perfidy

I guess I'll just keep trying. More comments have shown up on Winds of Change; the thread's disappeared into the past, so I think I'll just respond here.

Paul Stinchfield:

You say the phrase "elimination of the other" didn't come out of a book, but "just came out that way." Well, I never said it came out of a book. After all, leftists not only write that way, they also talk that way, and that particular rhetorical trope has been around long enough to thoroughly pervade the discourse of the left from professors of "cultural studies" to, I suppose, people who just like "Rage Against the Machine." And that phrase means genocide. Genocide motivated by racism, intolerance, bigotry and paranoia. That's what it means now, and that's what it meant when it was coined. However you picked it up, you surely knew its meaning and nonetheless used it to mischaracterize Trent's opinions. You cannot use such language and then credibly claim lack of responsibility for such libel. I gave you an opportunity to apologize and repudiate your inexcusable language, but you instead chose to weasel out.

Whatever. I'm 36 years old. I've spent pretty much every one of my adult years either building software companies or reading technical material that supported the building of software companies. Recently I've taken an interest in politics, and I take roughly the same approach. Unlike you, I have not had time to take classes, go to marches, attend seminars, subscribe to journals, and correspond. So when I tell you I haven't heard the phrase before, believe it. When I tell you I just wrote it that way, believe it. If you want to continue to make things up and accuse me of them, be my guest.

If I intend to say that Trent is pro-genocide, I'll just say it, exactly like that.

I simply observe the following: People will generally tell each other what they all want to hear. You see it on the left, and you see it on the right. The comfort level at Winds of Change is pretty high for hardliners on the right. You get to say what you like, there's plenty of comfortable agreement to go around. Sorry for disrupting the mutual back-slapping.

Trent writes:

Why should *ANYONE* take you seriously?

From the top:

1) Chemicals are not a threat to prepared troops in the field or emergency responders in hazmat moon suits. Unprepared civilians and emergency first responders are as vulnerable as the Kurds were to Saddam's genocidal gas attacks.

There have been a number of terrorist attack plans broken up in Europe that involved Muslim terrorist using lethal chemicals in enclosed spaces like the European parliment.

2) Libya's "turning states evidence" -- after we caught them red handed with the goods -- showed we have a world wide illict nuclear weapons component bazaar. One that would never have come to light without both 9/11/2001 and the war in Iraq.

3) As for biological weapons being "theoretical," tell that to Washington D.C. postal workers and the mail staffers at the networks and Senator Daschle's office.

Or in the first case, the relatives of dead postal workers.

The anthrax that hit Daschle's office was the product of an industrial weapons laboritory, not some "lone gunman" mad scientist. However much the FBI chants that to a gullible press corps.

4) David Kay was on today's Fox News Sunday speaking today of the breakdown of Iraq's internal order, via corruption, that was turning it into a "WMD market phenomina" where buyers and sellers were meeting. That exact thing is my leading theory for the fall 2001 anthrax mailing attack. What we are seeing of the Pakistani connection to Libya's nukes may already be just that.

5) It does not matter what you believe about the Israeli-Palestinian situation. What matters is the Palestinians won't settle for less than a total victory which involves genocide of the male Jews of Israel and Dhimminitude for the women and children survivors.

That you are chanting about a "reasonably honorable solution" doesn't adress the facts on the ground. It shows you are operating from religious conviction and not reality.

The Palestinians have chosen evil of their own free will. Deal with it or be damned for it.

I thought we were talking about a survival war here. I am trying to qualify this clash of civilizations as a survival war.

1. Yes, it sucks to be on the receiving end of a chemical attack. Barring the secret construction of a massive Islamic air force, exactly how are these chemicals going to be delivered to US cities in quantities that justify the term survival war? Ground-based delivery won't do much; the stuff dissippates too quickly. Ricin attacks don't qualify for survival warfare.

2. You don't actually believe that only religious nutcases are trying to get access to nuclear materials, do you? Criminal elements will want them, as will purely political movements. There are quite a few states who want them as well. In other words, eliminating the threat from Islam doesn't begin to cover the bad guys. That means your definition of bad guys has to expand, and it has to include words like "criminals".

3. When I say theoretical, I mean this in the scientific sense: Accepted theory is that they are very dangerous, and I agree. I do not mean this in the sense that the dangers are not real. The anthrax letters are a ludicrous point on which to suspend the notion of a necessary clash between cultures that could kill millions. I feel bad that a nut job with lab access (or maybe a rogue operative somewhere) got access to some of this stuff. He killed several people, none of whom were his intended target. Meanwhile, four thousand people that month died in car accidents. Hundreds were killed in criminal acts all across the country. The anthrax letters were clearly a failure, succeeding only to the extent they were referred to as a true threat.

4. Basic science is what it is, and Iraq is not the only rogue state in the world. There is a great deal of nuclear expertise all around the world. What, exactly, was being bought and sold? Knowledge is a slippery thing; there was nothing special about Iraq in that regard. I expect that similar knowledge sales have been occurring around the world. For all the characterization as a "marketplace", it must have been a marketplace without any physical presence. Weapons were not being manufactured in Iraq and sold around the world.

5. It's nice that you think all Palestinians think this way. Let's say they do...my reaction is, so what. They can't achieve the goal, and sooner or later, they'll simply give up. Fix the economic circumstances and you'll watch support dry up for the Islamists very quickly. I do not believe that an insane variant of any religion can take complete hold when communications are relatively free. I am a rationalist; I believe that ultimately human beings will select that which leads to gain. Palestinian leaders have controlled too much of the agenda, and have maximized their own gain at the expense of the population, who have been forcefed propaganda for far too long.

If, on the other hand, all Palestinians do not think this way, we must support those who counter the radical threat. There are limits to this, of course -- if we are supporting a vanishingly small segment of the population, there's no point.

Signs are that Arafat's means of control (financial) are coming apart. Into this gap will come other leaders; Palestinian society will fracture. This is a good thing. With any luck we'll see the emergence of a counter-Islamic segment of the population. The problem with the Islamists is that they're organized and armed. Like a drug gang in Rio, they can terrorize the population to get their way. Of course I view all of radical Islam pretty much the same way; Palestine is not the only population subject to this cancer.

As far as religious conviction goes, I have none. I believe simply in an unknowable God, which makes all this religious fighting and horror seem completely ridiculous.