Recognizing our differences
Don Quixote on Jul 22 2006 at 6:38 pm | Filed under: Anti-war, Hezbollah, Islam, Israel, Muslim violence
Not a day goes by that we don’t hear a drumbeat of stories about the “civilians” being killed in Lebanon and the growing “civilian” crisis there. But what is a civilian? If Israel bombs the home of a civil Hezbollah leader and kills the leader, his wife and his four kids are there 6 civilian deaths? Five? Four? None?
Before you answer, please view the matter from the standpoint of the Islamic extremists. You know, the ones who raise their children to be suicide bombers and human mine field clearers. The ones who believe that dying for their religion is the most honorable act one can commit. The ones who targeted civilians on 9/11 and routinely target civilians with missles and suicide bombers in Israel, Iraq, Spain, etc., etc. The ones who routinely use “civilians” as human shields. The ones who turn mosques into ammo dumps and strategic headquarters. Viewed through their eyes there are no such things as civilians.
So why all the talk about civilian death and disaster? Well, while the Western mind has great trouble understanding the Islamic extremists’ view of the world, the extremists understand their enemy very well. They are quite happy to trot out wailing mothers and maimed children and scream about how brutal and inhumane it all is. They play on our softness, our tender concern for innocents. Only in a world gone mad, or a world in which the opponents understand us very well and we understand them not at all, could such tactics succeed. We have one side that routinely targets civilians and the other side that works diligently to avoid civilian casualties. Yet, to hear the American left tell it, the second group is the inhumane one. They buy the wailing mothers ever time.
We cannot make sense of the current world struggle between radical Islam and the West unless we undertand the very different persepctive our enemies bring to the battle. They understand us very well and play us like a fiddle. It’s about time we understand them as well they understand us, and judge them (and their “civilian” disasters) through their eyes. DQ
Email This Post To A Friend
7 Responses to “Recognizing our differences”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
DQ, not sure if BW has explored this story. Have you read the explanation that followed?
——
http://ontheface.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/7/20/2142505.html
–
Being somewhat(!) anti-MSM, I was moved by the expressed morality in this observation:
—excerpt
“..images of dead people - either Israeli or Lebanese. Israeli television doesn’t broadcast them, nor do the newspapers print them. Even when there were suicide bombings in Israel several times a week for months, none of the Israeli media published gory photos of dead or wounded people. It’s a red line in Israel. Do not show dead, bleeding, torn up bodies because the families of the dead will suffer and children will have nightmares. And because it is just in bad taste to use suffering for propaganda purposes.”
—–
Which is exactly what today’s Western MSM/Arab terrorist media is doing.
They play you all like a fiddle because they are very good at disinformation, deception, propaganda, and psychological operations.
The Japanese, seem to have a much better grasp of mental attacks than most. Maybe it’s cause of the martial arts culture thing. If you psyche your opponent out in a match or a scirrmage, then you can gain some time on his reaction speed. He will hesitate because his mind will be confused, while your mind is clear and you can strike fast. Hamas strikes fast because they have no doubt which side God is on. The West is slow and weak, because we are unsure who are the Good guys. Not the military, and certainly not me personally, but maybe 48% of America, those that voted for Kerry definitely.
Only someone with a great understanding of the human psyche can defend himself against mental attacks. Or someone with great discipline and self-confidence, like the US military. Civilians and the media have zero defense, they are easy prey.
Sun Tzu’s been telling us to know thy enemy and you will know thyself ever since he died and his book’s been in print. Unfortunately, some people are misapplying his lessons and believing the “root cause” of terrorism is US foreign policy. Obviously they don’t know themselves or their “foreign policy” as much as they like to present to the world.
For one thing, to know the enemy and their weaknesses, you must also know yourself and your own weaknesses. If you don’t know yourself, how are you going to analyze the enemy? The enemy is human, just like you. If you don’t know your own human fallibilities, who the heck will expect you to know the fallibilities of some freaking stranger?
This is why you cannot trust the Democrats when they say that they understand the enemy. They don’t even understand their own economic and socialist policies, they still believe their stuff works and is effective. People under such delusions are unlikely, if ever, to truly comprehend the nature of their opponents. They will always be looking at a mirror. Their enemy’s weaknesses, become their own weaknesses.
A mirror is no good to see what the enemy has in store for you across an open plain.
Everyone has weaknesses. If you believe in something, that belief is your strength as well as your weakness. The Islamic Jihad are religious zealots. Their religious fervor is the source of their personal motivation, as well as their personal flaw. We all know that democracy’s weakness is the same as our strength. We become better because we are an open society, yet at the same time this openless and lack of censureship also makes us more vulnerable to being destroyed and deceived.
Why would openness make us more susceptible to deception? Why, it is simply because people who believe that they are seeing the truth, will believe that they what they see is the truth. If everyone knew there was censureship going on, then they would not believe everything they saw, because they would always harbor doubt about the accuracy of such stories. In an open society such as ours, we get many useful and accurate information, but the same trait that gives us strength and knowledge to make the right decisions, also fools a great many people.
Many people believed in the Democrats before 9/11. Neo Neocon being one of them.
The source of your strength is also the source of your weakness.
Believe or not, we in the U.S. had a similar ban on showing dead bodies or accident victims, but during the late and unlamented Clinton whatever-you-call-it and the advent of cable, that rule went by the boards and now anything goes, even if they have to stage a photo-op to feature things at their goriest.
[...] [Read more and discuss…] [...]
This is an excellent analysis and I would like to see these ideas more widely understood.
This kind of argument is the road to becoming no better than Al Qa’ida.
Hezbollah are not al Qa’ida and the population of Lebanon or all Muslim countries are neither all Hezbollah nor all Al Qa’ida nor all growing suicide bombers - though if we kill enough civilians we may bring about a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Read Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International’s reports - the best independent investigations - and you’ll find both sides in the Lebanon war were indiscriminately targeting each others civilians and what’s more that this pattern has held for decades in wars between Israel and Hezbollah.
The moment you start arguing all muslims are potential suicide bombers and legitimate targets is the moment you start acting to justify the targeting of ambulances, fleeing civilians , everyone and anyone - at that point you can forget any war for ‘civilisation’ or ‘freedom’ - and you can forget persuading the majority of muslims not to support the extremists if you’ve adopted the same standards and methods as those extremists.
calgacus says:
“Hezbollah are not al Qa’ida”
Need proof for this statement.
BTW, the day you find Western suicide bombers attacking civilians for the sake of cold blooded massacre THEN THE WEST will be on its way to “becoming no better than Al Qa’ida.”