Archive for terrorism

The Irrationality of Moderation

Posted by: Jason | July 26th, 2008 · 4:19 AM

If politics is indeed the art of compromise, than we wouldn’t admire names such as Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan. Comparing the latter two of these American presidents, whose names will forever dominate our historical view of twentieth century politics, we would certainly find discrepancies in philosophy, leadership style, and in the challenges they each faced during their presidencies.

But of course, we would also find many commonalities between these men. As much as Roosevelt’s New Deal was considered radical, as was Reagan’s insistence on boldly calling the Soviet Union an evil empire, or the suspension of habeas corpus under the Lincoln administration controversial, these men shared in their ability to refuse compromise of their core principals.

As children, we’re taught to excel in all areas of life, whether it be sports or academics. At the workplace, we value the well being of our associates, but know that our own accomplishments are paramount to the survival of our families. In our own personal lives, to compromise in our faithfulness to our wives or time spent with our children is shunned upon.

Concerning the smaller things in life, like deciding which restaurant to eat at or which movie to see, compromise is certainly appropriate. But who would argue the virtue in tolerating things like one of our children failing in school, a verbally abusive manager at work, or relating to politics, a law that we consider devoid of justice or morality.

Political moderation is arguably the most harmful of these examples, because as politics defines the government that controls us, the lives of entire nations are affected. In recent American politics, there is no greater example of this than in our current government. And if there is one lesson to be learned from the Bush Administration, it is that moderation produces failure.

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Ronald Reagan, A Time for Choosing

Posted by: Jason | July 25th, 2008 · 10:08 AM

Every conservative, and every American for that matter, should be familiar with perhaps one of the greatest speeches in the history of this country. On October 27, 1964, on the eve of the presidential election, Ronald Reagan gave his first major political speech, A Time for Choosing, supporting Barry Goldwater as a candidate for president.

Goldwater’s quest ended later that year, as he fell in defeat to Lyndon Johnson who became the 36th president of the United States. But this speech put Reagan on the map as a serious political thinker, later propelling him to win his first election as California governor in 1966.

To say that this speech changed my life is an understatement. It allowed me to understand Ronald Reagan as not just a good man, but one of our greatest of American presidents. This speech literally brought me to tears when I first heard it, because never before have I ever heard a man argue Conservatism in a more articulate and honest way.

I chose to post only a 4 minute segment of this speech, my favorite 4 minutes. The reason I did this was because of the particular part’s relevancy to today. Reagan argues here that through pacifism and not strength, do we reach the real path to war. This is a message that is just as true in 2007, as it was in 1964.

It is important for conservatives, as well as liberals, to read this post, and watch this clip.

Watch the clip here

Text of full speech

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Scriptural Literalism as a Cause for Islamic Terrorism: A Short Dissent

Posted by: Ion | July 24th, 2008 · 8:43 PM

Ordinarily, citing one of Karen Armstrong’s devotional and haphazard apologias for Islamic Fundamentalism in your introduction, is not a good way to win me over to your essay. However Mahmood Sanglay did manage to keep my interest in his fine editorial for The Brunei Times.

The Armstrong argument selected by Sanglay, is her view that a propensity toward a literalist reading of religious texts is the locus of all violent religious extremism. It doesn’t take much contemplation of the world’s religious texts to recognize that this is fundamentally unsound as a universalist precept.

For a common example, reading the The Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount found in the Gospel of Matthew as written, is not going to persuade you to become a suicide bomber. When Jesus says “Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy” that can only be read to advocate things such as euthanasia of the weak or murder to liberate the soul from heresy, when reading it as metaphor, not literally. Or if you prefer, a literal reading the Pancasila of the Buddha (not Sukarno’s), is unlikely to produce the monastic warriors of the Shaolin. A more liberal interpretation certainly can though.

Thus exactly the opposite of what Armstrong and Sanglay separately propose cannot produce violent extremism, clearly does and has. Indeed in many if not most religions, a literal reading of scriptures is likely to be far more pacific than one that is open to more casual and ambiguous interpretation. “Choose what you wish and make of it what you will” is rarely a recipe for judicious outcomes in the broader practice of moral and religious codes.

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No Excuses for Iran: Responding to Joshua Foust (Part I)

Posted by: Ion | September 29th, 2007 · 2:21 PM

(photo: Department of Defense)

I noticed two days ago that Joshua Foust wasn’t very pleased with my criticism of his apologia for Iranian actions in Afghanistan. Good. The bad sort of apologist would have considered my remarks highly complimentary, those of merely mislaid judgment would have been gravely offended, as he is.

Unfortunately, despite a justified offense, he doesn’t appear to have relinquished his views and thus our work is not yet done. To recap, Joshua has argued that Iran serves no strategic purposes in aiding the Taliban and that evidence to the contrary found in Afghanistan (Iranian military explosives, etc) is manufactured, or misattributed by NATO to Iran to stimulate “war fever.” This is utterly false and foolhardy as I shall demonstrate herein.

But before I begin dealing with this, I should apologize to Joshua for just now getting round to responding. After reading his lengthy defense on Wednesday, it was clear it would require an equally lengthy response by me and as you can see, it did. That of course had “deal with it over the weekend” written all over it. So here we are. It’ll be a long post, but hopefully a fun one. If nothing else, Joshua’s attempted defense of himself is certainly entertaining.

Now, it begins:

Lee at postpolitical is under the impression that I am Iranian, or that I carry water for that regime, or in some way defend them. I don’t really understand why he would think that, but I also don’t like him spreading patent falsehoods about my beliefs and intentions, so let’s set the record straight, shall we?
(The Conjecturer)

As stated, I’m under impression that Joshua excused Iranian actions. Or I should say Iranian inactions, as he would have it. Not only did he submit that the Iranians were not aiding the Taliban despite evidence to the contrary, he argued that they could not aid them. To accomplish this, he volunteered for them in their absence, a little rationale which serves to completely exculpate them from not just blame, but any possible blame. Said he:

I mean, the Iranians have NO reason to try to destabilize a friendly government in Kabul to benefit a terrorist group they almost went to war with.
(A Secondhand Conjecture)

This is enormously worse than merely saying the evidence is insufficient to draw conclusions and we should err on the side of trusting Iranian intentions (a passive defense), or that failing that, the Iranians had plenty of good reasons for having those weapons in Afghanistan (an active defense). As you can see, Joshua goes far beyond either of these two tacks and counterfactually argues that evidence not only doesn’t exist, but cannot exist, as there is “NO reason,” no motive, for it ever existing to begin with.

I should say that I’m not of the mind that this comprehensive of an apology was his intention, as I shall make clear below. But let’s face it, if you wanted to sit down and deliberately devise a rationale which would totally absolve Iran of any current or future culpability in Afghanistan, no matter what evidence has been or will be uncovered, you would soon end up with something approximating Joshua’s argument.

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The Miscalculations of the Myopic

Posted by: Ion | September 22nd, 2007 · 9:31 PM

(photo: USMC)

Since we’re plinking the Iranian apologists today, the latest from Joshua Foust at ASHC:

NATO keeps insisting it’s finding Iranian arms and saying it’s government policy, I keep wondering why they don’t think it’s the drug lords along the open border. I mean, the Iranians have NO reason to try to destabilize a friendly government in Kabul to benefit a terrorist group they almost went to war with. Right? Would they miscalculate that badly—like Americans?
(A Secondhand Conjecture)

Even a blind Persian pacificst might be persuaded to agree that the army of their worst enemy, sitting atop the primary northeastern invasion routes to the Persian plateau, is unwelcome. There are certain obvious incentives for preoccupying and eventually evicting that presence.

As to whether Iranian supply of Taliban insurgents represents a miscalculation, I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be funny, given that he’s alluding quite obviously to Iraq. In that country, Iran has been supplying the Taliban’s southern equivalents for years now and has suffered no meaningful consequences for their effort from anyone (and quite a few successes). Is Afghanistan so suddenly sacrosanct? Of course not. They’re shipping weapons to the place as we speak and Joshua & Co. are already on hand to excuse and dismiss them, as they did previously in Iraq.

Worse, it’s a shell game without a hidden coin. If the quality and quantity of captured materials ever manages to meet Josh’s threshold for blame of Iran (his criteria for blaming US forces is significantly less stringent we should note in passing), does he expect us to believe he’d become an advocate of retaliatory action, when he’s precluded that previously over the Iranian supply of the Iraqi insurgency, for identical purposes?

As for that last part about past Iranian hostility to the Taliban, evidently Joshua wants an inflexible world. The Taliban’s primary ally in that period was the Pakistani state, now the overtly sworn enemy of it. Perhaps not for Joshua, but you’ll notice things do change with strategic circumstances. The catalyst for the Pakistani change of heart, is the same motor animating Iranian sympathy in reverse: The American army on their borders.

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Getting Away with Murder, Iranian Style

Posted by: Ion | · 5:26 PM

(photo: Headquarters Marine Corps)

It was once said that regional stability in the Middle East was impossible as long as Saddam Hussein was in power in Iraq. For me, given events, this was manifestly true. Faced with the situation we acted and acted decisively. Yet as nettlesome as Iraq under the Baath was, since its fall, Iran has proven to be a far more adept culprit in this area than Saddam ever dreamed of.

Fostering and fomenting serious shooting wars in at least three countries (Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen), flooding the region’s guerrillas with arms and materiel and using its geography to threaten and distort regional security in something that resembles a permanent prelude to war, Iran quite plainly makes our argument against Iraq look petty. Saddam’s prodigious efforts to infiltrate, manipulate and destabilize his neighbors were not in the Iranians league.

Yet for some reason –presumably out of fear of our domestic political situation– we’ve decided to meet their aggression against and subversion of regional security with equanimity, tolerance and at most, vague threats coupled to mild expressions of displeasure. The moment anyone in our military or government voices a thin hint of a will to arrest Iran’s efforts, attach meaningful consequences to their actions and confront the possibility of changing the political situation within that country, these men are immediately silenced, their strong words mitigated, their advice ignored.

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Truther Phantoms in Afghanistan

Posted by: Ion | September 18th, 2007 · 5:12 PM

(photo: Patrick)

No one has ever accused 911 deniers of wisdom (excluding themselves of course). Here’s a fine case in point for why:

“Foreign policy? Nothing you’re going to find in a newspaper or anything like that but between 1989 and 1992, we decided to give Osama Bin Laden $20 billion to fight the Russians in Afghanistan….”
(ScrewLooseChange)

I don’t need to say it and you needn’t hear it, but I do say it only because there’s some Truther reading the above and thinking “right on!” The Soviet Union announced its withdrawal from Afghanistan on July 20, 1987 and the last troops departed on February 15, 1989. In 1992 the Soviet Union didn’t even exist, much less was it to be fought in Afghanistan.

Perhaps the only motive for 911 deniers’ habit for inventing history, is that they’ve never bothered to read any. Me say pick betta hobby.