It just goes to show...

...the truth of the US right whinge.

The world-famous neo-neocon has, with the assistance of such wizards of technology as the old wasp (also known as Mr X and other appelations legal and otherwise) and friends, limited the right of free speech to only those who agree, confirm and perpetuate the "party line". I have seen it before from the likes of Mr Republican aka NoOne - charming gent that he is - about 5 or 6 years ago.


I, among many others I suspect, have been banned from posting comment at her site.

Well, when you see comment such as that which follows, who could give a stuff?

"Modeling Appropriate Behavior" will only go so far. the West has been doing this for centuries vis a vis Islam and it hasn't worked. How can anyone expect it to work now?

In confronting the Soviet Bloc during the cold war, NATO came up with the strategy of Combined Arms to make up for numerical inferiority.

And the portions of the West who still possess the will to resist Islamofascism will have to come up with a strategy for this struggle as well.

The opposition believes that in "not fearing death" they take away our strongest tool, deterrence, and force us into a corner. In characterizing the use of standoff weapons as "non proportional", "cowardly" or contrary to some illusionary "international Law" hope to take away the military advantage.

By forcing the West into playing the hand of the "Calculus of Death" they hope to achieve goals that they can't win militarily and they count on demographics to win the "Long War".

What they fail to see is that they are forcing Attrition Warfare on the West. They hope by asymmetrical attrition to break the will to resist. From the point of view of the West, It will be reverse attrition in that the US will not use superior numbers, the usual "attriting", but superior weapons systems. And, while we are developing more precision munitions, our most effective systems are area weapons and the most effective of all are the most fearsome of all.

If the West every "screws its courage to the sticking place" with the US anchoring it, the results could be very bad indeed.
senescentwasp | 08.21.06 - 1:34 pm | #

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You could always just move the state of Israel to Florida.

If that seems crazy to you, you have some inkling of the arab grievance.
Anonymous | 08.21.06 - 1:53 pm | #

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Whenever I hear the word "grievance" I cringe. "Arab grievance" then...
Oh
Zeno | 08.21.06 - 2:08 pm | #

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Words and expressions that should be abolished under penalty of death:

grievances
root causes
cycle of violence
quagmire
land for peace
religion of peace
disproportional reaction
violence only begets violence
militants
"supposed" suicide bombers
youths
Asians
peace in our time
Zeno | 08.21.06 - 2:13 pm | #

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Oh, I meant "youths" and "Asians", of course.
Zeno | 08.21.06 - 2:14 pm | #

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Anonymous at 8:21;
did you not read Neo's post, as usual? It is not a "grievance", it is a full blown psychosis. Even if the Jews abandoned Israel, Islam would find something else to "grieve" about.

It is perfectly obvious now to anyone but an ideologue or the willfully unseeing that this whole "grievance" industry is a sham and a cover for the struggle of Islam against the non-Islamic world.

Dumb comments such as yours give you a continuing reason to remain anonymous.
Senescent Wasp | 08.21.06 - 2:17 pm | #

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CHOP
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Zeno makes the point that Iranians are not Arabs. It is also true, I think, that the majority of Jews and all Arabs are racially similar, i.e. Semites. The factor that separates them is religion; Judaism against Islam. Moslems kill in the name of their god but they do not kill only Jews, they kill other infidels; Islam against Christianity. The Jews seem not to want to kill Christians although some Christians are brought up to hate Jews.

If Moslems persist in killing peoples of the religions different from their own and necessarily doing it for religious reasons, then those who are attacked must ultimately declare war on Islam as a whole. No collateral damage in a declared war, just dead enemies.
George Warburton | 08.21.06 - 4:55 pm | #

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One of the problems with what we are allowed to do in this type of conflict is that the line between civilian and combatant isn't very clear.

I'm not just talking the uniformed vs ununiformed stuff, but is the banker that funnels millions into Hizbolla a valid target? IMO he is WAY more valuable a target that people launching rockets - yet he is off limits for specific targeting as a civilian.

The samething goes for Iran and Syria being the puppet masters for groups like Hizbolla. Treat them like they are - we do that in organised crime here. The crime boss is just as guilty as the guy that pulled the trigger, yet in this case there are excuse after excuse as to why we shouldn't.

We are going about it the hardest way you can. We are allowing the enemy to pick what, when, where, how, and whom we fight. It doesn't take a brilliant tactician to realise that is a recipie for failure. The only saving grace we have is that we are so much more powerful than them that we can sustain the loss and still win.

I also think our enemies greed and drive will eventually go far enough that enough people will decide to ignore the anti-war crowd (I think a great many of them will never be swayed no matter what).
strcpy | 08.21.06 - 5:02 pm | #

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CHOP
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WW3 has already begun but has taken place so far with the enemy using a technique and operating at a level at which the Western world cannot respond. Only Great Britain, Australia, Israel and the US have a significant constituency(of which this blog is a part)which perceive the reality. All the rest are captured by the anti-American/anti-Jew currents that sweep the banks of world-wide public opinion.

It has become more important to tweak the noses of the Jews and the Americans than to take steps for survival. To experience the giddy, self-righteous thrill of seeing those you envy and hate coming to harm or being shamed. Always time to take care of those pesky terrorists later after a bit of fun watching the US and the Jews get their just desserts. And of course there are counterparts, strong and influential, within the borders of the US and Israel.

Right now in Israel the supporters of the home-grown Israeli anti-war crowd are evidently beginning to comprehend certain realities. Several thousand rockets can do that. Getting one-sided, rigged and staged coverage from the MSM can also convince. The anti-war folks in the US are not yet at that threshold of consciousness. Many lives might be saved by taking strong actions now but their imaginations are not yet up to the task.

I don’t think the enemy wants to pull off a truly large-scale action in the West. The enemy walks a fine line: Kill just enough to keep anti-war crowd uneasy and wanting to mollify but not so much that pro-war elements could take vigorous reaction. The embassy take-over, the London and Madrid bombings, 9/11, Mogadishu, the barracks in Lebanon, all the relatively low-grade murder that has taken place to date, to our clever enemy the West’s reaction to all these were like a chemist’s litmus. As long as Iran doesn’t mount an invasion of the US Iran knows they have nothing to worry about. Iran and Syria are now seeing how far they can go with Israel. They are finding out that they can wage war on Israel as long as they use their proxy terrorist militias. For now they must be content with thousands; time for tens of thousands, or millions, after the West has been rendered helpless.

Soon Iran will have a nuclear weapon. Once obtained it will give them the leverage to raise oil prices; the Saudis, who have resisted so far, would have to go along. The Saudis currently kill a lot of terrorists but that would end, with the Saudi rulers accommodating the terrorists or more likely overthrown with the help of Iran. Once Iran could use the economic option(raising the price of oil), the nukes would need to be used as a threat only to their neighbors. The West could easily be manipulated with the oil, playing Western countries and others like China off one another because the oil is absolutely necessary for their economies. The beginning of the Great Caliphate.


grackle | 08.21.06 - 6:28 pm | #

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About Israeli "peace activists", the less is said the better. They care only about Israeli lives, not about Lebanese or Palestinian lives.

Peace Now and others in the Israeli "peace camp", suffer from a severely blinkered vision. You might want to take a look at the article by Yitzhak Laor (who lives in Tel Aviv) in the current _London Review of Books_ (LRB):

"In Israel there is still no proper history of our acts in Lebanon. Israelis in the peace camp used to carry posters with the figure '680' on them – the number of Israelis who died during the 1982 invasion. Six hundred and eighty Israeli soldiers. How many members of that once sizeable peace camp protested about the tens of thousands of Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian casualties? Isn't the failure of the peace camp a result of its inability to speak about the cheapness of Arab blood?"

-- Yitzhak Laor in London Review of Books (click the link below):
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n16/lao...16/ laor01_.html

~~~~~~~~
Richard | 08.21.06 - 8:56 pm | #

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grackle wrote: I don’t think the enemy wants to pull off a truly large-scale action in the West. The enemy walks a fine line: Kill just enough to keep anti-war crowd uneasy and wanting to mollify but not so much that pro-war elements could take vigorous reaction. The embassy take-over, the London and Madrid bombings, 9/11, Mogadishu, the barracks in Lebanon, all the relatively low-grade murder that has taken place to date, to our clever enemy the West’s reaction to all these were like a chemist’s litmus.

grackle, the fallacy in what you said consists in this: you seem to think that there is ONE mastermind somehow co-ordinating all these attacks and carefully determining/modulating their intensity. However, all the evidence so far indicates that many (most) of these attacks are carried out by separate groups acting on their own. Also, the Lebanese militants are Shia and are completely distinct from the Sunni al-Qaeda, and seem to have very different agendas and goals.
Charlemagne | 08.21.06 - 9:19 pm | #

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"About Israeli "peace activists", the less is said the better. They care only about Israeli lives, not about Lebanese or Palestinian lives."

Oh, for the love of God, grow up.
harry | 08.21.06 - 9:56 pm | #

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grackle, the fallacy in what you said consists in this: you seem to think that there is ONE mastermind somehow co-ordinating all these attacks and carefully determining/modulating their intensity.

A “mastermind” isn’t necessary. The enemy in WW2 had no “mastermind” and this new enemy is no different.

However, all the evidence so far indicates that many (most) of these attacks are carried out by separate groups acting on their own.

“Separate groups” perhaps. But “acting on their own”? None of the terrorist groups would be much of a problem if they were “acting on their own.” If they were acting on their own instead of being used by clever Islamofascist nations to wage war by proxy, they could be easily countered. These are not gangs like the Mafia.

Also, the Lebanese militants are Shia and are completely distinct from the Sunni al-Qaeda, and seem to have very different agendas and goals.

Here again, “completely distinct” perhaps to another Muslim but “very different agendas and goals”? The agenda is always the same - they all want to terrorize. They all want to kill us, which should be the only significant goal to a Westerner. They all want to wipe out Israel, which I think may be kind of an important similarity if you are an Israeli.


grackle | 08.21.06 - 10:12 pm | #

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"A “mastermind” isn’t necessary. The enemy in WW2 had no “mastermind” and this new enemy is no different."

Hitler, Tojo, Mussolini - ring any bells? They were the masterminds for the Axis during WWII.

Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin - Any bells ringing, yet? These guys were the masterminds for the Allies during WWII.

They were mostly political, though. How 'bout militarily? Eisenhower, MacArthur, Montgomery, Bradley, Nimitz, Rommel, Yamamoto are just some of the military masterminds of WWII that come quickly to mind. There are so many more. However, all of the military masterminds answered to their civilian masters.

Charlemagne is far more correct than most folks think. There is no central authority in Islam except the god (al'lah.) The Koran is the word of the god and Mo'profit is his mouthpiece.

Mo'profit supplied a blueprint for Islamic warfare. Al'Qaida and Laden established a functional modern doctrine of Islamic asymmetrical warfare.

With the internet and the wide disperssion of terror information, open source terrorism is the strategy du jour. Anyone can be a terrorist today, if they are willing to put in the time. And no terrorist need answer to any civilian mastermind; they all answer only to the god.

Until the west comes to the realization that the ideology of suicidal Islam cannot be fought by traditional rules, and finds our Custer, Patton, Rommel, Grant, Sherman, or Attila, soldier masterminds willing to fight beyond the rules, the best we can hope for is dhimmitude.
Indigo Red | Homepage | 08.22.06 - 12:07 am | #

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Cluster bombs.
troutsky | Homepage | 08.22.06 - 12:22 am | #

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To deal with a situation like this, you have to go back to first principles.

What is it the enemy wants? That's easy, they want the destruction of Israel. But what is it the they want more than the destruction of Israel? You have to find that out, and make it clear that if the war continues, then they lose the thing they value more than Israel's destruction -- AND Israel survives anyway.

Some suggestions:

The Geneva Convention sets forth rules of warfare between civilized combatants. Israel needs to publicly break all those rules, quite conspicuously. In particular, those who don't wear uniforms and bear arms openly need to be executed, on the spot, by hanging with swine leather.

Arabs, and Muslims generally, want respect. This must be denied them. 'You want to surrender? Good. You can start by crawling forward with your face in the dirt, and begging for mercy. But wait a moment, we have to set up the camera first.'

The leaders talk tough, but don't risk their lives. Israel must go after them. I explicitely include the governments of Syria and Iraq.

No more smart bombs against rocket launchers. Carpet bomb any site where rockets were launched from. Use fuel-air explosives and napalm. 'What, you say the village was full of women and children, and we killed 90% of them, and the rest are in a hospital. We're sorry. Please tell us which hospital, and we'll kill everyone there too.'

The Muslims want their paradise. So, issue the troops hollow point bullets with lard inside the hollow points -- 'Not only are we going to kill you, we are going to defile you first.'

Israeli intelligence needs to find those imams preaching the destruction of Israel, and put smart bombs through the doors of the mosque in the middle of the sermons. Bomb one filled with pig urine or lard or pork, to contaminate everyone and everything in there. Bomb two to kill everyone inside. And THEN, after everyone in the mosque is dead, carpet bomb or shell the neighborhood on general principles. 'Yes we know they were probably all non-combatants. That's WHY we killed them.'

The Muslims of southern Lebanon value their land. Ruin it. I'm talking building a small nuclear power plant and a pipe line, pumping sea water uphill, then evaporating the water, so that what is left is too salt to grow anything.

Arabs value their families and clans. Start making it a point to find a fighter's entire clan, and kill all of them, or sell them into slavery.

Also needs t
Stephen M. St. Onge | Homepage | 08.22.06 - 12:38 am | #

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Hmm, somehow the end of the post got chopped off. As I was saying:

As for the international news media, they should be treated as enemy combatants too. 'You want to live? Good. Crawl forward etc.'

Most importantly, no peace talks, truces, any let up except with those who start, by announcing publicly, in Arabic, that Israel has the right to exist in its present borders, before Israel even acknowledges their existance.

Hez'bollah and its ilk do not grant Israel a moral right to live. Israel must deny the same to them. It's time for Israel to play by the Hama rules.
Stephen M. St. Onge | Homepage | 08.22.06 - 12:42 am | #

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WWII has absolutely nothing to do with anything. "the pullout from Lebanon six years ago ,and the more recent withdrawal from Gaza ,led to a moment of clarity.." Please,does anyone here think starving Gaza while continuing to build settlements on the West Bank was an honest attempt at creating a lasting peace with Palestinians? While building a Wall which separated villages, while maintaining checkpoints, while destroying homes etc etc ? Ludicrous , and yet every one of you will insist Israel did everything it could.( not you Richard) Shebba Farms? Golan Heights? Moment of clarity all right.Try reading something by Rabbi Michael Lerner, or try Sabbeel, a Christian Palestinian organization before you are totally irrelevant.
troutsky | Homepage | 08.22.06 - 12:57 am | #

Pass over the derision poured on the anonymous contributor. (By the way Waspie, it is not me and you know it). It will be interesting to see how much longer troutsky lasts as a commenter (that is not me either Waspie, and you know it).

No, the fascinating thing about all of the outpourings of frustrated rage and impotent rhetoric is its lack of originality.

For goodness sake, the opening gambit has to include a link to explain "Behaviour Modelling", which reference is then lost in the tirade of justifying the use of sophisticated weaponry in order to enforce the "will of the US".

We are given a list of terms the use of which should be punishable by death? We have the inevitable comparisons with WW2 and the "appeasement" of the 1930's, we even have declaration of WW3 yet.

We face a future (if we are to believe these people) of religious dominance by Islam, of the power of the mullah, of the removal of freedoms.

I read people such as neo-neocon, right, wing-nut, the Belmont Club and even all things beautiful and many of their blog-links not for the entertainment value (the right wingnut has that in spades) but so that I can try to get a handle on the other enemy.

There is a common thread that runs through all of those sites. It has little do do with politics or even truth. Read the anger. Read the frustration. Read the impotence.

For as much as Islam fundamentalism is an enemy of freedom, so too is the US right whinge. There is no real interest in freedom. Their only interest is in the imposition of their own beliefs upon the rest of the world. They are driven. They are driven not by what is right. The force is the common fear. The paranoia of difference. The psychosis that comes from not being able to understand, to comprehend difference. They demand uniformity - of thought, of belief, of action.

Exactly the same motivations as they accuse their enemy.