Scott: Are you working on the article I suggested to you? That would be one way to get people to start working for that change. Just saying…

But for many of us, including many people like myself who were directly affected by 9/11, a few years of reflection led to the realization that terrorism was not the existential threat to the US that it is for Israel.

 Israel faces an existential threat from Hamas, who want to replace the state of Israel with an Islamic state. We face exactly the same threat. The tactics are asymmetrical—they include terrorism, but are not limited to this at all.

Freedom Housejust released their annual survey. Nations of the Middle East and Africa are "not free."

These nations are also hotbeds of terrorism. "Not free" and hotbeds of terrorism… What's the explanation? Are these two facts related somehow?

First, they are "not free" because "freedom" is not one of their political values. Islamic states value Islamic law, not "freedom." If Islamic states made a Map of World Peace, we'd be colored "not peaceful" because the only way to achieve peace is by accepting Islamic law. We think "peace" means either "no war" or "harmony." Our idea of "peace" is based on "freedom." The Islamic idea of "peace" means "God's rule," which to us is "not free"—witness the Freedom House map. There are no states in Islam's world map; there is only the community of believers. There are no communities of believers in the Western world map; there are only states, which have rights.

This is why there is an existential challenge today, not because of the tactic of terrorism.

We are not fighting a war against a tactic. Jihadists use terrorism against us but it's their ideology that is the existential threat. Their ideology is called "Islam." They must confront us from a position of weakness, hence the "irregular" or "asymmetrical" warfare called "terrorism." Our challenge is to fight an asymmetrical war without giving up our commitment to the values we hold important. This challenge has not been met and no one has even tried to meet it. Instead, people simply hurl insults at one another for being either nazi-like warmongers or appeasement junkies to score points in sterile debates. Meanwhile, troops have to fight because…yes, it's true, we face an existential threat from jihadists. This war will not end until either we submit to the rule of God or they submit to the goal of freedom, which means a reform of Islam itself. Neither of these alternatives will happen in the forseeable future.

I couldn't have said it better myself:

a half-baked ruminator…a simple troll…cold…arrogant…dismissive…a shrill partisan

Thanks for being so honest!

So someone who spews simplistic nonsense is not an idiot? What would you call him then?

Besides that, do you feel like taking a stab at argument instead of just calling me names?

ED Kain:
I don't get it. Weren't you the guy who was all about advancing debate etc etc? Exactly how does calling me a simplistic idiot (or one who spews nonsense whilst having his head in the sand) do that? Do you imagine you're being arch and sarcastic?

Why don't you humor me, then? Come up with a bunch of examples of our meddling—not counting the '53 coup in Iran. Because I can't. I'm taking "meddle" to mean unwarranted intervention. I could easily reel off twenty examples of the top of my head with respect to Latin America but I can't with respect to the Arab/Muslim world. When and where have we meddled, aside from when we discovered, drilled for, refined, and distributed the oil in the region, and in the process made them rich? Wait! I remember one. 1956. The invasion of Egypt by France, GB, and Israel. They were on the road to Cairo and Nasser was all set to commit suicide with his entire cabinet. We told them to back off or else, thereby handing Nasser a mammoth propaganda victory. Is that the kind of meddling you mean? If that's what you mean, then sure, we've meddled a lot, like when we provided support for the jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan or supported the UN humanitarian mission in Somalia. But usually "meddling" has a negative connotation. So… what are you talking about.

Then again, this question of meddling is only a side-point. We agree that it's not really relevant to understanding the jihadist's aims, even if it were true. It's just that I'm tired of hearing this "backlash" meme. It's false and it's ass-backwards because they attacked us in the first place for reasons of their own.

I mentioned many of your errors of fact and interpretation. Like your idea that Iraq was a stable nation prior to the invasion and that it was contained by the oil-for-food scam. Like your idea that "the world, and the Middle East, have gotten along just fine without democracy for centuries." These alone would allow me to return the insults you have leveled at me, but I won't. You see, I'm interested in advancing the debate.

As for

It must be nice to have such a cut and dry, simplistic, one-sided perspective with which to rationalize and condense all the world’s nuance. It allows you to say such absurdly simplistic things. If only they were like us there’d be no war. We’d all live in peace and harmony. Right, the West has gotten along so well. We never warred amongst ourselves, right? Oy vey…

I don't think you really know how to use sarcasm very well. It just comes off as childish. For one thing, I don't believe that peace and harmony are possible, ever. I just said that if they accepted the principles of pluralism, sovereignty of the nation-state and so forth, we could negotiate with them in good faith—therefore there would be no war. Why is this so simplistic for you? It means that they do not share our values and that to imagine that they do will cause all kinds of problems, like thinking that "jihad in general is just an overly aggressive, globalist form of nationalist expansionism." It can't be anything like that because they do not deposit loyalty in the nation-state. They want to map the world with Islamic law, according to their own words. This has nothing to do with nationalistic expansion.

I really have no idea how to "overcome the notions that gave rise" to Islamism. I don't think I proposed any policy whatsoever. For sure, I never said that "implementing democracy in the region" was the way. I don't believe that it's as simple as "implementing democracy" or denying that we can ever "implement democracy." I believe that the idea of "government of the people...etc etc" is an important starting point—meaning, anti despotism. But there are no magic policies. Politics has been called the "art of the possible." We need artists of the possible to know where, when, how to "implement" and when, where, and how not to. To me, it's a practical question, not a question of finding the correct formula. As a personal matter, I don't come down on either the idealist or the realist side for this very reason.

Islam, to it’s very bones, rejects western values. Islam is male dominated. It rejects pluralism. It rejects democracy. It places god’s law above civil law. Islam does not value the state, it places value in the religion. It values a sort of pan-Islamic notion where coreligionist are valued more than the artificial nation state where Moslem’s reside.

Exactly! This is why they declared war on us. This is why no negotiations are possible because to negotiate, one must accept pluralism and the nation-state to begin with. If Islamists did that, then there would be no war.

Few things beyond air, water, shelter and food can be considered good for “the world generally.”

This is a radical multicultural point of view. You must know that "the world generally" agrees that national sovereignty, pluralism, respect for individual rights are also "good for the world generally."

a cruel man, to be sure, but one who cared little for the Islamists. Saddam Hussein may have posed some small threat to our ally, Israel, but hardly more than the Iranians.

After the first gulf war, Saddam had made many moves to form alliances with Islamists and to give his regime an Islamist cast. He was harboring wanted terrorists, along with the Ansar al Islam group and Zarqawi; he was making $25 thousand payoffs to families of Hamas suicide murderers.

Certainly when Scott implies that a stable Iraq is good for “the world” we can see that no part of the world will benefit more than Persia, a once near-isolated power in the region, its potential threat to the West dampened by its hostile neighbors.

Iran will benefit from our intervention in Iraq, but not as much as they want. They have legitimate interests in Iraq, but now they have to deal with us there as well. They are hardly the nation that will benefit the most—that would have been true without the surge.

Scott takes an “ends justify the means” approach when musing over this matter of Iraqi stability and democracy. But prior to our invasion was that country not stable?

Of course it wasn't. It was teetering on the edge of an explosion no matter what. That's one reason why we invaded.

Iraq was even more contained, its economy and livelihood even more isolated than any of these nations are today–a strategy that was arguably nearly as ill-guided as our current efforts, given the ensuing poverty of the Iraqi people and the oil-for-food scandal that enriched Hussein and others at the expense of the national well-being of the Iraqi people.

Hussein was using the money to rebuild his military. The oil-for-food scam involved key members of the UN Security Council as well as UN officials themselves. This does not show "isolation." It shows integration in the same way that other criminal groups are integrated into the global economy. To call this "containment" is illusory. The oil-for-food scam is one reason why Iraq was dangerously unstable in 2002.

The world, and the Middle East, have gotten along just fine without Democracy for centuries.

You should read the UNDP reports on the Arab/Muslim world. Then tell me if you still think they "have gotten along just fine without Democracy for centuries." Of course they haven't. "Getting along just fine" does not include being home to the world's most despotic regimes and its petri dish for terrorism.

Unfortunately, our meddling in the region and our lack of understanding of the culture, has lead to some rogue elements within Saudi Arabia to declare Holy War on us.

According to you, when did these "rogue elements" declare war on us? Do you date this from the foundation of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt in the 1920s; to Qtub's radicalization of that movement in the 1950s? To the synthesis of the Muslim Brothers and the Wahabbi state in the 1960s and 70s? Because in every case, these "rogue elements" declared the US to be its "far enemy." These "rogue elements" have included the Saudi state, which for decades has financed the expansion of their Wahabbi ideology throughout the world and including the US—where Islamic studies at US universities are heavily endowed by Saudi money. Or would you rather go back to classical the classical jihad of the Arab/Islamic empire? Whatever time you choose, what did this meddling consist of? In contrast, listen to Zawahiri. He's speaking to the faithful, not making propaganda for the West. Where is the "meddling" you refer to?

We also extend our hands to every Muslim zealous over making Islam triumph till they join us in a course of action to save the umma from its painful reality. [This course of action] consists of staying clear of idolatrous tyrants, warfare against infidels, loyalty to the believers, and jihad in the path of Allah. Such is a course of action that all who are vigilant for the triumph of Islam should vie in, giving and sacrificing in the cause of liberating the lands of the Muslims, making Islam supreme in its [own] land, and then spreading it around the world.

Your idea that our "meddling" has somehow caused an Islamist "backlash" is false according to the facts—our "meddling" in the Muslim/Arab world has been mainly about trade and oil. The few exceptions to this, like the 1953 CIA-sponsored coup in Iran, do not even approach the level of "meddling" we have been responsible for in Latin America. And the only "backlash" this has caused is general resentment. No one there has declared war on us.

But much more importantly, your idea of "meddling" echoes the Islamist idea of "defensive jihad," which is only designed to appeal to Western ideas of justice and thus obscure the Islamists true ideals. This portrays their declaration of war on us as some kind of reciprocity for our "meddling." This ignores the fact the the whole idea of "resiprocity" is foreign to Islamists. For them the only source of justice is Islamic law. Therefore, even if the US abandoned the region entirely—including Israel—jihad would continue because Islamic law enjoins them to jihad to spread Islam over the whole world.

Let us for a moment pretend that our vision of geopolitical evolution is not that of an American, but rather that of a fundamentalist Islamic leader, or perhaps of the grand maestro of terror himself, Osama bin Laden. Would these visions align with our own?

This is the nucleus of the problem, whether you're a neocon or a realist. Islamists want to impose their own version of globalization on the world. The comparison with the Cold War is apt because the USSR tried the same thing with their version. Along with this, though, you're assuming that all world cultures value evolution. This is false. The Islamists explicitly reject it, for example. The impediments to their imposing an Islamic order on the world include evolution itself, which they anathematise and punish accordingly under Islamic law.

It's naïve to think that we can negotiate with entities like Hamas. They reject the whole idea of negotiation in the first place—just read their official charter if you don't believe me. They—and all Islamists—have a world view opposed to ours. They will not negotiate their world view, just as we won't negotiate ours. The gunslingers in your example have to share a world view if they are to negotiate. That would be the first rule of negotiations. After that, then, yes, we can negotiate with Hamas or Iran or anyone else because it's precisely our world view we're fighting for. Aside from this, with respect to Iran, we have had back-channel negotiations with them for years. Negotiations are ongoing. They have produced deals in Iraq, which led to the disarming of the Shia militias last year, for example. It's hard to follow them because they're not public. But that doesn't mean they don't exist. Don't believe all the campaign speeches you hear.

As for being backed into a corner: I don't think al Qaeda agrees with you on that one. They were run out of Iraq and they have been significantly degraded as a fighting force. They're the ones hiding out in caves in the mountains, not us. Right? Hiding out in caves means that they're backed into a corner.

So you think that acceptance of the two-state solution by Palestinians is as likely as horses growing wings? We agree on that. But as long as they don't, then what solution do they propose, according to your reading? Yes. Really. If Palestinians didn't want to exterminate Israel, then there would be no need for any security measures. It would be a sure thing. It's the "surest" way, not precipitous Israeli withdrawal,which would only lead to another cycle of attacks and retaliation. As long as Palestinians refuse to accept the two-state solution, Israel will need security measures to protect itself, whether they withdraw from the West Bank or not. But it isn't unilateral because Israel has accepted it for twenty years. If they did accept it, then I'd expect the whole peace process to go through to the conclusion of a viable Palestinian state on the former British mandate. How can you call this "unilateral?" Israel accepts it. The US accepts it. The EU accepts it. The Palestinians don't accept it. This includes the dismantling of the settlements.
Are you asking me how to get Palestinians to accept the two-state solution and thus desire to live in peace with Israel and Jews? Palestinians need to be unequivocally defeated. But—first, I want to say that I do not propose a military defeat (that's already happened), much less ethnic cleansing, genocide, massacres. "Defeat" here means that Palestinians have to give up the goal of exterminating Israel. It only means accepting the two-state solution. I think that diplomatic pressure would do the trick in a minute, if that pressure was coming from Europe and other Arab states. If they made it clear to Palestinians that they lost and the two-state solution is the only solution, then Palestinians would have no other way out. As it is, though, Arab states and Europe use the conflict in Palestine/Israel for their own ends, so that isn't very likely.

I'm using an analogy between WWI, WWII and this conflict as a basis for this. Germany was defeated in WWI but they were not forced to recognize it. This left the door open for the "stab in the back" theory, where Germany was actually winning and was betrayed by Jews and Commies. After all, Germany was never occupied after WWI and there were never ever any foreign troops on German territory. WWII was the result. Roosevelt and Churchill used this knowledge to formulate the "unconditional surrender" doctrine that guided Allied diplomacy in WWII. It worked, didn't it? Germany accepted peaceful relations with its neighbors after that. I can't see how this reasoning fails—maybe you can tell me—but I have to emphasize that I'm not saying I want to see carpet bombing of the West Bank. I'm saying that Palestinian defeat can be accomplished by solely diplomatic means and I would not support anything that even resembled mass murder.

apartheid doesn’t apply because it’s not part of Israel; but it’s also not being occupied by Israel; and yet it is being settled by Israelis who are treated different than their Arab neighbors much like an apartheid system, which of course it can’t be because it’s not part of Israel.

This is a pretty fair summary of what I said. You're trying for sarcasm here: "Do I have your circular logic about right?" I guess you are authorized to use this rhetorical device because you're the owner of this blog. I accept that. I don't why my logic is circular. I said I wasn't sure what to call it because it's such a unique situation in world politics. Can you now answer my question and tell me why you say it is an occupation? Anyhow, I'm not denying that Palestinians are being maltreated by Israelis in the West Bank. I am not some racist crank, like Freddie says. I believe that the Palestinians have the right to live in peace like anyone else. I respect Arab/Muslim culture as long as they don't attack me with it. But they have been maltreated by Arabs since the partition, when their refugee plight was used as a bargaining chip against Israel. I'm not trying to apportion blame or to arrive at sweeping moral judgments (not because I disparage this exercise either).
Exactly why is it "nonsense" that Israel's security measures on the West Bank protect it from attack? They have been attacked from there repeatedly in the past. How can you say that concern for this is such "nonsense?" Up until 2002, Palestinians had sweeping autonomy over the West Bank and Israel had withdrawn the vast majority of its forces, as per the Oslo agreements. From 2000 to 2002, they were subject to suicide attacks that were operated from the West Bank. Why is it "nonsense" to think that these attacks would resume in the case of an Israeli withdrawal today?

Where do the settlements fit in here? Good question. Short answer is that they don't and must be dismantled. But that can't happen in the absence of a peace agreement, can it? Until then, they most certainly do support Israeli security, which is why they're there in the first place. You can't continue to put all the blame for this situation on Israel alone and expect that people won't think you're anti Israel.

The difference between the Jordanian and Egyptian occupation and Israel is that Palestinians did not pose any threat whatsoever to Jordan and to Egypt back then. When they started to pose a threat they were oppressed with much more brutality than Israel ever has done. I didn't see any protests by the international community over this back then. Why is that, do you think? I just can't see how Israel is acting "just like" Jordan and Egypt aside from the fact of imposing some sort of control over the West Bank. I know that this is a stupid way to argue, but if I were Palestinian, I'd prefer to be occupied by Israel than by Hamas.

Now I'm shallow. Fine. But wallowing in emotion doesn't even reach that depth. The surest way to end the need for those measures is for the Palestinians not to promote the extermination of Israel as their goal and to accept the two-state solution. Simply withdrawing from the West Bank will not accomplish this as long as Palestinians adhere to their genocidal goals.

Israel is occupying the West Bank

Is that any way to answer a question? Should I now say isn't? And you'd say is?

Since you asked me what I'd call it, I'll tell you, just so you can see that I'm willing to engage in debate, not just some absurd is/is not shouting match.
It's a hard question to answer because we lack the vocabulary for it, so maybe bear with me? The West Bank was "occupied" by Jordan 1948-1967 (funny we didn't hear any condemnations of Jordan for breaking international law back then). In 1947, according to the UN, it was supposed to be a Palestinian state. Instead, Jordan "occupied" it. So it never has been an independent state or even a part of an independent state, as would have been the case if Jordan had annexed it in 1948. So, what's the word for taking control over a territory that never has been an independent state and furthermore has been controlled by other states in the past? It's just a shot in the dark, but I'd call this a "border dispute" and the West Bank "disputed territory." This seems a lot more accurate than "occupied" to me, since "occupation" implies an illegal annexation of some foreign territory by a state, not just "being there." Israel had all the right in the world to take control over the West Bank in 1967 and has not lost that right in the absence of a peace treaty with the Arabs, which is stipulated in UNR 242.

Of course Jordan won't be firing on Israel from the West Bank. What do you take me for? But Hamas will be if Israel withdraws. Or not? Besides, where does it leave UNR 242 if Israel withdraws without a peace treaty? Wouldn't this be a violation?

You're using the term "apartheid state" in a way that I've never seen it used before. "Apartheid" refers to a regime that discriminates against some of its citizens, like the South before the Civil Rights act, like Christian Europe before the French Revolution, or like Islamic law does today everywhere it's applied. The West Bank isn't part of Israel, so how can Israel be accused of discriminating against the people of the West Bank? Are you suggesting that Israel should grant citizenship to them? The West Bank isn't even a state, so how can it be an "apartheid state?" Israel uses its power to control the West Bank because they have good reason to believe that if they didn't, then it would become the base for attacks on them, once again. Why does this equal "apartheid?"

ED Kain: Who is proposing that Israel become "a total police state?" How does this answer the question I posed above? My comment here is basically a critique of the 60 Minutes broadcast. They present the security measures Israel is taking without showing why they're doing it. They appeal solely to emotion. I'm just asking for a little analysis, that's all.

Don't listen to ED Kain, Freddie. He's just trying to make a Freudian quip at the Israeli's expense. It's not analysis to call people "motherfuckers," is it?

That's a good one, Freddie:

Tragic in the classical sense, meaning that it isn’t just some twist of fate, but a function of the traits, and philosophy, of the people involved.

You've got the makings of a real analysis here. Seriously. If you could describe these traits and philosophies of all the people involved, that would be a good read.

Didn't you fail to mention the Palestinian terror that has plagued Israel, necessitating such security measures? How would you suggest that they deal with this, then? Why was the Wall built, do you think?

Can you separate your emotions, which are being willfully manipulated by this 60 Minutes episode, from your analytical ability?

It is the settlements more than anything else that prevent a two-state solution from being realized. Whereas the Palestinians have no true guiding authority to end, once and for all, the terrorist attacks on Israel, the Israelis do have a legal framework to end the settlements in the West Bank.

This is not correct. You're excluding the Palestinians completely from any responsibility in the failure of the two-state solution. For twenty years now, the two-state solution has been the official policy of the Israeli government. Before that, in 1947, the Arabs had the chance to found a state on the West Bank. Before that, in 1937, they had the same chance, which was offered to them by the British government. There were no settlements back then. What was preventing it then? What was preventing it in 2000, when it was again offered by Israel?

I think that Hamas's genocidal goals, the suicide murders, missile attacks, the illegal arms contraband, the continued indoctrination of Arab children with Jew hatred have something to do with the failure of the peace process. If you're putting the whole blame on Israel, like you do here, then why isn't this "anti Israel?"

You think the Palestinians have no authority to end terrorist attacks. Why? They're running a police state. If they can find homosexuals and crucify them, why can't they stop terrorist attacks?

Better to act now, make the right decisions, withdraw from the West Bank, take the high road and instigate the two state solution, rather than risk going it alone.

Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 and got Hizbollah missile attacks in response; they withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and got missile attacks in response. How would you show that withdrawal from the West Bank would not get the same response as these, or worse? Wouldn't Hamas take over the West Bank then as well? Do you think that it's an acceptable risk to have Hamas on the West Bank and in Gaza?

Not all of Israel is an apartheid state

Which parts are "apartheid" and which aren't?

The above seems to be the heart of your opinion.

The following are side-points.

We support them unconditionally. We support their every move…We support policies as horrendous as the continued occupation and settlement of the West Bank

1. Of course this is an unacceptable exaggeration. Nothing is "unconditional." And we don't "support their every move." There are lots of "moves" we have opposed. We have never supported the settlements, for example. They do it anyway, but then, why should they take orders from us?

2. Why do you say that Israel is "occupying" the West Bank? Israel took control of this territory was after the '67 war, when it was used as a fire base against Israel by Jordan. Why is it "horrendous" for Israel to want to control territory that was used to bomb it? If Israel is "occupying" it, then whose territory was it at the time?

Bush already begun that process by so undermining American credibility in the peace process.

Fine. Blame Bush. But, again, American credibility had been badly burned by Arafat in 2000. Clinton threw all his logs on the fire to get to a final settlement. He was utterly disrespected by Arafat. I'd say that Palestinians undermined their own credibility there. I'd say that Bush was just doing his job—if Arafat was so bold as to publicly disrespect Clinton, then it was Bush's job to show him that you can't do that and expect business as usual because it's about the office of the president. It isn't just some personal slight that one can forget about.

The same ignorant people who currently support Israel without really any knowledge of the conflict or region…

I'm sure this is just sloppy writing. You don't mean to call supporters of Israel "ignorant." Can you rectify this?

"I don’t know how best to solve the problems in this growing war between the Mexican government and cartels, but I am largely persuaded that drug legalization is the only long-term method to undercut the economic power of the cartels and handicap their ability to wage war."

Just so you know, we agree on this one. I'll go you one better, though: the war on drugs is the most egregious, disgusting, and destructive of all the US interventions in LA in history. It's so bad that people don't even call it by it's correct name (intervention).

So, along with legalization, the US should make reparations to LA for 30 years of the drug war. A kind of Marshall Plan for the post-drug war reconstruction, which would have the benefit of requiring cooperation among the nations of LA. This would have the benefit of being a capitalist "Bolivarian dream" that Hugo Chávez can shove up his ...

We are fighting an ideology that is represented by a series of non-state actors: these groups challenge the authority of states, challenge the rule of law, operate across state boundaries, use indiscriminate violence in an asymmetric fight to achieve their aims and so forth. If we don't understand the enemy, we're doomed from the start. This "islamo-nationalism" idea doesn't help and that the only support you have for it is Oliver Roy just makes it worse. Why do you rely on him? Of all the scholars of Islam I can think of, he's the least reliable. In 2004, he said that Hamas was cooperating with Fatah in the interests of "islamo-nationalism." His ideas lead to such egregious errors.

If nationalism was an important part of Arab or Islamic ideology, then what was stopping them from negotiating in 1937/1947/2000 with respect to Palestine/Israel? In contrast, Zionism is a nationalist ideology and they had no qualms in those years of accepting an offer of a nation-state, even if the offer didn't fullfil all their desires. Arabs, in contrast, accept no compromise, in part because they do not accept the idea of the nation-state if it isn't somehow Islamic--which means that it isn't based on nationalism in the first place. If they won't compromise, then they must be defeated. To preempt my being called a racist neo imperialist warmonger, this defeat does not have to be a genocidal bloodbath. It can happen through diplomacy, if people in the West agree that it should happen. Unfortunately, this is not happening today so the bloodshed will go on.

"Islamo-nationalism" will appeal to people who lack an understanding of the Arab/Islamic world because it appeals to a founding principle of the Western political world-view. It's a "given." But it isn't a given in the Arab/Islamic world, where people's primary loyalties go to the family, tribe, region, sect, and ultimately, religion. Even more so, it's anathema to the Islamist ideology. Of course, everyone today lives in a nation-state even if they want to overthrow it. That's because the West has succeeded in imposing this idea on the whole world. It's part of the idea of globalization. But that hardly implies that everyone wants to preserve the western model, even if they want to overthrow a particular nation-state and replace it with another (their own). Islamists reject the Western model in its entirety, and this includes nationalism. They want to impose an Islamic model of globalization on the world, not just tweak the Western model so as to get more "rights" and "freedom." These ideas are not even part of their world view to begin with. By trying to understand today's Islamists as nationalists, we're distorting reality in unacceptable ways. Roy's intention is to oppose the US-led backlash against the Islamist attacks, not to provide an analysis that will be useful for us in this fight.

If there's any place on earth that shows the folly of imposing nationalism on the Arab/Islamic world view, that place is Somalia. There has never been a nation-state there. It is wholly a creation of European colonialism and did not make the transition to post colonialism. This imposition of the Western worldview has generated crisis after crisis in Somalia. For a contrast, just look at Djibouti. The West has never cared about it, so they have been able to organize things in their own way, which means that Djibouti is controlled by clans.

The Bush administration's policy of rejecting any Islamist group is the correct one and it will be followed by the Obama administration as well. This policy did not cause any bloodshed whatsoever. The bloodshed was and is caused by the Islamist's attacks on us, which we responded to correctly by putting ourselves on a war footing. That's because Islamism has the goal of replacing the Western world order with an Islamist world order. At this level, no negotiations are possible, and never will be until either we or the Islamists are defeated. I want our side to win. What about you?

Why the hell didn't my bullshit map embed properly? It looked OK in the preview. http://s388.photobucket.com/albums/oo323/roquenuevo/?action=view&current=e36601d2-1.png

It's a good thing people are finally picking up on this in the States. It would surprise you to know that what you're reporting on here has been going on for years.

I'm going to add some info to what you say, plus try to widen the focus a bit to consider the geopolitics of the Mexican situation. Is that OK with you? Since I doubt that anyone will read this to the end, I'm putting my conclusion up here: the war on drugs is the most egregious US intervention in Latin America in history—and that's saying a lot. It's destroying society, government, any chance at development. Its anarchy and corruption permeate all aspects of society. It begins with the criminalizing drug use—how in the world did this ever happen? Where did people get the idea that being sober 24/7 was a value to be enforced by police power? I assume it was just one more bright idea that jesus freaks have foisted upon us in the US but how did it get to the point of being accepted in Mexico, which has one of the world's most intense drug-use cultures? With respect to the US, where are all the "US Out Now!" demonstrations? How come nobody ever protests this intervention? As a gringo down México way, you can imagine I've been held accountable for US interventions worldwide throughout history—one reason I never go into cantinas. Most of these complaints are just stupid and there's always two sides to every question etc etc. I mean, for example, yes, we did steal half their country in the Mexican war, but we paid them for it and it was a defeat for the criollo elite, which allowed the modern mestizo nation to emerge. But the war on drugs is so completely destructive that I can't find any argument at all to defend the US—which is what I do when people attack it. It doesn't matter, though, because nobody ever says that we should get out of here with our war on drugs. People just don't question it. I think it's some kind of taboo.

You're extending the "war" metaphor when you say that there's a "narco insurgency" in Mexico. The narco is not an insurgency. They're criminals. They don't want to take power here. They want to create anarchy, which is the best business environment for them. In this they have already won the war.

You say the local police are on the payroll of the narco, which is why the federal police are being used. This is not correct. First, the local police don't pose a threat to anyone and I doubt that any narco would have to pay them off because they're hopelessly out-gunned. It's like Israel vs. Hamas. Then, the federal police have always been used in the drug war—Calderón did not initiate this. They are the group that is on the payroll of the narco and always have been. Calderón's innovation was to use the army to fight the drug war. The army is usually thought of as being at least less corrupt than the federal police and it's probably true. In normal times, the army is like a gigantic Red Cross. Their main duties have been disaster relief. Otherwise, nobody ever sees them—unless you're a real insurgent, and they will hunt you down and kill you, breaking all the human-rights laws in the book.

Maybe they are trying to use Petraeus's COIN doctrine down here. But it sure doesn't show if they are. The basis of this doctrine is to protect the populace from the insurgency so that normal economic life can resume while the military deals with the insurgents themselves. I suppose that this was McCain's reason for suggesting it for the drug war in the US. Aside from the constitutionality of the idea (which you have correctly questioned), the idea makes some sense. In Mexico, it doesn't. First, the narco protects the people from the army, not vice versa. The narco allows whatever development there is out there and the army is attacking it. So, if anything, the narco is applying Petraeus's COIN doctrine, not the army. The army is the insurgency here, not the narco. There are vast areas of the country that are outside state control completely and always have been since the Aztecs—well, with the exception of Díaz regime in the nineteenth century. He was the most badass ruler Mexico has ever had and that includes Moctezuma. It's violent, poor, and ignorant. It's not really lawless. Under the surface, it's really a throwback to feudalism: overlapping fiefs fighting it out for territory. This is inevitable since the state cannot extend its control to these places. These are the places the illegal immigrants come from. If you're a kid from there, you have the choice of staying there and digging in the mud for corn and chile, going to the "other side," like they say here, joining the narco, or joining the army, where you can get the training you need to desert and join the narco for ten times the money and a lot more respect. If you do go to "the other side," then what happens to the people you leave behind, your mother, wife, sisters, kids? You promised to send them money, which is why you went in the first place. They will keep on plugging away at the corn and chile because they don't have anything else. When the narco comes for a visit and offers to rent your land or to hire you to guard the fields, what do you say? Do you say, "No way, José! I refuse to be part of this dirty business which is the bane of society. For the children?" Not if you want to walk away from the meeting in one piece, you don't. Do you call the cops? There are no cops and even if there were, they'd be working for the narco too. So you're going to let them grow drugs for the children on your land. Or you can die and someone else will let them do it. In any case, development starts to happen in places where there was never even a chance of it before.

So… how does it look to you when your "corageous leader" sends the army in to shoot the place up and destroy the crops? Are you going to shake Calderón's hand and call him a hero like Obama did? This is why it's absurd to talk about the COIN doctrine here in Mexico: the government is attacking the livilihoods of the poorest people in the country in the name of 24/7 sobriety. That's no way to establish legitimacy, stability, peace and prosperity. It's how you get moved into the "failed state" column over at the State Department.

Back to my example of the forlorn Indian kid living in the mountains: He can go to school, pull himself up by his own bootstraps, and become president himself in twenty years. Just kidding! He can go to school and then he still has the above choices. Or he can quit school and start doing this stuff younger, which is obviously more attractive to him when he sees all the pimped-out Caddys and Hummers cruising the main square of his little shit-town. Official government statements say that around ten percent of the nation's counties are under the control of the narco. This is surely a serious underestimate. This map shows my own bullshit estimate of the geography behind this statistic. This is why education is not the solution, like so many people think it is. It's worthless, given the opportunities there are here. It's just rational to quit school and make money however you can, because that's what you'll be doing anyway. 

This brings up the more interesting geopolitics of the problem. My imaginary Indian kid can also go to the city and drive a pirated taxi or sell pirated CDs and DVDs on the street by joining some "opposition" political group. Then, he gets to blockade highways and camp out on main streets whenever the "opposition" wants some attention. So… long story short: up to now you can see that there are many different "insurgencies" here: the narco; the police; the army; the opposition. I haven't even mentioned the guerrilla, which is on the map. Any talk of education is just blather to people whose main problem is survival in an extremely violent world. It's not like living in Connecticut.

Just like in any war, the different factions can and will be used as proxies by more powerful nations. We have our proxy in Calderón, which is pretty stupid. He just has no chance of winning this thing. But other countries are not so stupid. The FARC, for example, has its finger in this pie—in the narco, the guerrilla, and in the "opposition." Hugo Chávez has his finger in the FARC's pie. Putin has his finger in Chavez's pie, as does Iran/Hizbollah. What would happen if the state lost all authority here, even the pretend authority they have right now? If the casualty figures today are worse than Iraq, well… "all hell breaking loose" would be an understatment. This is pretty-much what happened here a hundred years ago in the so-called Mexican Revolution and in many areas of the nation one fifth of the people died and the economic destruction that was wrought was not overcome until the early '60s. This could happen instantly, due to the laws of succession of the presidency in case he dies. There is no law, like in the States, when the VP is instantly taking the oath of office and life goes on. Here, there's just a proceedure for choosing a new president. It says that the congress will choose an interim president to either serve out the dead president's term or to organize new elections withing an 18 month time span. It's a nice proceedure but it has no chance of ever being followed if the worst happens. There are too many groups willing to use violence here that want power for that to ever happen. The best case would be that the congress chooses an interim president (think Manuel Camacho, a wily character) and he's quickly pushed aside. The worst case is the most likely: the shit hits the fan. I hope you can see by now why this will be a much more serious problem for us than Iraq ever could have been. We could have just withdrawn from Iraq and apologized. But we can't withdraw from having a border with Mexico. This is why Calderón is not a "corageous leader." That might be true if he was just risking his own life. But he's risking the presidency itself. That's not "corageous." It's stupid and reckless.

It's time for some of Obama's famous prescience and proactive outside-the-box thinking before it's too late. Otherwise, we'll be blindsided by this thing. If he has it in him.

A more interesting counter factual is: what would have happened if Europeans weren't ingrained Jew haters? For sure, they would never have gone to Palestine—what would have been pushing them out? They wouldn't have gone to the States in such great numbers either, so Europe would still be benefiting from their excellence in the arts, finance, business, the professions, etc etc. and we wouldn't be. But then, what? Jews would be just citizen-Jews in Europe, like they are in the States. But there would be no Middle East crisis to blame on them. There would have been no Holocaust that Europeans could accuse Jews of exploiting for financial gain. But this is where my counterfactual imagination hits a wall. The rest of it—wars, colonizing and decolonizing etc etc—would have happened anyway. The Middle East today would be home to much the same ancestral violence—except that there would be no Israel. Jews would still be in Europe. I can't see any reason that the depressing progression of remedies for the decline of the Islamic world wouldn't wouldn't have happened even without a Jewish state in the Middle East or that Islamists would not have attacked us.

"Here’s what I want: I want a two-state solution with Israel returning to its pre-1967 borders, which would have the little benefit of no longer being a violation of international law, laws Israel is bound by treaty agreement to adhere to and which explicitly outlaw the annexation of foreign land through military conquest."

What treaties are you talking about? Where do you get the idea that Israel has "annexed" the West Bank? Just a stab in the dark, but one treaty I know of is SCR 242, which says that Israel will give up territory (it doesn't say "all the territory") in the West Bank in return for peace. So, why is Israel "in violation" and Palestinians are not?

The above is how you get from discussing international politics to discussing morality. Since your discussion only condemns Israel for violating international law, why is it wrong to assume that you favor the Palestinians?

You say your little solution has been "blocked at every turn by the Israeli government and its patrons in the United Nations security council, the United States" even though it has the support of all the right-thinking people. But the fact is that it hasn't been blocked by them. In fact, it was openly offered to them in the 2000 Camp David talks. It has been blocked by the Palestinians—unless you'd demand open borders with a state with openly genocidal intentions against Israel. If there were a group like Hamas in some part of LA, I don't think you'd be demanding that they have full communications with the rest of the city, since they would use this to kill people in LA.

Chris Dierkes:
There's simply no way to understand this conflict without understanding history. It's funny that you say you don't want to discuss history and then you continue by discussing history. Do you mean that you don't want me to discuss history, but that you can? I don't get it at all.

I'd like to say that we agree on the fact that the "[peace] process was ultimately flawed from the get go." But this was hardly Clinton's fault. He's a politician and politicians will want to broker deals and so forth. Everyone else does it. If the president announced that the process is flawed, he'd come in for opprobrium from all sides. So we're stuck with it, even if we know it's flawed and will never come to anything.

What I don't understand is the "coup" you say Clinton engineered to bring Arafat into the negotiations. When did this happen? From what I can remember, after Arafat renounced terrorism and recognized Israel's right to exist, he was in, no matter what Clinton could have done. That was the idea all along, anyway, so it would have looked bad for Arafat to do this and then still be locked out. But you seem to know more about it than I do, so what's the deal?

In the 90s, Arafat signed the Oslo Accords and got the Nobel Prize, remember? If Clinton, or anyone else, had said what you're saying here, they would have been laughed out of town.

I must differ with your idea (well…it's not really your idea. It's a meme) of appealing the the "cycle of violence," shown when you say, "a nearly infinite number of errors on all sides." I know that you're not interested in hearing me discuss history, but if anyone else reads this, they should know that this is not supported by any evidence at all. In every case (or almost, anyway) Israeli violence has been in retaliation to Arab or Palestinian attacks against them. Palestinian/Arab/Hamas ideology is such that the mere presence of a Jewish state in Palestine is in itself an attack, to which they respond. You can take their position if you want to. It's very popular, so I don't think you'll get into a lot of arguments about it. It helps people maintain the facade of moral righteousness by blaming both sides, but it has the effect of blaming Israel because, as Freddie himself has said over and over, we expect more out of Israel.We don't expect anything like this of the Arabs. Tell me why this isn't racist.

Of course it's true that Ross and Clinton want to cover their butts. Who doesn't? But what's your explanation for the failure of the 2000 Camp David talks, other than generalizations about "a flawed process from the get go?" I thought they had a good deal and, if Arafat had signed it, today there'd be a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza.

Kath: "time and again you wrote stuff making it clear that you thought that Israelis were worth less than Palestinians. "

Put up some examples here. I bet you can't because I don't think that. If it was implied in anything I said, I'll repudiate it once you post it. This would only be a matter of sloppy writing on my part. But for you to say the above is a matter of sloppy reading.

ED Kain:

Dennis Ross:

In the Clinton ideas, which are also presented in the book, the Palestinians were offered the following: 100 percent of Gaza, roughly 97 percent of the West Bank. The principles that guided the way the borders should be drawn and determined by the two sides, based on the percentages were: Contiguity of territory for the Palestinians, non-absorption of Palestinians into Israel.

The following is scanned from his book, The Missing Peace: [URL=http://s388.photobucket.com/albums/oo323/roquenuevo/?action=view&current=05c156b6.gif][IMG]http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo323/roquenuevo/th_05c156b6.gif[/IMG][/URL]
Why is this a vague offer? Seems like a good deal to me, especially when you consider the offers of compensation that were extended to the refugees. Since then, they have defended themselves against suicide mass-murderers.

In 2000, I was sure that Clinton would be able to get a deal. I thought that that was going to be the beginning of the end of the conflict. I really had no position as to how much land Israel should cede, or on anything else. When the Israeli proposals were announced, they seemed like a good deal to me, but what do I know? When Arafat refused categorically, my position changed. I saw it as definitive proof that the Palestinians were not negotiating in good faith. If they had been, then why not make a counter-offer? Why just refuse and start a violent suicide-murder campaign?

Back in the '80s I was almost completely on the Palestinian side. Who wouldn't be after the invasion of Lebanon and the Intifadah? But those days are over. Israel is not the same state today as it was back then. Critics have not considered this development of actual events in their critiques. They act like its' still the '80s with some religious zealot in charge of Israel talking about Judea and Samaria instead of leaders committed to the two-state solution by law. That changed my own political calculus.