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Shall we wage a war against Islam? An exchange
Here is my exchange with David Yerushalmi concerning his article, previously discussed here, in which he proposes a war against Islam. He had sent me the article, saying that he agreed with the Separationist strategy I have outlined. (Be sure to read my follow-up to the discussion, where I establish that Mr. Yerushalmi’s strategy really means the destruction of Islam.)
LA writes:
This is interesting, but is definitely not Separationism, i.e., Contain, Isolate, and Police, as you are calling for an open-ended war to destroy Islam itself. You want to destroy all Islamic regimes. I only want to destroy regimes that are actually doing things dangerous to us. That’s a big difference.
DY writes:
The last point is a good one but what is the difference between a sharia faithful Islamic regime and one that is not hostile to us? You are ignoring your own piercing critique of Islam-Sharia
LA:
There may be sharia regimes that are not projecting themselves outwardly.
You want to destroy Islam. You want to eliminate Islam from the earth.
That is very different from what I propose. I want to contain Islam within its historic lands where it can’t threaten the rest of us. I have no designs on Islam itself, though, as I’ve said, if our containing it and stripping it of any hope expanding itself results in a demoralization and perhaps a Kemalization from within, that would be fine with me; I would love to see Islam disappear from the earth. But that is not the purpose of my strategy.
Look, David, in the long run and the larger picture, you may turn out to be right that Islam must be destroyed. But, as the Separationist position is defined, your position is different from it.
DY
I understand your position. But it leaves me with this: how do you know until it is too late if a regime is projecting outwardly? What is “projecting”? Is Iran’s blustering enough or do we need to show they are actually supporting the insurgency in Iraq?
Moreover, an Islamic Sharia faithful regime must project outward or it is NOT a faithful to Sharia.
A nation that developed a NEW Shari’a that did not call for our demise, either by war or otherwise, would not be what I define as an enemy regime.
I don’t propose the destruction of Islam. I propose the destruction of the LEADERSHIP and INFRASTRUCTURE of those who abide by historical and traditional SHARIA. I can’t be much clearer than that.
Leaving such leadership and infrastructure in place as you might be suggesting UNTIL there is an OUTWARD projection might end up being too little too late. What happens if Musharraf is assassinated and an Islamic regime takes over? Let’s suppose they say: We are not looking for a fight but we will impose sharia on our own people. In the meantime they have nukes and VERY capable bombers for delivery. You can’t tell me you sit back and not act immediately?
LA replies to DY’s points:
> I understand your position. But it leaves me with this: how do you know until it is too late if a regime is projecting outwardly?
Are you saying that every Islamic government on earth is inherently a threat to the U.S. as this moment? Whoever thought that? I thought our problem was with terrorist groups and regimes backing them. Now you’ve redefined the problem as any Islamic state.
> Moreover, an Islamic Sharia faithful regime must project outward or it is NOT a faithful to Sharia.
This is not true at all. Many Islamic countries border other Islamic countries, and therefore have no external jihadist policy. Islamic countries bordering on non-Muslim countries tend to be at conflict with them. But such local situations are not necessarily the kinds of threats that require invading the country and destroying its regime. Again, you have incredibly upped the whole analysis beyond what anyone has said before, other than the L-dotter types who talk about wiping out all Muslims.
> I don’t propose the destruction of Islam. I propose the destruction of the LEADERSHIP and INFRASTRUCTURE of those who abide by historical and traditional SHARIA. I can’t be much clearer than that.
I suppose one could make sense of your position as a kind of Kemalization imposed from without. We tell the Muslim world: you can have your Islamic religion, but it can have no power in the state. So this would be a universally imposed Kemalization. That’s interesting.
But the bottom line remains that this means either invading and destroying the government of any country with a state based in Sharia, or getting that country voluntarily to give up its sharia regime to avoid invasion. We would have to stomp all over the Muslim world. We would have to invade many countries.
In fact, all 57 Muslim majority countries in the world are signatories of the 1990 Declaration of Human Rights in Islam which states that sharia is the ultimate standard for human rights and for law. Therefore, at the highest level of their political expression as the world body of Islamic majority countries, all 57 of those countries are sharia regimes and according to you we would have to destroy them all.
> Leaving such leadership and infrastructure in place as you might be suggesting UNTIL there is an OUTWARD projection might end up being too little too late. What happens if Musharraf is assassinated and an Islamic regime takes over? Let’s suppose they say: We are not looking for a fight but we will impose sharia on our own people. In the meantime they have nukes and VERY capable bombers for delivery. You can’t tell me you sit back and not act immediately?
Now you’re switching back from your global, destroy-all-sharia regimes idea to a particular situation. I don’t think a general answer is possible to your question. It would depend on various factors. The criterion is, does a Muslim regime pose a serious threat to us? And if it does, we destroy it. I don’t want to define the situation any more precisely than that.
[a separate e-mail exchange]
DY
On your first or more substantive comment, I believe your distinction between our views is one without substance. If we take what you have written about Islam seriously, as I most certainly do since I’ve written the same, a faithful Islamic regime is a dangerous one. I could care less about Islam’s surviving. But I most certainly want to take out their faithful leadership and infrastructure.
LA
We disagree. I have never said that a sharia regime just by the fact of existing poses a danger to us. The question is what kind and degree of danger does an Islamic regime pose. A danger of annoyance? A danger of terrorist attacks? Or a danger of WMDs? These are different things. Your logic is that any Islamic regime is such a threat to us that it must be destroyed. This is an extreme statement. If you expect people to agree with it, you’ve got to demonstrate how that is true.
My criteria are more concrete and de-limited. Is a regime harboring terrorists aimed at attacking us? Is a regime with a hostile character developing WMDs? Is a regime fomenting jihad in a neighboring non-Muslim country? The first two situations would under the logic of the Separationist policy call for U.S. aggressive action against such a regime. The third situation might call for some kind of effort, preferably by the local countries, to push jihadist country back into its own borders, or, if it is an unregenerate danger, to destroy it. It depends on the specific circumstances.
DY writes:
No. You are not taking enough notice of my qualifier. Not Islamic. Any Islamic regime which adopts as its operating “constitution” Shari’a – AUTHENTIC, TRADITIONAL, AND HISTORICAL Sharia – is the enemy. By definition, this regime has adopted a platform – political as much as ideological-religious – to destroy the West. I can provide you with several “Islamic” regimes which do NOT use Sharia as its constitutional platform although they might use Sharia and fiqh for marriage and inheritance etc. Jordan; Morocco, Egypt. None of these countries operate constitutionally on Sharia. They all apply aspects of Islamic law especially in family law matters and in some other civil law matters, but it is selective use much the way Israel uses Jewish law in some instances. (This does not mean of course that a country which does not embrace Sharia will never embrace terror.)
A regime cannot pragmatically be faithful to Sharia and not support our destruction. Now, I also was careful to say that once we define our enemies, that doesn’t mean that we attack as an automaton. It means we assess the risk; but the presumption is against such a regime. Unlike the nonsense we hear that suggests that because we made an intelligence assessment of WMD in Iraq that turned out overstated that we were wrong to attack. This is a different case of course because the presumption existed there because we knew he had wmd in the past and had used it and he would not give us access to verify compliance. But the notion of presumption was valid there and it would be in the case of a regime that announces or in fact adopts authentic Sharia.
The problem you have with your statement is the Pakistan case. You continue to side-step it.
LA replies:
Ok, I guess that’s a useful distinction, between partly sharia regimes and authentic sharia regimes. But how many such “authentic” sharia regimes are there in the world today? I have no idea offhand. I imagine there are very few, in fact, outside of Iran, Sudan, and maybe Saudi Arabia I can’t think of any. If that’s correct, then your “destroy all authentic sharia regimes” policy is not that different from my position.
Further, this is not just a matter of sharia. It’s also a matter of terrorist groups, and non-sharia regimes that may be dangersous as well. So sharia cannot be the sole criterion.
On Pakistan, I’ve answered as much as the situation allows. We must go to hypotheticals to answer further. If a threatening Islamic regime took over Pakistan and seemed likely to employ its nukes or sell them to terrorists or whatever, that would immediately become a prime candidate for topple and destroy. But what if only a “half-sharia” regime took over Pakistan? Even by your reasoning, that would not be a candidete for toppling either.
DY replies:
In response to what you just posted: “In fact, all 57 Muslim majority countries in the world are signatories of the 1990 Declaration of Human Rights in Islam which states that sharia is the ultimate standard for human rights and for law. Therefore, at the highest level of their political expression as the world body of Islamic majority countries, all 57 of those countries are sharia regimes and according to you we would have to destroy them all. “
This is not the “highest level of their political expression.” This was a “declaration” and wholly non-binding. Egypt and Jordan do not manifestly embrace Sharia. That is why al Qaeda wants their regimes replaced. In the Jordanian constitution, Chapter Two, Art 6, it states: “i) Jordanians shall be equal before the law. There shall be no discrimination between them as regards to their rights and duties on grounds of race, language or religion.” This is by definition not Shari’a. While Islam is the state religion, there is no legal definition of Islam and the very fact that the same constitution allows “freedom of religion” further makes the point.
Now a constitution itself is not determinative. Had you read the Soviet Union’s constitution you would have thought it to be the bastion of liberty and law in the world. But you cannot use a non-binding declaration to define a country’s character.
Iran is a clear case. They declare and behave as bound by Sharia. The same is true of Saudi Arabia. Pakistan does not. Indonesia’s constitution is also clear that it does not follow Sharia.
Given this glance, it is clear that Search and Destroy or the SANE Separationist approach does not require the U.S. to destroy “Islam.”
Moreover, let’s assume Iran had not been involved in previous terror attacks (Saudi Arabia and now Iraq) but had only said that Israel has no right to exist and denied the Holocaust. They have never threatened Israel directly with war. Would you take action in this case? Let’s suppose for all intents and purposes, they appeared “inward” enough and were not “projecting” as they have in Saudi Arabia and most certainly are now. But they are absolutely wedded to Sharia. They get nuclear power and continue to insist they are not making bombs but refuse to allow infidels or agents of infidels on their land to inspect. Do you act?
And if Iran is too hypothetical since they are projecting, what about a takeover by Sharia faithful in Pakistan. Do you wait until you have evidence of projection? That evidence might be the use of nukes. What say you in this case?
LA replies:
I called it their highest political expression because this is one instance in which the entire Muslim world, as the Muslim world, declares itself. The Declaration may be aspirational, but it is very important as a formal political expression of the most fundamental principles shared by all Muslim societies. And the one common principle they have, the highest principle that rules all others, is sharia. At the same time, I take your point that in practical reality and according to their own constitutions most of the signatories are not in fact under sharia law.
However, I had conceded the same earlier when you finally made clear your distinction between partial sharia regimes and authentic sharia regimes and I realized that our positions were not that far apart after all. If you had made that distinction clearer at the start, I think much of the exchange would have been unnecessary.
As for your obsession with the Pakistan hypothetical, I have already said that depending on circumstances, toppling might be called for, so I don’t know why you keep returning to that. We are trying to arrive at broad principles here, not write a complete rule book covering every possible contingency.
DY quotes LA’s reply beginning, “Ok, I guess that’s a useful distinction, between partly sharia regimes and authentic sharia regimes…. If that’s correct, then your ‘destroy all authentic sharia regimes’ policy is not that different from my position.” Then DY replies:
Now we are where I thought we were at the beginning. We are NOT that far apart. Full Sharia gets the full treatment but even then on our terms, when, where and how. Also, recall, we destroy with total air supremacy and covert and special ops. We need not put infantry on the ground. We destroy command and control and infrastructure. Let them spend time and money rebuilding.
On half-Sharia, then the presumption is not so strong and we make our assessment. But I would have an absolute iron clad rule: No Islamic regime of ANY type may have nukes. Musharraf and Pakistan are a HUGE problem. If anyone other than a SECULAR regime took over, the presumption would be that half-sharia is whole sharia with the nuclear part of the equation. We cannot risk having made a mistake.
LA says:
I only said we were not that far apart in the sense that since there are very few full sharia regimes that you would want to destroy just for being sharia regimes, there was not a huge difference between us. But I still disagree with you on the necessity of destroying sharia regime per se. I’m interested in the objective threat a regime poses to us, not in how sharia-like it, especially when we’re talking about a country on the other side of the world. My bottom line again is that I don’t care what kind of regimes the Islamic world has, apart from the effect those regimes have on us and other non-Muslims. I could be persuaded that any full sharia regime must be a candidate for toppling, but as I understand things now I do not see the necessity of that. Also, your argument that “No Islamic regime of ANY type may have nukes” is very interesting and deserves further thought.
LA adds:
Also, I say again, as I said in the previous blog entry, that your position and mine are significantly different in that you call for a war against Islam, while I call for what is essentially a defensive action of rolling back, isolating, containing, and policing Islam within its historic lands, while only occasionally interfering directly in the Islam world when it is necessary for our own security. Perhaps the actual measures you and I would support are not that different. But what we call this effort matters. As I explained in my exchange with Andrew McCarthy last month, a war by definition aims at victory, but a war against Islam can never be won, and a war that can never be won is not a war. So we should not call this a war. We should call it the permanent containment or quarantine of Islam.
DY:
Yes. I would declare war on “faithful,” Sharia-based Islam or just Islam. The war might be long and hard but your defensive approach would be longer and harder and guaranteed never to end. SANE’s creates a constant negative reinforcement. Moreover, you cannot contain science and you act as though they have no science. Science is the ace in the hole to the enemy. They can develop new weapons and new delivery systems and if you take a hands-off approach until you have evidence of bad behavior, it could well be too late. I repeat: Pakistan is armed today with nuclear weapons. You are one bullet away from those weapons falling in the hands of al Qaeda. Iran will soon have them.
Also, maybe because I have spent so many years in the Middle East, living among and with Arab Muslim neighbors, I believe the Muslim world would simply view your defensive approach as half-hearted and misread it for weakness. With SANE’s, that would most certainly not be a problem.
Also, as to what Charles G. commented on your original posting, we would hardly be a “fly swatter.” The man has no appreciation for our total air superiority. I could care less what France provides the enemy, other than how I might sanction France for supporting our enemies. As the French delivered new containers of weapons, we’d be bombing the containers. How many countries do you suppose would want to engage us in this way? The great Arab bravado would become a joke in short order. Israel learned this in June 1967 only to completely forget the lesson in July 1967. Had Israel treated its enemies preemptively since the Six Day War, Israel would not have the problems it faces today. The Palestinians would be Jordan’s headache (and you recall how the deceased King Hussein delt with them in Black September).
And, again I repeat. We need not put infantry on the ground to accomplish our task. And the reason is as you recognize: The Muslim world can only be reformed by unfaithful Muslims. That reform is not likely to occur under your defensive approach where they can build up Sharia in dar al-Islam as long as they have not yet “projected.”
SANE’s message being: A war in fact is winnable. Yours is not any more than the Bush Democracy Plan. Indeed I would argue a defensive quarantine just invites further attacks because you cannot quarantine science/technology.
LA:
Mr. Yerushalmi started today by sending me his article and saying that he was including himself among the Separationists. Now he’s dismissing Separationism as no more viable than the Bush Democracy project. That’s quite a change in the space of a few hours.
Mr. Y. says Muslims would see containment as Western weakness. The idea that Muslims would see a policy under which the West abandoned its philosophy of liberalism and inclusion and open borders; a policy under which the West steadily returned Muslim immigrants back to Islamdom and thus ended forever Muslims’ hopes of spreading Islam to the West; a policy under which the non-Muslim countries banded together to prevent Muslim power from extending beyond the historic borders of Islam; a policy under which America smashed to smithereens any Muslim regime that fomented terror or developed WMDs; a policy that basically locked up Muslims where they are, depriving them of any power to affect the rest of the world, as a “weak” policy strikes me as ludicrous.
Mr. Y. argues:
They can develop new weapons and new delivery systems and if you take a hands-off approach until you have evidence of bad behavior, it could well be too late.
The idea that we must destroy all Islamic governments in advance because they might at some point without our knowledge develop weapons that in one blow could destroy us, is very far fetched. Mr. Y’s policy really does come down to the “Let’ turn the Muslim world into a smoking ruin” idea that we hear on the conservative blogosphere.
I close on this point. If we recognize the Islam problem and give up our liberalism we can without killing millions of people and destroying entire societies successfully defend ourselves from the Islam menace. Now maybe that will not work in the long run, and maybe the killings of millions of Muslims, the destruction of their cities, of Mecca and Medina, will become necessary. But we’re not anywere near such a horrendous necessity at this point. I admit that, given the threat Islam presents to us, Mr. Y’s extreme proposals are not inherently irrational. But they do add up to a scheme for a hideous global war of destruction against Muslims that is not necessary at this point, when a much better alternative is available.
- end of initial entry -
Mark P. writes:
I was reading this very interesting exchange and it occurred to me:
Isn’t it nice to live in a country so absurdly powerful that we have the luxury to stretch nuance to the breaking point when discussing the very survival of our oldest enemy? I wonder what the Muslims make of such a situation, watching infidels casually discussing when, if and how they can be destroyed.
How different it must’ve been for all of the those ancient, Christian communities in Spain and the Balkans.
I, for one, would prefer to exterminate the Muslims since dead men don’t practice Sharia of any kind, partial or otherwise. But the logistics of such a task are just too staggering.
Containment and separation is the way to go.
James S. writes:
David Y. sounds like a bit of a warmonger. The existence of a pure sharia regime somewhere on earth is not ipso facto a threat to us. Doesn’t history show this? He acts as though you are being something less than prudent if you do not want to have to destroy every Muslim country anywhere anytime it hints it’s turning Sharia. Let them pose the actual threat first is all you’re saying, he wants to attack without provocation. He tries to say Muslims will always pose a threat because they might one day develop some technologies to hurt us but that goes for any enemy ever, past, present and future. We’ve never been as belligerent as he wants us to be and yet we still exist.
By the way, he calls your position non-credible in an update to his essay.
David H. writes:
I have been following this discussion closely, for it is a most important one (and one that I hope will not end in animosity, like more and more “discussions” do in this day and age).
Mr. Yerushalmi writes:
“SANE’s message being: A war in fact is winnable. Yours is not any more than the Bush Democracy Plan. Indeed I would argue a defensive quarantine just invites further attacks because you cannot quarantine science/technology.”
Unless I am mistaken Mr. Auster, your position includes the use of massive firepower should Islamic nations begin developing advanced weaponry (I would include any form of air power development). I don’t believe they could develop an ICBM in secret (surveillance would be constant), and if Moslems are not allowed to leave their containment area, the prospect of a suitcase bomb making it to America or continental Europe is remote. However, any attempted infiltration of a border state would have to be met with deadly force. I believe a very aggressive quarantine, given the legitimate threat of massive retaliation (including nuclear), would not encourage attacks, at least after the first test of the boundaries results in the annihilation of all those involved as well as punitive strikes on nearby states.
That being said, IF a nuclear or biological weapon were ever used by Moslems against a non-Moslem nation, then a war of annihilation (including the complete destruction of Mecca and Medina) would have to be the one and only response—no exceptions. Otherwise deterrence does not work. The deeply fanatical still would not care, but others who control the power structure (with all the privileges) certainly would.
Moving from the hypothetical to the real world, I believe that Iran and Pakistan will require our attentions very soon (I would say now, but we are not prepared for that war; the neocons democracy-junkies would waffle, while the left would sabotage the effort and as we have seen, the US government will not prosecute treason). India should be involved in the neutralization of the Pakistani nuclear threat from day one, as they are in the greatest peril. This might be a secret war, but if this requires open combat, so be it (Who shields the Taliban and al-Queda after all? They are no ally of the West). The preparations for this should have been well underway. Espionage and covert ops should have already begun.
One of the most significant problems facing either idea is a suicidal Russia, ruled by the vicious Soviet criminal Putin, who couldn’t care less for his own people. I’ve wondered if either of you have had the time to factor Russia into the equation.
There is one last point. Unfortunately America, France, the UK and Russia have provided advanced aircraft to Islamic nations. The establishment of a quarantine zone would be a bloody undertaking, make no mistake about it—the Islamic nations such as Egypt would challenge such an attempt and an attack on Israel (and probably Ethiopia—a forgotten ally) is a given. In setting up the quarantine the air forces of the Islamic nations would have to be destroyed, and any ground attack annihilated.
P.S. Pardon the length, but I really do believe this is a tremendously important discussion.
SANE posts comment by SANE contributor smearing me
LA writes:
Below is a comment posted on January 13 at SANE, by David Romero. I repeat the way this started. David Yerushalmi wrote to me, asking me to list him among the Separationists. On the basis of his article, I said there were both similarities and differences between us, but they would make for a good discussion which I invited DY in a spirit of friendliness to have with me at VFR. As this discussion was winding down, David Y seemed to sense that my views were not as close to his as he had apparently believed, and he turned increasingly aggressive in a flurry of e-mails, demanding that I answer him on certain point that I had already addressed as much as I could. Then he posted a private e-mail by me at his site in which I had told him that his abrasive tone was not in keeping with the spirit of the discussion to which I had invited him, and now he allows commenters to post low-level personal attacks on me like this, in which, because of my “resistance against the SANE War Manifesto,” I am portrayed as a person so egotistical that I can’t admit when it’s raining.
The one thing you may overlook about Auster, unless you have followed his blog for awhile, is his irritating habit of never admitting he may be wrong. The man’s ego is horribly outsized with omniscience which renders him impervious to logicial coherence as evinced, say, from Victor Davis Hanson, Melanie Phillips, Mark Steyn, Pope John Paul II, and a host of others who don’t see things as clearly and distinctly as does Mr. Auster. Shalom Midbar may be right; Auster might not understand the science-democracy obversion of modernity, which would account for his resistance against the SANE War Manifesto. But I’m more willing to bet that the man is simply captive to his own ego such that he would never admit it’s raining, even when he’s all wet.
The name David Romero was familiar, so I searched my e-mail and found an exchange with him from last October 29, He had written to me, asking for my response and advice on an article he had published at SANE:
Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2006 4:57.p.m.
Subject: Thank you
Hello, Mr. Auster.
I have written what I believe is a solid article challenging the notion that Mexican immigration is a benign force on the ongoing assault of America’s national character and existence as a unique European republic. I’m telling you this because I wanted you to know that your comments and writings inspired me to attempt to say something substantive about this troubling circumstance. The article is linked below, if you care to read it.
Unortunately, not many online publications seem to be interested. Perhaps that is because I’m an unknown entity; this is my first writing effort for publication. Then again, the deafening response of silence I have received (from The American Thinker, National Review, Intellectual Conservative, et al) may be because of other less obvious reasons. In other words, the argument to preserve a people and nation because it is Ours and as such different in rank from the Others can only be described as the vilest form of discrimination. It is what one might term Outside the Pale of Political Discourse and dismissed with the “R” word.
I believe a multicultural affliction is what I’m up against. In any case, thank you for your website and the inspiration you provided me.
http://www.saneworks.us/comments.php?aid=205&cid=35&b=Immigration-category-35.htm
Best regards,
David Romero
I wrote back to him telling him there was a lot of good stuff in the article, but also pointing to some things both thematic and stylistic, that needed to be improved for the article to have a better chance of getting published. That was my last contact with him. Between then and now (was I insufficiently approving of his article?), he went from being “inspired” by me to describing me in the hostile and denigrating terms used above, indeed, going so far as to say that I am so blinded by ego that my arguments are intellectually worthless. And David Yerushalmi, whom I had welcomed to a debate at my site, allowed that comment to be posted at his site, allowed it to remain online, and never even posted his own comment disagreeing with it.
Jeff in England writes:
This disappointing resort to personal invective against one’s debating opponent is a product of the dumbing down of modern American intellectual dialogue. While the left certainly specialised in it against the right and within intself, we are now seeing it apppear frequently on the right.
I have disagreed many times with Larry Auster on many issues and all I can say is that he has argued his case intelligently against whichever arguments I have put forth. I never felt any sense of a massive ego at work against me nor a sense that he (Auster) was always right. His “right” in any debate is determined by the validity of the logic he puts forth and his thinking on most issues is to say the least very impressive.
Debating opponents of Larry often build up a sense of frustration when debating Larry Auster because his argument is usually a very good one.
So opponents may feel like Mike Tyson when he was fighting Evander Holyfield. In other words, beaten in the legitimate fight, they resort to biting off ears. This latest comment by one of SANE’S writers is on the level of Mike Tyson’s attempted victory by earbiting.
Ironically, Larry Auster had previously encouraged the SANE writer (Romero) and had pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of the writer’s writing style etc. Ironically too, I had been telling Larry Auster how impressed I was by David Yerushalmi and his e-mag SANE which I had recently discovered. There was a lot of insightful thinking and crisp writing at SANE about issues such as immigration and multiculturalism and they seem to avoid resorting to hate or name calling either against the subjects of their articles or against other writers. Very quickly they have proved me wrong by resorting to personal attacks on Larry Auster when they couldn’t win their argument in traditional ways. They are not the first to do so nor the last.
Their personal invective is an easy way of avoiding the weaknesses of one’s own argument: in other words whatever valid argument your debating opponent presents, just call him or her a self-righteous egomaniac and then declare that you have beaten him or her because of that. Is this the future of intellectual dialogue? Is this what we want to see in the blogosphere, conservative or not? I ask David Yerushalmi to reconsider what has occured here and apologise to Larry Auster. If Larry Auster is wrong on a debating issue then make a logical case against his argument. His e-mag, VFR, emphasises serious intellectual argument which is why I personally am attracted to it. He is more tolerant than most in publishing views that disagree with his. But resorting to personal invective against him in response to his intellectual arguments not only makes SANE look bad, it lowers the whole tone of the intellectual right on the blogosphere.
LA replies:
I thank Jeff for this. This especially:
“Their personal invective is an easy way of avoiding the weaknesses of one’s own argument: in other words whatever valid argument your debating opponent presents, just call him or her a self-righteous egomaniac and then declare that you have beaten him or her because of that.”
I hadn’t put this into words before, but Jeff’s description hits home. In fact several others (Robert Spencer for example) have spoken of me exactly as Jeff says. In their portrayal, “Lawrence Auster” turns into this monster of egomania, a person who cares nothing about truth, argument, fairness, America, the West, or simple decency but who writes what he writes only to achieve his own ego-dominion over all things. Such a person is to be ostracized. It is truly remarkable that Romero, who two months ago was praising me highly, turned around and—not even in reaction to some argument I was having with him or with anybody, but simply in response to my collegial interchange with David Yerushalmi—attacked me in exactly the same terms as Robert Spencer, who has disliked me for years. Three months ago, Romero attributed mainstream conservative magazines’ failure to respond to his article (which he said had been inspired by me) to the fact that “the argument to preserve a people and nation because it is Ours and as such different in rank from the Others can only be described as the vilest form of discrimination.” Yet now Romero takes me to task as someone who out of sheer egotism is “impervious” to the “logical coherence” of the crusading univeralist liberal Victor Hanson and the open-borders pope John Paul II!
What in my inoffensive conduct toward David Yerushalmi could have set off the attack on me by his contributor Romero, which is identical to attacks on me that have come from others? I don’t know, but I think this comes from the fact that I have strong and articulate views on a lot of issues, I directly and bluntly challenge the dominant beliefs of our time held by “conservatives” as well as liberals, and I consistently point out how a lot of people, particularly popular and esteemed writers on the right, are wrong. I violate the spirit of the time by making judgments and defining boundaries. The question is, do I write what I write because I have something to say and I think it’s true and worthwhile and interesting (as any honest and sincere writer does), or because I’m an egomaniac seeking to glorify myself over others? Each reader has to decide that for himself.
However, I just realized this doesn’t explain Romero. The other people who have attacked me in personal terms have been mainstream conservatives. But Romero supposedly agrees with my traditionalist idea of nationhood. Maybe what happened—and this is a pure guess—is that Romero was new to these ideas, and thought he agreed with me, while he also agreed with Hanson, Steyn, John Paul II, et al., and only later realized that my views were completely different from theirs, and so he turned against me. Which, not coincidentally, also seems to be what happened with Yerushalmi. He thought he agreed with Separationism, and called himself a Separationist; then he realized Separationism was different from his ideas, so he turned around and attacked it.
Yerushalmi’s position adds up to a war to destroy Islam
LA writes:
In a follow-up at his website, David Yerushalmi gets more specific on his war aims:
SANE’s War Manifesto is different then from the “Separationists” in that it targets not “Islam” for destruction, an impossible task to be sure, but its capability to wage war primarily and secondarily its motivation to wage war. But one should not confuse or conflate the motivation to wage war with the motivation to be a Muslim. They are not necessarily synonymous because most Muslims today are not so committed to Shari’a they are prepared to die for the cause.
The capability target is obvious: the leadership, the command and control and the physical infrastructure to operate such regimes. We need not put infantry on the ground to accomplish these war goals: our air supremacy, special ops, and covert action can accomplish these tasks. There must be no let up, however, no halting. Our war effort to destroy their capability must be certain and definitive. They must harbor no doubts about our resolve and our capability. Once we’ve killed enough of the committed faithful and destroyed their capability to establish Shari’a-based regimes, networks, and the like, the war will have been won.
First, because of Mr. Y’s placement of the word “not” in the first sentence above, it could be interpreted as saying that my separationist strategy targets Islam for destruction. What Mr. Y actually means to say is that I have disagreed with Mr. Y’s war strategy on the basis that it targets Islam for destruction, whereas the truth is that he only seeks to destroy Muslims’ ability and will to wage war. Of course, destroying the enemy’s will and ability to fight is the very definition of war. The problem that emerges is in how Mr. Y. defines Islamic war and Muslims’ capability for waging it. He writes: “Once we’ve killed enough of the committed faithful and destroyed their capability to establish Shari’a-based regimes, networks, and the like, the war will have been won.” [Emphasis added.] So what he means by Muslims waging war is their having sharia regimes, i.e., “full” sharia regimes, as he explained in our discussion above. And we must destroy, not just such full sharia regimes, but Muslims’ very capability to create them. Further, destroying their capability to create them implies destroying their motivation to create them, as Mr. Y. makes clear in his first paragraph above where he treats capability and motivation as a pair. And that brings us to the nub of the problem. To destroy Muslims’ capability and will to construct sharia states means nothing less than crushing them as Muslims, driving out of their souls their very desire to follow Islamic law, because as long as that desire is there, there is always the likelihood that they will try again to construct sharia regimes. To eliminate Muslims’ motivation to form sharia regimes, a motivation that arises from and is commanded by Islam itself, we must destroy Islam itself.
So Mr. Yerushalmi has inadvertently confirmed the point I made at the beginning of our discussions. In the blog entry preceding this one, I wrote: “I want to contain and quarantine Islam where it cannot harm us or have any effect on us; Yerushalmi wants to eliminate it.” Mr. Y. corrected me on that, saying he did not seek to destroy Islam, and I accepted the correction. As he has continued to articulate his views, however, it turns out that eliminating Islam is indeed what he is aiming at, though he would disagree with that characterization.
SANE issues an apology, but blows the apology
LA writes:
At 1:39 P.M. Monday, two days after Romero’s comment was posted at SANE, this note was posted at SANE by SANE’s “staff,” who sent it to me in an e-mail:
Mr. Yerushalmi asked us to take another look at Mr. Romero’s comments about Lawrence Auster’s argument or rhetorical style. We have done so and we take note of Mr. Auster’s comments on his blog relative to this discussion.
While we have published a very good piece by David Romero on immigration and would welcome other such essays, we have in fact edited some of the more personal and gratuitous remarks about Mr. Auster. While we believe that it is fair and legitimate comment to suggest that one side of a debate has foreclosed a real discussion due to being close-minded, we believe equally that it is no longer within our boundaries to attribute a close-mindedness to ego or other “psychological” phenomena.
We apologize to Mr. Auster for the delay in dealing with this sooner. It is a bane of externally inputed comment threads that the line is crossed at times and matters better not exposed to the light of day get exposed.
I wrote back to SANE:
Your phrase, “matters better not exposed to the light of day get exposed,” makes it sound as though Romero exposed something about me that is true, rather than that he smeared me as a person so blinded by ego that I’m intellectually incompetent.
SANE, or rather the “SANE Staff,” wrote back:
You are correct and that was not our intent. We will change it now.
Below is SANE’s revised version of Romero’s comment. It still says that talking to me is like “talking to a wall.” (By the way, look again at my discussion with DY above and see how polite I was to him and how many points of his I conceded), and Romero still says that the problem is not a legitimate difference of views between Mr. Yerushalmi and me (a difference in which I repeatedly expressed respect for Mr. Yerushalmi’s views and even said that in the long run he may turn out to be correct on the need to destroy Islam), but rather my “irritating habit of never admitting he may be wrong … his refusal to admit that he is wrong.” Those last words had to be inserted by the editors in order to replace Romero’s smear. One wonders, since they had to edit the comment to the point of inserting their own words into it, why didn’t they just remove the comment altogether? Romero also scolds me , bizarrely, for my failure to understand “the science-democracy obversion of modernity.” I certainly do fail to understand it, since I have not the slightest idea what it means.
From: David Romero Date: Sat, January 13, 2007, 03:24 AM Subject: Auster: Talking to a Wall Comments:
The one thing you may overlook about Auster, unless you have followed his blog for awhile, is his irritating habit of never admitting he may be wrong. […] This Shalom Midbar may be right; Auster might not understand the science-democracy obversion of modernity, which would account for his resistance against the SANE War Manifesto. But I’m more willing to bet that [… this is merely a product of his refusal to admit he is wrong].
LA continues:
SANE has now sent me this, at about 4 p.m. Monday afternoon.
This is the final version of the SANE edit of Mr. Romero’s comment:
From: David Romero
Date: Sat, January 13, 2007, 03:24 AM
Subject: Auster: Talking to a Wall
Comments:
[SANE Staff: We have now removed the entire comment per Mr. Yerushalmi’s request. The final view on this is that while we value Mr. Romero’s contributions to SANE, this particular comment extends beyond our acceptable boundaries for public comment. Mr. Yerushalmi comes down on the side that while one might argue that someone is “close-minded” as Mr. Romero maintained was the case of Mr. Auster, without hard facts, it becomes an unsubstantiated claim which does not deserve posting. Simply indicating by way of evidence as Mr. Romero did that Mr. Auster disagrees with most of the conservative chattering class proves nothing since everyone Mr. Romero cited are in fact to be challenged and suspect because they still refer to Islam with some PC euphemism out of a fear that they will no longer appear in the main stream media as the favorite radical conservative. Meaning, even “radical conservatives” jealously guard their ability to garner exposure. Mr. Auster is certainly not guilty of that charge and that puts him head and shoulders above that crowd.
We will note on Mr. Yerushalmi’s behalf, and he has now written twice to Mr. Auster about this, that the commenter at Auster’s VFR that wrote “David Y. sounds like a bit of a warmonger” is hardly less guilty of empty sophistical name calling. We note for the record that Mr. Auster has not, unlike Mr. Yerushalmi and those of us volunteering to run the SANE Works for US web journal, has not bothered to either apologize for that posting or to delete its offending parts.
All the best,
SANE Staff (CP, PK, and KS)
Just before receiving the above, I got an e-mail from David Y. repeating the complaint about the “bit of a war-monger” comment:
I note that you ignore the “war mongering” comment which suggests a far more despicable personality than someone accused of being merely egotistical. You are not quite being as judicious in your website editorial responsibilities as you are requiring of SANE.
How does one reply to a person who, having just urged the most aggressive war in history, involving the pre-emptive destruction of all Islamic governments in the Islamic world, thinks he has been terribly mistreated by its being said of him that he “sounds like a bit of a war monger”? How does one reply to a person who not only considers that statement an unacceptable insult outside the bounds of discussion, but says that the comment that he “sounds like a bit of a war monger” is a personal attack equally as egregious as this:
“The one thing you may overlook about Auster, unless you have followed his blog for awhile, is his irritating habit of never admitting he may be wrong. The man’s ego is horribly outsized with omniscience which renders him impervious to logical coherence …. the man is simply captive to his own ego such that he would never admit it’s raining, even when he’s all wet.”
I also wrote to David Y.:
I appreciate the fact that you have finally removed it, 60 hours after it was posted, and after your initial editing of it which I had to point out to you publicly was still offensive. Is it the case that you did not see the comment yourself during the first 57 of those 60 hours?
I also appreciate that you dissociated yourself from Romero’s attack on me for criticizing various conservatives, and for noting that, far from deserving condemnation for criticizing Hanson, Steyn, et al., I am to be commended.
On your amazing statement that what James S. said about you is as bad as what Romero said about me, I am speechless. I am posting both your staff’s e-mail to me and your e-mail which came in at the same time. I’ll have a more substantive reply later on this.
David Y. immediately wrote back:
It appears you will remain quite talkative in your speechlessness. This is disingenuousness in the extreme.
“I’m speechless” is an impressionistic expression by which people mean that they are flabbergasted, astonished. How often is anyone who describes himself as speechless literally speechless? Yet in Mr. Y’s eyes this innocent expression makes me “disingenuous in the extreme.” That would mean that virtually everyone who has ever described himself as speechless is disingenuous in the extreme. At the same time, I must say that it was also literally true. Other than describing Mr. Y’s position, as I did above, I was at a loss how to explain to him that the statement “sounds like a bit of a war monger” is not in the same order as Romero’s comment. Clearly, we are not just in Plato’s Cave here, the realm of delusive images of reality, where all of us reside, but in what Eric Voegelin called the cave below Plato’s Cave, where the possibility of discourse itself breaks down. It will require further thought how to convey to Mr. Y. the error into which has has fallen. However, given the kind of language he just used toward me, there may be little point to that.
Jeff in England writes:
Man you couldn’t make that apology by SANE staff up. Sounds like some CIA internal memo in a conspiracy film or something like that. Still at least they have responded with some sort of apology. Is the staff’s opinion the same as those of David Y? Though I’m glad I originally sent you the SANE blog, you certainly didn’t need those kind of personal aspersions (by either Romero or Yerusahlmi himself). They were not only wrong, they were infantile. In addition, they are a distraction from the real task at hand. I am, however, enjoying the “clarity” of the exchanges about Islam between you and David Y. I think it is very educational for VFR readers to read this sort of dialogue.
Lyle S. writes:
I hope that you and Mr. Y can reach a civil accommodation. I think we all, you, Mr. Y and others here want to keep muslims contained, peacefully or not, one way or t’other.
I believe, whether we like it or not, Islam is at war with the West.
Re. Clauswitz’ formula: Warmaking = Motivation + Capability:
Islam has the motivation (faith, etc.) but not, as yet, the capability.
The West has capability (weapons, etc.) but not much motivation.
It appears to me that at this point, keeping muslim capability moribund is the West’s easier necessary task.
God bless you for all your hard work.
LA replies:
Thank you.
That is very well put: They have the motivation, not the capability (though they’re rapidly gaining it vis à vis nukes and immigration); we have the capability, but not the motivation.
And that idea perfectly fits my long-time argument, which I repeated in my exchange with David Yerushalmi: It is not within our power to destroy their motivation, since as long as they are Muslims they will have the motivation, at least potentially; but it is within our power to destroy their capability, by strictly containing them within their own world and by destroying any entities arising within that world that become dangerous to us.
War as I understand it means destroying both the enemy’s capability to fight and his will to fight. But since we can never, short of extirpating Islam itself, extirpate the Muslims’ (at least potential) will and desire to wage jihad against us, the concept of waging war on Islam doesn’t fit the facts. The concept of containing Islam—which means, permanently depriving Islam of its ability to project itself onto non-Muslims—fits the facts.
Jake F. writes:
In your debate with Yerushalmi, you nail the point here:
To destroy Muslims’ capability and will to construct sharia states means nothing less than crushing them as Muslims…. To eliminate Muslims’ motivation to form sharia regimes, a motivation that arises from and is commanded by Islam itself, we must destroy Islam itself.
I can’t interpret Yerushalmi’s comments in any other way than you do, and your response is exactly the right one. I’m glad you two had the debate, and I’m glad to hear of Yerushalmi, but it’s over.
James S., famed author of the horrendous personal smear, “David Y. sounds like a bit of a warmonger,” explains himself:
It seemed to me like his strategy called for the United States to wage war against dozens of countries regardless of whether they posed a real danger. I thought this was going overboard and that it was weird that he would be so adamant about going overboard, considering this was supposedly a friendly debate between allies. Warmonger was just the first word that came to mind, and I had no hatred in my heart when I said it.
Your last post should put an end to it but I doubt they’ll let it drop. They came looking for a victory over you and they haven’t gotten their trophy yet.
LA replies:
And I posted James S.’s comment because it was within legitimate bounds of debate. If David Y. takes exception to the statement that he “sounds like a bit of a warmonger,” he can dispute it and explain why he’s is not a warmonger, just as, for example, when the editor of Reason magazine called me a racist years ago (a rather worse charge than being called a bit of a warmonger), I didn’t write to the magazine saying, “How dare you make this personal attack on me!” I knew that my ideas are racist according to contemporary liberal notions, and therefore that it’s up to me to explain that what the editor said about me was not a correct use of the word racist and to offer a better use of the word. Similarly, when blogger Ben Domenich called me an “Evil-con” a few years ago because of my support for maintaining America’s white majority culture, I didn’t express outrage about it. I know that to many people today my ideas do seem evil. So I posted a long comment at his site explaining my views of race and culture and showing why they are not evil but moral.
Now obviously Mr. Y’s strategy of preemptively destroying the governments of multiple countries which have not done anything to us other than to exist, is, to put it mildly, the sort of thing that most people would consider warmongering. So if Mr. Y is to engage in the debate and win over people to his view, it’s up to him to explain why he does not believe in war for the sake of war (which many people are going to believe about him), and doesn’t even like war, but is convinced that the war he is proposing is the only way to make ourselves safe from Muslim aggression. But instead of doing that, instead of taking James S’s perfectly understandable comment as an opportunity to explain himself further and carry forward the debate, DY acted as though James S.’s remark was a totally unacceptable personal insult requiring an apology and retraction, and he then made that issue the centerpiece of his interactions with me, writing me about three e-mails about it demanding that I apologize and delete the comment (I have not posted all these e-mails), in addition to the statement that he had his “staff” write for him about it at the SANE site.
Concerning the need to make a bridge between the radical and the mainstream, I had similar advice for Mr. Y’s contributor David Romero last October when he sent me an article for my feedback. I wrote to him:
Also, you need to realize that your argument is not “common sense” to most people today, but radical. Therefore you can’t just throw your ideas at the reader, you’ve got to take seriously where we are now (liberalism), and why that’s wrong, and why the national approach is the better one, and what the national approach consists of. You’ve got to lead the reader step by step toward your view.
(By the way, that was my last personal contact with Romero prior to his personal attack on me last Saturday as a person intellectually crippled by my own massive egotism. Maybe he was offended by my advice last October.)
Like Romero, DY seems insufficiently to grasp the fact that his ideas are indeed extreme by today’s or any day’s lights, and that if he’s going to get people to listen to them he needs to present them in a calm and logical way, not importunately and angrily push them on people the way he was doing to me, in what was supposed to be a friendly discussion.
Jeff writes:
I read the latest reply by David Y. where he demands an apology for being called (by your reader) a “bit of a warmonger” and then seems concerned about your “speechlessness” (where he misuses the term). He seems like a young child who says when caught redhanded “I’m sorry but it’s really his fault.” The warmonger comment made by a reader was perfectly logical in context and obviously not meant as a personal insult.
Speechlessness … well at the very least Yerushalmi needs to go to a dictionary. He had the sense to offer an apology but had to ruin it by uttering further abuse. Totally infantile and totally unnecessary. Man, it makes me wistful for dialogue with my left wing comrades.
LA replies:
“Speechless” is defined in one dictionary as unable to speak temporarily. So you could be unable to speak for, say ten seconds, and that would be a condition of speechlessness. Obviously, in order for the statement, “I am speechless,” to be true, it cannot be expected to be literally and permanently true. Simply saying, “I am speechless,” would be a lie (or rather disingenuous in the extreme), because one is speaking in order to say it.
“Snouck Hurgronje” writes from the Netherlands:
Lyle S. wrote: “Re Clauswitz’s formula, Warmaking = Motivation + Capability, Islam has the motivation (faith, etc.) but not, as yet, the capability. The West has capability (weapons, etc.) but not much motivation.”
The West has weapons and can raise large armies. If victory were a matter of combat power, the USA would have obliterated the insurgents in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Israelis would have flattened Hizbullah in South Lebanon.
As a part of a lack of willpower the West is suffering from a lack of direction. There is no clear picture of the other side, what the “shapes” of his organisations are, who the members and supporters of the jihadists are. Therefore even if there were a will to fight there is no way to plan an attack on the jihadists.
The attacks as are currently undertaken on Islamic societies, degrade Western-style infrastructures in those countries, so that their societies are set back. When set back these societies take a shape that conforms better to the shape and strength of Islamic and tribal Middle Eastern societies, so that the attacks actually enable the jihadists and obstruct Western-style forces in those countries.
Any military victory has to be followed by a political settlement of the society of the conquered. The West does not even have the beginning of such a settlement. Therefore any action against the jihadists should be limited to raiding, until there is found a way to settle conflict and transform military victory in peace or even just a ceasefire.
Snouck continues:
Y. wrote: “It appears you will remain quite talkative in your speechlessness. This is disingenuousness in the extreme.”
In order to avoid this semantic trap of the witty Y in which you found yourself, please consider to use the British (and Dutch) idiom “trouserless” to express bafflement.
LA replies:
Do the British actually say, when astounded by something, that they are “trouserless?” Give me an example of how it’s used.
Snouck answers:
In an exclamation. The use is close to “Such Chutzpah!”
“You mean that Tony Blair blasted the Lib-Dems for not defending Britain, while allowing 175,000 Muslims into the country annually? I am trouserless!” (In Dutch: “That drops my trousers.”)
Vivek G. writes:
David Romero wrote about Lawrence Auster’s “irritating habit of never admitting he may be wrong.” But what is irritating about it? Anyone who has done sufficient homework prior to airing his views won’t easily admit that he may be wrong. The onus is on the other person to provide substantive arguments to elicit that admission. Usually, only when arguing parties want to be steadfast on their points of view, certain finer nuances of their respective stand-points emerge which often result in a much clearer understanding of both the perspectives. And at this critical juncture CLARITY is one thing that is urgently needed, for it alone will enable us to act.
I do not agree with LA on all that he writes and that has never been a problem. Neither of us holds the other “a captive of ego.”
My personal observation has been (I am not making any universal statement, and no personal offence intended to anybody) that during debates, often-times, conservatives tend to be rather impatient, and therefore settle using personal vitriol what could easily be settled by precision.
LA replies:
Naturally, the more a person challenges accepted views, especially the accepted views on his own side, the more he will be seen as irritating or worse. Recently a blogger described me as a “pest” and a “pariah” among conservatives because of my criticisms of conservatives. Like David Romero with his comment that I am an egotist blinded to the truth by my egotism, or like Robert Spencer with his comment that I seek to discredit all other conservatives so that only Austerism rules, or like John Derbyshire who, without responding to any of my criticisms of him, described me as the type of person who buttonholes you in a bar and won’t let you go, and as someone who drives people “nuts” with my “ill-natured, relentless, nit-picking, logic-chopping” arguments, the blogger who called me a pest did not ask whether my criticisms of conservatism are true. Or rather, he said that to the extent that he agrees with me (on the issue of Islam), I’m valuable, and to the extent he doesn’t agree with me (apparently on most other issues), I’m a pest. On the issues where he doesn’t agree with me, he did not make any arguments, he simply said that I “don’t get it” and that I’m “clueless.” So for conservatives (and though this blogger is no thinker, his attitudes are actually typical) the operational definition of a pest is a conservative who attacks conservative positions that one supports. The same goes for the operational definition of an egomaniac who is incapable of admitting that he is wrong and who is blind to truth and who seeks to discredit everyone except himself and to rule the world. The fact that I consistently criticize so many conservatives and conservative positions, and that I do so not for superficial reasons but on fundamental grounds, automatically makes me an objectionable and dismissible figure. This is to be expected. The only solution is to keep making good arguments so that the arguments can no longer be ignored.
John D. writes:
Keep up the good fight Mr. Auster. Traditional conservatism has become very adulterated with liberalism in the mainstream of thought these days. I am quite happy to have a true traditionalist thinker in which to turn. You have exposed many a snake in the grass. I will continue to refer to you as the “Explicator Extraordinaire.”
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 11, 2007 06:57 PM | Send
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