When the Apology is Longer Than The Crime...

...they ain't sorry.

The crime: 120 characters.

According to Patterico:

Fadlallah was a Holocaust denier who has justified suicide bombings and who “is believed to be responsible for the killing of 241 U.S. Marines during the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings,” according to the New York Times.

The apology: 747 words, emhapsises mine. With gems like:

It was an error of judgment for me to write such a simplistic comment and I'm sorry because it conveyed that I supported Fadlallah's life's work. That's not the case at all.

Life's work. Like terrorism and Jew hating?

I used the words "respect" and "sad" because to me as a Middle Eastern woman, Fadlallah took a contrarian and pioneering stand among Shia clerics on woman's rights. He called for the abolition of the tribal system of "honor killing." He called the practice primitive and non-productive. He warned Muslim men that abuse of women was against Islam.

He still supported things like, um, TERRORISM!

It goes on and on retelling mostly her encounters with him. She does say "Sayyed Fadlallah. Revered across borders yet designated a terrorist. Not the kind of life to be commenting about in a brief tweet. It's something I deeply regret." You didn't need to explain a terrorist to say sorry, Nasr. Just say "Sorry I lamented the death of an oppressor of Lebanon."

Or, if you actually care about Lebanon missy, you do what I did and say "YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

What Do Hollywood and Turkey Have in Common?

They're both awesome at creating publicity.

Notes on Israel

Sorry for the longness between meatier posts, but here one is.

First, the Israeli operation was well within the Jewish State's rights. The fleet of “activists” was not actually bringing supplies to Gaza, as their very oily press releases say. The boats were to break the Israeli blockade on Hamas-run Gaza. This is a national security issue and Israel had every right to intercept them before they penetrated Israeli waters.

Second, the “activists” were not exactly peaceful or caring of human rights, as shown by the Al-Jazzera report from the boats. These folks were chanting war cries and glorifying the terror campaign of the last 10 years against Israeli civilians. Peace activists don't glorify death and wish for death. Hell, they don't attack soldiers with iron rods and grab at their weapons, instigating a firefight. Peace activists annoy mid-day traffic or petition Russia to give up nukes. Word is that the Turkish group that sponsored the fleet has connections to terrorism. Peace, indeed.

Third, the so-called “international community” has proven itself to be anything but. The Arab cartel has hijacked the UN, once again, to pursue its anti-Israel agenda. The West is not helping it self by sucking at the Arab tit, either. France, England, Germany; they are all appeasing their large Muslim populations, specifically the loud and radical Islamist factions. They either are too blind or too corrupt to realize that the more ground they give to the radicals, the more the radicals will ask for. This does not bode well for Israel.

Overall, the raid, while just, has become just another nail in the coffin for Israel. When it does good or bad, right or wrong, the Islamists and their leftist allies will jump upon the little nation and bash it until it cries uncle. Israel, like it or not, is the only base of Western power in the Middle East. We have American bases and American allies, but Israel is the only place where Western culture and ideals thrive. Against it, from the Palestinians, from the Syrians, Jordanians, Iranians and Muslim Lebanese, is the rejection of Western culture and ideals. One can say that its because Israel is on stolen land (I bet you there's an Assyrian Christian petitioning the UN for Syria's return of his land) or because of its tactics or because of whatever reason the big brains in leftist-Islamist land can come up with. But at the core, the reason that Israel was invaded no less than 4 times during its first 30 years, was that it was not Arab, it was not Islamic: it was Western and Jewish. Because there has not been a regional war between Israel and any of the other powers for more than two decades, three decades if you exclude the Gulf War, people have forgotten or purposely dismissed Israel's history and the history of the Arab states that now claim the moral high ground over it. It makes it easier to justify their support of terrorism if they don't remember the War of Independence, the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War and every other skirmish and incursion by Israel's larger and stronger neighbors. Not to mention the anti-Semetic rheotric that has ruled the diplomacy debate since the beginning.

Strategically, the most important issue of all of this, we are slowly losing to Iran. Israel has lost Turkey, its only real Muslim ally, mostly through no fault of its own. Turkey has been slowly turning Islamist for years now and the sponsoring of a terrorist connected flotilla of weapon-wielding, firearm snatching supporters pretty much crossed the line between ally and rival. The leaders of Turkey and Iran have been working together for a while, the Brazil-Turkey nuclear plan to aid Iranian nuclear ambitions a fine and recent example. With the Western power base in the Middle East slipping and the Iranian/Islamist power base expanding, we are on a course towards regional war no matter what happens. Israel could accommodate up to its eyeballs and there'd be no handshakes between it and its newfound enemies. The Islamists smell the blood in the water and they know that without political and material support from the West, Israel will be vulnerable to attack. I believe that within a decade, if not sooner due to Iranian completion of a nuclear weapon and long-range ICBM (est. 2015), there will be an attempt by Syria, backed by Iranian missiles, planes, as well as Hezbullah from Lebanon, to knock Israel off the regional pedestal. This will happen if the West, most of all the United States, does not increase moral and material support for the beleaguered nation. It will be the largest strategic and moral defeat for America since the Vietnam War.

The anti-Israel left, of course, will not admit to the reality of the situation. It will not admit that Arab nations have been attacking and terrorizing Israel since its birth. They will not admit that the “aparthited wall” (real effing creative, guys) was built to stop sucide bombers from the West Bank... and TADA it has! They won't admit to Iranian sponsorship of Hamas. They won't admit to the egregious violations of human rights by Hamas against women, religious minorities and political enemies. They won't admit the glorification of terrorism by the Palestinian Authority, or its vast corruption going back to its founding with Arafat. They won't admit to pretty much anything that diverts from the narrative that Israel is the new NaziSouthAfricaChinaImperialJapan. Even with video evidence, Israeli solders with bullet wounds, found weapons and military equipment and the chanting of Islamic war cries, there are still papers and government condemning Israel for its unprovoked assault on “peace activists”.

Give me a break.

Israel needs our help. It needs moral backing against the mob of Islamists willing to kill. It needs help in keeping its military strong, modern and able to fend off any Iranian backed assault. It needs help to survive. Lest we forget that while our wars can be debated in length about their moral purity, Israel rarely has such a chance. Since its birth, Israel has fought to stay alive on its own soil. Something America hasn't done in over a century. Does this mean we should ignore real crimes? Absolutely not. Israel's constant use of captured terrorists as human shields is something that bugs me, among other things. It is not a perfect nation by a long shot.

But, at the end of the day, Israel, our longtime ally, deserves our help. It deserves our friendship. It deserves a chance to survive as it sees fit, not survive as knuckle-dragging religious bigots and hypocrites think its should exist, if at all.

The Truth About the Israeli Boat Raid

Don't let the MSM or the far left run this story. This video

and this report spell out what really happened.

Navy commandoes slid down to the vessel one by one, yet then the unexpected occurred: The passengers that awaited them on the deck pulled out bats, clubs, and slingshots with glass marbles, assaulting each soldier as he disembarked. The fighters were nabbed one by one and were beaten up badly, yet they attempted to fight back.

However, to their misfortune, they were only equipped with paintball rifles used to disperse minor protests, such as the ones held in Bilin. The paintballs obviously made no impression on the activists, who kept on beating the troops up and even attempted to wrest away their weapons.

One soldier who came to the aid of a comrade was captured by the rioters and sustained severe blows. The commandoes were equipped with handguns but were told they should only use them in the face of life-threatening situations. When they came down from the chopper, they kept on shouting to each other “don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” even though they sustained numerous blows.

Stick to Destroying the Constitution. Kay? Thanks.

Winner!

This hope [ending Afghan corruption] is delusional, as the remainder of the editorial makes clear (Karzai's most important political allies, as well as members of his family, are among the corrupt). No amount of jawboning is going to cure the systemic corruption that plagues the Afghan government. Building the rule of law, moreover, takes decades even under favorable circumstances.

But the greater error in this policy is that our military presence in Afghanistan is making the terrorism problem worse (see this essay), not better, because it inflames Islamic radicalism worldwide--including homegrown terrorism. (Meanwhile, Al Qaeda has other places to seek refuge and locate training camps.)

The author is correct about Afghan corruption, but he should stick to his legal wet dreams and not counter-terrorism.

The idea that we should stop fighting Islamist radicals because fighting them pisses of Islamic radicals is old, worn and comes from the festering bowels of far left ignorance. Islamist ideas aren't knee-jerk reactionary burps. It's a well thought out ideology born of the combination of anti-Americanism, anti-Western civilian and Islamic superiority. Sayyid Qutb, the father of modern Islamist terrorism, wrote volumes of theory and ideology. The goal? Islamic supremacy. Not the liberation of Palestine. Not the ending of American friendships with the Saudis. Not stopping Danish cartoons. Absolute and total supremacy of Islam. Some, like Hibz ut Tahir, try to do it politically. Others, like Al Qaeda, see themselves as the vanguard force of the new Islamic caliphate. Either way, being nice to the radicals won't stop them. They have goals, power structures, ideals; an entire state all planned out when they win. They hunger for power vacuums, they do not abhor them.

The greatest thing Al Qaeda could have is a base of operations as large as Afghanistan. Currently, Al Qaeda is trapped in the tribal areas of Pakistan with its leaders in hiding, not an ideal situation for the group. Before 9/11, they trained tens of thousands, financed themselves through drugs, had the protection of the Taliban and, by proxy, the protection of Pakistan. After 9/11, we captured major players in the group, forced them into a remote area of a new ally, tracked their calls, killed their leaders and constantly harassed them. Unless Al Qaeda gets a new country as a base (like Afghanistan for instance if we leave prematurely) they are stuck as moral support. The groups capable of attacks are stuck in their respective areas. Al Qaeda in Iraq was soundly defeated by the surge, but they are still a problem. Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb was formerly an Algerian Isalmist group that has plans of going global, but remain an Algerian problem for now. Al-Qaeda in Yemen has been the biggest problem of the last year. They armed and trained the infamous Christmas Day Pantybomber. All of these groups would just adore us if we left Afghanistan open to establishment of a central Al-Qaeda base.

Just like they adore the left-wing idiots that represent them in courts they had no right to be in.

ACLU Exposes CIA Agents, Left Silent

Remember when a Democratic hack exposed the identity of a CIA agent? Bush and Rove got blamed.

Where's the outcry now?

A team of CIA counterintelligence officials recently visited the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and concluded that CIA interrogators face the risk of exposure to al Qaeda through inmates' contacts with defense attorneys, according to U.S. officials.

The agency's "tiger team" of security specialists was dispatched as part of an ongoing investigation conducted jointly with the Justice Department into a program backed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The program, called the John Adams Project, has photographed covert CIA interrogators and shown the pictures to some of the five senior al Qaeda terrorists held there in an effort to identify them further.

Details of the review could not be learned. However, the CIA team came away from the review, conducted the week of March 14, "very concerned" that agency personnel have been put in danger by military rules allowing interaction between the five inmates and defense attorneys, according to an intelligence source close to the review.

The team also expressed concerns about the inmates' access to laptop computers in the past. Some of the inmates who are representing themselves in legal proceedings were granted laptop computers without Internet access. However, the officials fear that future unfavorable court rulings could provide the inmates with the capability of communicating outside the island prison.

Lawfare at its best.

Iranian Nuke Egghead Defects

Awesome.

An award-winning Iranian nuclear scientist, who disappeared last year under mysterious circumstances, has defected to the CIA and been resettled in the United States, according to people briefed on the operation by intelligence officials.

The officials were said to have termed the defection of the scientist, Shahram Amiri, "an intelligence coup" in the continuing CIA operation to spy on and undermine Iran's nuclear program.

A spokesperson for the CIA declined to comment. In its declassified annual report to Congress, the CIA said, "Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons though we do not know whether Tehran eventually will decide to produce nuclear weapons."

Fear, Politics and the War on Terror, Part 1: The Truth of “Torture”

Fear and War will be a three-part series showing how fear and politics, not idealism and morality, are the driving force behind those who oppose the covert operations of the War on Terror. Part I will show that the CIA interrogation program was not torture and describe how it saved lives. Part II will delve into the opposition to covert action by the anti-war crowd, and how their opposition is based on falsities. Part III will explain how and why covert action is needed to fight terrorism and how it is within our ideals to do so.

“Because when America strays from our values, it not only undermines the rule of law, it alienates us from our allies, it energizes our adversaries and it endangers our national security and the lives of our troops. So as Americans, we reject the false choice between our security and our ideals. "
- President Obama

Americans are idealistic people. Our Founders believed in the rule of law, even when it comes to a monarchy, as well as the well-known mantra of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When it comes to war, we Americans want to believe they are on the good side of history. We hold our soldiers to higher standards than others. We reflect on wars past and try to change the mistakes that brought us to crimes like Mai Lai and Abu Ghraib. We do our best to make sure we don't turn into the monsters that we are fighting. Alas, in the realities of war, we can't always stop bad things from happening. The best we can hope for that when crimes do occur, they are not systemic and are punished accordingly when they happen.

The problem with President Obama's words is that he is speaking about the so-called systemic “torture” done by the CIA terrorist interrogation program, not about the fractional percentage soldiers and contractors that've been convicted of crimes during the War on Terror. This “torture” is an interrogation program that disrupted several plots against the United States and has left its “victims” intact both physically and mentally. Far from the horrors of the Imperial Japanese, Nazis or North Vietnamese, in which those few who survived interrogation had scars, neurosis and missing limbs for proof, the CIA program's detractors only have the words of the terrorist themselves and they are not the most reliable of people. In fact, our “victims” are so undamaged by their ordeals that they are able to fully mount court cases competently with the help of their lawyers. Or, most grievously, in the case of those previously called to be tried by civilian courts (now a defunct venture), they are so damaged that they can threaten to turn the trial into a circus with advanced polemics.

The fact is the CIA terrorist interrogation program has not tortured anyone. In 2009, the International Red Cross leaked a report to the press that accused the CIA of busting the heads of detainees against hard walls with the help of a leash. These accusations came from the detainees themselves, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who said, after being asked about future attacks, “Soon, you will know.” Along with the so-called “torture memos” released by the Obama administration, the media ran wild with the story, accusing the CIA of bringing back the Spanish Inquisition and other inane comparisons. With all this negative press, some conservative publications like National Review were shocked at what became known as “walling”[1], asking their counter-terrorism friends if it was really true, and if so, how could we have let it get so bad.

The real story is that the “walling” as described by KSM and his cohorts is only a quarter-truth. “Walling”, as practiced by the CIA, meant that “detainees were placed with their backs to a "flexible false wall," designed to avoid inflicting painful injury. Their shoulder blades -- not head -- were the point of contact, and the "collar" was used not to give additional force to a blow, but further to protect the neck” [2]. The point of walling, just like the point of waterboarding, was to break the resistance of the detainee to interrogation, not to punish him. Once resistance was broken, debriefers, agents totally separate from interrogators, took over. These agents knew their subjects inside and out, terrorist experts called in to ask, analyze and verify what the detainees had to say.

The success of the interrogation program cannot be understated. After being given enhanced interrogation techniques, KSM spilled the beans on more than just attacks he had planned, he and others in the interrogation program “provided our first window into the operations of the terrorist network that had just attacked our country. They explained who al Qaeda's top leaders were, how they interacted, how they made decisions, how they moved money, deployed cells, communicated with their operatives, and planned terrorist attacks” [3]. Critics like Timothy Noah of Salon, who harp on the usefulness of KSM's information with no critical thinking (something I will expand upon in Part II) [4] totally miss the point. Even if there were no plots planned, KSM and his fellow detainees still gave us mountains of information on al Qaeda's command and control, financial network and tactics. Information that has led to countless other captured terrorists as well as the deaths of hundreds of high level al Qaeda members, including Osama bin Laden's son.

These are just few of the plethora of facts available to the public on the CIA interrogation program. President Obama's release of the “torture memos” gave the public a deeper insight into how we humanely treated, interrogated and questioned terror suspects, despite the obvious intention of the release of such sensitive information, which was to demonize those who authorized it: the Bush administration. In the repeatedly claimed false choice between our security and our ideals, President Obama chose a third, highly self-interested and devious option: politics.

Sources:

1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/15/AR2009031502724.html

2. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124018665408933455.html

3. Thiessen , Marc. Courting Disaster. Hardcover. 2009. p.101

4. http://www.slate.com/id/2216601/

Far Right Terrorists Stopped

Good work, FBI. Terrorists on the left or right, Christian or Muslim, must be stopped.

But I have to comment on this:

According to the indictment, Hutaree members view local, state and federal law enforcement authorities as the enemy and have been preparing to engage them in armed conflict.

Five bucks David "Localism is Fascism" Neiwert calls these religious anarchists fascists in the near future.

For these who don't know, Posse Comitatus was a group that claimed anything above the local government was illegitimate. One of Mr. Neiwert's attacks on Jonah Goldberg's timely book Liberal Fascism involved the anarchist group:

Beyond the Klan, completely missing from the pages of Goldberg’s book is any mention of the Silver Shirts, the American Nazi Party, the Posse Comitatus, the Aryan Nations, or the National Alliance — all of them openly fascist organizations

I didn't know Il Duce was a localist. That explains his centralized government and imperialism!

Major Blow to Taliban

Yes!

The seizure of the Afghan Taliban's top military leader in Pakistan represents a turning point in the U.S.-led war against the militants, U.S. officials and analysts said.

The arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar represents the most significant Taliban capture since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a senior Obama administration official said Tuesday.

Baradar has been a close associate of Osama bin Laden's and is seen as the No. 2 figure in the Afghan Taliban, behind Mullah Mohammed Omar.

Also on the case are And So It Goes In Shreveport and Report on Arrakis. As well as Legal Insurrection.

If true, this could be the biggest blow to the Taliban since the start of the war.

Left-Wing Terrorists Attack Radio Towers in Washington State

CNN:

The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) issued a statement saying opponents of the towers argue that "AM radio waves cause adverse health effects including a higher rate of cancer, harm to wildlife, and that the signals have been interfering with home phone and intercom lines."

"When all legal channels of opposition have been exhausted, concerned citizens have to take action into their own hands to protect life and the planet," Jason Crawford, a spokesman for the group, said in a news release.

Members of ELF have been sentenced for acts of domestic terrorism in the past.

Despite reports and news to the contrary, the most active terrorists in the last ten years have been leftist groups like the Earth Liberation Front, the Animal Liberation Front and various anarchist groups that planned to bomb the RNC as well as bombed military recruitment centers.

While we should not take our eye of violent groups of the right, it is no excuse to not crack down on known cells of ALF, ELF or any other anarchist group that plans to commit violence.

Not Surprising

"Had [President Bush's Warrantless Surveillance Program" been in place before the [9/11] attacks, hijackers Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi almost certainly would have been identified and located."

Don't Wet Your Pants, Shep

I was listenting to Fox News on my SIRIUS radio on my way to work and it seemed poor Shepard Smith was making a mess about how the DHS report on right-wing terrorism was correct in the light of the Holocaust Museum shooting. He didn't cite it by name, he kept using the words "report" and "reports". He went so far as to read kook emails about Obama's birth certificate to show the insanity of the far-right and how the DHS was correct. All this before they really knew the age and politics of the shooter.

Shep, I don't think the DHS talked about an elderly, mentally ill, racist World War II vet.

I despise kooks just as much as the next sane folk, but that DHS report was far from nuanced and wouldn't have done crap to stop this attack, considering the guy parked his car, walked up and started shooting. It wasn't like hung out in the Museum and whispered about Jew money and the Holocaust myth.

You Have The Right To Remain Silent... Oh Sh*t, Forget I Said That

Terrorists get Miranda rights Miranda is something that isn't even actually REQUIRED constitutionally for AMERICAN citizens.

A Comment on A Murder

The senseless murder of George Tiller has brought back the fear of right wing terrorism. Nary a hour went by after the he was killed before the Left throwing its arms up in outrage over the right wing's violent means and ignoble ends. They want to kill doctors and enslave women, some will say. They are fascists and want to eliminate liberals, David Neiwert will gleefully post, making sure to plug his new book on the subject of violent conservatives. With a single murder, the first murder of an abortionist in a decade, the Left will paint an entire conservative movement, the pro-life movement, with a brush dipped in the blood of a murder victim. A single death, with the help of a sensationalized media and well-trained political hounds, may take down a movement that's spent the past ten years trying to remove the stain of fringe individuals committing evil acts.

And yet, as cold as it is to do so, I think about the past ten years of the far left, I seem to remember those years starting with the destruction of downtown Seattle by anarchists and other anti-capitalist protesters. I remember ten years of terror attacks by the Animal Libertarian Front and the Earth Liberation Front on property and people, including setting bombs under cars (which some went off, burning their targets), kidnapping and torturing scientists as well as harassing families. I remember the anti-capitalists in Miami, those arrested in New York at the 2004 RNC, those arrested in 2008 with plans to bomb the RNC in St. Paul, and so on. Does the mainstream Right bring up ALF and ELF and try to paint Al Gore with its horrific acts of violence? I've never seen it.

The murderer of Mr. Tiller should be brought to justice and given the harshest of sentences. Not because he sullied the pro-life movement, something I don't have any stake in, but because it's the law and what a moral society demands. Already, many famous pro-lifers like Kathleen-Jean Lopez of National Review have called for this evil man's head, despite the conservative fringes playing up the murder as a righteous act.

To make the murderer out to be hero would be an immoral thing to do. To make any murderer out to be a hero is immoral. Just ask the Left about Bill Ayers. A man who committed violence and killed in the name of his beliefs. He was sent to jail and eventually regretted his actions. He was condemned far and wide by the mainstream Left and nary a left-wing politician had any connections with the man.

Oh, wait...

Yes, There Are Still Terrorists

4 Accused of Bombing Plot at Bronx Synagogues

The hits (and lack of) just keep on coming today!

Oh, So NOW They're Terrorists

Democrats Block Move to Close Guantanamo

The Last Stand of a True Horror

A deep blow to those protesters who illegally shut down the Gardiner Expressway last week:

The Sri Lankan president has declared a military victory over the Tamil Tigers after 26 years of bloody civil war.

Speaking on a visit to Jordan, Mahinda Rajapakse said he would return home to a nation totally free from the "barbaric acts" of the rebel group.

However, senior officials told the BBC fighting rages on in a tiny area of the north-east where the Tigers' leadership is said to be cornered.

More than 70,000 people have died in the bitter war for a Tamil homeland.

[...]

There are now concerns that the Tamil Tiger leadership is preparing for a last stand, our correspondent says.

The Tigers' leadership has said repeatedly that they will not surrender, and are thought to be keeping thousands of civilians as human shields.

There have also been reports that the Tigers are preparing a mass suicide in the face of a military defeat.

In their war against Sri Lanka, the Tigers killed two world leaders, tens of thousands of civilians, used child soldiers and perfected the use of individual suicide bombing before the Arab and Islamist groups even tried it.

UPDATE: It's offical. The Tigers are defeated. May Sri Lanka now live free and without fear.

Denouncing Terrorist Group Is A Hate Crime In Canada

Un-effing-believable. I knew there was a good reason I left!

While thousands of Tamil-Canadians protested at Queen's Park on Wednesday, a separate group of demonstrators, speaking out against the Tamil Tigers, gathered on a pedestrian overpass across the Don Valley Parkway.

Approximately 40 people stood on the overpass, just north of Gerrard, with signs saying "Protect Canada, stop the Tamil Tigers."

The sentiment of these protesters was also seen earlier as a plane, carrying the same message, flew over the Tamil demonstrators at Queen's Park.

Police will be investigating the airplane message as a possible hate crime.

From the Canadian blog The Strong Conservative:

To say "protect Canada, stop the Tamil Tigers" is entirely consistent with Canadian values. And even if it wasn't, and indeed there was hate, there should be no reason why someone can't spout all the hate they want so long as they do not advocate violence. That is the key point. Are we so afraid of making a counter argument to stupidity and ignorance that we must criminalize certain thoughts? Are we that intellectually lazy?

Meanwhile the "protesters" are doing this: "Signs reading "LTTE is our sole representatives" and "LTTE fights for Tamils' right in Sri Lanka," referring to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam – widely recognized as a terrorist organization – are prominent across the front lawn of the legislature. Protesters chanted: "What do we want? Permanent cease-fire. When do we want it? Now."

Are they being investigated too?

When people talk about the decline of Western civilization, they aren't talking about rampant commercialism or George W. Bush, but our ability to blind ourselves to natural truths because we use unnatural ideas like the "all cultures are equal, except for western culture" multicultural theory so many Western states have adopted.

When told that "one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter", a friend of mine said "Yeah, but he's still a terrorist."

Not in Canada, he ain't.

Political Moralities: Another Trek Through The Layman Left's “Torture” Thinking and Arguing

Here's a quandary. How do you wrap your head around a moral absolutist argument by those who also believe in moral/cultural relativism? How do you find the theoretical synthesis between having an impenetrable morality all the while believing that other moralities/cultures are just as legitimate, even if they violate the absolute moral code?

Want to know the answer?

The answer is that you don't.

Politics as Life

There are millions of my fellow political junkies out there who eat, sleep, live and breathe the goings on of home and the world. We read the news, the opinion sections, the blogs; we watch the news, listen to the talk hosts, agree or disagree over and over. Some of us are more informed than others. Some of us are more passionate than others. The key thing is that the amount of passion you have for politics has no bearing on the depth of your knowledge and the accuracy of your points.

This is not a phenomenon of the left or the right. Both sides have those who are informed, those who are passionate, some who are more of one than the other and some who are equally both. Of the both category, on the right, you have thinkers like Thomas Sowell, Rich Lowry, George Will and Will Wilkinson. On the left, you have such names as Ezra Klien, Matt Yglesias, Bill Scher and Fareed Zakaria. There is plenty of knowledgeable and passionate people on all sides, all with views that make sense, even if you don't agree with them.

The problem arrives with the appearance of the passionately uninformed politico. In a debate on torture on Blogginghead.tv between John McWhorter and Glenn Loury, two distinguished professors, the comments were flooded with post after post on how the Bush administration should be prosecuted for the so-called crimes these people accuse them of. Some commenters went so far as to say both men were dead wrong on the subject because said commenters knew a priori that what the United States did was wrong, and by such astounding argument any other talk on it, or any other path of thinking other than conviction, was null and void.

I'm all for an actual, intelligent, back and forth battle of wits. I think I'm right when I debate, of course (who wouldn't think that?), but I've been corrected by others and I have corrected others countless times. Such is the way you learn and grow your intellectual mind. But it's these people who take politics as a lifestyle, not just a hobby or an interest, that come to be the people who get the deluge of links from eager beaver college students in their term papers when they call President Bush a war criminal and a fascist. It's these people who get vast followings by questioning the authenticity of birth certificates or claiming FEMA is about to round us all up in the event Obama turns out to be a Muslim Martian. These people are the ones that fan the flames of unintelligent debate. And just because it'll piss off the uninformed left, I'm going to focus on their contradictory moralities and totally ignore the right.

Torture as National Moral Rot

The argument I hear constantly from the passionate moralists is that giving a green light to torture, with specific focus on waterboarding, would erode America's moral standing and national moral core. Whether the other methods like temperature fluctuation and sleep deprivation count as well depends on the moralist you're talking to. This argument crosses so many different ideas and cherry picks from them only to make an inane point that has no bearing on the real world.

To start off with torture, there is no conclusive proof of actual state-sanctioned torture. Waterboarding is still being debated by Barack Obama and Barack Obama, let alone the rest of the government. Even in foreign policy hawk circles there is plenty of room for discussion. All this while the other methods are not even on the table except by the most hardened of activists. So to sing the praises of Spanish judges or demagogues is so premature as to be embryonic.

Moving on, the green light to this so-called torture program was given years ago by not only the slew of public policy experts in the government, but by Congressional leaders. Congress is the voice of the people and the people at that time wanted to prevent another 9/11 at all costs. Luckily, for captured terrorists, at all costs in America does not mean beheading, gang rape, burying and stoning, or any other disgusting and horrific methods used by radical Islamists. At all costs, in American-speak, means within reason. What the “torture” memos describe is not the legal gymnastics to do whatever we need, but to build a legal ceiling to prevent torture from occurring while doing its best to not hamper the goal of the entire program: gathering intelligence. Basically, to do the best one can with terrorists who've been expertly trained in interrogation without it actually being torture.

And now we get to the icing on this mudcake: the idea of a collective national morality affected by the collective agreement to institutionalize torture. First and foremost, the idea of a collective national morality is fascistic. Such talk was used by every Progressive from Teddy to Kennedy. It was used by the Nazis, the Italian Fascists and many others. A belief in a collective national morality dismisses the idea that individuals are able to determine their own morality because of some kind of collective psychological slavery to the will of the mob. It also dismisses the checks and balances of our republican system in which the collective can (and has been) reserved in its fury by the executive or judicial branches, as was the case in the Civil War and its aftermath. The nation could be calling for the extermination of all redheaded stepchildren, but it'd still go against a warehouse full of constitutional protections and it would be struck down, if the judges actually did their job. As for our moral standing, other parts of the world have opposing moral/cultural codes which naturally conflict with ours, and so our moral standing with these nations probably isn't exactly high during good times, let alone the times that they can exploit as a war against their values when, in fact, we do nothing of the sort.

So, what we have from this paraphrase summary of the layman left's argument against torture, is this:

The United States, through its representative legislature, green lighted methods that have yet to be determined as torture, but if the people, now in discussion over the issue, do not demand the prosecution of the past administration for crimes that have yet to be conclusively ruled on as crimes, then the collective morality of the nation, a concept both fascistic and questionable, will be affected by the people's choice and negatively affect the nation in ways we do not know nor in ways we can hypothesize except that it won't be good for our moral standings with nations whose views conflict with ours naturally and who exploit every chance they get to denounce us.

Compelling stuff.

Arguing To Win

These politically passionate folk, armed with their air-tight argument against the use of harsh interrogation, strut their stuff on their blogs, on message boards, in coffee shops and on the street. They proclaim the immorality of what President Bush and his administration did. They attack others as fascists and monsters. There is no way someone who is moral can support these methods. No way in hell. Anything else deserves a stern response, preferably snarky or emotional. And this is where the passionately blind lose sight of their goal, if they had a goal to being with.

Their mistake is to believe they can change the mind of someone in a political debate that cumulatively lasts less than an enema (though sometimes the enema may be preferable depending on who you're debating). You're not arguing to win, you're arguing to argue. I don't slide over to my conservative group on Facebook to turn the doe-eyed liberal into a cranky, shotgun toting conservative. I go on there to be motivated to come up with new and interesting ways to prove a point. What began as a “But I'm right” morphed into a “Of course, Alternet is a unbiased source!” to “Eh... Wikipedia? Are you sure?”. The one thing I never did was actually win an argument. The one thing I did do early on was explode due to my opponent's odd opposition of changing his entire code of values. Who knew a conservative didn't want to give up US national sovereignty to foreign powers?

Spy vs Spy: Leftist Theory Fights Itself

“Politics as life”-ers have an emotional attachment to their views and that view's superiority that it puts them in the predicament of contradicting past or current views. For example, the political left's defense of not-so-covert agent Valarie Plame (found in D.C.'s Who's Who next to the name of her ambassador husband while “undercover”) while promoting the outing of CIA interrogators. The “torture” debate puts this front and center when it pits liberal/leftist moral absolutism against their equally vigorous support for multiculturalism, which is a product of moral relativism. Of course, not everyone arguing against the use of waterboarding or other methods are moral relativists, but I'm not arguing against everyone who has an objection to “torture”, but those who have an objection to “torture” that contradicts their other standing views.

Moral relativism has a bad rap because of its association with liberal/leftist social theory. From the left, moral relativism holds that the world has a plurality of moralities and those moralities are equal in comparison as they relate to the individual's belief and passing judgment would be ignorant. Basically, the “one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter” argument. Thing is, if you scratch the egalitarianism from moral relativism, you actually have a very basic and accurate theory on the reality of moral views in the world. There are different moralities, that is a fact, but the key thing for any intelligent person (liberal or conservative) is to realize is that not every single morality can be equal with the other. This is impossible because morality is subjective, and no matter how much a liberal may try to respect every single morality that shows itself on campus there's going to be some view that'll outrage them (other than a conservative point of view, of course).

Now, how exactly does someone who believes in an equality of moralities turn around and proclaim that “torture” is immoral?

They want to win. The argument they use is partisan, not intellectual. They want to be objectively right, not just subjectively right, and that involves doing all you can to appear on the winning side of history (and that's only if history exonerates their view). Those who take to the streets, to the blogs and to the boards in anger are not trying to find out what exactly is torture in our complicated world, or add to the discourse on the morality of using torture, if what we've done is indeed torture. They want the honor of being proclaimed victorious over an issue that is mostly subjective and therefore can never be really determined on objective grounds.

So, if you ever encounter one of these moralists in the middle of proclamation of moral absolutes, ask “Who says?”. If they are anything like the person I described, you should be able to hear the explosion. Just make sure you're under something when it happens.