April 2, 2016

"Trump famously suggested that we target the families of terrorists. Suppose we target them for shame instead of violence."

"[I]magine a fully-briefed President Trump talking about the losers in that terrorist’s family, by name. That’s world news. It would get back to them. Imagine Trump talking about how many cousins have inbred in that family. Imagine Trump humiliating the terrorist’s family in ways that only Trump can. Ordinary insults would have no impact. But the weapons-grade humiliation that Trump wields can definitely leave a mark. It might take some testing to find the most humiliating approach, but some form of persuasion would have a permanent impact on the family’s reputation, even coming from an enemy like Trump. He’s that good. (Or that evil, depending on your point of view.)"

Says Scott Adams, expatiating on the wonders of humiliation. He asks us to use our imagination, and for some reason, in this post, he doesn't talk about visualizing how the game progresses, the counter-moves and further responses. He stops at the point where you might find it amusing. Are you amused? Are you enthused?

AND: If families deserve shame for the actions of a member, how does that play out for all the mothers whose sons enter a life of crime? How mean to them do we want to be?

71 comments:

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

Shaming has no effect on the shameless

PB said...

Religious zealots can't be shamed for their religion. Just like Democrats.

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

Although in truth, the Conventional Media has been generally effective in insulating such as
..the mindless Progressive rent-a-mobs such as occupied the Madison Capitol bldg a few years back;
..the Occupy [whatever] mobs a bit more recently;
..Islamic terrorists of the present years;
from public shaming.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Science tested? It's good that he opened with a joke but that's where I stopped reading.

I once described Scott Adams as the Penelope Trunk of political punditry.

I shouldn't think that was clever.

But I do.

Paddy O said...

For some reason this scene comes to mind (with Scott Adams playing the role of the gnat).

Paddy O said...

Is Scott Adams amused by Trump or maybe Scott Adams is a muse for Trump. You might make a joke on that.

Alexander said...

Result 1: (Expected) Shame has no impact. Families of terrorists are in fact feted in the streets by their co-cultists.

Result 2: Shame has some effect. People ostracized. In some cases, honor-killed. Mainstream news media and progressives of all stripe say that Donald Trump murdered these people, by shaming them. Cut to a camera of six year old saying they are starving because nobody will sell food to their family. Nobody bothers to investigate, Trump kills children.

Other possibility: Turns out, that a culture that has been built for millennia around protecting, preserving, and prospering the family - and only the family - takes you seriously when you kill their 50 closest kin in retaliation. Families in the middle east begin killing their lunatic relations instead of praising them. The propaganda about how one's family will gain from one's martyrdom plummets like a rock. Any child that goes around with "Allah Akbar" a little too loosely on his lips gets the rod before the idiot grow up to do something about it.


Hagar said...

Shaming and ridiculing them is actually a good idea that will prevent them gaining adherents.

But Donald Trump does not wield "weapons' grade" anything and certainly not in his speech; for me, most of the time it is hard to tell what, if anything, he is talking about.

cubanbob said...

Targeting the families is certainly brutal, immoral, possibly illegal but it is quite effective. The Communists can offer excellent testimony of the effectiveness of the tactic.

AllenS said...

Killing everyone within a one mile radius of where their families live would give you a better result. Call it a big fucking attitude adjuster.

Meade said...

Would a two mile radius give you "a better result" x 2?

AllenS said...

Keep it close, Meade. Once families, neighborhoods, and villages know that they now have skin in the game, will keep a better eye out for their children going bad.

Laslo Spatula said...

"Farook!"

"Yes, Amir?"

"I hear that Trump is now threatening to rub his Taunt on us!"

'I do not understand, Amir. He is threatening to rub his Taunt on us?"

"Yes! It must be like waterboarding, but with his Taunt!"

"I still don't get it."

His Taunt, Farook: the space between his balls and his anus. He is going to rub it repeatedly on our faces!"

"Ahhh, Amir. That is 'Taint', not 'Taunt'."

"Taint?"

"Yes: 'Taint' is the area between your balls and your anus. 'Taunt' just means to ridicule someone."

"Well, that doesn't sound so bad. I was worried there, for a moment."

"I understand, Amir: having your face smothered between Trump's gyrating balls and anus would be awful indeed."

"It must be sweaty and orange."

"Very orange, Amir."

"Farook?"

"Yes, Amir?"

"Hillary Clinton: does SHE have a Taint?"

"Yes, Amir she does. It is between her vagina and butthole."

"Because that would be even worse."

"I agree, Amir. Her Taint is probably covered in scales and stiff hairs. Or like a Scorpion."

"I do not like to think about such things, Farook."

Nor do I, Amir: nor do I."

I am Laslo.

Michael K said...

"Families of terrorists are in fact feted in the streets by their co-cultists."

More rubble, less trouble.

Middle East motto.

pm317 said...

Or just quiz the family members on what they know -- aren't all of Saudi's one big family? Loosen the laws to enable interrogating family members to draw out how much they know/knew.

Unknown said...

Just mind-boggling. There is no difference between what Scott Adams proposes and what the Nazi's (and others) did by encouraging communities, neighbors and friends to snitch on whoever they were after such as Jews, Poles and so on. And, how did that work out.

chuck said...

> "[I]magine a fully-briefed President Trump"

I like fantasy but the premise here is too weird to sustain disbelief.

Ken Mitchell said...

On a related note; IANAL, but I understand that while promises made under duress are not legally binding, there is ONE such promise that is; parole. I suggest some sort of "family parole" for middle-eastern immigrants to the USA. Any act of terrorism by any member of the family should result in the immediate deportation of the ENTIRE extended family. They take nothing but the clothes they are wearing, and forfeit everything else.

pm317 said...

snitch on whoever they were after such as Jews, Poles and so on

That comparison does not hold because Jews, Poles were not indiscriminately killing people. And the pleas to snitching are already under way and nothing new to Trump. Drive around the beltway you will see big signs blaring see something, say something.

Phil 314 said...

"(Donald) Trump’s (grand)father, Friedrich Trump, came to America in 1885 as a 16-year-old from Kallstadt, a village in Rhineland-Palatinate, a region known for wine and stuffed pig’s stomach. After working for a few years as a barber in New York, he headed west and opened a restaurant in a mining town in Washington state where workmen were treated to hearty food, liquor and assignations with women in the back rooms of the establishment."

Economist Feb. 13

In other words, the Trump dynasty started with a whorehouse. Shameful.

rehajm said...

Uncle Saul says ridicule is man's most potent weapon.

Roger Sweeny said...

The Merle Haggard Mama Tried lyrics was written by Merle and was released in July 1968 as the first single and title track from the Mama Tried vinyl record album.

This song is one of eight #1 [country] songs that Merle recorded between 1966 and 1969.

The song was written by Merle as he tried to focus on the pain and suffering he caused his mother after being placed in San Quentin prison in 1957.

...but it should be noted that although Merle was incarcerated in San Quentin, he was never sentenced to "Life without Parole" as was written in the song.


http://www.all-about-vinylrecords.com/mama_tried_lyrics.html

Fernandinande said...

AllenS said...
Killing everyone within a one mile radius ...
Meade said...
Would a two mile radius give you "a better result" x 2?


Hint: Pie are round, cornbread are square.

Michael K said...

"the Trump dynasty started with a whorehouse. Shameful."

Whore houses were legal in Washington and Idaho as recently as 1959 when I was there. It was to protect the families of mining town workers. Ignorance is no excuse although stupidity is.

Ken Mitchell said...

Phil 3:14 said... "In other words, the Trump dynasty started with a whorehouse. Shameful."

And the United States Marine Corps was founded in a tavern.

Really, though, I have no prejudice against "prostitution". It's an honest profession, providing a service for a fee. It's certainly more honorable than, for example, politics, where the politician extracts a fee without providing any service.

Bans against prostitution and gambling were driven by the same puritan bluenoses who gave us the temperance movement and Prohibition, ad we can see how well THAT turned out. Now alcohol is legal again, and gambling is legal, and I think that the ban on prostitution needs to fall as well.

Ken Mitchell said...

Meade said... "Would a two mile radius give you "a better result" x 2?"

The area of a circle is calculated as pi times the square of the radius; double the radius, and you increase the area 4 times. So your comment should read:

"Would a two mile radius give you "a better result" x 4?"

Rick said...

Why assume families of terrorists are shamed by them? Some will be, others will embrace it.

Nyamujal said...

Why stop at families? Perhaps close friends should be targeted too. Friends are the family we choose after all.

FullMoon said...

Unknown said... [hush]​[hide comment]

Just mind-boggling. There is no difference between what Scott Adams proposes and what the Nazi's (and others) did by encouraging communities, neighbors and friends to snitch on whoever they were after such as Jews, Poles and so on. And, how did that work out.


"If you see something, say something."
Also, recently read something about teachers asking grade schoolers if mom and dad had any guns, or smoked marijauna, or something.

Also, aren't law abiding citizens worldwide encouraged to notify authorities of criminals?

Apparently, you subscribe to the "snitches get stitches" philosophy.

tds said...

Insults won't work in Arab world. Arabs are 1000x better in insults than Americans, and 100x better than a skilled New Yorker. Just read each and every Iranian press release. Arabs are so accustomed to insults, I'm not sure they even notice.

PS They are skilled negotiators, too. Try to buy anything on an Arab market, or negotiate nuclear disarmament deal.

Anonymous said...

Sure lets make the brothers and sons ( or daughters, or wives) of the terrorist hate us even more, so they have an excuse to commit some acts of terror as revenge for the humiliation of their family? How is this going to work with families who might have reported the radicalization of a family member before the act of terrorism is committed? How would this help assimilation efforts? Why would they want to assimilate if they thought they were hated and would never be accepted into the community?

Michael K said...

"Insults won't work in Arab world"

Trinitrotoluene works better. In a pinch, diesel oil and fertilizer.

Michael K said...

I nominate Amanda as the detonator pusher.

Chuck said...

I thought that the marvels of modern Western economics, civilization and society were enough, to humiliate the nations governed by Islamic oligarchies.

We've been humiliating them since the era of Queen Victoria.

Ken Mitchell said...

Amanda said... "Sure lets make the brothers and sons ( or daughters, or wives) of the terrorist hate us even more,"

Amanda, the Muslims who hate us (and not all do!) don't hate us for our ACTIONS; they hate us for our EXISTENCE. They DON'T CARE what we do. The ones who are terrorists use terror as their tactic because they CANNOT defeat us in battle; that's be demonstrated repeatedly since about 1500.

But they can defeat us by terror; sapping our will to fight, exploiting the fact that they don't care about their own casualties, and are willing and eager to exploit any weaknesses that they find. That includes our own concern for collateral damage; so Hamas builds rocket launchers into schools and apartment buildings, turning the civilian population into human shields.

Islam, in its current incarnation, is a militant religion that cannot accept outsiders except as slaves. The Muslim religion will need to reform itself from within, or be destroyed. Co-existence is impossible.

I sometimes think that President Trump ought to go to Saudi Arabia for his first state visit, and quietly tell the Saudi king; "We're not sure where the next nuclear weapon will be detonated. But the two after that will be in Mecca and Medina." Give the Saudis some reason to dial back their support for Wahhabist terrorism.

William said...

Shame is how the children of immigrants learned to be American. Our forefathers didn't emigrate to America because they were bored with being idle aristocrats........Shanty Irish was a literal term. The famine Irish lived in shanties and possessed only the rags on their backs. When they came to Ameica they were made to feel ashamed of their poverty and the impulsive vices such poverty engenders. From shanty to curtain lace in one or two generations. Shame works......,,,Women who wear hijabs should be made to feel defensive about wearing such garments. This should go double for their male relatives. I know that not every Muslim woman who wears such garments is pressured to do so by her male relatives, but quite a few of them are. There are some old world customs that don't work here. Immigrants should be told about them.

Meade said...

The best tactic against radical Islam is feminism.

Beldar said...

WHAT is your fascination with this cartoonist, Prof. Althouse?

jr565 said...

Shame wouldn't work, since they don't think that hating the infidel is in fact shameful.

Big Mike said...

Althouse knows Merle Haggard. There is hope for the lady!!!

(That is no lady, that is Meade's wife.)

Big Mike said...

The best tactic against radical Islam is feminism.

@Meade, most American feminists wouldn't lift a dainty little pinky against Islam. Islam hates Christians and most of them hate Christians, so the women think that the Muslims are sort of allies. Back during World War II some Jews cooperated with the Nazis in hope of being loaded on the last boxcar to Auschwitz. 21st century American feminists are sort of like that.

Also, expanding the radius proposed by AllenS would not get you two times the effect; it would get you four times the effect. I'm surprised that you aren't aware that if you enlarge the diameter of a circular flower by a factor of two you need to increase the number of flowers you buy by a factor of four.

clint said...

This gives new meaning to the phrase "Bully Pulpit."

Jim Gust said...

"I sometimes think that President Trump ought to go to Saudi Arabia for his first state visit, and quietly tell the Saudi king; "We're not sure where the next nuclear weapon will be detonated. But the two after that will be in Mecca and Medina." "

If Bush had done that on 9/12 we wouldn't be in this mess now.

Meade said...

"most American feminists wouldn't lift a dainty little pinky against Islam"

I wasn't thinking of American feminism, I was thinking of Islamic feminism.

Rick said...

Amanda said...
How would this help assimilation efforts? Why would they want to assimilate if they thought they were hated and would never be accepted into the community?


Neither the American left nor Muslims themselves desire Muslim assimilation. Why does Amanda think conservatives should care about the left's arguments for a policy they don't support?

Rosalyn C. said...

Malala, the Nobel Prize winner, thinks all children deserve a quality education. And she also thinks, despite being shot in the face for going to school, that Islam is a religion of peace. She thinks the problem is that all the terrorists didn't get a quality education. So much for Islamic feminism. I wouldn't get my hopes up.

"Meantime The Tsarnaev brothers who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings seemed integrated. Nobody noticed anything wrong with Syed Rizwan Farook, the San Bernardino shooter, or Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber. They weren’t lurking in a no-go zone. They had American friends, an education and career options if they wanted them. They didn’t want them. And that’s the point." see: INTEGRATION IS NOT THE ANSWER TO MUSLIM TERRORISM It’s not cultural integration, but religious disintegration.

I prefer compassion to shaming when it comes to dealing with the pathological effects of Islam. We're all part of the human race after all. That said, I don't advocate sticking your hand inside the animal cage to pat the tiger on the head. Compassion doesn't mean lying about the problems -- that's also delusional.

Owen said...

As noted above a doubled radius creates 4x the area. Energy needed is a function of the area. To obliterate a given area it makes more sense to drop lots of smaller warheads in a grid pattern rather than a single giant one.

That's the idea, anyway. Actual field data would help refine it.

DanTheMan said...

>>Sure lets make the brothers and sons ( or daughters, or wives) of the terrorist hate us even more, so they have an excuse to commit some acts of terror as revenge for the humiliation of their family?

Amanda nails it. That's why FDR never bombed Germany or Japan. He was smart enough to realize that killing the enemy was no way to win a war, since it would just make things worse.

Nyamujal said...

I think someone from the National Review pointed out that Trump has a very dim view of the military if he thinks they'll willingly kill innocent women and children, that they're cold blooded killers and the only thing holding them back is "political correctness". He then proceeded to point out to several stories of heroic men and women in uniform protecting Iraqi kids and women, often at great costs to themselves.
I loved that article. And the author, who's an ex-marine makes an excellent point. If wanton revenge is all we want, we lose the moral authority to call ourselves the "good guys".
When it comes to shaming the families of terrorists, perhaps Adams had something like this in mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4BfSy7wmBw

Ken Mitchell said...

Owen said... "Energy needed is a function of the area. To obliterate a given area it makes more sense to drop lots of smaller warheads in a grid pattern rather than a single giant one.

That's the idea, anyway. Actual field data would help refine it."

This data already exists. Also, remember that radiation and overpressure decrease by the CUBE of the distance, so you need a warhead EIGHT times more powerful to achieve complete destruction of the target if the radius is doubled. This is inefficient and wasteful. (Retired US Navy officer with a degree in Physics here....)

Your better option is a hexagonal grid over the target, but the timing must be PRECISE; otherwise, you'll experience "fratricide", where the first weapon's blast will destroy or disperse subsequent weapons. Considering that Islamists have few deep blast-proof bunkers, you might be able to "go cheap" with a grid of FAE (Fuel-Air-Explosive) weapons.

Ken Mitchell said...

Nyamujal said... "I think someone from the National Review pointed out that Trump has a very dim view of the military if he thinks they'll willingly kill innocent women and children, that they're cold blooded killers and the only thing holding them back is "political correctness"."

And yet, we fire-bombed Tokyo with waves of a THOUSAND B-29 bombers, obliterated the city of Dresden in order to cut a rail line, and used nuclear weapons on relatively unimportant Japanese cities like Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We regret the necessity of killing innocents, and we'll have some bad dreams about demolishing an unmarked NSF hospital in Raqqa, but it's worth the cost to kill ever ISIS fighter.

Doctors have to remove a lot of healthy tissue to get all the cancer.

Nyamujal said...

@Ken Mitchell, I think you're comparing apples and oranges. The Axis powers posed an existential threat to the allies. The axis powers had armies of thousands and amazing modern weaponry at their disposal. They posed an existential threat to democracy, freedom and our future. How many carrier groups does ISIS have? How many V-2's are they raining on London? They're a bunch of losers with guns who think they can bring about the end of days by engaging Kaffirs at Dabiq. If anything they know that they can't possibly occupy and destroy us so their only hope is counting on a huge overreaction on our part. They're a small death cult and they, and their ideas can be completely destroyed only with the cooperation of the people who are suffering the most at their hands- Arab Muslims. Every strategy that involves a huge loss of innocent lives makes our job that much harder.

Ken Mitchell said...

Nyamujal said... "@Ken Mitchell, I think you're comparing apples and oranges. The Axis powers posed an existential threat to the allies. "

As ISIS does to Europe and NATO. They've already invaded in numbers of nearly a half-million, 75% of whom are single males of fighting age (16-40). It's a very bizarre idea that Muslim men would flee the battlefield and leave their wives and children behind; I think it's more likely that the "immigrants" are actual invaders in fact.

However, most military analysts acknowledge that ISIS is at least ATTEMPTING to devise, if not an actual nuclear weapon, at least a radiological weapon. This is strictly a "terror" weapon; it has no military purpose. It's solely designed to cause fear and panic.

As I wrote several posts up, the Islamists are incapable of facing us in battle, and everybody knows that. So this is how they intend to defeat us.

An existential threat? Yes, it is.

Brando said...

Here I was thinking this might be a good idea until you lost me with the "Trump well-briefed" thing. I can easily see him out there publicly shaming the wrong person's family who then get visited by some patriotic vigilantes.

Rosalyn C. said...

Bombing of Dresden -- Feb., 1945, end of WWII in Europe, surrender of Germany -- April, 1945 There was no longer an existential threat, but the need to finally break the will of the Nazi army to end the fighting. You have to evaluate and challenge your assumptions with historical facts.

It only takes a few completely crazy maniacs to keep most people in line, in a state of surrender; terrorists understand that. They count on our surrender, not our overreaction, to gain their goal of Islamic supremacy. Overreaction won't happen, and they know it.

Liberal bias refuses to acknowledge the time honored traditions and intelligence of terrorists in pursuing their goals or even the fact that they have goals. Liberal thinking is all in favor of surrender in the guise of co-existence as a tactic. You'd think that all those images of women being lashed in public for not wearing the hijab and gay men being thrown off rooftops would convince people there's something wrong with sharia law, but not really. Iran and Saudi Arabia don't really understand Islam supposedly.

Nyamujal said...

@Ken Mitchell, I don't buy the invaders argument. The refugees are fleeing ISIS. ISIS ideology states that once a caliphate is established, it is the obligation of every muslim to move there. The hardcore ISIS fighters aren't leaving and they actually target families that try to leave. There may be a small number of terrorists embedded with the migrants, but the numbers aren't large enough to pose an existential threat.
Let's agree that tougher border controls are needed, and that European governments need to send back asylum seekers that don't meet their admission criteria, or refugees that fail to meet UNHCR standards. But how does indiscriminately bombing the people being held hostage by ISIS in the territories help? Russia has been doing that, and ISIS hasn't lost a lot of territory. Instead the bombing has exacerbated the refugee problem:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/09/imprecise-russian-bombing-syria-fuelling-refugee-crisis-us-official

Nyamujal said...

@Ken Mitchell : http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/the-problem-with-bombing-isis-in-syria/379081/

Ken Mitchell said...

Nyamujal said... "@Ken Mitchell : http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/the-problem-with-bombing-isis-in-syria/379081/"

Yes. And your point? The Atlantic doesn't carry a whole lot of weight with me when it comes to military strategy. In fact, it would be fair to say that for anything the Atlantic suggests, we should do the opposite. (They are occasionally right, but then, a stopped watch is right twice a day.) I'd be willing to allow the women and children to enter as refugees, but I can't accept the idea that single adult men warrant "refugee" status. Send them back to clean up THEIR OWN country. If there aren't all that many hard-core ISIS fighters, then it ought to be easy for "actual Muslims" to root out and eliminate the violent heretics among them.

Do you think that this is an actual "war"? Because ISIS thinks that it's an actual war, and Iran thinks so, too. There's only one way to end a war; kill enough of the combatants that they can't fight any more. I'm not willing to settle for half-measures; I don't want a Versailles style armistice that plants the seeds of a worse war in 25 years, and I'm not particularly interested in having a stalemate that lasts for 65 years, like the one in Korea.

Cato the Elder famously ended his speeches in the Roman Senate with the phrase "Carthago Dalenda Est"; "Carthage must be destroyed." The Romans sacked Carthage, carried off the survivors in chains, and left no stone standing upon another.

Let me say it once again; ISIS dalenda est!

pm317 said...

I was thinking of Islamic feminism.

Not if the men choose to wait for their 69 virgins on the other side.

Anonymous said...

Nyamujal: @Ken Mitchell, I don't buy the invaders argument. The refugees are fleeing ISIS.

Oh, they're invaders all right, though Ken is incorrect that they are invading on behalf of ISIS itself (though we know of course that some of them are). A lot of "refugees" are opportunists who do not come from ISIS controlled or threatened areas at all, but much farther afield. Among those who do, Ken is correct to say that they are not "refugees" if the large majority are men of fighting age, "fleeing from dangerous war zones" in which women and children have been left behind. It is an invasion, aided and abetted by Europe's weak and deluded leaders, and its genesis predates the Syrian war.

I tend to agree about the inefficacy of bombing, but not because it alienates people whose co-operation we need in order to fix their countries for them. If not for the idiocy of allowing mass Muslim migration into the West in the first place, while messing about incompetently in the internal affairs of ME countries, Islamic terrorism on Western soil would not have become the problem that it is.

Nyamujal said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nyamujal said...

@Ken, What will work is a political solution with targeted military action. The battle has to be fought on two fronts, one in Iraq and another in Syria.

In Iraq, spec ops are already working on tracking and eliminating ISIS's leadership cadre. There have been some pretty successful raids and hostage rescue missions in that regard. To help retake territory in Iraq, the Ramadi model is a good one. The final push to retake that city was led by US trained Iraqi forces with close air support from Iraqi air force F-16's after Kurdish militias helped cut off supply routes in the north.
Recently, a marine artillery base close to Mosul is providing cover for Iraqi troops who hope to liberate that city. The US is already supporting non-PKK Kurds in helping them keep ISIS at bay. With the Kurds, you don't want to support the PKK as that'll piss of the Turks.

Politically, in Iraq, some sort of compromise also has to be reached between the Kurds, the Shia and the Sunnis. We need to put pressure on the government to stop antagonizing the Sunnis and try to deliver on the promises made during the Anbar awakening if we want to drain Sunni support for ISIS.

Syria is trickier simply because of all the actors involved, from Al Qaeda style rebels who are fighting ISIS but are still our enemies, to the FSA, the Kurds, the Russians, the Iranians, the GCC countries scared of a resurgent Iran, and Assad.
Again, without coalition building nothing will be accomplished there. Coalition forces could contain ISIS in Syria and reassess their strategy to fully remove them from the region once and for all. This would allow some time to train indigenous Syrian forces to do the heavy lifting, and Arab forces to do the peace keeping.
It very well could be that special forces teams and JTACs, paired with the Syrian Kurds in the north as a fighting force and Sunni Arab armies working as peace keepers once territory is gained, could storm across Syria to the heart of ISIS power in Raqqa, just as special forces backed by the Northern Alliance did to the Taliban in Afghanistan 15 years ago.

Now, some compromises have to be made. The Russians want their deep sea port but if we're willing to live with that, perhaps they'd help nudge Assad from power with the proviso of guaranteed safety/territory for Alawites and other Syrian minorities. This can be done, but you'll find that blind bombing or just putting a large number of US troops in harms way isn't the answer.

Nyamujal said...

@ Ken, as I've outlined, there are ways we can accomplish our goals without creating several future problems by alienating a large number of Muslims. I'm hardly a foreign policy expert but reading some books over the past few months and research has given me a decent handle on the intricacies of the conflict. The people running for office have untold resources at their disposal and the option to have several experts like Charles Lister at their beck and call, and yet they spend their time spewing the vilest, most ignorant crud imaginable (like one Mr.Trump). C'est dommage....

Owen said...

Ken Mitchell: thanks for correcting my physics. Energy goes as the cube not the square (I kept visualizing a half-sphere due to ground burst and it confused me). As for the political and strategic efficacy of bombs: Nyamujal is eloquent in saying how they could make things complicated and harder for us. But the infinitely ramifying complexity of balancing this interest against that; of finding ourselves stymied by this or that minor actor's agenda; of our need to please every splinter group; suggests that Nyamujal is going about this from the wrong end. Once men fear you, they stop dictating how they want you to please *them*, and spend their days and nights worrying about whether they have done enough to please *you*. Things get...simpler.

Not necessarily prettier; but simpler.

Ken Mitchell said...

I've forgotten which general said that he didn't care if they hated us as long as they feared us even more.

And Churchill nailed it, as he usually does; I'm not bothering to look up the precise quote but he said that the Mohammedans were either at your knees or at your throat.

Earnest Prole said...

Who gives a flying fuck about Donald Trump, Scott Adams, and terrorists? They’re all fugacious. But Merle Haggard singing “Mama Tried”? Timeless.

Owen said...

Ken Mitchell: after 9/11 I looked up that quote and memorized it in Latin, for added classiness: "Oderint, dum metuant."

"Let them hate us, so long as they fear us."

john marzan said...

targetting families is supposed to deter terrorists forom committing terrorism. would the jihadist be deterred by adams suggestion?

Anonymous said...

Ken Mitchell: I've forgotten which general said that he didn't care if they hated us as long as they feared us even more.

That was Caligula (though I'm sure others used some variant through the centuries).

Probably not the role model you're looking for.

I'm not bothering to look up the precise quote but he said that the Mohammedans were either at your knees or at your throat.

If I'm not mistaken he said that about the Germans.

At any rate if they weren't over here and we weren't over there we could be spending less time and resources fussing about the psychology of Mohammedans.

Rusty said...

Meade said...
The best tactic against radical Islam is feminism.

And guns. Armed feminists in Iraq and Iran.
Is there an Islamic version of "Pussy Riot"?

Earnest Prole said...

Rest in Peace, Merle Haggard