Dean's World

A few weeks ago, in a popular internet forum, a militant extremist made the following comment calling for an attack on civilians in Israel:

“If killing 10% [of the population] radicalized the remaining 90%, then they too should be killed, and thus made an example of.”

Though most of the forum’s regulars claim to be proponents of democracy and the rule of law, many of them vigorously agreed with the statement. One even reposted the comment on the front page. For onlookers, it was a chilling reminder that even in an era of increased vigilance and security, the enemies of freedom routinely take advantage of America’s generous free speech laws to spread messages of hatred and incitements to violence.

Generally speaking, I believe that people so bent on bloodshed—what some of us on the other side call armchair jihadis—don’t deserve the compliment of rational opposition. People like this aren’t interested in solutions to the conflicts the world faces today. Without those conflicts, these fear-mongers lose what paltry significance they feel they have gained by shouting the loudest and calling for the most shocking kinds of revenge and destruction. But this circumstance was different. This was no jihadist chat room, no Wahhabi blog, no fundamentalist website. The commentator was CaliforniaJosh, the reposter Naftali, the forum Dean’s World. And the only reason the rest of the DW readers were unconcerned about their call to exterminate civilians in Israel is because those civilians aren’t Israeli. These so-called proponents of democracy have become so cynical they appear to believe that being born on the wrong side of a wall is a sin punishable by death.

These two posters claim they aren’t Islamophobes. I believe them. They’re not Islamophobes. They’re anti-American. America stands for the rule of law; they’re calling for chaos. America holds that a military force is responsible for protecting civilians during a time of war; they are calling for the murder of people whose only crime is being inconveniently difficult to separate from the bad guys. America stands for life; they’re calling for genocide. They will claim they love this country—hard to believe when they publicly insult everything it stands for. They will claim they support the troops fighting to make Iraq safe, yet they call for the very sectarian bloodshed those troops are dying to eradicate. There is no word nasty enough for such irresponsible, self-aggrandizing hypocrisy. To say that behavior like this shames Dean’s World is an understatement—it shames an ideal people have died to protect.

In the comments to this post, Aziz, a Dean's World front-pager, asked me to support, or reject, the policy of [a] saturation bombing of the Gaza Strip.

When I responded that I have no moral problem at all with a saturation bombing of Gaza, Dean Esmay, the blog host, challenged me thusly: Support that logically if you will, and explain how it's not genocidal.

What I answered follows:

"I don't care if its genocidal or not.

The only support I will offer is that if one wishes to wage war, he needs to be prepared for he and his dependents to die. And if his people (or even a part of them) wish to wage war and he objects, he needs to stop them or flee; his life is his responsibility not mine. And if he is unable to flee, then my life comes before his.

And I grant the same calculation to my enemy."

(Please place all relevant comments in the thread started by my friend in Egypt)

While I sympathize with Israel's plight and believe they are generally the wronged party, I have to disagree with Naftali's statement. Not all criticisms of a "disproportionate response" are valid, but while one should be prepared for annihilation in war, that does not mean that annihilation is ever justified, even if done in the name of self-defense.

Willow is right: these kinds of statements are barbaric, irrational, wrong, and counter to the philosophies of tolerance and universal human rights that are the foundation of liberal democracy. Enemies should be defeated, but making friends of those enemies should be our ultimate goal, as our grandfathers did in Germany and Japan and our fathers did in Eastern Europe and Asia.

Anyone calling for genocide by any name under any circumstances should be ashamed. And if you're a Christian, you ought to be doubly ashamed, as Christ teaches us to turn the other cheek, not burn our enemies' cities to the ground with their families inside.