Richard lashes back

Thanks to Richard for posting his comments below. I'm responding in the main forum because I think these are worthwhile topics to debate, but to be fair, this is further along in the thread and it may be more worthwhile to check the full text out.

RB: We're fortunate to belong to a civilization large enough and prosperous enough that we don't have to engage in 'total war' when faced with a murderous lunatic fringe. But, the Wahhabi's are very much engaged in a 'total war', and they are prepared to attack us in our hospitals, our schools, our trains and our offices in order to wipe us out.

AR: There is a fundamental difference between 'war' and 'terrorism' and there is an even greater gulf between 'total war' and 'terrorism'. They are orders of magnitude apart and shouldn't be conflated.
I will take your point that they are willing to commit atrocities we would never countenance as being true, but I fear that Bush is making that less so by opposing reasonable humane standards like the Army's previous field manual - which is coincidentally the essential part of the standards that John McCain is currently trying to get reasserted by the Senate despite a promised POTUS veto.

RB: Do you suppose that just because you draw a geographical distinction between American's arresting guerrila fighters in Iraq, and what is and isn't appropriate there and here, the Wahhabi's are going to share your point of view? Unfortunately the nastiness of war means you have to play at the level of the lowest common denominator... hockey's the same way, isn't it?


AR: 'War' does not mean playing at the lowest common denominator. Even if our water supplies were poisoned, or mustard gas was used against troops in Afghanistan, I would not surrender the high ground and endorse those tactics by our troops. Those tactics, like torture, nuclear weapons, viral, bio, and gene warfare, are beyond what can ever be endorsed.

To answer at least one of your questions directly, 'No', I don't think the Wahabi's would share my point of view. But they already don't share my point of view about anything else. They are religious fundamentalists predisposed to violence - in kind no different than those lunatics who shot abortion doctors, cowardly fringe dwellers fueled by hate from, and cloaked from guilt by, their religious movement.

RB: Moreover, while it is possible for a single sociopath to construct and execute a pipe-bomb, reality and experience tell us that this is not what we are up against. There are communities of people, developing the psychological rhetoric, designing the weapons, purchasing the materials, executing the deeds, and taking credit for them. They don't take place in isolation. people know about them, before they happen, and choose to do nothing to warn society. They also know when the next wave of attacks are coming, and again, choose to do nothing.

AR: You are verging on paranoia - which of course, is the point of terrorism, isn't it? Here are a couple of things to think about;

Three people planned the Oklahoma bombing that killed 168 people.
The FLQ had only 20-25 members guilty of conspiracy, and only 4 guilty of the murders.
Between 4-7 men planned and executed the 7/7 bombings
Just two men were charged in the Air India bombings

The actual number of people then in your 'communities' as you see them, need not be extremely large to garner a great deal of attention from their deeds. There are 52,600 Muslims in greater Vancouver alone. Only a few need to be Wahabists for their to be a potential for terrorism here - do you reccomend we round them up Japanese internment camp style? Deport them? Fear them?
I will not endorse that line of thought at all. 'They' are still 'Us'.

Increasing security measures, o reducing our rights will also prove to be ineffective. We simply cannot protect all of our vulnerable spots. Chechen rebels attacked schools, a Palestinian woman walked into a hospital and then to the maternity ward strapped with explosives, etc. So terrorism will not be stopped by stooping to their level, because their madness knows no limits at all, and it need only one sufficiently motivated person to be succesful.

Nor can we 'declare war' on it, no more than the US can coherently 'declare war on drugs' - it is nonsensical. We can however, attempt to police terrorism, which is the proper way to think about terrorists, as criminals. It does not require any special powers of authority than police currently have, nor does it require that we lose our humanity by engaging in depravity when we capture and interrogate them.

RB: If you do not believe it is appropriate to wage war against those who seek to undermine and destroy liberal western civilisation, do you subsequently not believe it is appropriate to use the means available to us through law to prosecute and prevent attacks against us in our cities? Do you defend their right to remain silent in the face of another attack killing 50 or so people?

AR: Let me be clear, I think it is very appropriate that we make the hunt for terrorists by police and military forces a priority - I have had the same position since 9-11, find those people responsible, and make the fuckers pay. But that doesn't mean I 'declare war' on them. It means they broke laws and killed people and they deserve to be brought to justice like any other violent criminals.

As for the 'communities' remaining silent in the face of the bombings, I share your concern that there appears to be less vigorous denial of these atrocities than seems apporpriate, but I also take note that Imams recently gathered to present an indictment against the violence and terrorism specifically. So there is at least an attempt by Islamic communities to formally renounce it.

RB: Well, perhaps it's just an issue between them and their maker. It's not our place to seek to bring about justice, surely, they'll face it when they eventually die.

AR: Since I don't share your belief that anyone has a maker to meet in the after-life, I'll settle for hunting them down and tossing them into a dark hole for the rest of their lives, or killing them in their apprehension.

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RB: As for Bush and Education, once again, Bush didn't say anything about science class, he said: "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought, You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."

AR: You are parsing him too kindly, the POTUS has just endorsed the teaching of theology in public schools - and you defend him. For shame.

RB: Liberal education requires exposure to all kinds of ideas in order to let people draw their own conclusions.

AR: Of course it does, but education is not and should not be church indoctrination. ID theory is a specifically Christian notion. It is about 'a' designer, not 'designers'. Dembski himself refers to the 'designer' as the 'Big G'. Nor is there anything to the theory other than the empty undemonstrable suggestion that there is 'design' in nature. It is therefore no more a relevant part of the educational curriculum (save perhaps in a fiction class) than astrology would be.

RB: Now, I'll admit Bush is playing semantic word games, and what he's implying is different from what he's saying. But, ultimately, you can only hold what he said against him, and frankly I suspect you'd play the exact same game, were you running the world, and owed your power in part to a group that endorsed some crazy ideas. (For example, progressive Christian leftists include a lot of people who are pro-public health, pro-welfare state, but anti-abortion. If you needed to accomodate them, I'm sure your rhetoric would include statements like "the need to ensure that every American has the opportunity to live a full and rewarding life.")

AR: I'll pass on commenting to the speculation of what I might say if I owed my status as POTUS to Christian leftists, since the notion is so absurd as to not warrant it. But I agree, Bush is playing word games - and he has been since we caught him silently high-fiving the right-wing nut crowd with his biblical nuggets in stump speaches, and the chilling 'Dred Scott /Roe V Wade' analogy.