December 13, 2009
SYNOVA IS DEAD ON
Althouse has a post about how CNN seems to have a broken English-to-English translator. In the comments was this gem from Synova. (I am copying the whole perfect comment because I can never get Althouse's permalinks to jump down to the right comment.)
Comments are disabled.
Post is locked.
In Iraq they did not *accidentally* wait until American soldiers were
surrounded by Muslim children to attack them. And then, without irony,
they *themselves* say that those children would not have died if the
Americans were not there.
Then someone like Wright explains that the violence would not have happened if the Americans were not there.
Here's a clue.
The enemy knows what they are doing.
They are not simple or child-like brown people who don't know better or who are being tossed, to and fro, by events that are beyond them.
They may or may not believe their own propaganda, but they do understand psychological warfare and engineer the massacre of children with the explicit knowledge and understanding of just *how* they can jerk *our* chains.
So... "We are sorry that there are dead Muslims, that we shot into a crowd of them, that we planted IED's, that we blew up that Mosque, that we were forced to go through your village and dispense justice and left the bodies in the street to be found."
And the thing is... America and the West has NOTHING to combat this with because we simply refuse to do so. We have no one who's job it is to broadcast our side of the story, to put the information out there over and over that by far the most Muslims killed are not killed by us but are killed by those we are fighting. And it's the truth! It's the truth, so why doesn't our media push it voluntarily? Why don't they make certain that every person knows the atrocities committed by Muslims on other Muslims. Why don't they?
When we have found and documented rooms with shackles and blood on the walls...
The response to a dead and *gutted* woman in Iraq who had spent her life working to help people there was an insipid "oh, dear" followed by... "but they made a prisoner at Gitmo look at pornography."
The response to butchered and defiled Americans was "screw them". The response to defiled, dismembered and tortured to *death* American soldiers was "OMGAWD we poured water on someone's FACE!"
Someone is enabling this sort of thing, abetting, and participating.
And AQ is *sorry* that Muslims asked for it, oh well... lets blow up more Muslim kids and blame it on America.
Then someone like Wright explains that the violence would not have happened if the Americans were not there.
Here's a clue.
The enemy knows what they are doing.
They are not simple or child-like brown people who don't know better or who are being tossed, to and fro, by events that are beyond them.
They may or may not believe their own propaganda, but they do understand psychological warfare and engineer the massacre of children with the explicit knowledge and understanding of just *how* they can jerk *our* chains.
So... "We are sorry that there are dead Muslims, that we shot into a crowd of them, that we planted IED's, that we blew up that Mosque, that we were forced to go through your village and dispense justice and left the bodies in the street to be found."
And the thing is... America and the West has NOTHING to combat this with because we simply refuse to do so. We have no one who's job it is to broadcast our side of the story, to put the information out there over and over that by far the most Muslims killed are not killed by us but are killed by those we are fighting. And it's the truth! It's the truth, so why doesn't our media push it voluntarily? Why don't they make certain that every person knows the atrocities committed by Muslims on other Muslims. Why don't they?
When we have found and documented rooms with shackles and blood on the walls...
The response to a dead and *gutted* woman in Iraq who had spent her life working to help people there was an insipid "oh, dear" followed by... "but they made a prisoner at Gitmo look at pornography."
The response to butchered and defiled Americans was "screw them". The response to defiled, dismembered and tortured to *death* American soldiers was "OMGAWD we poured water on someone's FACE!"
Someone is enabling this sort of thing, abetting, and participating.
And AQ is *sorry* that Muslims asked for it, oh well... lets blow up more Muslim kids and blame it on America.
Posted by: Sarah at
09:11 AM
| Comments (1)
| Add Comment
Post contains 435 words, total size 3 kb.
1
I love your phrase "broken English-to-English translator"!
Why don't they make certain that every person knows the atrocities committed by Muslims on other Muslims. Why don't they?
Because in their eyes, only Westerners are accountable for their actions. All others are supposedly victims of the West ... even though Muslims are actually the biggest victims of Islam. But they can't say that. No, only Christianity is 'fair game' for criticism.
Someone is enabling this sort of thing, abetting, and participating.
And our forces lack the cultural and linguistic knowledge to know who all of those someones are:
It would take us Americans years of training and study of databases and so forth to figure out what every Iraqi or Afghani over the age of 12 already knows about his language, culture, neighbors, and neighborhood.
The main information needed in such “wars†is who are the bad guys. The locals know. But it is extremely difficult for us to figure it out. Our weapons and training for killing the bad guys are useless if we cannot figure out which ones to kill.
Unlike buying a building, you cannot just ask for the information and rely on it in the Middle East. But the point is that it is extremely foolish of us to try to use ordinary 18-year-old guys from Gary, Indiana and Flagstaff, Arizona and such to become competent policemen in those countries. Most of the problem there is a police, not a military matter, and it must be done by local policemen.
How effective would Afghan or Iraqi policemen be in Washington DC? How effective are they now at home? Emphasis mine:
The U.S. Marines were tense looking for bombs buried near a mud compound in this remote farming town in southern Afghanistan. Their new Afghan police colleagues were little help, joking around and sucking on lollipops meant for local kids.
The government had sent the new group of 13 police to live and train with the Marines just a few days earlier. Most were illiterate young farmers with no formal training who had been plucked off the streets only weeks before.
Building a capable police force is one of the keys to President Barack Obama's new Afghan strategy.
A broken key. Throw it away. Policing their country is their problem. Let's police our own country. Watch our borders. Secure our airports. Keep an eye on jihadism at home. That is doable. So why aren't we doing it? Why insist on the impossible - made doubly so by restrictive rules of engagement?
The U.S. and allied soldiers who refrain from shooting where civilian human shields are benefiting themselves by enabling themselves to claim they are great humanitarians who held their fire. But they do that at the expense of the rest of the American and allied military who will be in continued danger from the bad guys in question. Indeed, the bullet that kills the humanitarian soldier who held his fire, or his best friend, may be fired by the bad guy he let escape with his decision not to shoot where he knew or suspected bad guys were—because of the presence of civilians.
Similarly, refraining from shooting at an enemy soldier because he uses innocent (or maybe not) civilians as shields rewards and thereby encourages the use of human shields. It is immoral to encourage the use of innocent civilians as shields. Furthermore, refusing to refrain from shooting at those who use civilians as shields will immediately end the practice which will lead to fewer civilian and military casualties on all sides and an earlier victory in the war. Paradoxical thought it may seem, ignoring the possibility of civilian casualties by shooting at the enemy regardless of the presence of civilians will save civilian lives in the long run.
Synova is right. The enemy knows what it's doing. But do we know what we're doing? Can we even define victory?
I don't think the term victory is relevant. I don't think it is possible for the US to destroy jihadism. But it is possible to contain it. To deport jihadists. To prevent jihadists from coming here. To attack jihadist states before they attack us. The latter will result in victories, but not the victory - the total annihilation of jihadism. That is out of our hands. Muslims must reform their own religion and social institutions. We can encourage them, but we cannot do that for them. We cannot be Atatürk. Yet we cannot simply wait for new Atatürks. We must defend ourselves. Locking our doors would be a good first step. What good is it to fight jihadists over there if they can still come here?
Why don't they make certain that every person knows the atrocities committed by Muslims on other Muslims. Why don't they?
Because in their eyes, only Westerners are accountable for their actions. All others are supposedly victims of the West ... even though Muslims are actually the biggest victims of Islam. But they can't say that. No, only Christianity is 'fair game' for criticism.
Someone is enabling this sort of thing, abetting, and participating.
And our forces lack the cultural and linguistic knowledge to know who all of those someones are:
It would take us Americans years of training and study of databases and so forth to figure out what every Iraqi or Afghani over the age of 12 already knows about his language, culture, neighbors, and neighborhood.
The main information needed in such “wars†is who are the bad guys. The locals know. But it is extremely difficult for us to figure it out. Our weapons and training for killing the bad guys are useless if we cannot figure out which ones to kill.
Unlike buying a building, you cannot just ask for the information and rely on it in the Middle East. But the point is that it is extremely foolish of us to try to use ordinary 18-year-old guys from Gary, Indiana and Flagstaff, Arizona and such to become competent policemen in those countries. Most of the problem there is a police, not a military matter, and it must be done by local policemen.
How effective would Afghan or Iraqi policemen be in Washington DC? How effective are they now at home? Emphasis mine:
The U.S. Marines were tense looking for bombs buried near a mud compound in this remote farming town in southern Afghanistan. Their new Afghan police colleagues were little help, joking around and sucking on lollipops meant for local kids.
The government had sent the new group of 13 police to live and train with the Marines just a few days earlier. Most were illiterate young farmers with no formal training who had been plucked off the streets only weeks before.
Building a capable police force is one of the keys to President Barack Obama's new Afghan strategy.
A broken key. Throw it away. Policing their country is their problem. Let's police our own country. Watch our borders. Secure our airports. Keep an eye on jihadism at home. That is doable. So why aren't we doing it? Why insist on the impossible - made doubly so by restrictive rules of engagement?
The U.S. and allied soldiers who refrain from shooting where civilian human shields are benefiting themselves by enabling themselves to claim they are great humanitarians who held their fire. But they do that at the expense of the rest of the American and allied military who will be in continued danger from the bad guys in question. Indeed, the bullet that kills the humanitarian soldier who held his fire, or his best friend, may be fired by the bad guy he let escape with his decision not to shoot where he knew or suspected bad guys were—because of the presence of civilians.
Similarly, refraining from shooting at an enemy soldier because he uses innocent (or maybe not) civilians as shields rewards and thereby encourages the use of human shields. It is immoral to encourage the use of innocent civilians as shields. Furthermore, refusing to refrain from shooting at those who use civilians as shields will immediately end the practice which will lead to fewer civilian and military casualties on all sides and an earlier victory in the war. Paradoxical thought it may seem, ignoring the possibility of civilian casualties by shooting at the enemy regardless of the presence of civilians will save civilian lives in the long run.
Synova is right. The enemy knows what it's doing. But do we know what we're doing? Can we even define victory?
I don't think the term victory is relevant. I don't think it is possible for the US to destroy jihadism. But it is possible to contain it. To deport jihadists. To prevent jihadists from coming here. To attack jihadist states before they attack us. The latter will result in victories, but not the victory - the total annihilation of jihadism. That is out of our hands. Muslims must reform their own religion and social institutions. We can encourage them, but we cannot do that for them. We cannot be Atatürk. Yet we cannot simply wait for new Atatürks. We must defend ourselves. Locking our doors would be a good first step. What good is it to fight jihadists over there if they can still come here?
Posted by: Amritas at December 13, 2009 05:47 PM (dWG01)
49kb generated in CPU 0.0105, elapsed 0.0703 seconds.
48 queries taking 0.0626 seconds, 170 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
48 queries taking 0.0626 seconds, 170 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
