Akenaton wrote:

"I think that the hope that Islam can only be fixed from within, if I'm understandint that, is well intentioned but unrealistic"

Robomatic.....You sound as if you think we have a range of options.
In fact we have no alternative but to step "back from the brink".
Waging war on a country for dubious reasons is a certain way to radicalise the citizens of that country.

Perhaps Islam cannot be fixed, and as I've stated already, if that is indeed the case then we are already defeated.
I prefer to be optimistic and the example you cite of the Muslim/Muslim killings can sow the seeds of change among even radicalised Muslims.

We must change our foreign policy, and remove our invasion forces before any change can even start.

If we cannot change our unsustainable lifestyle and rapacious economic system....historically the main cause of conflict in the Middle East, then we must except the consequences

I do not think we're already defeated. I think the defeat of radical Islam is inevitable and that the majority of Muslims are not only not with the fundy's but a major part of the solution.

But I do think it won't be done peacefully. As for our foreign policy, I think it could be better, but now that we're there, it's important that we pull off some kind of perceptable win.

As for our unsustainable lifestyle, I agree with you. But I'm an American, I'm all about 'excepting' (i.e. not accepting) the consequences.


Roughyed wrote:

Islamic fundamentalism, far from being 'equivalent to Nazis in every significant way' is very distinct and it doesn't help drawing spurious parallels.

Nazism is a distinct political movement which occurs where there is a lethal threat to capitalism in a particular country and the balance of class forces means that an alliance betweeen the petit bourgeouisie and the lumpen proletariat can take power and save the status quo.

Fascism/Nazism has only ever taken power in Europe in Catholic countries. This is not because these countries are evil or because the Catholic Church is fascist but because the counter-reformation only happened in countries where there was a large peasantry and an underdeveloped haut bourgeouisie - the class forces that favour Fascism/Nazism.

What we are seeing in Al Qaeda is a Saudi civil war being fought by proxy. Osama Bin Laden is a member of the Saudi royal family who would very much like to run the country. Everything he has done is to further that aim. The people he uses are drawn from the petit bourgeouisie and lumpen proletariat because those are the people who support nationalist movements as well as fascist movements. It doesn't make him a fascist or a nazi.

This doesn't excuse Al Qaeda who are a backward looking group with no scruples but it can lead to some illogical leaps if you misidentify your enemy.

Your description of the situation in terms of class warfare, if you are not being deeply sarcastic, sounds kinda Marxist, which is a hoot. As if Marxists and their counter-intuitive netherphilosophy of diabolical materialism ever explained anything...

In fact, Saddam Hussein consciously modeled himself after Comrade Joe (Stalin). Nazism and Communism are different shades of the same thing: Totalitarianism. Nazism embraces the pseudo science of race, Communism believes in the central dominance of the planned economy. "Fundamental" terrorist religious fanatics, any stripe, believe in a dedicated route to Heaven that is defined only by them. It is a substitution of man for God in the name of God.

All the above systems are Procrustean, they have no trouble with eliminating human beings who don't fit the mold. They enslave whole populations whose only choices for life are to fight or fit, viz the old Soviet maxim "When you live with wolves, howl like one."

Which brings us to GregB:

I'm beginning to believe that Western justice is fairly useless
in dealing with these monsters. The deterrents which the Western
world has available (i.e., incarceration and in a limited number
of cases, execution) just don't serve to do anything but effectively
martyr Islamic terrorists.

It may be that Israel has realized this, when formulating their
response to 'suicide bombers.' In some cases, they've bull=dozed
their family homes in response.

As Westerners, we have a sense of 'fair play' that won't presently
permit us to resort to such measures. But we ultimately may have to
revise our thinking with regard to peoples who have such alien
values systems. We may have to mete out justice as it would be
meted out by the 'Islamic states' that these characters seem to
desire so fervently.

So when they drive their Jeep into an airport in Glasgow, society
drives a bulldozer into their grey-haired mother's home in
Sheffield. Or in Islamabad. Or said grey-haird mother gets deported with nothing but the clothes on her back, having been stripped of any
privileges of citizenship. Same treatment for any mosques who provide them spiritual refuge or the madrases at which they were trained.

After all, if these families, religious schools, and houses of worship
are so innocent, then why, too, aren't the folks at the night clubs
or the check-in counters, and on the tube trains?

In the colonial period, if a villager attacked a soldier from the
outpost, the garrison might well have responded by burning the
village and/or its fields. Like it or not, it got the message
across.

Perhaps Western 'Civilization' needs to look at going back to those
terms, if representatives of Islam insist upon operating in
medieval terms.

Our (The West's) options are in fact very flexible, because our past embodies the present of the World Of Islam. And if we are flexible and somewhat adept, we can understand that the Islamic world is not monolithic, is full of intelligence and creativity and the yearnings that brought light and science to the backwardness of the European Christian world hundreds of years ago (but took hundreds of years to take effect).

So we need to use force, we need to use argument. We need to use understanding. We need to partition the Islamic world so as to minimize the antagonism of the majority, who do NOT seek our deaths (yet).

Which brings us to the present, where we have imperfect leaders. Sometimes one has to lead the leaders.