An upside-down world

RD: Topic: what must we do to wage this struggle? Perhaps you have already written on this, so maybe you have a permalink? I think the current framing ('War on Terror') has become next to meaningless, partly because of Iraq and partly because it has been widely used in demagoguery. One alternative frame that I like is: the world community as a living body and the 'terrorist' challenge is a chronic disease. Diseased flesh may sometimes have to be removed (use of military), but a larger challenge is how to prevent further infection/replication. Also, the technologies that makes this so dangerous is NOT going away: hence the chronic nature of the disease. Thoughts?

Michael Blowhard, You write: "There are lots of people in the world who hate us and who covet what we have. So what?" If that was all there is to it, I would second your shrug of the shoulders. But you omit one *small* detail. Some of those people who hate us and who covet what we have also want to kill us. They already have killed some of us, if memory serves. Should we just shrug our shoulders at *that*?

As for the subject at hand, the Left has always been in need of a proletariat with which to bash the rest of the citizenry over the head. The working class is now much too bourgeois to be able to act as a high-grade bludgeon for the more radical elements of the left. Enter various unsuccessful and resentful ethnic minorities - the rest of the story writes itself.

Perhaps you're not familiar with Cohen's writings, but I detect a touch of projection here. Cohen (who has ceased to be a "left-wing journalist" in any meaningful sense of the word) would know all about "contortions and betrayals of liberal and leftish thinking". Like many cheerleaders for the war, he has now had to face the fact that he was spectacularly wrong. Whilst most of his former cohorts have mumbled mea culpas and moved on, however, Cohen rages against those who have proved to be right, using pretzel logic to try and blame those who were opposed to the Halliburton Administration's misadventure in Iraq for the current fiasco there. He has become something of a laughing stock in Britain.

Rod's plan for pursuing Islamic radicals-- Berating local Muslims. Eating good, healthy food. Make friends with military families so he can whine and cry when they have to do their jobs.

I see one problem with the suggestion that we should limit Muslim immigration to the US: what about the millions of Iraqis who have left their (currently unlivable) country? Jordan and Syria have appealed to the UN for help, being unable to deal with the 2M-and-counting Iraqi refugees. Since we caused this mess, it seems only fair that we should take these people in.

Bob writes: "Some of those people who hate us and who covet what we have also want to kill us. They already have killed some of us, if memory serves. Should we just shrug our shoulders at *that*?" I didn't suggest shrugging our shoulders when they come after us. "Hit back hard" are the words I used. But on what basis can our actions in Iraq be defended from *any* point of view? We've lost more soldiers there than we lost civilians in the WTC, which Iraq had nothing to do with anyway. And Iraq civilian deaths, thanks to our flailing-about, might total 100,000, or even far more. And here we are, entrenched in such a way we apparently can't get ourselves out of our self-created mess. Meanwhile our respectability and prestige are in the mud. So long as the team that hates us and wants to do us harm doesn't do us any actual harm, let's take reasonable action to protect ourselves and get on with life. If they do harm us, let's kick their asses and make 'em pay in such a way that they'll think a zillion times before trying it again. I've got no quarrel with any of that. But so far as lurching around the globe, trying to set things "right" in some vague way goes, because we've talked ourselves into an obsession with "evil" and because we think of ourselves as crusading do-gooders, count me out.