Debating a Leftist Who Refuses to Acknowledge the Obvious
A leftist responded to my comments here. Due to comment section limitations I’m responding in this posting.
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Your invokation [sic] of the war powers granted the president during war suggests that the War on Terror is, in fact, and actual war, fought in an acutal [sic] place against actual people. The war on terror is only an idea.
The war on Muslim terrorists is very real as is self-evident to most of humanity. Simply examine the many declarations of war they have made against us.
The enemy we’re dealing with is not going to be satisfied until we convert to Islam and repent for our “wicked” way of life.
What follows is a sampling of the enemy’s perspective…
From page 51 of the 9/11 commission report:
Bin Ladin’s grievance with the United States may have started in reaction to specific U.S. policies but it quickly became far deeper. To the second question, what America could do, al Qaeda’s answer was that America should abandon the Middle East, convert to Islam, and end the immorality and godlessness of its society and culture: “It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind.” If the United States did not comply, it would be at war with the Islamic nation, a nation that al Qaeda’s leaders said “desires death more than you desire life.”
I’m guessing the last part of the quote is a reference to the practice of abortion.
Here is a snippet of bin Laden’s letter to America:
(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.
(a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling’s, and trading with interest.
…
(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator.
I do not understand why so many leftists refuse to take the word of the enemy at face value when the enemy is so serious about their ideology that they are willing to die for it.
Thanks for the shout out. I’m so proud to be called a leftist. However, I must take exception to claim that I refuse to accept the obvious. While yes, I acknowledge that certain “Muslim terrorists” have declared war against America, I do not see how that means we’re at war. Who are we at war against? Anyone who threatens America? Anyone who says that our immoral ways justify the bad things that happen to us?
Just because bin Laden said we’d be at war with the Islamic nation doesn’t mean we are. To answer the threats by calling our response a war only legitimizes those who make the threats. And to call our response a war legitimizes bin Laden’s claim that the entire Muslim world thinks the same way he does. To call our response a war legitimizes those who respond as though we are at war–declaring war against terror legitimizes terror as a part of that war.
Or to take a different approach, how about an analogy. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Does that mean that Venezuela should go to war against Christian Fundamentalists?
I’ve more to say. I’ll get back to you.
Naveed Haq was an indigent. He stayed with a friend because he could not afford $400 to pay the rent. Who supplied the funds to buy two new guns for an estimated $1,500? Or do guns just show up for anybody ready to kill some Jews?
Sellinghishead,
We are at war with those who supported the 9/11 Muslim terrorists and the Muslim terrorists around the world who continue to commit abominable monstrosities in the name of Islam. You should read my reply to a moral relativist on profiling for more details.
Your refusal to take the existential threats from Muslim terrorists seriously is emblematic of the severe credibility problem Democrats have when it comes to our national security.
Your implicit presupposition that we should never answer threats because answering them legitimizes the threat-issuer is a recipe for self-annihilation. By your own reasoning we should not have responded to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor because it legitimized imperial Japan. Your position is not reasonable.
A non-trivial amount of Muslims around the world support bin Laden as you can see here and here. Furthermore, this article gives you an idea of the immense amount of Muslims who support violent jihad.
Ah, the old moral equivalence attempt. If I had a dollar for every time a Muslim apologist or leftist attempted this …
Surely you realize there is a difference between justifying an action via logical steps from a set of premises versus justifying an action where there are no logical steps to substantiate it from a different set of premises. Not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists that we are fighting in the war on terror (Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc) are Muslims. Furthermore, Muslims who commit murder to spread their religion are logically using Islam’s founding documents to do so:
Your comparison fails on at least these levels:
“Ah, the old moral equivalence attempt. If I had a dollar for every time a Muslim apologist or leftist attempted this …”
Too bad you don’t get the money when a conservative tries it.
One might take you for a moral relativist when making a comment like that.
On a more serious note
While we agree that there is a branch of Islam that is very militant, we disagree in our response. I believe that to respond to this branch of Islam by declaring war on it only legitimizes the sense of holy war. Further, to label the enemy as Islamic or Muslim alienates all those who practice the faith, when our goal should be to alienate terrorists from the other practitioners of the faith.
I appreciate your reasoned response to the analogy. I have some thoughts:
“purposefully murdering innocent women and children”
Is there a difference between deliberate an inadvertent murdering of innocent women and children? Does your criticism extend to any style of warfare, such as strategic bombing, that results in the deaths of innocent women and children?
“many Muslim nations provide support to the Muslim terrorists while our government did not heed Robertson’s calls”
I’d clarify the statement a bit, to say “many Muslim nations provide support to organizations whose members have committed terrorist acts.” However, our government has heeded the call of fundamentalists in the past and no doubt will do so again.
“Pat Robertson is not a terrorist”
Why not? He called for the unlawful murder of the head of state of another country? What is your definition of terrorist that doesn’t include what Robertson did? And if you try to make the claim that PR is not a terrorist because he only called for the assassination, but did not see it through, then we have a problem, because many of the terrorists you’d like us to be a war with haven’t done anything yet.
For the record, the Muslim community also condemns evil acts committed in its name. And our nation has sometimes used religion to make political decisions (e.g. stem cell research).
I don’t know how I went from being a leftist to being a democrat…I feel as though I’ve been downgraded. As for my being a Democrat, I am very troubled by Democratic opposition to giving Iraqi insurgents amnesty. To go down this road would be to ignore the difference between open armed conflict and the ideological conflict that is the war on terror. To not grant insurgents amnesty would make them criminals, just like the rest of the terrorists in the world; to consider the insurgents criminals would be to connect them with all other terrorists in the world, and to legitimize calling the entire thing a war on terror simply because one little part of it actually works like a real war.
I have no problem with bringing terrorists to justice, but we have to be very careful about how we define a terrorist, and if we’re going to treat the terrorists like criminals then we must follow the rules of law. And I have a problem with associating a religion with terrorism, as it encourages people to see every Muslim as a terrorist to be.
Sellinghishead,
Legitimate in whose eyes?
So you would rather we less accurately describe the terrorist.
Do you not see a difference between a death caused by a murder and the death caused by an accident?
My criticism extends to anyone whose primary target is innocent people. The reason I highlight Islamic terrorism is because its practitioners and their supporters are the enemy we are fighting in this global war.
Your statement serves to clarify in one area and obfuscate in another. I think the following is even more precise than both of our statements: “many Muslim nations provide support to organizations whose members have committed terrorist acts in the name of Islam”
I detect that you are uneasy about labeling the enemy accurately. Perhaps it is caused by those years of multiculturalist indoctrination.
C’mon are you serious? I can’t tell if you are joking so I’ll assume you are being serious. There is no evidence that Pat Robertson had gone beyond saying these words out of frustration. Furthermore, he apologized for his remarks:Is it right to call for assassination? No, and I apologize for that statement. I spoke in frustration that we should accommodate the man who thinks the
U.S. is out to kill him.
There is no comparison between Robertson’s which were widely criticized and he quickly retracted compared to the types of statements uttered by Muslims on a daily basis. Here is a sampling of the members of the “Religion of Peace”:
* Egyptian Cleric Sheik Muhammad Nassar Tells a Group of Children about Child Martyrdom in the Early Days of Islam
Egyptian Cleric Sheik Muhammad Sharaf Al-Din on a Children Show: The Jews Are the People of Treachery, Betrayal, and Vileness
* 3 and a half year old girl: Jews Are Apes and Pigs
* Syrian Deputy Minister of Religious Endowment Muhammad ‘Abd Al-Sattar Calls for Jihad and Says Jews Are the Descendants of Apes and Pigs
For these and other vile examples Muslim hatred visit The Middle East Media Research Institute site.
“PR is not a terrorist”? Of course public relations is not a terrorist. What is your point? There is a distinction between Muslim terrorists and those who support them. If the support comes in the form of PR then it is entirely appropriate to fight them in the battlefield of ideas (e.g., by shedding light on their bankrupt worldview and by exposing their deceitful techniques).
Are you familiar with the Islamic supported deception techniques of taqiyya and kitman? No one has been able to point out to me that there has been a fatwa (i.e., a Muslim religious edict) against Osama bin Laden (OBL) for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. See this posting where I addressed the fact that I did not see a single fatwa against OBL for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In light of the fatwas issued for pointing out inconvenient truths about Mohamed’s life the fact that the Muslim leaders to my knowledge have not issued a fatwa against OBL for the 9/11 terrorist attacks is nothing short of stunning.
There is nothing wrong with justifying political positions through your religious views. Once you start murdering and committing terrorist acts in the name of Islam or any other religion then we have a problem.
The Global War on Muslim Terrorists and their Supporters (WGMTS) has many fronts: military, ideological, economic, etc. We need to do a better job at fighting the ideological battle through open debate, shedding light on the Truth, and PR to name a few techniques.
They already are connected to the other terrorists. They are connected by the same ideology whereby they justify their acts in the name of Islam.
The Muslim terrorist has demonstrably created the association by justifying their acts on Islamic grounds. What you seem to be advocating is that we not be as precise as we can be when describing the enemy since some people may conclude that there are Muslims who are more easily persuaded to become terrorists since the terrorists use the Koran, Hadith, and Islamic jurisprudence to justify their acts. What role do you see moderate Muslims playing in this war?