Michael has actually risked his life and is currently risking his life by going to Iraq and embedding with soldiers, so he can report back to us on what he sees there. Before his first trip to Iraq, he was deeply skeptical of the war and our strategy.
Yet, because he writes stories that highlight the good things we have accomplished, you casually dismiss him as a “wingnut”.
And of course, there are thousands of troops who firmly believe in their mission and who are committed to victory in Iraq. They are not worthless cowards, even by your standards, so how can you dismiss their position on the war and their moral authority?
Most of your blathering is not worth fooling with. I do notice, however, that you are back to the refuge of the chickenhawk, that of pearl-clutching at the incivility of your detractors (who were right about all the things you were wrong about) …
If the chickenhawks are wrong and you are right, then there is no need whatsoever to resort to incivility. My wrongness and your rightness will speak for itself.
Incivility is a tool to distract from more substantial arguments. It’s wrong, and you should be ashamed to embrace it.
… and Soviet-style declarations that those who disagree with you are crazy.
I didn’t say you are crazy, I said you needed counseling. And I’m not going to knock on your door at 3:00 am and arrest you and commit you to a military hospital. Other than those minor details, though, you are correct.
And please note, you need counseling not because you are anti-war, but because you appear to have no problem being abusive and contemptuous. I’d say you have a problem if you were abusive and pro-war; the politics doesn’t have anything to do with it.
Infinity one Friedman Unit at a time is still infinity.
We’re stuck fighting in Iraq not because our troops aren’t doing their job, but because our enemies (including Syria and Iran) are determined to test our will to stick it out.
I don’t know how long the war will last, but if we don’t end up fighting Iran directly, I’d be very surprised if we were still taking casualties in Iraq three years from now.
If you want to bug out, now or in the next few months, the Iraqis will be left paying the tab. If Iraq becomes chaotic and fragmented and tyrannical as a result, it will be because we refused to finish the job, not because the job was unfinish-able.
Now, I can’t prove that I am right and you are wrong. That is just my opinion. But it is based upon following the situation as best I can from a distance. If you don’t like the fact that I can’t make a definitive prediction, then perhaps you should remember that you can’t make a definitive prediction either.
Decision-making is based upon incomplete information, and there is nothing we can do about it. Because even if we pull out, then that is just as much a decision based upon incomplete information as staying and fighting would be.
Your claim to want to “monitor our progress” is a lie, because you always want the war continued, no matter what the monitoring shows.
My standards for pulling out are very different from yours, but they do exist. If having different standards from you is your definition for lying, then yes, I am a liar.
This is just idiotic.
Once again: if something is truly idiotic, then you should be able to explain how wrong it is without actually having to call it idiotic. The adjective doesn’t add anything other than an element of abuse.
It was known that Iraq wasn’t a threat to us. It was known that Colin Powell’s UN speech was all lies. It was known that there was no cooperation between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. It was known that Osama bin Laden launched the September 11 attacks to lure the U.S. into a war against Islam – to get us to fight them over there so they didn’t have to fight us over here. It was known that invading Iraq was going to be a disaster.
Actually, none of these things is “known”. You accuse me of making unsupported assertions, but this whole paragraph is a list of five unsupported assertions.
I don’t mind you making unsupported assertions: you could be right, after all, and even if you are wrong, you are letting me know what you think. But it is ironic, to say the least, that you indulge yourself in this way when you make a point of criticizing me, rightly or wrongly, for the exact same thing.
Yeah, it would be horrible, wouldn’t it, to try something that didn’t involve the U.S. unilaterally imposing its will through military force …
There are still 30 countries in our coalition with boots on the ground in Iraq. And although the U.S. constitutes the vast majority of foreign troops in the coalition, the actual majority of troops fighting is now Iraqi. So perhaps we’re not being as unilateral as you think we are.
… (so long as you personally didn’t have to pay for or participate in the enterprise).
Thanks for reminding me that I am a chickenhawk. I was kind of forgetting towards the end.
It’s a lot better for you to make excuses about why it wouldn’t work than for you to advocate a course of action that would be easy and cheap, and whose failure wouldn’t leave us any worse off than we are now.
I couldn’t disagree more strongly. I think “engaging Iran” could very well be disastrous, unless it were done from a position of strength.
It could be disastrous, not just for Iraqis who would be trapped in civil war and/or Shia theocracy, but also because it might greatly help Iran in their quest to obtain nuclear weapons.
The rest of your various lies, excuses, mischaracterizations, and self-justifications, I don’t feel like bothering with.
You don’t need to respond to anything I write. Although I do appreciate your letting me what you think, your rudeness is something I would just as soon do without.
If you wanted to respond to one thing, though, I would like to know how you justify calling Michael Totten a “wingnut”.

Mike Toreno,
Your pearl-clutching at the “incivility” of your detractors is what’s a tactic.
Yes, it’s a tactic to try to coax civility out of you. It’s a tactic to try to help you understand that someone can disagree with you because he sees something you don’t, not because he’s making stuff up or lying.
But even if someone were making stuff up and lying, incivility would still be counterproductive. For if someone were lying, you could expose the lies with the truth. If you insist on throwing rudeness into the mix as well, you are just making yourself look rude and taking away from your own credibility.
In other words, when I point out to you that you are impolite, I’m not attacking you and trying to discredit you, I’m trying to help you and make your arguments sharper.
And why would I want to do that?
Because I’m not avoiding your ideas and your views, I’m trying to engage them. Your attacks are an impediment to me (and to anyone else who would be reading these comments) engaging your ideas. And since you are a smart person, it raises the possibility that maybe you are insecure about your own views, and actually don’t want people to engage them too seriously.
You seek to define a range of acceptable discourse so that you can avoid engaging your opponents honestly. When someone points out that your arguments are lies, and that you are motivated in your support of the war by the fact that you aren’t suffering the consequences, you avoid facing up to the facts by falling on the fainting couch at how “uncivil” it is for you to be called out as a liar.
I haven’t been avoiding anything, chum. If anyone’s been avoiding some points, I would have to say it’s been you.
For example, how exactly is Michael Totten a “wingnut” again?
The reason you are unconcerned with the fact is that you don’t care about America, you only care about depicting yourself as a warrior, while thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis die.
You know, if would be very easy for me to say that you don’t care about Iraq, and that you want to throw the sacrifice of our dead and wounded soldiers in the trash by bugging out of Iraq. That you don’t care if, as a result, the Islamist terrorists regroup and hurt America.
But I know that that isn’t true. And even if it were true, it is irrevelent to whether or not your position and points are correct.
So I don’t go there, and I won’t. Shame on you, for choosing differently.
If you can’t handle a relatively simple discussion, you shouldn’t expect anyone who doesn’t agree with you already to take you seriously.
I am entitled to use tactics designed to hurt and discredit you. Your arguments are dishonest. Someone who uses dishonest arguments deserves to be hurt and discredited.
If my arguments are dishonest, you can explain why they are dishonest and leave it at that.
I think, at a minimum, you are using my alleged dishonesty as an excuse to indulge yourself in a self-satisfying way at my expense, and at the expense of people who agree with me (which is on the order of about 50 million of your fellow citizens).
At worst, you are, again, one very sorry puppy who desperately needs to find a grown-up confidante who can help you work through some issues that you have.
And, no, that is not a tactic. It is an attempt to grab your attention and focus it on the fact that something appears to be wrong with you, and you would probably be much happier if you could push yourself to start fixing it.
I know that the wingnut sources that are the only place from which you get information discount them, but these are all facts that are known now and were known in 2003. There are numerous credible references bearing all of them out. You have nothing to offer in contradiction except to gravely ponder what will happen if we “give in” to the imaginary “Islamofascism” and the tiny splinter group “al Qaeda in Iraq”. Your not accepting the facts doesn’t diminish their truth, it merely proves that you are unconcerned with the facts. The reason you are unconcerned with the fact is that you don’t care about America, you only care about depicting yourself as a warrior, while thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis die.
You’ve accused me of ducking your points, and not engaging the truth.
Well, I think I’ve addressed everything you mention here. I will just add that having a credible reference for something does not mean that point is proven and “known”.
When something is controversial, there will be a great many credible references on each side. If you (or I) latch on to one set of references and ignore the other side’s set of references, then the truth will evade you (or me).
The war in Iraq is very complicated and messy and dynamic, and it has been for five years. I strongly encourage you to do more research from credible “wingnut” sources (in addition to anti-war sources, of course), and try to piece together a more complete understanding of what is going on.
Good luck, amigo.
All the best to you,
Matthew