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The leadership on the Left often takes a position so absurd, so preposterous, that it cannot be defended, and repeats it as many times as possible, until, oddly enough, the rank-and-file on the Left starts to believe it. A perfect example is the statement that the United States acted unilaterally in Iraq. (Check here for debunking of this in detail).
This post will debunk another equally goofy statement. I love this one: “By killing terrorists, we are only creating more terrorists.”
Prior to slamming this into the ground like spiking a football in the endzone, I will quote a recent post from the Iraqi weblog, Iraq at a Glance:
I watched a documentary movie on AlArabiya channel called Madraseh Deeniyeh, it means: a religious school, these types of schools are widespread in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and some on the borders between those countries.
The movie showed the lives of the pupils of this Islamic school, in the beginning, everything was fine, showing how life is so peaceful, and how those kids learn by heart the Koran for 2.5 years even when they do not understand a single word cause its written in Arabic so they learn it as it is, after those years the teachers begin to explain the meanings of the Koran to make them understand what Islam is.
One of those fierce looking teachers of course with unkempt beard talked about the system of these schools, and showed the reporter some of the parks while the pupils were playing volleyball with each other.
The teacher said: we learn those kids the morals and ethics of Islam, how to respect the people, we are studying the Koran, and learn it by heart, the pupils here are so happy and proud of their future as theyll grow as good men
Till now, I asked myself: so what?..whats wrong with this system, since it is an ordinary school, and does not hurt anyone, let them learn what they want to learn, but without harmful outcomes..
Pretty good so far. They’re teaching the kids to be happy and to grow up to be good men. But—the documentary continues:
But I knew that theres something after this nice introduction.
The movie went on, and I watched some scary scenes, those kids were sitting and reading the Koran loudly and hysterically with rapid forward and backward moves and above this, the teacher was holding something like a small piece of a hose and was beating them while they were reading the Koran frantically!
And here the black face was shown up.
The reporter asked one of the pupils about his life in this school, and the kid said that they are there from the morning till late evening, they dont do anything but reading and studying the Koran (according to their teachers way) for years.
Say what now? They whip the kids and make them hysterical, and this goes on for years? The kids are permitted to do nothing else, year after year?
And what’s the outcome of this?
Future troubles began to be clear half an hour from the beginning of this movie.
The kids were talking about the Jihad and how they are ready to be one of AlMujahideen, their parents were so happy with their courageous and strong boys, and that they would get AlJannah (the paradise) sooner or later.
Then, the manager of this school and some also bearded guests came by (obviously the big leaders) and started to talk in front of a crowd of teachers and boys explaining how the United States want to spoil their youth and destroy Islam, how they came to Afghanistan to destroy and make an end to Islam and how they want to control the Islamic world and many other thoughts, and then began to shout and scream: God bless our great leader Osama bin Laden, God bless our great leader Mullah Omar Death to America..Death to America and her collaborators and the crowd replied in a louder and scary voice the same great words of their supervisors!
That’s life for these kids in the famous madrassas.
And there you go.
The terrorists aren’t currently raising their kids to be loving, hopeful, productive members of society. They’re raising them to be killers. They’re raising them to hate us and our “collaborators” and to seek our “death”.
You can’t create more terrorists by killing terrorists, because all their kids are trained from early childhood to be terrorists already, right now.
However—by killing the terrorists—we can save future generations of children from being raised in this sadistic manner.
Q.E.D.—that which was to be demonstrated has been proven.
#1Great comment, Jeff. Thanks for posting it.
...the vast number of madrassas are also in Saudi Arabia, a country with whom we are allied, and they had little or no influence in secular Iraq before the war. Now we have essentially the same there. Our war has created terrorists.
Yes, the Saudis are financing the madrassas. Do you have a link regarding the number of madrassas in Iraq, or on an increase in the number of madrassas in Iraq? It sounds unlikely that there could, in the past year, have sprung up schools where Iraqis are sending their children to be indoctrinated in such things.
Furthermore, key members of Blair's Labor party and Berlusconi's party in Italy, both governments that are our strongest allies have said that the war has made terrorism worse.
Liberals say all kinds of things without information to back them up. The leaders repeat it until the rank and file on the Left think they believe it; and the rank and file trust that their leaders know their stuff. However, as I have noted, there are no facts to back up many of these positions.
But maybe then democracy in Iraq (ther are already democracies in Muslim countries like Turkey and Indonesia) will ultimately win the hearts and minds of the terrorists so that they will put their arms down and embrace the West.
I agree.
#3Regarding whether we are winning or losing the war on terrorism, I have heard facts tossed around carelessly on both sides. However, we got to examine them, evaluate them, but in these politicized times, it is becoming increasingly difficult to come up with hard evidence to make a good assessment. The President's supporters are quick to claim victory; his opponents are quick to acknowledge defeat. Honestly, trying to say we are winning or losing the war at this juncture is like predicting the score of the game in the first quarter.
Currently, many news articles seem to equate Kerry's policies on Iraq with Bush's. While both provided incredibly banal responses on Iraq in their debates, I think we may be able to read between the lines. While Bush ambiguously claims he will stay not a day more than is necessary in Iraq, I think he is there for the long haul. Last spring he commented that he had selected 14 "enduring" military bases. This could increase the resistance against our occupation, but it could provide us with the firepower to put it down as well. The presence will also compromise the transparency with our relations with the Iraqi government, but may give us the influence to put the right people in the right place.
Kerry on the other hand, claims he will begin a 4 year withdrawal sometime in the first 6 months of his administration. This may provide the transparency to calm some of the Shiite insurgents who are fighting primarily against our continued occupation, but it may do little to squelch the Sunni insurgency, who have everything to lose in the new government. His openness to international alliances won't provide anything in Iraq, but it could help create a more popular based international front making the terrorists the demon, rather than ourselves. The downside is the marriage could contrain our the offensive firepower if conflicts arise in other regions.
However, we got to make a decision on which we think the war should go
#4As is common when right-wingers present liberal arguments in order to show how wrong they are, you have misrepresented the liberal argument. No one claims that we shouldn't kill terrorists because "killing terrorists creates terrorists." Obviously, we must kill terrorists. Instead the liberal argument is this: Killing a Muslim turns even his (or her) moderate family members into anti-American extremists. And these people, especially the unemployed ones, are willing fodder for terrorists organizations. Therefore, we should avoid killing ordinary Muslims who simply don't like people invading their country. We can do this by not invading their country.
Your "killing terrorists creates more terrorists" statement suggests that you are saying that all Muslims are terrorists. If so, why are we "liberating" nations of terrorists?
#5Drew, thanks for your comment.
As is common when right-wingers present liberal arguments in order to show how wrong they are, you have misrepresented the liberal argument.
When you say "the" liberal argument, it appears to presume that there is only one such argument on this subject. There are several, including the one you describe. I have described another one. It does not appear to me that I have represented it inaccurately. Here are two quotes making the argument as I presented it.
From a blog reader's comment:
So we killed some suicide bombers? We have fulfilled their purpose as you have said, but then, what do we do when we realize that killing only creates more of them? We have to think about the fact that we can never kill terrorists faster than we create more terrorists (by killing terrorists) because killing them is the way in which we create them.
From a Cornell Review report on a debate at Cornell:
Each side was given an opportunity to question the other and provide a rebuttal. The members of Turn Left provided most of the left's rebuttal. They attacked the right, by asking 'how can you claim victory when there is increased terrorism?' Because the US has neglected ideology Arab public opinion and needs, the use of force to kill terrorists justifies their struggle and creates more young terrorists.
These quotes show that I have accurately represented one argument of the Left on this subject.
Turning now to the argument you present:
Killing a Muslim turns even his (or her) moderate family members into anti-American extremists. And these people, especially the unemployed ones, are willing fodder for terrorists organizations.
The US has worked very hard to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible, as I discuss here.
The documentary film VOICES OF IRAQ shows that many Iraqis are grateful to America for freeing them from oppression, terror and tyranny. (Click here to see my post on that film.) Additionally, 75% of Iraqis want a democracy.
Your "killing terrorists creates more terrorists" statement suggests that you are saying that all Muslims are terrorists.
I did not make the statement that "killing terrorists creates more terrorists". I debunked it.
#6Lately I have read a lot of american political blogs, and my humble meaning is that what seems to be apparent from my Norwegian point of wiew (which is a Norwegian political scientists wiew) is that you fail to realise that number of muslims hating america is increasing every day.
Of course America has the right to kill anyone who poses a threat to them, and I supported both the Afghanistan and Iraki invasion, Norway with its humble army contributes with small detachments in both theaters of war. The taliban and Baathist dictatorships where terrible and its great that we have chased them.
What seems to be obvious with american military operations is that they are very good at winning the war but terrible at winning peace.
How come more americans soldiers have died after the war was declared won?
Because the feeling of gratitude for beeing liberated from Saddams regime has been replaced by beeing occupied by a foreign country.
One point that I would like to highlight is the situation in the Israel-Palestine conflict and how it is perceived in different parts of the world.
I have lived in America for one year. During that year, I watched american news channels every day, and not once did I see a report on innocent civilians palestinians getting murdered by the israelli army, palestinans kids getting killed by israelian snipers, yet it happens almost very day. This is what is beeing showed to the arabic public by arabic tv channels. They see the conflict only as a conflict were Israellis, being backed by Americans, oppress a helpless muslim sivilian population. And the numbers rarely shown in western media support their claim: for every israelli killed in the conflict there are 25 palestinians dead. Alle this makes their anger grow, and more and more young arabs are willing to turn themself into suicide bombers, or join terrorist organisations like al-quaida and raise hell with the western world.
What I however saw everyday on american news was, innocents israelli sivilians getting blown to peaces by suicide bombers, and palestinians celebratings this and burning american flags on the streets.
It is obvious that both parties , american and arabic media, are biased, and show only the part of the conflict that makes their case stronger.
I think the situation would be much better if the americans and arabs were shown the whole story, that would in my opinion make people realise that both sides are misled and need to reach a agrement to stop this bloodbath, because the Israel-Palestine conflict is the main reason why so many muslims are despising america.
I think that even for a right-winger it is obvious that the terrorist threat is only increasing, while the right to defend oneself is obvious against a threat, the path that is beeing taken, doesn't solve anything. We need to solve the terrorist issue on one side, while improving relations with the muslim world, so that muslim terrorists become marginalised and disliked by moderate muslims instead of beeing seen as martyrs.
The modell that The brits used to reach a peace agreement with the IRA, could be a good example to follow.
Finally in trying to solve this issue, I think it is important to realise that both liberals and rightwingers have the same goal- decrasing the threats against America, there is no point in chastising the other part, but it is rather more important to find a solution togheter and to realising that both sides have good points.
#7Henrik, thanks for the comment.
...you fail to realise that number of muslims hating america is increasing every day.
Is there documentation available to support this? The documentary "Voices of Iraq" presents evidence of the reverse.
...for every israelli killed in the conflict there are 25 palestinians dead.
Can you provide a link to document this?
That was a funny article that made me giggle a few times. However, it failed to mention that the vast number of madrassas are also in Saudi Arabia, a country with whom we are allied, and they had little or no influence in secular Iraq before the war. Now we have essentially the same there. Our war has created terrorists.
Furthermore, key members of Blair's Labor party and Berlusconi's party in Italy, both governments that are our strongest allies have said that the war has made terrorism worse. Not to mention the general sentiment voiced around the rest of the world. Polls in Arab countries need hardly be consulted. A recent poll in our allied country, Jordan, showed 96% of the population against the policies of the Bush govt. Other Arab countries show similar anger. Do you mean to tell me there is no relationship to anti US animosity and terrorism?
Before you call me liberal, I voted for Bush Sr., and many conservatives have blasted the Bush plan, including Brent Scowcroft, the National Security Advisor under Bush Sr. There is good argument that our unilateralist policies (this word was used by Scowcroft too) are creating more terrorists. But maybe then democracy in Iraq (ther are already democracies in Muslim countries like Turkey and Indonesia) will ultimately win the hearts and minds of the terrorists so that they will put their arms down and embrace the West. Fairy tales may really be true!