Let them hate provided that they hear

Last night I came upon Steven Den Beste’s piece about the USA conquering and rearranging the Middle East, in the manner of the USA’s conquest and re-arrangement of Japan after WW2.

Like Perry I liked Den Beste’s description of the nature of the contest, but I recoiled somewhat from his proposed solution. I also found Eric Raymond’s supportive reaction to it very thought-provoking.

I wasn’t the only one who was provoked. Commenter Logi Ragnarsson (5.12 pm Thur 19) said, in among saying ruder things: “Why do you want to start a massive assymmetric war in the world I have to live in?” Others with similarly Iceland-like names piled in with similar points. As Dave Roberts commented a bit later (6.14 pm):

Well, you’ve really stirred up everyone with a ‘sson in their name.

There followed an intriguing digression into the question of how much, if at all, my British ancestors imposed civilisation upon the Indian ancestors of N. Srinivasan (7.58 pm). I hope that the internet reaches out even further, and manages to bash its way into the thought processes of at least some of the Good Muslims. You know, the ones who on 10/11 were saying: “Yes, it’s all very terrible, and what happened to those people was dreadful, dee dum dee dum, but the bastards had it coming to them. Now they know what it’s like.”

Do these Good Muslims realise what danger they are in? I’m losing count of the number of Internetters – I’m one of them, Dale Amon is another – who have warned/threatened that a few more 9/11s and the Good Muslims could find themselves experiencing the life of Good Germans circa 1941-45, only with bigger bombs. Will Allen (6.06 pm) added his voice to this chorus:

One thought: for all those who are concerned about the United States’ excessive use of force in this war, you better hope like hell that the Islamic fascists don’t succeed in deploying a weapon of mass destruction against an American city. If they do, hesitant voices will be swept away like so many dust motes, and a titanic slaughter will ensue that will make Tokyo, Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki seem like minor dust-ups. Slaughter on this scale harms the slaughterer as well as the slaughtered, but one hopes that elements in the Islamic world recognize what incalculable danger their fascists have placed them in, and thus will act accordingly.

Amen. If we say this kind of thing often enough, then it just might get through to its target audience, which mostly lives in places far further away from the USA than Iceland or India.

The Good Muslims don’t have to like being threatened with nuclear incineration. They (and anyone else who cares to – Iceland do you hear me?) can call me (definitely) and I’m sure also Dale Amon and Will Allen and anyone else who has said this stuff all the names they like, provided the message gets through to its target audience. Let them hate provided that they hear. And, hearing and fearing, let them then restrain the Islamo-fascists. “Okay guys. Once is enough. You’ve made your point. No more, okay?”

We infidels are now grumbling about the huge fifth column of Muslims in our midst, who refuse to assimilate and who remain steadfastly Islamic, and in not a few cases have become steadfastly Islamo-fascist. History may decide that they saved the world, by (a) seeing these threats on their PCs and then (b) sending that message back home.

British Muslims are famously into computers. I remember participating in a debate at the University of Surrey a few years ago, in front of an almost totally Islamic audience, in which I and a polite Islamic gentleman exchanged polite threats of Mutually Assured Destruction. He and almost the entire audience wanted the whole world to go Islamic and didn’t care how they did it, and I gave them: “Don’t underestimate the West, it is a formidable and sometimes formidably brutal and ruthless civilisation, you rouse it at your peril, Dresden, Hiroshima, Gulf War 1 (recently concluded), etc. etc.” Immediately after the polite applause (I felt entirely safe throughout this event, by the way), my polite opponent politely gave me his business card and said I should give him a call if I ever needed anything in the way of computers.

One of the many good things about the internet is that things like these Armageddon threats can get said good and loud, without the likes of President Bush having to say them.

And this message may already be getting through. There have, after all, been no more actual 9/11-like atrocities in the USA since 9/11 itself – although no doubt commenters will want to tell us all about various Near Things. Conspicuously, nothing big and bad happened on 9/11/02. Al-Qaeda, it would appear, has so far failed to become the mass political movement that its leaders must surely have hoped it would become as its reward for 9/11/01. If present trends continue and there are no more big bangs – just lots of smaller ones around the Muslim perimeter in such places as Israel and Pakistan and Northern Africa – then maybe the Den Beste plan will sink back into the “historical might have beens” file.

But if there are further big bangs, then the Den Beste plan, or worse, will duly unfold, no matter what Iceland says.