Update on the marathon bomber(s)

Turns out I was right about who the bomber(s) were--not American leftists or rightists.

As I write this one of the perps is dead, the other being hunted. I hope we capture the second one alive so we can better understand how an apparently normal, rather secular immigrant becomes radicalized and murderous.

And then try, convict and execute him. Wanting to understand the enemy does not correlate with being soft on crime. It has to do with not being stupid on crime.

Drone-o-phobia

The Washington Post published an op-ed piece by Fareed Zakaria titled "Why Pakistan keeps exporting jihad." Numerous comments ensued--many of them talking about drones killing village-fulls of innocent civilians as a universal truth.

My comment:

Who says our drones are killing vast numbers of civilians?

Islamist radicals and their friends.

Well, they always tell the strict truth, don't they?

And it's not like they have a motive--such as the fact that we're killing off their leadership and they can't go outside without looking up half the time, even though they know they'll never see or hear the drone that's hunting them.

That couldn't possibly be a motive.

And besides, only a complete fool who hates his own country and is unable to analyze the validity of an information source would fall for such obviously self-serving claims...

The real problem is that the ubiquity of videocameras (including those in cell phones) enable people to put horrifying images on the Net and go viral with them, producing knee-jerk reactions in the gullible--without the context that would explain them. Not to mention the ease with which fakery can be slipped into the same gullible people's minds.

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That garnered the following comment on my comment:

tarquinis1 wrote:

ehkzu wrote: Who says our drones are killing vast numbers of civilians?
Islamist radicals and their friends.
Well, they always tell the strict truth, don't they?

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Well ok ehkzu, since you obviously are a Zionist, let's put the shoe on the other foot.

If some country were were via Hellfire strikes killing Zionist leaders in Israel, and via invasions dispossessing millions of Jews from Israel, would you find that acceptable? Or, would that be a cause for which you may take some very serious action?

My point being, double standards will not wash for long in the modern world. The ultimate in hypocrisy will not work for long. For just one example:

Iran is a signatory to the NPT, is the single most inspected nation in the entire world adherent to it, has zero nuclear weapons, and we have no significant EVIDENCE (outside of baseless political allegations) that they are in violation of the treaty, which clearly gives them the full legal rights to develop civilian nuclear power.

Whereas, Israel as a nation that refuses to sign the NPT treaty, possesses hundreds of nuclear weapons, with the most advanced delivery systems, and a world class anti-missile defense defense network, well that is just fine.

No double standard here, no blatant hypocrisy here. After all, the Jews are exempt from international law that would bind any other nation. God says so, at least according to your own writers.

We have killed hundreds of thousands of Muslim peoples in Iraq and Afghanistan. I do not find it surprising that some may well be radicalized by these facts.

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To which I then replied:

Thanks to targuins1 (3 & 5 entries below this) for providing a flawless example of what I was talking about in the entry just before his, and then following it up with yet more proof of how ideologues’ thought processes wind up deriving reality from their ideas, instead of the other way around.

First he leaps to the conclusion that I’m a Zionist—even though my entry said nothing about Israel, I don’t identify myself as a Zionist in my comment, and anyone who reads my blog would see that Israeli issues amount to less than 1% of what I deal with there.

For both Zionists and anti-Zionists, the land occupied by Israel and Palestine is the center of the universe, and these people’s problems are by far the most important problems on Earth.

Talk about self-absorbed. A billion humans live in a state of starvation around the world; we’re rapidly destroying the ecosphere; Palestinian suffering would look like paradise to many people in the eastern Congo and the Darfur and Bangladesh and Burma and many other places. And since I’m rational I know that all religions are twaddle, so the competing religious claims of Jews and Christians and Muslims mean nothing to me theologically.

But to an anti-Zionist, anyone who disagrees with him must be a Zionist, because that’s all there is in their miniature cosmos. Claustrophobic much?

As for his “shoe on the other foot” argument that’s only valid if all killing is morally equivalent. It’s not. We didn’t declare war on the Islamic fascist movement. They declared war on us—on every single American and American ally and anyone else who happens to be standing near one of us, even if they’re devout Muslims, even if we’re in a mosque praying. No exploitation of Arabs by American CEOs justifies targeting noncombatants. We don’t. They do. This is total war by their rules, and we’re killing every leader who sticks his head up. Deal with it.

As for Iran—its fake-elected “president” has repeatedly threatened to erase Israel, and backed it up with mass rallies where adherents scream Death to Israel, Death to America repeatedly, along with an endless propaganda campaign blaming everything but hangnails on Israel. I choose to take him seriously. Any nation that frequently threatens a war of aggression against another country is in a different category than other nations when it comes to nukes. As for its being inspected—that’s not what the UN inspectors say. Perhaps targuin1 has been receiving divine revelations like Ahmadinejad gets.

So yes it’s fine with me that Israel has nukes (where tarquin1’s numbers come from are also, doubtless, divine revelation—Israel sure isn’t talking). Not because I’m ga-ga about Israel, but because it has a democratic government that’s able to demonstrate reasoning powers, while the vastly larger Iran is ruled by revanchists and fruitcakes.

Our war on Iraq was unjustified. I sure didn’t vote for the guy who did that. But I did vote for the guy who’s trying to pick up the pieces. Our war on Aghanistan was abundantly justified, however, and the people who enabled Al-Qaeda to attack us are exactly the ones trying to reconquer the place.

That said, the “facts” radicalizing weak-minded Muslims are called “The Narrative” by Islamic fascists, and it’s 95% baldfaced lies coupled with massive distortions of the Q’uran. There is 5% truth in there but it’s dwarfed by the nonsense.

And drone attacks are a perfect example of that. And tarquin1’s total denial that Islamic fascists could by lying about the nature of such attacks shows that he’s drunk so much of the Kool-Aid that he’s a lost cause. They have motive, means and opportunity. The only way they wouldn’t would be if they believed in telling the truth to unbelievers. And if you believe that I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

Jihad Jane proves profiling doesn't work!

Jihad Jane is a petite, blonde-haired, green-eyed, American 46 year old who was arrested for planning to murder a European cartoonist who dissed Muhammed.

Leftists have proclaimed this arrest as proof that profiling doesn't work.

This is moronic, of course. Sure, there are non-Arab jihadi. Sure, you shouldn't categorically exclude anyone from scrutiny. But if 90% of jihadi are young Middle Eastern/Indian-looking men, ignoring that statistical fact is suicidal. Someone who fits the profile of the vast majority of people who have attacked us should expect extra scrutiny, and someone who doesn't shouldn't expect to get an automatic pass. Both of these facts are true.

Calls to abandon profiling in this and in most other instances seem to stem from a willingness to sacrifice public safety in the name of one's ideology, combined with innumeracy that makes people blind to statistical probabilities.