Flypaper

Doug at Political Pistachio wrote an incoherent mess to rebutt some points I made about his lunacy. I'll parse it, I hope, tomorrow. Soo... not in the mood to do it today.

The problem with responding to his loon-speak is that he throws everything but the kitchen sink into a single post. It's simple language, using the slogans and propaganda of the pro-war right. Each of the talking points deserve it's own discussion. However, I'll touch on one point now. This idea that we "fight them there so we don't fight them here".

Nuance is not a strong point for the simple thinkers on the right. They like to lable things, and quantify them in such a way as they can consider the "enemy" in the same terms as "enemies" have been defined in the past, and reinforced in entertainment. The television show 24 is not very realistic. Hate to burst your bubble. You can't think of the "jihadists" in the same terms as the Germans and Japanese of WWII.

From the Times yesterday;

The Iraq war, which for years has drawn militants from around the world, is beginning to export fighters and the tactics they have honed in the insurgency to neighboring countries and beyond, according to American, European and Middle Eastern government officials and interviews with militant leaders in Lebanon, Jordan and London.

Some of the fighters appear to be leaving as part of the waves of Iraqi refugees crossing borders that government officials acknowledge they struggle to control. But others are dispatched from Iraq for specific missions. In the Jordanian airport plot, the authorities said they believed that the bomb maker flew from Baghdad to prepare the explosives for Mr. Darsi.

Estimating the number of fighters leaving Iraq is at least as difficult as it has been to count foreign militants joining the insurgency. But early signs of an exodus are clear, and officials in the United States and the Middle East say the potential for veterans of the insurgency to spread far beyond Iraq is significant.

Maj. Gen. Achraf Rifi, general director of the Internal Security Forces in Lebanon, said in a recent interview that "if any country says it is safe from this, they are putting their heads in the sand."

ex-Pro War realist Sullivan says the obvious;

The president's trope has been that we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here. It's a notion dependent on the absurd idea that a disparate, lateral organization of religious fanatics is somehow unable to do both. The truth appears to be: we are training them over there so they can come and murder us over here. We are honing their guerrilla skills by night, have provided them training by day, have either given them arms ourselves, or allowed Iran and Syria to send munitions. The icing on the cake is that the chaotic occupation has allowed some terrorists to skim the oil export industry for the money to keep the killing going indefinitely, and that the maintenance of an occupation of the Muslim country provides an over-arching motive for a new wave of terror. And so all we're doing is waiting to see when this wave of Bush-created terror comes ashore.

When can war make us "less safe"? The Iraq war is a perfect example.

Doug will tell you that we simply need to kill more Muslims. In fact, he calls it a "war on Islam". Knowing that killing a billion people is probably not a persuable strategy for the United States, and knowing that the current strategy does the exact opposite of "making us safe" - what's the solution?

The answer - as it's always been, is liberal, secular, democracy. It is completely impossible to resolve the threat of Islamic terrorism without reducing the influence of Islam in government. You sure as hell don't accomplish that by increasing Christianity in western democracies. You don't accomplish that by invading and occupying Muslim nations - thereby giving them every propaganda tool they need.

They must have an incentive to want to adopt a modern, progressive, culture. Simply trying to kill them will not work, has not worked, and it's insanity to keep sacrificing American blood and treasure in a failed policy just hoping against hope that somehow if you kill enough people, they'll decided to completely change their ways.

And a somewhat related point. What is the right going to do when the "troops" start sounding exactly like the anti-war left? I posted some quotes below. There's been a slow but steady change of heart in even the most committed of American soldiers. As the Delta Captain says, they will always do their jobs and follow the chain of command, but what if you can't even win the "hearts and minds" of your own military? The administration has fucked this up so badly that it's impossible to expect the military to grind year after year through the muck without forming their own opinion.

The right has been calling us "anti-American", and "traitors". What are they going to say to the soldiers who are saying exactly the same as us?

What a mess.