Dean's World

Aziz over at Nation Building (who really need to get a new URL if they're to be serious about bringing in new people, especially people who may not be particular fans of Howard Dean) has a tentative endorsement of the idea of treating terrorists by the same laws as pirates.

And, all jokes aside, this is a very serious argument. Please no jokes.

(And no, this does not mean that Dean's World will discontinue its tradition of honoring International Talk Like A Pirate Day in two weeks. We will continue that fine, fun tradition. But that is a joke, entirely for fun, meant to honor great fantasy movies like Treasure Island or Captain Blood or The Princess Bride. Having fun with humorous mythological fluff is no different from enjoying a film like Aladdin, which may take place in Baghdad but contains absolutely no serious suggestions for how to behave in Baghdad that I'm aware of. Fun is fun, this is serious.)

What I'd ask the fine folks at Nation Building is this: you're tentatively endorsing this, and I can see why. It's a powerful idea, and worth taking seriously. Piracy at one time, in the early 1700s, had the tacit support of many nations, including the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, and some of the northern coastal states of Africa as a form of illicit (and thus plausibly deniable) warfare. After a decade or three of this, all the states involved began to recognize that this was a bad idea, and not strategically viable. They all began cracking down on it hard, some a little later than others.

But there is a danger to this view of terrorism. My own gut says this is a proposal with much merit, but it amounts to declaring that pirates and terrorists enjoy no civil rights protections to speak of. Anyone declared a pirate or terrorist may be killed on sight or, if captured, hung by the neck until dead, dead, dead by a fairly quick military tribunal--what some might call a "kangaroo court."

Under such a view of terrorism, for example, many of the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay would simply be dead now, summarily executed after a quick military tribunal. Appeal? Perhaps an impassioned appeal to the head of whatever state captured you (Bush in America's case, Blair in the UK's case, and so on) might save your neck. But probably not.

I know many people who are quite ready for this and would not shed a tear over the fact that some cases might wind up being unjust. C'est la guerre will be the not-particularly sympathetic response from many. I might join them. In fact I'll just be honest: I probably would.

But are you guys up for it? It would certainly add clarity to the muddied waters.

Related Posts (on one page):

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Ken McCracken (mail) (www):

Internationl law already treats unlawful combatants as 'pirates' as described here. Those caught fighting on a battlefield out of uniform, like the Taliban, have traditionally been tried by a military commission and then shot. This is the way they were dealt with during the Civil War, for example.

During World War II, Jewish partisans who were captured by the Nazis were giving summary judgment and a bullet in the back of the head, and after the war the Nazis who participated in this were not treated as war criminals, because they were acting in accordance with customary international law regarding the treatment of unlawful combatants.

The U.S. case of Ex parte Quirin is very enlightening on this topic.

Terrorists enjoy no rights under the Geneva Conventions other than the right to a determination by a military commission as to whether they are unlawful combatants or not. If they are, they are entitled to no legal protections whatsoever.

9.7.2006 1:19am

Cybrludite (mail) (www):

Hosti humanis generi, baby. (Assuming I didn't mangle the Latin too badly)

9.7.2006 1:38am

Vic Stein (mail):

"I know many people who are quite ready for this and would not shed a tear over the fact that some cases might wind up being unjust. C'est la guerre will be the not-particularly sympathetic response from many. I might join them. In fact I'll just be honest: I probably would."

Really? We've released tons of people from Gmo that we decided ended up there from bad intel, dumb luck, and so on. You wouldn't care if these people had instead been killed?

Somehow, I don't see that enshrining as common practice that nations can simply seize people secretly in any nation in the world no matter what their citizenship is (and on the basis of a "war" with no well defined party in particular), torture them, and then execute them... all on the basis of "we have a really really good reason that we can't tell you or even them, ever, except maybe we'll selectively leak this or that as necessary to convinced the public" as being a good idea. Lets say even that this time around everything we do is exactly justified and correct (which, unfortunately, seems wildly implausible). Is that still the precedent we want moving ahead?

9.7.2006 1:59am

Dean Esmay:

Well Vic, you make a good case.

Another case would be, "what were they doing being on board a pirate ship/found near a terrorist hideout?"

This would be the hard question we would have to ask. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both answered this question, and their answer was, "Kill them when you find them, and hang them if they surrender."

It's not a pleasant notion. But it's certainly a definitive answer. And part of that answer would be, "don't get caught hanging out near terrorists."

9.7.2006 2:49am

Paul X. Miller:

Vic, I'll wager the guys that were released were probably not those captured on the battlefield, more likely they were handed in by those looking for the reward.

If an unlawful combatant was captured in the act of shooting while out of uniform, like many of Gitmo's bozos were, current international treaties allow for their summary execution.

The real story there is that the US has accorded these particular ass-clowns way more rights than they are entitled to.

9.7.2006 3:23am

willem:

Piracy traditionally involved attacking isolated ships at sea to plunder the material goods. Killing was of secondary concern to a pirate; a means to an end, an act of convenience. To destroy the society responsible for creating plunderable commerce in goods was not the goal of the pirate. The pirate depended on the victimized society to make the goods available for plunder.

Within the paradigm of postmodern LE (law enforcement) thinking, these behaviors are essentially indistinguishable from Islamofascist Terrorism: i.e., items are plundered, property is destroyed, and people are murdered in the process. The proper response of LE is to wait until the crime occurs, study its evidentiary profile, construct a legal case, seek the perps, apprehend them, and engage in the lengthy dance of due process and prosecution under the law. They are paid to process the crime. They are paid not prevent it. Those who are murdered in the process (provided they are not a member of the LE community itself) are seen as just another statistic until it's time to whip up a sob story to sell the a jury on convicting.

In an era of organized murderous religious psychopaths seeking to acquire WMDs, the postmodern LE paradigm is arguably more insane than the Islamofascists who see to multiply the decapitations of Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl by exploiting technology that will increase the number murdered per terrorist event by many orders of magnitude.

Unlike piracy, the purpose of Islamofascist Terrorism is to destroy the offending society if it does not convert to Islam. There is no desire to steal property. There is no desire to operate a predatory symbiosis. The object of the Islamofascist is to convert the infidel to Islam or purify the earth by his murder, his family's murder and the murder of the society which spawns them. All the Islamofascist wants is total, absolute submission to his religion and world view.

There is no diplomatic solution to Islamofascism. It is a conflict over submission, not cooperation. In our "reasonableness" we are demanding they self-convert away from Islamofascism and adopt some derivative form where they agree to leave us alone. Such expectation they will do so is insane projection. We do this in denial of their clearly professed doctrine: they are required to kill us if we do not convert.

We are in a War with Islamofascists and more importantly those who use Islamofascism as proxy to seek other goals. They have made their intentions absolutely clear. There is no doubt what they have dedicated their lives to accomplishing. These are not pirates in search of adventure, drink, sex and bounty. These are dedicated, devoted wolves of the worst kind.

Those who are unwilling to kill these wolves don't want peace, they want to preserve a delusion at the expense of others.

The product of war is peace. Which peace will it be?

9.7.2006 4:09am

I find that women are often more pragmatic than men. And I note that it's Mary who's repeatedly invoked this article.

So I wonder, is she agreeing with all this? I think she probably is but I do wonder.

9.7.2006 4:40am

Piracy traditionally involved attacking isolated ships at sea to plunder the material goods. Killing was of secondary concern to a pirate; a means to an end, an act of convenience.

Yes and no, Bill.

Killing was of secondary concern, but, their basic code was, "give us everything we want and we'll let you live. Fight us and we'll kill every last man among you, and rape the women if there happen to be any nearby who aren't fighting."

This seems to still be the code of pirates in 2006. Romanticize it all you want, that seems to have been the sum of it from day one. And I'm not quite able to see how it's different from Al Qaeda's basic aims, although I'm interested to see if you think I've missed something.

9.7.2006 4:46am

maryatexitzero (mail):

I find that women are often more pragmatic than men. And I note that it's Mary who's repeatedly invoked this article.

So I wonder, is she agreeing with all this? I think she probably is but I do wonder.

As I've said, I'm not a Jacksonian, I'm a Jeffersonian. Our civil rights and our safety as a nation grew and thrived as a result of these piracy laws.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who said "Kill them when you find them, and hang them if they surrender." made America what it is today.

If we hadn't broken with the European tradition of pandering to elites and appeasement, what would we be today? Not much.

That said, I love the Pirates of the Carribean films. Well, the first one, anyway. But Disneyfied pirates have as much relation to reality as singing and dancing teapots.

9.7.2006 8:05am

Ken Hall (www):

It's an extension of the concept of outlawry. An outlaw is literally outside the law; one can do with an outlaw as one wishes with no fear of sanction.

It's the same thing with pirates. Pirates sail "against all flags," and are thus outlaws by definition.

I think it's a good idea.

9.7.2006 9:10am

Martin L. Shoemaker (www):

willem,

Did you get a chance to read the article that prompted the discussion? It addresses a lot of your contentions.

Piracy traditionally involved attacking isolated ships at sea to plunder the material goods. Killing was of secondary concern to a pirate; a means to an end, an act of convenience. To destroy the society responsible for creating plunderable commerce in goods was not the goal of the pirate. The pirate depended on the victimized society to make the goods available for plunder.

From the article (emphasis added):

The pirates of the so-called golden age, as historian Hugh Rankin described them, were "a sorry lot of human trash." Coming from the lowest tier of the English merchant navy, they struck indiscriminately in ferocious revenge against the societies that they felt had condemned them. Often these disenchanted sailors cast their piratical careers in revolutionary terms. The 18th-century English legal scholar William Blackstone defined a pirate as someone who has "reduced himself afresh to the savage state of nature by declaring war against all mankind," while another account tells of one Edward Low, common seaman, who "took a small vessel, [hoisted] a Black Flag, and declared War against all the World." Pirates gave their ships names that reflected this dark purpose: Defiance, Vengeance, New York's Revenge, and even New York Revenge's Revenge.

Perhaps the most telling statement of the pirates' motives comes from a pirate named Black Sam Bellamy. To a captured merchant captain, he boasted, "I am a free prince, and have as much authority to make war on the whole world as he who has a 100 sail of ships and an army of 100,000 men in the field."

This was more than bravado. Historian Marcus Rediker has suggested that it indicates a new "pirate democracy" that drew its revolutionary principles from its perceived war against civilization and cast itself as civilization's antithesis. Some pirate bands even had constitutions. The "pirate articles" that became commonplace in the early 18th century purported to lay out in legal terms both the rights and obligations that members in a pirate band enjoyed. An excerpt from articles of Captain John Phillips, drafted in 1723, even provides a sort of liability insurance for injured comrades.

The corollaries between the pirates' "war against the world" and modern terrorism are profound and disturbing. With their vengeful practices, pirates were the first and perhaps only historical precedent for the terrorist cell: a group of men who bound themselves in extraterritorial enclaves, removed themselves from the protection and jurisdiction of the nation-state, and declared war against civilization. Both pirates and terrorists deliberately employ this extranationality as a means of pursuing their activities. The pirates hid in the myriad shoals and islands of the Atlantic. The terrorists hide in cells throughout the world. Both seek through their acts to bring notice to themselves and their causes. They share means as well—destruction of property, frustration of commerce, and homicide. Most important, both are properly considered enemies of the rest of the human race.

9.7.2006 9:22am

Chuckg (mail):

I firmly agree with the people who say that we should go back to the strict constructionist Geneva Conventions interpretation for illegal combatants -- a military tribunal to make sure he's guilty, and then him out and shoot him in the ear.

9.7.2006 9:26am

Aziz (mail) (www):

Dean - http://www.nationbuilding.org :) It maps to the site teh same way. People who really cant get past the URL are probably - to borrow a phrase from matoko - too low-g for me to care whether they are turned off or not.

the site is really just a notepad. I think that if it started to actually attract a lot of traffic it would be more hindrance than benefit :P Back when it was dean nation, the traffic was gigantic and I was grateful in many ways when election season was over.

ill reply to the point of substance over there...

9.7.2006 9:53am

matoko-chan (mail) (www):

ekshually, razib bought a domain name, nationbuilding.org, i think...aziz-habbibi, u a re so sentimental. ;)

AND the cultural anthro analogy is not pirates-- but cargo cultists and ghost dancers.
A far better model to be using is the "Ghost Dance". A culture that is under stress from new, generally outside influences, takes certain steps to resolve that stress. The first step, usually, is to blame the outsider. Then to revert to a "purer" form of religion. When those don't work, violence follows, usually with magical claims of either immunity to death or rapturous immortality in the hereafter.

From the UCDavis Anthropology lecture series : “Systemic replacement” movements have been quite regular occurrences among those indigenous peoples whose economic fortunes declined as the result of articulation with capitalism—people who developed a sense of deprivation. In North America, for instance, the Ghost Dance religion appeared among the Western tribes in two iterations—1869 and 1889. In those cases, it was believed that if certain communal rituals were practiced correctly (especially the dance after which the movement was named), the bison herds would return to invigorate the native economy. Further, the ghosts of dead ancestors would return to life and bring with them locomotives loaded with weapons and other commodities that would be necessary to drive off the Whites and restore land to the tribes. Unfortunately for the Ghost Dancers, they also believed that shirts blessed by spirits were bullet proof, and that belief turned out to be erroneous." Ah, but suitcase nukes and weaponized anthrax may have more power than pipevests and warpaint.

from an article about Chechyan suicide bombers

"... telling you something about the Riyadh al-Saliheen myth; it’s very interesting and it doen’t surprise me that it has come up in Thetchnia. It has become central to much of the folk narrative behind the suicide “martyr” would they say terrorist attacks, but it is older. The expression means indeed “the garden of the virtuous”, but it has a larger meaning. On the one hand it has been used as a title for haddits (Islamic traditions attributed to prophet Mohammad) collections; the one by Imam Nawawi is a best-seller not only among jihadist sympathizers but generally appreciated by revivalists. In fact, among lots of moral and sometimes esoteric tales, it is said to include the theological justification for the suicide bombers –Islam traditionally forbad suicide- and is apparently used in the mind conditioning previous to the suicide.
The candidate to "martyr" is isolated and told that he or she not only will go automatically to the Garden of the Virtuous but will also be entitled to designate 72 friends or parents that will win acceptance into Paradise thanks to his deed. Iran’s mullahs used also this folklore to motivate their revolutionary guardians during the Iran-Iraq conflict: the shock troops of children were issued a plastic key to the garden of the virtuous prior to being sent into WWI style attacks against the iraqui lines."

The mind conditioning of the Dancers involved the Ghost Dance itself, and the ceremonial donning of "blessed" shirts that were believed to be bullet proof. The "plastic key", like the Ghost shirts, is a symbol for attaining the goal-- for the Ghost Dancers, immunity from bullets, for the terrorists, automatic entry to paradise. But both cults basically desire the termination of the invading strategy of Western culture.
Polynesian cargo cultists also "sacrificed" cargo, in an attempt to attain it for themselves. Post WWII versions of cargo cults involved cargo sacrifice to bring back the japanese, and drive out the whites.

Now, this brings up an interesting question. Wovoka and the ghost dancers believed that they could win, and drive out the white-eyes, if only they could acquire the "magical steam locomotive filled with winchesters". Has the flattening of technology made the analog of those magical weapons readily available today?

9.7.2006 9:56am

ha ha, simul-commenting!
too low-g?
lol, u call me an intellectual snob. ;)

9.7.2006 9:58am

clarification: the ghost dancers were defeated by denial of weapons. perhaps that is not possible today.

9.7.2006 10:05am

urthshu (mail) (www):

"give us everything we want and we'll let you live. Fight us and we'll kill every last man among you, and rape the women if there happen to be any nearby who aren't fighting."

If that were only it! Unfortunately, you have to add in "we'll kill your kids in front of you &make self-congratulatory videos about it that sell like hotcakes". Money talks, BS walks. They've found an alternate way for the common guy to turn a rupee over there other than owning an oil field. "Murder, it's a living"

Anyway, no, I don't think anybody would be up for it. If so, a person escorted away from an air terminal could be found cold on the tarmac 15 minutes later and nobody would care. I don't buy it.

OTOH, I do like the definition. The Left has been hammering away at LE being the 'best' way to handle Terrorism. If passed we could define it further &say 'Well, here ya go, what's the problem NOW?' Goalposts only move so far &then you start to corner yourself, IOW.

9.7.2006 10:24am

AND the cultural anthro analogy is not pirates-- but cargo cultists and ghost dancers.

IIRC, there was at least one other culture the US had fought that used suicidal attackers [other than Japan] and that was an Indian tribe in the Northwest [Blackfeet? I can't recall at present].

What I do recall is that their motives were slightly different. For these, the motive was redemption of shame. I can see some parallels with Terrorists in this.

Oh - we defeated them with smallpox. You know, WMDs. Food for thought.

9.7.2006 10:30am

point of correction, m-chan. I have never called you a snob :)

I might have called you an intellectual, but that isn't quite the insult it used to be. ;)

9.7.2006 10:35am

urthshu, the japanese talked about honor, the jihaadis dont talk it as much....perhaps they feel it tho. i agree they are infuriated by continuous miltary losses and percieved disrespect and humiliation.
samurai culture was about honor and duty.
islamic fundamentalists are millenialists, like the ghost dancers, return to the caliphate, a "golden age", and pursuit of paradise, afterlife reward.

9.7.2006 10:47am

hmmm...where i like the pirate analogy is that pirates filled an environmental niche, until they were extincted by LE.
the way that could work was their hiding places and resupply were burned out, destroyed, and the pirates were separate from the culture they preyed on.
the problem with using LE on jihaadis is that they embedd in civilian populations. so extincting the jihaadis would require genocide of the host population.

9.7.2006 10:55am

ha ha, the jihaadis are not separable (mathspeak) from the host culture as the pirates were. that is why LE worked.

9.7.2006 10:58am

Oh, I agree there. They are millenialists.

But a trifling clarification: Redemption of shame isn't quite the same thing as Honor in the Samurai sense.

I've heard 2 explanations for this mechanism in Arab [not necessarily muslim] culture. That Arab culture is honor/shame based, and that Islam promises success within it's call to prayer but when they consider their 'ranking' they experience cognitive dissonance.

I can readily understand the latter. Its the motive for youth crime the world over. Youths tend to think they're hot sh*t, but when somebody puts them in their place or 'dis' them, they lash out.

urthshu, that is really good.
i totally agree.

but back to jihaadis and LE.
now do u see why we can't kill our way out of the jihaadi fatory?

9.7.2006 11:02am

Last for me [gotta get paid!]

The point about them being seperable is well-taken. I sort of hinted above at that when I wrote about 'money talks BS walks'.

If there were a way to make turning a buck off of terrorism - for the common man selling the CDs or posters or hate literature, etc. - then we'd start seperating them.

But I think that people would fight 'banning ideas' far more than they'd fight summary executions of terrorists under piracy laws.

9.7.2006 11:03am

to expand on urthshu's metaphor, the britmuslim chembombers are analogous to the microsoft employed geek socialmisfit stalker that buys a semi-automatic and caps the chick from HR that wouldn't date him along with six of her co-workers.
for disaffected britmuslim youth, islam is just the clothes.
western culture is the chick that dissed them.

9.7.2006 11:06am

The mind conditioning of the Dancers involved the Ghost Dance itself, and the ceremonial donning of "blessed" shirts that were believed to be bullet proof. The "plastic key", like the Ghost shirts, is a symbol for attaining the goal-- for the Ghost Dancers, immunity from bullets, for the terrorists, automatic entry to paradise. But both cults basically desire the termination of the invading strategy of Western culture.

That would make sense if these oil-money funded terrorists were fighting only Western Culture. It would also make sense if they weren't so well-paid. But these oil-funded paramilitaries are also fighting the "invading strategy" of Kurdish culture, Buddhist culture, Hindu culture, communist culture, polytheist culture, shia culture, sunni culture - you name it, there's an Islamist-funded terror group that hates it.

These oil-funded terrorist paramilitaries are the latest tactic used by leaders who have been practicing ethnic cleansing in the Middle East for decades. Arab Muslims have been enlaving and 'converting' Africans for centuries. Comparing these racist, apartheid Muslim/Arab supremacists to Native Americans is a grave insult.

Actually, comparing these terrorists to pirates is a bit of an insult to pirates. But, their tactics and the structure of their state support are similar.

9.7.2006 11:21am

western culture is the chick that dissed them.

We're tired of getting f*cked. LOL

OK really gotta go

im gonna say one more thing too.
the ONLY way to shut own the jihaadi factory is to get the host culture to turn against the jihaadis.
that is why dean spends so much time reaching out, encouraging and making a forum for moderate and reform and progressive muslims like Ali and Aziz.
l8r.

9.7.2006 11:22am

shut down.
;)

9.7.2006 11:23am

ok, i lied.
one last thing i promise.
Abazaid gets it.

In an interview in Iraq later, he was even blunter about the limits of U.S. firepower. "Military power can gain us time...but that is about it," he said.

It's a striking comment from one of the country's most influential generals, whose views are increasingly being echoed by President Bush. As head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. Abizaid oversees the U.S. military effort in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the Horn of Africa, Central Asia and the Mideast. ...

But his view of the region is increasingly shaped by the inability of all that firepower to prevail against a violent strain of Islam seeking to expand its foothold. "The best way to contain al Qaeda is to increase the capacity of the regional powers to deal with it themselves," he says.

Gen. Abizaid's approach is part of a broader rethinking within the Bush administration of how best to fight terrorism, driven in part by the failures of the past five years. One of its tenets is that change must take place gradually and be led by locals. The U.S. can provide help training and equipping indigenous counterterrorism forces to break up al Qaeda cells, Gen. Abizaid says. But bigger changes that address the root causes of terrorism in the region must take place over years, if not decades.

Abazaid is talking about using mil power as a holding effect while building schools in Iraq.
that's what we have to do to shut down the jihaadi factory.

9.7.2006 11:45am

the ONLY way to shut own the jihaadi factory is to get the host culture to turn against the jihaadis

By making special efforts to treat Muslims well, giving them lots of money, or even by defending them against attack? We've done that, and jihadi activity has increased. Jihadism and Muslim advice about counter-terrorism both seem to be based on the idea that there's a sucker born every minute.

As a nation, non-Muslim Brits have the most positive attitude toward Muslims. In response, Britains' muslims are the most hostile towards non-Muslims. I'm not even going to try to guess why but it's obvious that this tactic doesn't work.

9.7.2006 11:48am

Kee-rist, I'm gonna get in so much trouble...
"Hi, I'm Mark"
"Hi, Mark!"
"I'm. I'm... addicted to Dean' World. I had it under control until I lost my job."
"We hear you, Mark! Let it out!"

Anyway...

the ONLY way to shut own the jihaadi factory is to get the host culture to turn against the jihaadis.
that is why dean spends so much time reaching out, encouraging and making a forum for moderate and reform and progressive muslims like Ali and Aziz.

Going to invoke the shade of SMA here. He at one point said,
"God makes lives three
The knight, the priest, the churl they be."

At the time, I said that the priests started it &the knights are going to kill us all, so only the churls are left to sort it out. The answer then is the Common Man. Hopefully we've enough in common to see us through.

God, I miss SMA. :-/

9.7.2006 11:50am

my lord Iblis, give me strength.

By making special efforts to treat Muslims well, giving them lots of money, or even by defending them against attack?

no, imbecile, giving handouts just makes them resent us as overlords, multiculti makes them despise us as hypocrites, negotiation and compromise makes them believe we are too weak to fight.

try supporting people like this guy, supporting Abizaid's plan to stand watch over school building and local governance and security AND THEN ask the locals to turn in the jihaadis instead of house to house no-knocks from the get go.

OMG!

now, just step away from the ~~crackpipe~~ dean's world, Mark.

9.7.2006 12:11pm

no, imbecile, giving handouts just makes them resent us as overlords, multiculti makes them despise us as hypocrites, negotiation and compromise makes them believe we are too weak to fight.

Define 'them' and explain why 'they' despise us.

By the way, can you tell us how can Hindus, Buddhist, Black Africans , etc. get the Islamists to stop hating them?

try supporting people like this guy

We should support Dr. Ghamidi, the neo-mutazhilite? How many neo-mutazhilites are there in the Arab Muslim world, and how much support do they have?

Can you show concrete examples of instances where nation building and support of local governance has caused jihadism and extremism to decrease in an Arab/Muslim state?

9.7.2006 12:46pm

I would agree that the terrorists are an example of a "Ghost Dance" cult. John Burgess has made this same point and I agree with him. But that's how they work. How we respond is another question.

I myself see this being the task of a generation. I see no quick fixes. Although I grow increasingly tired of the Saudi-funded schools and textbooks, and wonder why we're still putting up with those.

9.7.2006 1:51pm

Oh, by the way, "imbecile?"

Offsides. 5 yard penalty against the offending team. New down.

(Cut it out M-C, you're better than that.)

9.7.2006 1:54pm

How we respond is another question.

Used to be we made fun of them. NOW you just get your head lopped off if you do that.... *sheesh*

[Yes, I know!!! I'm on lunch!! I swear!!]

9.7.2006 2:02pm

Offsides. 5 yard penalty against the offending team. New down.

awwwh, c'mon dean! its french!
its actually...ummm...err...a term of endearment!

seriously, mary is a classic example of why progressive and reformist muslims rarely speak up. first, they must shoulder the burden of all their co-religionists behavior. second, their words are trimmed and stretched on the horrible procrustean bed of western sentiment until they just fit the "moderate" box, fourth, must innumerable answer demands about where are the rest of the moderates, and fourth they become zoolike exhibits, anomalies, rareties, or "house muslims" and completely lose any legitimacy with the rest of the muslim world.
mary's arguments on this thread are without substance, like radar chaff.

let me wrap it up. jihaadis are more like ghost dancers than pirates. and if we attempt to deal with jihaadis with the LE paradigm, we cannot extinct them, because unlike pirates, they are nonseparable from their host culture. got it?

lunch ovah. ;)

9.7.2006 4:32pm

Brigitte Gabriel and Irshad Manji are good examples of "house muslims". they are also part of the angry estrogen posse along with hirsii ali and wafa sultan.
they have zero legitimacy and/or resonance with the world muslim population.

9.7.2006 4:37pm

jihaadis are more like ghost dancers than pirates. and if we attempt to deal with jihaadis with the LE paradigm, we cannot extinct them, because unlike pirates, they are nonseparable from their host culture. got it?

Got what? Define "host culture".

..or is that too much to as? Is asking for facts or clarification trimming and stretching you on the horrible procrustean bed of western sentiment until you fit the "moderate" box? Oh, the humanity!

I'm not talking about 'extincting' them, I'm talking about dealing with them in an effective way that respects our laws. The LE paradigm will work if we apply it to extremists living in America or Europe. They are separable from the host culture. Most of the host culture would be more than happy to separate from them.

9.7.2006 5:09pm

Oh, Mary. He's just sayin' that all muslims are terrorists. LOL

9.7.2006 10:01pm

urthshu!! im a grrl!
-chan is the japanese honorific meaning young lady...a reminder i often forget. ;)

The LE paradigm will work if we apply it to extremists living in America or Europe. They are separable from the host culture.

bwahahaha! silly, they are citizens. i thought u were a jeffersonian?
better 99 guilty men go free than one innocent should suffer?
the citizen jihaadis are embedded deeeeep.

9.8.2006 12:15am

Oh, Mary. He's just sayin' that all muslims are terrorists.

Matoko doesn't think before she types, which make her comments kind of interesting

bwahahaha! silly, they are citizens. i thought u were a jeffersonian?

under Jefferson's laws they belong in a third category, without the rights of citizens. that's what these laws are about

the citizen jihaadis are embedded deeeeep.

ooohh i shiver with feeer. so, are Jihadis inspired by Qutb or Creepshow?

9.8.2006 9:10am

*sigh*
o mary. just how do u detect they belong in the third category?
are u going to give them lifestyles and loyalties [polygraphs]?
they get due process and justice like the rest of us once they have committed a crime.
and your hang-em-high approach is just more trying to kill our way out of the jihaadi factory.
we need to shut down the factory

9.8.2006 9:54am

o mary. just how do u detect they belong in the third category?

the feds and the Europeans have been 'monitoring' these groups for years. if they don't know who they are, they haven't been doing their job.

and your hang-em-high approach is just more trying to kill our way out of the jihaadi factory.
we need to shut down the factory

We shut down the factory by hanging their financial supporters and their political enablers too. In fact, those are the easiest ones to catch.

9.8.2006 2:09pm