Avenging Noam: Why Oppression Does Not Create Terrorists

 

It is commonly argued that oppression leads to violence. This argument can take the form of outright apologetics for terrorism. It is “understandable” that Hamas launched the attacks of October 7th as they are responding to 75 years of oppression. There is a more subtle version of this argument that grants that what Hamas did was wrong but suggests that Israel’s response is only going to create more terrorists. Every Palestinian killed in Gaza is going to cause their relatives to become terrorists. This argument seems contrary to practical experience. Everyone is oppressed to some degree. Most people do not turn to violence unless pushed by some propaganda effort.

My middle name comes from my half-second cousin, Noam Yehuda. (His grandmother, Sarah Wachtfogel, was my grandmother’s older half-sister from their father’s first marriage.) Noam was killed in Lebanon the year before I was born. As I understand it, he was hit by the shrapnel of an exploding tank caused by a Syrian missile. Presumably, the Syrian soldier who fired that missile is still alive somewhere. How would I respond if given his name and address? Would I seek “justice” for Noam and kill this Syrian? One thinks of the scene in the show Gotham where the young Bruce Wayne confronts his parents' killer.

 

I was not raised to kill people. For that matter, I was not raised to pursue justice, but rather peace. As such, I would introduce myself to the soldier and explain how we are connected through this person Noam. I would assure him that I mean him no harm, recognizing that he was a soldier who did his duty just as Noam was a soldier doing his duty. Perhaps I would invite him to join me at Noam’s grave to pray. Is this what Noam’s killer deserves? I am not trying to achieve justice. The best way to honor Noam is to bring peace and that means shaking hands with murderers (assuming that they are not using the peace treaty as cover to plan more attacks) and letting them live their lives without getting the justice they deserve. Noam's killer needs to make his own peace with God. It is not my job to hasten that appointment or to help him atone through his death.  

If I were to shoot this man and claim that I was avenging Noam, perhaps you might believe me that I was pursuing justice, however misguided my actions might be. If I were to torture the man before proceeding to murder his family and then shoot up a Syrian kindergarten, it would be obvious that, whatever my claims for striking back against oppression, I was doing this because I was a murderous psychopath using idealistic rhetoric as a moral fig leaf. What if I were aided in my killing spree by several thousand American Orthodox Jews? If such an atrocity were possible, it would show that the American Orthodox educational system was not just raising kids with a giant oppression complex but was brainwashing kids and raising a generation of killers.

Note that this is a distinct issue from whether such actions could be justified. Even if defensible, such an atrocity could only be carried out by moral monsters. Decent people the world over would, therefore, be justified in protecting themselves against this menace and would not have to worry about creating more "Jewish terrorists." The terrorists are being created no matter what anyone does. All that is left is to eliminate those terrorists in the short run. In the long run, it will be necessary to go after the larger system that manufactures these terrorists. This would mean taking out political leaders who arm and finance these “justice warriors” as well as the “educators,” who gave them the idea that they had any business pursuing justice through violence. 

One can believe that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is unjust and that Palestinians have the right to violently resist. But, even if Israel was the moral equivalent of Nazi Germany, that would not explain what happened on October 7th. The Hamas fighters would not have raped women and murdered babies, even if those women and babies deserved to be raped and murdered, unless they were raised within a system that actively encouraged them to do so. We have no reason to assume that the Hamas propaganda machine would suddenly stop even if Israel agreed to a ceasefire or even surrendered. As such, Israel has no reason to worry about creating more terrorists. Those terrorists are being created no matter what Israel does so Israel can do nothing but try to kill as many terrorists as possible and prepare to do the same to the next generation.          

On Open Borders and Free Speech: It Is a Matter of Principle

So, in his State of the Union Address, Donald Trump accused the Democrats of supporting open borders and Democrat Stacy Abrams felt the need to deny this. With both parties committed to denouncing open borders, it seems necessary to explain what open borders are and to address a strawman argument that has come to be associated with it. Let us be clear what open borders are not; supporting open borders does not mean giving up control over borders and the end of national sovereignty. Open borders are a statement of principle that people have a right to come into this country. As with any principle, it is the beginning of a conversation and not a suicide pact. This means that, in practice, there will be situations in which the principle will be violated in order to defend against a clear and present danger. That being said, while certain people, such as terrorists, should not be allowed to enter the country, the burden of proof is on those who wish to restrict immigration to demonstrate that they are acting to protect against a clear and present danger and that their plan is closely tailored to meet that threat.

Consider the example of freedom of speech. I would hope that it is clear to people on both the left and right that free speech has inherent value as a principle. That being said, freedom of speech is not a suicide pact. It does not mean that you can say whatever you want where you want it. For example, free speech does not allow you to undermine national security. It does not even allow you to block traffic. It certainly does not apply when you are on someone else's private property or working for them beyond the hope that the owner or boss will seek to demonstrate their own principled commitment to free speech by going beyond the letter of their legal obligations. How we reconcile the principle of free speech with the many practical restrictions is part of our ongoing conversation and reasonable people are going to disagree about the precise boundaries. That being said, we can embrace free speech as a starting assumption with a very heavy burden of proof on anyone who wishes to restrict free speech to demonstrate the existence of a clear and present danger.

Israel is a good example where there is a clear and present danger from immigration. Those Palestinians who took part in Hamas' March of Return were not trying to enter Israel to look for jobs or to enjoy the Tel Aviv nightlife. Many of them were clearly coming to expropriate the property of Israeli citizens and commit acts of violence. Thus, the IDF was justified in not letting the marchers into Israel and even using violence to stop them. The fact that innocent Palestinians were killed as well does not change this fact. To be considered non-violent, they were under the moral obligation to disassociate themselves from groups like Hamas.

By contrast, Israel has a moral duty to allow the entrance of Sudanese refugees as they are not coming to Israel with violent intent. I would even go so far as to say that allowing refugees with no association with the Arab/Islamic program of destroying Israel is a critical plank for Israel's moral defense against the Palestinians. It would demonstrate that Israel is honestly acting to protect the lives and property of its citizens and not merely to maintain some ethno-state.

Similarly, if there were to arise a radical Hispanic supremacist movement that sought to bring their people into the United States to murder American citizens, then the United States government would have the moral authority to stop such an entrance even to the point of opening fire on a large group of people, including women and children. As with the innocent Palestinians, their failure to make sure they were not associated with those seeking violence means that their deaths lie on their own heads. That being said, it would not be enough to say that some immigrants are criminals because the burden of proof is on the government (even if it might be less than in a criminal trial) to demonstrate that the individual is a threat or at least has allowed themselves to be associated with a terrorist group.

In the cases of both free speech and immigration, while we accept restrictions, they must be implemented in the good faith that those calling for the restrictions and the politicians implementing them actually believe in free speech or immigration as a principle. The moment we recognize the existence of an organized movement that denies the right of immigration to this country in the name of maintaining some kind of white Christian state then such people lose the right to enforce any kind of immigration policy. If they truly believe there is a threat, they can go back and convince us that they have no outside agenda.

The defense of open borders is the fundamental human rights issue of our generation. In a world in which many people are oppressed based on their religion, race, gender or sexual preferences, allowing individuals to take advantage of modern travel to shop for a country that best protects their rights, is a necessity. If you are not willing to take a stand on this issue when it so obviously could help so many demonstrates that you were never serious about individual rights in the first place. Granted, this does not mean no restrictions or an end to borders. I accept that reasonable people are going to disagree with me about precisely where to draw this line. (Some of my readers might even want to accuse me of being a statist for allowing the government to step in and police borders at all.) That being said, I would hope that we could at least accept the right of individuals to immigrate across borders as the start of a conversation. There is nothing radical about such a position. This was official American policy until the late nineteenth-century.

War Criminals, Lone Wolves, and Terrorists: Definitions and Implications

With the recent rash of shootings has come a renewed debate over the distinction between a terrorist and a lone wolf. (Clearly, both whites and non-whites can be terrorists.) With Islamic terrorism and the Israeli-Arab conflict always in the news, there is the debate as to what is terrorism and what is a war crime. These issues tend to bog down into polemics so there is a benefit to offering specific definitions for the sake of clarity. Imagine three criminals standing before you, an SS officer, an angry white man and a member of ISIS. All three of them have murdered a classroom full of children so there is no doubt that they are all very bad people, who deserve punishment. The question becomes how they may be treated. The SS officer and the white man, as a war criminal and a lone wolf, have rights while the ISIS terrorist does not.

The SS officer is in uniform and a member of the German armed forces. As such, though he is a war criminal, he is protected by the social contract your country has with Germany. We must accept that he has rights and cannot simply be tortured to death. There is a benefit to declaring him a war criminal in that the German government, by putting him in uniform, has placed its entire leadership and population as guarantors of his good conduct. Ultimately, they are the ones truly responsible for his conduct; the fact that he is the immediate cause of the crime is incidental. Think of the uniform as a loan contract in much the same way as a paper currency that can be called in. The government can disavow the soldier; at which point the uniform becomes null and void. This would render our war criminal an out-of-uniform combatant and thus a spy/saboteur. As such he has no rights and can be tortured or killed at will without trial. Alternatively, his government can choose to acknowledge the soldier, but this would force them to make some kind of restitution to the satisfaction of the victim's government (or social contract insurance agency). Failure to do so would allow the government to take to seek satisfaction in blood. This would allow for the bombardment of German civilian populations and, afterward, the execution of German political leaders.

The lone wolf shooter is not protected by any uniform but, even though he is a criminal, he is still a citizen with rights. His crime does not imply a larger rejection of the social contract so the social contract continues to protect him. As such, he must be given a trial. To be clear, what makes him a lone wolf and not a terrorist is the fact that he lacks any larger material and ideological support structure. This, admittedly, can make it difficult to tell the difference between a lone wolf and a terrorist. It is quite possible that the entire distinction may rest on the discovery of a pamphlet in the person's possession or a history of visiting a terrorist website.

This brings us to the terrorist. The most important thing about a terrorist is that he is an out-of-uniform combatant just like a spy/saboteur. This means that not only is it permissible to not grant him any rights, but it may also be necessary. Consider that the distinction between soldiers and civilians is crucial to the maintenance of civilized order even and especially in a time of war. This distinction requires that soldiers be easily identifiable with uniforms. Unless the penalties for violating that distinction are severe no country would ever bother to hold them.

Not only is the terrorist, by definition, guilty of endangering civilization by undermining the social contract, but the so-called human rights activist who attempts to grant the terrorist rights is also guilty as he has rendered the line between soldier and civilian meaningless. Thus, we must recognize an antinomian "true" human rights, which involves torturing the terrorist. The very act of torturing the terrorist, regardless of the information he might provide, is protecting civilians from harm. The belief in the principle that terrorists do not have rights is precisely what is giving civilians rights. The person who objects to this is himself the real violator of human rights and it is as if he personally tortured innocent people. (To be clear, what is necessary is the belief in the moral rightness of torturing terrorists, which likely requires the occasional literal fulfillment. This acceptance allows for demonstrations of mercy in individual cases. Just because the Law is righteous does not mean it is always right to fulfill the Law.)

As you recall, the distinction between a terrorist and a lone wolf killer is the existence of a material and ideological support system. What differentiates the terrorist from a war criminal is that the terrorist's support structure is not one with which we have any kind of implied social contract relationship. We need to respect the rights of the war criminal in order to demonstrate that we were true to the social contract and justify placing his country's leadership and people outside of it. By contrast, we never had any kind of social contract with the terrorist organization. Furthermore, terrorist organizations, while they may possess a leadership and funders, lack a clearly identified civilian population to pay the price for their crimes. For example, while it was morally permissible to bomb German cities for Nazi war crimes, bombing Afghani cities in retaliation for Al-Qaeda terrorist crimes would have been far more problematic. Since there are no civilians to pay for terrorist crimes, we are justified in pursuing the leadership in a more aggressive fashion. Since terrorist leaders may prove more elusive than war criminal political leaders, this leaves the captured terrorist to pay the full weight of the crime. This is despite the fact that ultimately his role was only incidental as compared to the terrorist leaders who planned the action and provided the physical and ideological support to make it possible.

A large part of the debate over who counts as a terrorist revolves around the implied assumption of a support structure. For example, if you already accept the existence of an entity called "radical Islam" or that Islam is an inherently violent religion then you will be inclined to see any violent Muslim as a terrorist. On the other hand, if you believe that complaints about Islamic extremism are simply cover for "Islamophobia" then you will dismiss any charge of terrorism. Similarly, in regards to white supremacists, if you believe that there really is something racist underlying white American culture then you are going to be more likely to see someone like Dylann Roof, who massacred a black church bible study group in Charleston, as a terrorist instead of simply as a misguided and disturbed young man.

Keep in mind that the distinction between a lone wolf and a terrorist lies completely within the realm of intention; was the crime committed as part of a larger conspiracy by a non-social contract organization to pursue their political goals. It is not just the individual terrorist that we need to make assumptions about but a wider network of people to the point of even calling them a group. Therefore, as none of us can read minds, we can never prove whether someone is one or the other; it is simply a judgment call. This has become even more so in recent years as the line between the terrorist support structure and its perpetrators has become more tenuous. For example, the 9/11 hijackers received direct material support from Al-Qaeda so it is very difficult to pretend that they were just some guys who decided on their own to crash planes into buildings. Contrast this with ISIS terrorists where ISIS merely has to operate a website and angry Muslims draw inspiration to engage in ramming and knifing attacks. It is hard to say that someone who happens to read an ISIS website before committing murder is an ISIS terrorist.

The consequences of who gets the terrorist label are literally a matter of life and death and demand caution. If Islamic terrorism exists. than someone operating a pro-ISIS website calling for jihad is a terrorist and can be shot on sight without the benefit of a trial. (As per the Julius Streicher principle, such speech is not really speech but a conspiracy to commit murder.) If we are wrong, then we have a martyr for free speech on our hands. Before you give the go-ahead to kill radical Islamic bloggers consider that, by the same logic, we should probably recognize that white supremacists exist as a movement and not just disturbed individuals, then the government should have responded to the Charleston shooting by going door to door and executing white supremacist bloggers and radio show hosts, particularly those that directly influenced Roof.

While we can never prove anything in any particular case, we can demand intellectual consistency. If you are quick to condemn Islamic terrorism but bend over backward to deny that there can be white supremacist terrorists there is a problem. Similarly, if you refrain from using the terrorist label unless they are white men, you are not being hones either.

Camp Chimerical Anti-Christianity: Facing the Consequences

A few years ago, for the fast day of Tisha B'Av, I wrote a hard-hitting post, raising some uncomfortable questions about the Jewish community. As that is one of my personal favorites, I decided to follow it up for this Tisha B'Av. My purpose is not to attack anyone and, for that reason, I have avoided names. I hope that my ambiguous feelings about my camping experience rather than hatred should be clear. As is often the case with me, I am more interested in asking questions that I find myself struggling with than in offering solutions.    

When I attended Haredi summer camps, I once played a villainous Spanish Inquisitor in a play. While waving a torch, I gave a speech about Judas Iscariot as the model traitorous Jew, which included a joke reference to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar as well. I remember watching another play in which a priest murders the prince, who started asking difficult theological questions regarding Judaism, in order to set the Jews up for a blood libel. Both performances can be seen as anti-Christian. The difference between them is that while I expressed a "rational" opposition to Christianity, the other person made a chimerical assertion. Spanish inquisitors are historical facts. The figure of Judas did play an important role in medieval Christian anti-Jewish rhetoric. Even Christians would agree with me on this. By contrast, there is no evidence of Christian priests murdering Christian children in order to frame Jews just as there is no evidence of Jews murdering Christians for their blood. Christians can hope to negotiate with someone possessing a legitimate negative impression of historical Christians. Such a person can be convinced that modern-day Christians are different and not a threat. A person with a chimerical opposition to Christianity will never be convinced that Christians are not a threat even by the evidence of his own eyes as he already believes things about them that he never had any evidence to begin with. Such a person will inevitably sink into the black hole of conspiracy theories to the point where the lack of evidence for his beliefs will simply prove to him that there is a vast cover-up.

In regards to this story of a priest murdering a Christian to cover up the fact that Christianity is false, I am reminded of Israel Yuval's argument that Christians came to believe in the blood libel because they saw Jews kill their own children during the Crusades. If Jews would kill their own children so that they do not fall into the hands of Christians, might Jewish mothers poison their children's kugel if they thought they were attracted to Christianity? If Jews hated Christianity this much, surely Jews would gladly murder Christian children. Thus, Christians had "no choice" but to kill Jews in self-defense. Similarly, it would be reasonable for impressionable Jewish children in the audience, like myself, to conclude that if priests would kill Christian children to stop them from converting to Judaism, they would gladly kill Jewish children. The logical conclusion from this would be that, if we ever found ourselves in a position of power, we should kill Christians.

Let me be clear, this play about a murderous priest was in no way exceptional in how Christianity was portrayed at this Haredi camp. One of my favorite rebbes used to tell stories with his stock villain, "Father Schmutz" (dirt). When priests were not trying to start blood libels, they kidnapped Jewish children and held them in secret monasteries to try to convert them. In case you were wondering if this was just a matter of some overzealous teachers, the head counselor of this camp used to have a radio show, "Children's Stories of Inspiration." In addition to blatantly idolatrous stories that endorsed human sacrifices to angels and a Satan capable of acting independently of God, one of his stories involved a Father Francois murdering a Christian child in order to start a blood libel. His plan was thwarted when he was forced to take hold of the hand of the dead victim, who then refused to let go.

Installing the campers with a visceral hatred of Christianity as a religion and a fear of Christians as people were part of a conscious top-down effort. I doubt the camp administration wanted us to actually go out and harm any Christians. That being said, their jobs depended on demonstrating to parents that their children were being protected from outside "negative" influences. In an exercise of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs, the fact that these administrators were, ever so slightly, putting every Jew on the planet in danger clearly took a back seat.

What are the consequences of this kind of education? When the Passion movie came out, I told my father that I could not call it anti-Semitic for the simple reason that its portrayal of Jews was not worse than the portrayal of Christians that I was regularly fed in camp. My father, the assistant-head counselor of that camp, agreed with me. On a more serious note, consider the role played by Islamist schools in installing a pathological hatred of Jews, directly leading to Jews dying in terrorist attacks.


      


It is clear to me that not considering the children in this video and certainly their teachers as legitimate military targets (the kids are even in uniform and practicing military maneuvers) will lead to dead Jews. The problem is that any non-Jew can respond that Jews also indoctrinate their kids to hate and I have simply too much personal experience to point-blank deny that fact. So the administrators of my camp have real Jewish blood on their hands. Their actions have made it harder to form the necessary alliances needed to fight Islamic terrorism and save Jewish lives.

Now it needs to be said, that the people I am talking about are warm wonderful people that I gained much from. These are not anyone's stereotypes of hate mongers. I loved camp and many of my fondest memories come from there.  Coincidently, the staff member who played the murderous priest later became my tenth grade English teacher at Yeshiva Torah Vodaas and taught me Julius Caesar (he was even good at his job). At the time, I did not see myself as being indoctrinated to hate and I still have my doubts as to calling this hate. Everything was framed in such a positive and loving way, which may have made it all the more insidious. There was much good to my camp; that being said, beyond the fun times and spiritual growth lay a dark side that needs to be faced.

History 111: Candide and the Innate Goodness of Man (Part II)

(Part I)

If medieval and early modern Christianity had a pessimistic view of human nature in which man is innately sinful and can only be kept in check by Church and State, we moderns tend to have a rather optimistic view of human nature that stresses man's innate natural goodness. This too has consequences for both theology and politics. If man is good then it stands to reason that he can achieve salvation through his own means without the aid of the Church. Now it becomes possible to talk about human reason as the bar against which to judge all things. Only someone confident in the intrinsic goodness of human beings could allow them to judge the world around them and do it based on what is innate to them. As for politics, a belief in human goodness allows for human beings to craft their own laws. We can even begin to talk about government as a contract between equals instead of the dictates of a patriarch to his children, leading to liberal democracy.

The legacy of this notion of human goodness still presents itself in our debates over crime and punishment and foreign policy. Why do people commit crimes? A conservative would say it is because they are "bad" people, motivated by greed and malice. In order to protect itself, society must remove this person from its midsts, either through prison or even the death penalty. Punishment is something that the person deserves as his just deserts. In the liberal model crime results from either mental illness, being raised in a problematic society or simply bad education. One way or another it is not the person's fault and the purpose of any "punishment" is not to penalize the person, but "rehabilitate" them. (See "C. S. Lewis on the Implications of the Nazi Holocaust.") Why are there terrorists? The conservative will tell you that it is because they are "evil" and hate "freedom." Naturally, such people can only be stopped by invading other countries and killing those people who deserve it. The liberal will tell that terrorists are the products of economic inequality, the legacy of colonialism and a fundamentalist education that preaches hate. Agree to peace talks, address the massive economic inequalities across the globe and provide a proper education for all and terrorism will disappear.

Now even the liberal acknowledges that there is much that is wrong with the world. Rather then lay the blame on people, the blame is placed on society. It is society that creates inequalities and teaches prejudice. People, left to their own devices, would naturally wish to live in harmony with others, recognizing the common humanity of all, and would not be bothered by the existence of other races and creeds. People have to be taught to hate others because of the color of their skin and the deity they pray to. The good news is that people can be saved from their own prejudices. With a properly funded welfare program, civil rights legislation and tolerant education, the natural human goodness in people will reassert itself and stand against all the ills created by society in the first place.

This brings us to Candide, a novel that represents this Enlightenment shift in how one views humanity. Candide is naturally good. Contrary to a simplistic view of the character, Candide is not stupid (a mistake made by the modern day adaptation, Forrest Gump). Candide is simply naive due to the fact that he is raised with no experience with the world. This is crucial to the character because it is precisely this lack of worldliness that allows for Candide's goodness. Candide does not suffer from greed, does not hate anyone and only wishes to live in brotherhood with all. Candide is not even capable of understanding the possibility that other people are not like this. The reason for this is that Candide exists completely uncorrupted by society. (This idea would be taken even further by Rousseau.)

It is for this reason that Voltaire subverts the garden of Eden story. Instead of Adam and Eve committing Original Sin, willfully disobeying the divine commandment to not eat from the tree of knowledge, and being rightfully thrown out of paradise, Candide has no notion of sin. He only wishes to experiment with the laws of "cause and effect." The fact that he kisses Cunegonde is interpreted as sin by a corrupt society, leading to him being wrongfully exiled from his beloved home in Westphalia. Instead of degenerate humans needing to be saved by righteous laws, Candide is the pure one, it is the outside system that is degenerate.


       

Farewell Osama Bin Ladin, Nice Knowing You

As I am sure by now my readers are aware American, forces have stormed Osama bin Laden's "evil fortress of doom," which, it turns out, was not some cave but an urban compound. I was hoping for bin Laden to go down with a pair of Gatling guns Wolfenstein boss style. It is only fair that the closest thing to a comic book villain this country has had since at least the Cold War should agree to give us the full comic book villain ending.

In thinking back on bin Laden in the shadow of the jubilant celebrations going on around the country I find that I do not hate him nor does the prospect of him being tortured by his promised seventy "Virginians" hold much appeal. Bin Laden was an enemy true, but he was a political enemy and hate, like any other emotion, has no place in politics. This is something both the Left and the Right fail to understood that their rush to bring morality into politics only serves to defeat their own desired ends.

If Bin Laden really was a monster, a being who either lacked reason or simply chose to act from malice, then there could never have been a chance for peace. How could one ever hope to negotiate with such a creature? Thus we would be left with no other option, but unrelenting Hobbesian war to the death with all moral considerations left to the wayside.

I like to believe that people, even Bin Laden, are rational and can be negotiated with. Bin Laden desired for the world to run a certain way, as a global Islamic theocracy. I do not judge him for that; I grant every man the right to want. Now it happens to be that the United States government also wanted things, such as global liberal democracy and capitalism, which conflicted with the desires of Bin Laden. Again there is nothing inherently wrong with this. It is inevitable that human beings, with their different wants, will come into conflict with each other. Now there are two ways to deal with conflict, negotiation or coercive violence. Rational beings have the advantage of being able to choose the former, unlike animals, which are limited to the latter. Bin Laden, through the act of 9/11, chose violence. An act that was surely not in my self-interest, but I am not saying that he was wrong for doing so; I never had any reason to expect Bin Laden to take my self-interest into consideration. For this reason, up until the day we killed him, I would have been open to negotiating some a peace agreement with bin Laden. He would not have even needed to apologize for 9/11; all he would have needed to do was offer me an agreement that gave me a more preferable set of options than war, backed by a rational reason for me to believe that he would actually keep such an agreement.

Let every man believe as he wishes as long as he accepts the full logical consequences of those beliefs. Bin Laden believed that it was in his rational self-interest to pursue war with the United States without keeping to the traditional rules of warfare such as only States wage war and war is to be limited to military personnel. So be it, but in turn that means that we will have no choice but to reply in kind, waging pure unrelenting Hobbesian warfare against him, his supporters or even anyone we might scare enough into waging against him for us.

Should we have responded to 9/11 by nuking Afghanistan, killing millions of innocent civilian Muslims, or even taking out the capitols of every Muslim country? If it would have made this country safer then yes. Considering that, as long as we are considered rational enough to be negotiated with in the future, such extreme actions would make anyone in the future think twice about attacking this country; it is not obvious to me that the mass killing of even innocent civilians would have been the wrong decision. What would the Muslim world look like if Muslims on the street believed that the actions of people like bin Laden would lead to the deaths of them and their families? Whether or not bin Laden was rational and desired to live, I respect Islam enough to believe that the more than a billion ordinary Muslims are rational and do want to live.

I do not hold it against bin Laden for attacking us. Of course, since I do not see anything intrinsically wrong with such behavior, I have no objections to behaving just like him. I believe in rational people working out their differences. In support of that goal, I am willing to be the worst monster in history; the sort of person that no rational being would ever seek to fight.            

Easy Libertarianism (Part II)

(Part I)


Baruch Pelta has posted his final thoughts on our discussion about libertarianism. He attempts to turn the tables on me in terms of authoritarianism, arguing that I desire to force my views on government on others despite the fact that the vast majority of people disagree with me about limiting government to only protecting against direct physical harm. He asks what I would do if I ever got my way and libertarian policies failed to work. How do I intend to protect American workers from being "crushed" by corporations? What would I do about radical Islamic schools teaching children how to be terrorists? In the end Baruch sees my "hard libertarianism" as no different from a Marxist or an anarchist. "All three of these belief systems require their adherents to accept on faith their economic theories, views of human potential, and philosophical constructs."

To start with that last point, libertarianism is not just another political ideology, but an attempt to transcend all political ideologies. Being a libertarian does not mean you reject other political ideologies, one could be a libertarian Marxist or a religious theocrat, just that you reject the use of government force in pursuit of those ideological goals.

What would a libertarian country look like? It would be thousands of experiments simultaneously conducted to discover the best ways to live and organize society. Every town and neighborhood could organize itself around any ideology it chooses. You could have a liberal town that kept corporations in check and offered free education and health care. Down the highway there could be a Haredi town that bans television and does not allow women to drive. Travel further down and you could find a socialist kibbutz where everything is held in common. Despite my libertarianism, I have no desire to live in a "libertarian" town. I may believe that drugs and prostitution should be legal, but I have no desire to live near a brothel, a crack den or the people who frequent either. My freedom of association allows me to pay to live in a place without these things and, to protect my investment, make a contract banning the town from ever bringing such things in. (The white supremacist in pursuit of his own happiness could make the same bargain to ban blacks and Jews.) Libertarian America would like a lot like the present day America just without people in Washington trying to force one size fits all solutions to this country's problems.

With this in mind the other issues fall into place. If liberal policies really proved to work better in practice than the alternatives and it is very possible that they might then I would be free to accept them. This would in no way be a pragmatic rejection of my libertarian beliefs. If liberal policies worked than the liberal towns in libertarian America would be more prosperous. Seeing that, people would rush to move into liberal towns or turn their towns to liberalism. Before you know it most of libertarian America could be liberal. This would not change the government in Washington, which would continue to concern itself solely with protecting people, no matter their political ideology, from physical harm. This means foreigners trying to attack libertarian America, and Americans trying to destroy libertarian America from within by forcing their values on others.

Would libertarian America be trapped into tolerating radical Islamic schools that endorsed terrorism, without actually carrying it out? Would libertarian America have to wait until hordes of jihadist children poured out of these schools? Not necessarily. Nothing against Islam here; the same would apply to any group that turned to violence. Keep in mind that libertarianism is not rooted in an absolutist ideology, but a pragmatic social contract, a plausible agreement that a society with many factions might come to in order to stave off massive violence. I tolerate liberals, Haredim, Marxists and even Muslims for the simple reason that it is the only alternative to shooting them and having them shoot at me. If the libertarian social contract failed to protect me then the contract serves no purpose. I only refrain from pulling a Baruch Goldstein on my local Islamic school, because I believe that my government will protect me from any potential terrorists. The moment I stop believing that then I am off to kill every last person in that school.

A social contract is not a moral absolute made with the entire world. I have no social contract with people in Mexico or Canada. They may be very nice people and I wish them the best, but they are outside my social contract. For that matter not everyone living in the United States has to be a citizen and come under the social contract either. It is for this reason that the slavery tolerated by the Constitution would not necessarily contradict libertarianism. Slaves were not citizens and therefore outside the social contract. Muslims do not have an intrinsic right to be citizens and be part of the social contract. Muslims in foreign countries are certainly not. Muslims who are American citizens are part of the social contract to the extent that I believe them when they claim to not be plotting to wage war against me. Even in libertarian America, if I hear a Muslim saying that Jews are pigs and should be killed, I am going to call my representative and tell him that I no longer feel physically safe and demand that he choose between that Muslim and me. Unless they strip that Muslim of his citizenship and make sure he is no longer a threat, I will reject the social contract and turn to war. (See Crimes of De-Citizenship.)

To Shoot a Man Trying to Kill Your Children: A Moral Trap for Pacifists

One of the major underlying forces behind modern political thought is pacifism; that the use of violence in of itself immoral. This is not to say that most modern people, even modern liberals, are active pacifists, but there is an admiration of pacifists (Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are two of the most revered figures of the twentieth century) and a given assumption that they hold the moral high ground. Would not the world be a better place if everyone pursued non-violence? There are real-life consequences to this sentiment as it puts anyone not following a pacifist path on the defensive, particularly when going up against an opponent with at least the pretense of pacifism. For example the State of Israel opening fire on the flotilla of aid ships. (The passengers attacked first with knives and poles, but those are just technical details.) Israel is forced to fight the moral censor from western liberals that they should pursue a more "ethical" path, one that turns away from violence. At the same time, our western liberal (particularly if they are Jewish) are allowed to, without cost to themselves, grab this moral high ground for themselves, as the opponents of violence by "both sides," and judge Israel for their lack of moral enlightenment. As such, I believe it is important to confront this ideology of pacifism head on. Not only is pacifism not a worthy ideal to be pursued, but it is also itself fundamentally immoral and those tainted by it are de facto apologists for and aiders in the abuse of human rights that they claim to oppose.

There is a challenge that I often put to people who claim to be categorically against the use of violence: a martyrdom-seeking terrorist is pointing a gun at your child with the clear intent to kill. You have a gun; do you shoot or do you allow your child to die? Alternatively, the SWAT team has the man in their sights and can take him out by sniper fire; do you call the sniper and tell him to back down? As should be clear from this example, for pacifism to be meaningful as pacifism it must be pursued even when it ceases to pragmatic, even at the expense of innocent lives. In essence, pacifism kills. There is a long tradition of people sacrificing their children for various causes and it is perfectly plausible that pacifism should simply be one more such example. But I think that most people would view someone who refused to fire as failing in their responsibility as a parent and partially responsible in the death of their own child, most certainly not a paragon of moral virtue.

The moment we decide to open fire then we have crossed an ideological Rubicon and we can no longer categorically oppose violence. All slogans of "make love not war," "war is not the answer" and "give peace a chance" fall away to be replaced by a discussion of where violence is appropriate and is even "the answer" as something virtuous. One would still be free to oppose specific military actions, such as the war in Iraq, but now the opposition must be couched in language other than simple opposition to war. Of course, no value is absolute. One does not believe in truth less because he points a potential murderer in the wrong direction away from his intended victim. The difference with pacifism is that by definition it is an absolutist ideology. One is not a pacifist if one merely does not like fighting. Furthermore, pacifism requires the denial of any virtue of those who would pursue its opposite; it cannot acknowledge any virtue in taking up arms for a just cause.

It is funny how despite the numerous times I have raised this issue with pacifist sympathizers, I have never been given a straight answer of shoot or not to shoot. They will try to dance around the issue by saying that they would not be in possession of a gun in the first place or would simply shoot to wound. The point of a moral dilemma is that it is supposed to be simple and extreme, far more so than you would likely find in real life. In our terrorist scenario, you are not in a position to stop him in any other way but to use violent force. He has a gun pointed at your child's head. Either he dies or your child goes. Whose life do you pick?

Crimes of De-Citizenship

As I am sure you are all aware, a Pakistani-born American, Faisal Shahzad, has been arrested for his part in the Time Square bomb plot. An intriguing debate has arisen within conservative circles over the fact that Shahzad was read his Miranda rights. Glenn Beck, of all people, came out in defense of making sure that this Islamic terrorist received his full constitutional rights as an American citizen. Far be it from me to stand to the right of Glenn Beck on an issue, but please bear with me. First off there is my general objection to Miranda rights in that they are the creation of an activist Supreme Court and should be overturned. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say or imply that the authorities need to inform people of their rights. It is the responsibility of each citizen to have a basic understanding of their own rights. (If Congress wishes to make such a law as to insist that police inform suspects of their rights I would be all for it.) Moving beyond that, I reject the assumption that Shahzad is an American citizen with constitutionally protected legal rights. I would argue that the very nature of his crime strips him of his citizenship and the legal rights that go with it.

I take it as a given that non-uniformed combatants, such as spies, saboteurs, and terrorists, do not have legal rights. Because of this, I reject all legal objections to torture. The United States not only has the right to put Al Qaida combatants in Guantanamo without trial it would also have the right to chop their fingers off one by one, gouge their eyes out, hang them by piano wire, and put it all on Youtube. These combatants would be in the Dred Scott situation, without the legal standing to sue the American government in the first place. Not that I think torture is, for the most part, a good idea or that I would wish for torture to be used. The maintenance of limits to war and the bare shred of human rights relies on the willingness to draw a distinction between civilian and military and to respect a certain code of behavior even in the treatment of the enemy. If there are no consequences to violating the laws of war then there is no reason to keep them. Thus not only can one disregard the human rights of those who do not respect them, one must disregard them. There is no moral difference between those who would piously offer rights to those who do not respect them and those who do not believe in them in the first place. Rights can only apply to those who believe in them and respect them in return.

Citizens obviously have rights that protect them. These rights apply even to criminals, from jay-walkers to sadistic murderers. If someone rapes and murders a child, he is still an American citizen and has rights. He cannot be tortured and has the right to a fair trial in front of a jury of his peers. Even if we apply the death penalty, up until the moment the State executes him, he is an American citizen and has the right to a humane death. The reason for this is that throughout this entire process this person has not acted to reject the authority of the State. Whatever sick desires he felt he must give into, he never challenged the right of the State to judge him. Shahzad did not just help park a vehicle full of explosives with the intention that it explode and cause major casualties for which we might wish to convict him of manslaughter, he plotted with a foreign entity to work to undermine this government. By making war against this government he committed treason and rejected the legitimacy of the government. Thus he surrendered his citizenship and all the privileges that come with it. The military has the practice of stripping soldiers of their rank when they commit certain crimes; I see no reason why civilians cannot be similarly stripped of citizenship. It turns out that that Senator Joseph Lieberman is actually sponsoring a bill to strip anyone involved with foreign terrorists of their citizenship. I would of course go so far as to say that as a traitor, a non-citizen, and an out-of-uniform combatant Shahzad would have no more legal rights and could be tortured and executed at will without a formal trial.

How would this work in practice? Obviously, there needs to be some sort of check in place to stop the government from simply accusing citizens of being terrorists and ignoring the Constitution. My suggestion would be the following. Once the charge of terrorism went out against our Time Square bomber it immediately became a military operation. Once the authorities had their man they should only have had to offer the opportunity for civil rights groups to come to Shahzad's defense in the equivalent of a preliminary hearing. In the civilian world if a case gets past the preliminary hearing to a full trial the assumption is that the person is guilty. Because he is a citizen, though, he has the right to be presumed innocent until guilt is proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Such rights can be dispensed with for people outside the claims of citizenship of this or any other established state.

Understand this. If I believe that you, my neighbor, have rejected the contract of citizenship and are plotting against me, I can only be expected to reject my contract of citizenship as it applies to you and I will be trying to kill you as the only means left to be able to live in peace. This does not have to be beyond a reasonable doubt; I only have to think it is likely and stop trusting you for this contract to break down.

The Hamas Spy

Rich Schapiro of Daily News has an article, "Mosab Hassan Yousef: The Hamas prince who was spy for Israel" on Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a prominent Hamas leader who served as a spy for Israel. On the surface it would appear as if this would argue against Eli Berman, about whom I posted earlier. Professor Berman makes the case that the strength of groups like Hamas is precisely their ability to weed out informants.

The answer comes at the end of the article:

In a statement from prison, he [Sheikh Hassan Yousef] said it was possible the Israelis recruited his son, but that his son had no access to the movement's secrets.

"Whether what Haaretz reported is true or not, Mosab was not an active member in Hamas or in any of its military, political or religious branches, or any other body," the elder Yousef said.

People who come through the system are more trustworthy and less likely to turn traitor than even family members. If you are going to build a terrorist organization you need a social service network, not a large family.

Would Haredim Make Good Terrorists? Some Thoughts on Radical Religious and Violent (Part II)

 (Part I)

It occurred to me that this argument, that successful terrorist organizations require agents with high defection constraints and this is best accomplished by recruiting candidates with long histories of service to the group's social welfare network even before they became terrorists, would explain why certain terrorist and counter-terrorism strategies used in television shows might not work in practice. In season two of 24, one of the major twists is the revelation that the point man in a plot by Islamic terrorists to use a nuclear device over Los Angeles is a blond haired blue eyed American female raised as a Protestant and whose family is unaware that she converted to Islam let alone has become an Islamic terrorist. If I were running a terrorist organization and had the good fortune to come into possession of a nuclear bomb (supplied by a conservative cabal looking to push the United States into a war with specific unnamed Muslim countries), would I be willing to trust this bomb to an American woman who was not raised in the system and has not even made the sacrifice of coming out to her family about her extremist beliefs? This would undermine the anti-profiling premise of this sequence of episodes. Certainly, if the government is looking for Middle-Eastern men I could recruit an all American white female, but do I have any that I can trust? If terrorists are dependent on people from very specific backgrounds then they would be vulnerable to profiling.

On the flip side, the show MI-5 (a British version of 24) has an episode devoted to a project designed to undermine Islamic terrorist cells in England by getting active members to turn and then agree to attempt to turn other members. The story focuses on the recruitment of a black convert to Islam by using his ex-girlfriend from his pre-Muslim days to get to him. If real life terrorist groups behave like Berman assumes they do then it is unlikely that they would ever allow a black convert to be in a position of serious responsibility where he could turn on the group. On the flip side, if I were a terrorist mastermind, I would look at the MI-5 episode as an excellent example of why I do not want to trust converts, no matter how sincere they sound and instead stick to people who have come up through the system.

Ultimately, there is both a liberal and a conservative side to Berman's argument. On the conservative side, he demolishes the common apologetic argument for groups like Hamas that they are primarily a social service network that only incidentally also maintains a militant wing. From Berman's perspective, it is precisely this social service network that is the foundation for terrorist activity so no separation can be made. This though also has a liberal face as Berman argues that counter-terrorism, instead of a military approach, should be focusing precisely on these social services by offering alternatives.

To step away from terrorism, this book is primarily about the economics of religion, particularly of the Haredi system, which is the inspiration for Berman's more general ideas. This book could be read as a study of the Haredi system, sidestepping any concerns about terrorism. Personally, I find Berman's study of Haredim to be a useful refutation of the sort of Haredi apologetics offered by Jonathan Rosenblum. Barring spectacular individuals, the Haredi yeshiva system is not useful as an alternative to secular college in preparation for competing in the job market. As Berman notes:

Israeli secular education in the 1990s had a return of 9.4 percent, a pretty good investment (a little higher than the U.S. return). Ultra-Orthodox education, on the other hand, was a terrible investment, at 1.8 percent. In other words, for every year in yeshiva a student was forgoing a permanent raise of about 7.6 percent, which they could have realized by spending that same year in a secular school. (pg. 73)

It is important that Haredi groups like Satmar do not get credit for their social services. The usual defense for Satmar is to point to their admittedly extensive social services, both in and even outside their own community. Kiryat Joel has the highest rate of poverty in the United States. Their philosophy of attempting to shut out the world is the greatest mass system of poverty creation that remains legal. As with the case of terrorism, the social service network is not something distinct from the extremism; it is the very foundation of the entire system that creates radicals and allows them to continue in their beliefs. (One of the reasons why I am a Libertarian and wish to eliminate government welfare is the knowledge that such policies will be the destruction of the Haredi community as they are faced with having to adopt Modern Orthodox policies or starving to death.)

This brings me to the big question that I came away from this book asking; for all this talk about the similarities between the social systems used by Haredim and Islamic radicals, would Haredim make good terrorists? In fact, Berman's major example of a failed terrorist organization is the Jewish underground that came from the Jewish settler movement. They lacked a system of culling out potentially untrustworthy recruits and were all too easily infiltrated by the Israeli government and neutralized. The Haredi system is very useful if you want to send out riotous youths to smash traffic lights and burn garbage cans or even to harass immodestly dressed women. This does not require any great planning, there is no valuable intelligence to sell, nor does it threaten any high-value targets. Imagine a Haredi youth calling the Israeli police: "hay I have a tip on a planned demonstration against chilul Shabbos. All I want is that you get me out of this life and give me a full year of college tuition with room and board." With something so basic, one could rely on moderately committed youths, motivated more by boredom than ideology.

As I see it, the Haredi system would not be effective for higher defection constant jobs like terrorism. It is not that they lack an effective social welfare system. The problem is that their system is almost too successful and is able to survive and even rely on free riders. The Haredi world is loaded with people who have been trapped into the system and would leave if only they were not dependent on the Haredi social system. (One of the few things that Unchosen got right.) In theory, these would be precisely the sorts of people who would turn traitor the moment they had something to sell. Would these people even be useful as drones, to be given specific low-level missions without any valuable intelligence to defect with?

If you insist you can do the cheap Jewish thing and have a friend lend you this book, do that. It would be hypocritical of me to complain. Better yet go out and purchase this book yourself. I look forward to hearing your reactions to it.

Would Haredim Make Good Terrorists? Some Thoughts on Radical Religious and Violent (Part I)

A few months ago a friend of mine, Reuben Seligman, recommended that I read Radical Religious and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism by Eli Berman. Many people recommend books to me, I welcome it and I occasionally even get around to reading them, particularly if it comes from a person whose taste I have a high regard for. I put this book on my Amazon wish list and ignored it. This person continued to pester me about why I had not bothered to read it. Finally he asked for my address and sent me his copy. Publishers and authors have sent me books to review before, but this was clearly serious. So I had no choice but to read this book and write about it. Let me say that this book was worth every bit of Seligman's pestering. Think of it as Freakonomics devoted to terrorism and religious radicals. Dr. Berman analyzes the relationship between radical religious groups and violence. He offers a highly edifying trip from Meah Shearim to Gaza and Afghanistan. The book treats both Haredim and Islamic fundamentalists with an economist's indulgence; they are rational beings who respond to worldly incentives. Dr. Berman assumes that there is a relationship between religious radicalism and terrorism, but does not indulge in any simplistic religion causes intolerance, which leads to violence as the believer attempts to enforce his beliefs on others. Berman's offers the intriguing if subversive model of social welfare groups, something that organized religions and particularly religious radicals seem to do better than anyone else, becoming the foundation for successful insurrectionists engaging in either conventional warfare against established militaries or terrorist attacks against civilians. The key to this is what Berman refers to as the "defection constant." What would it take to cause a member of a group to sell out? For example a Hamas operative to phone in to Israeli intelligence the planed suicide bombing against a bus or a Taliban fighter to hijack the cargo of a caravan of trucks on a Taliban controlled road through Afghanistan. The higher value the target, the greater the reward will be for betrayal. Western intelligence will offer more for information that stops a plane being flown into buildings than they would to stop a bus bombing. Western countries can pay more for defectors than non-Western countries. Assumedly, everyone has their price, money or otherwise, and the leadership of a group, better than anyone, has a rough idea what that price is for its members. This in turn sets a limit to what you might trust your people for. The same person that you might trust with a simple kidnapping job might not be trustworthy with a weapon of mass destruction. This means that groups with a higher defection constant, whose members require a higher price to sell out, will be able to attack higher value targets and thus become a more successful terrorist or insurrectionary force, without fear of betrayal.

So what does this have to do with organized religions, even religious radicals, let alone religious social welfare networks? The social welfare network offers a highly effective self selecting method of weeding out people with low defection constants. The social welfare network is premised on the notion of members helping each other when needed. The problem with this is that it is a system that invites free riders. I might join the group and take advantage of your help, but when I am called to lend a hand I will conveniently be unavailable. Because of this, social welfare groups need to actively weed out free riders by demanding that their members demonstrate their good faith by making sacrifices. Thus social welfare networks have a ready supply of members, who have demonstrated their loyalty to the group and their high defection constant. This becomes decisive the moment the service changes from visiting sick members in the hospital to blowing up hospitals full of non-members of the group. Religious radicals have the inside track on creating social welfare networks because they demand regular demonstrations of sacrifice as signs of allegiance, the keeping of religious restrictions such as what you can eat or what clothes you can wear. Berman advices, only half in jest, that graduate schools put the following rules in place to ensure that students all prepare for class:

• Avoid alcohol consumption with anyone not in our group.
• Do not travel by car.
• Avoid beaches, coffee shops, and movies.
• Do not watch television or use the Internet.
• Do not read books other than texts of our profession.
• Follow our own very unusual dress code.
• Eat only according to the strict rules of our membership.
• Speak only our fairly arcane language.
• Adhere to rules about how, when, and with whom you can have sexual relations.

These rules would pretty much destroy dating options and most other social activities with outsiders. If we could impose all of them, though, we should be able to guarantee a high quality seminar (or other collective product) the next day, simply because nobody will have had anything better to do with their time than get a good night's sleep and prepare for the seminar! (pg. 79-80)
People might be attracted to this lifestyle and embrace its restrictions if the rewards were suitably enticing, say being able to belong to such an elite group, full of people willing to make such sacrifices, and attend the very interesting class it gives. As long as the penalty for breaking the rules is high enough, say expulsion, then people will agree to pay the price. What might, in theory, work for graduate students, has proven to work very well for religions.

(To be continued …)

War and Peace: My First Conference Presentation and My Weekend at Purdue (Part II)

(Part I)

The second paper was “The Moral Significance of Recognizing Violence in Pogge’s Borrowing and Resource Privileges,” presented by Mark Balawender of Michigan State University. Thomas Pogge attacks borrowing and resource privileges, arguing that the developed world acts as an enabler to authoritarian governments as they borrow money and cause economic harm to their people. This process of borrowing money in exchange for resource privileges allows corrupt third world governments sell out their own countries. There is not normative standard to judge the legitimacy of governments. This allows authoritarian governments to seize power and gain money quickly even though this harms the population. How does one deal with this from the perspective of liberalism which allows economic transactions that only incidentally cause harm to other people?

A useful analogy is the case of two parallel paths one higher up than the other where the rocks from the higher path can cause harm to those on the lower half. Such a situation is okay where the population freely chooses which path to take. What happens when you have a case where the path one chooses is dependent on one’s social or economic status? This would create a different moral situation. Thus such instruments of global Capitalism as lending money to corrupt third world regimes in exchange for resources should be classified as forms of violence and should be viewed as wrong within the parameters of liberalism.

I found this presentation amusing mainly because it reminded me so much of Talmudic dialectics. As a good traditional liberal I oppose the aiding and abetting of authoritarian regimes. As a believer in free markets, though, I have the ultimate weapon against such regimes, Capitalism. Under free market conditions it is not in my interest to support authoritarian regimes even when control over their natural resources. Such regimes are likely to fall and the new regime is unlikely to respect its predecessor’s agreement, particularly if they are able to make the case to the world that this was a bargain made between thieves, designed to impoverish the country. I raised this issue with Balawender and he responded that Pogge had used a similar argument.

The final presentation of the first session Nathan Stout of Western Michigan University, “The Torture Memo: A Philosophical Critique” Prof. John Yoo’s Torture Memo, on behalf of the Bush administration, allowed for extreme interrogation tactics. Yoo defines Al Qaida members both as enemy combatants and as unlawful combatants. He assumes that 9/11 was a declaration of war on the part of Al Qaida and therefore the United States entered a formal war with Al Qaida no different than a war with a established state. This makes what happens next to fall under the military; Al Qaida fighters are military combatants. On the flip side, since Al Qaida does not keep to the established protocols of war, they are unlawful combatants, no different than spies. Congress does not have the authority to interfere with the President’s handling of unlawful combatants and the President is free to do with them as he wishes. How does one go about defining combatants and unlawful combatants? We assume that enemy combatants lose their rights to life and liberty because they choose to participate in war. This is in keeping with Just War theory. An unlawful combatant wishes to fight while maintaining the protections of a non combatant; he therefore loses the rights of lawful combatants. Yoo’s model would require one to assume that Al Qaida soldiers had a right to fight to begin with. Yoo, though, rejects the notion that Al Qaida is in any way a legitimate political entity. This being the case one should not be able to say that the United States is at war with Al Qaida.

I have not studied Yoo’s arguments, though the argument he makes seems to be very similar to the one that I made in a debate on Atheist Ethicist. I argued that the Al Qaida fighters held on Guantanamo Bay get the worst of both situations. As out of uniform combatants they have no legal rights. As prisoners captured during combat they do not need to be tried. The challenge being raised against Yoo seems to have a very simple solution, accept that Al Qaida is a political entity and should be treated as a state. I raised the scenario with Stout where Al Qaida would have acted “legally.” Al Qaida issues a formal declaration of war on the morning of 9/11 before they hijacked the plans. Uniformed Al Qaida soldiers get past security and hijack civilian airliners. After somehow getting all civilians off the plans they then crashed the planes into military targets such as the Pentagon. America declares war against Al Qaida and invades Afghanistan. Uniformed Al Qaida fighters clash with American forces out in the open, away from civilians, and are captured. I would have no problem with saying that Al Qaida prisoners should, under such circumstances, be treated with full legal rights as if they were from England, France or Canada and protected from torture. Since this is not the case, I have no problem in stripping Al Qaida fighters of their legal rights and handing a blank check to our government to torture them.

(To be continued …)

A Call for Buddhist Jihad

Apparently, South Africa has decided not to grant the Dalai Lama a visa for the upcoming peace conference this week. As reported by CNN, the South African government is concerned that allowing the Dalai Lama would shift the focus away from the upcoming World Cup and to China, which South Africa has no interest in offending.

To move away from inanity of all this; obviously, a peace conference where a game of soccer is more important than the suffering of millions of people at the hands of an authoritarian regime is not much of a peace conference. This is the same South Africa that hosted the Durban conference on racism and we know how much that had to do with racism. Are we seeing a pattern here? I would actually like to focus my criticism here on the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is one of the truly great spiritual leaders of the world (everything that the Haredi gedolim are not). That being said, this incident is just one further example of something that I have often said, that the Dalai Lama is a rather pathetic creature. His continued decision to put his pacifist scrupulous over pragmatic reality has made him completely irrelevant and has cost his people a country.

In the lead up to last summer’s Olympics in Beijing (which I wanted America to boycott) many Tibetans rose up in revolt against the Chinese. The Dalai Lama not only denounced the violence and threatened to resign he even refused to call for a boycott of the Olympics. I am reminded of a different group, the Palestinians, which took a different attitude toward the Olympics. During the 1972 Olympics in Munich, members of the Palestinian terrorist organization Black September kidnapped and murdered Israeli Athletes. This did not harm the Palestinian cause on the contrary within several decades Yasser Arafat was on the White House front lawn being handed a Palestinian state. Arafat even received a Noble Peace Prize for his efforts. Where would the Tibetan cause be if only the Dalai Lama was willing to put aside his moral scruples and become a terrorist like Arafat? What if this past summer the world had witnessed Buddhist suicide bombers crashing China’s glorious opening ceremony? What if images of China’s adorable “under sixteen” women’s gymnastics team having being beheaded were seen across the internet? I am sure the world would have expressed its moral indignation, but soon there would be a call by modern liberals to understand the root causes of these acts of terrorism and the frustrations of Tibetans and those of the Buddhist faith as China continued its cultural hegemony over them. To help this along, Buddhist “militants” could extend their reach beyond China. Why attack China and ignore countries like the United States whose love for cheap manufactured goods supports Chinese rule over Tibet? It would take just a few embassy bombings and some attacks on American soil before the United States would begin to rethink its trade deals with China.

Under such circumstances, the Dalai Lama would not be lacking a visa to come to any peace conference in South Africa. I suspect he would be made the opening speaker. He could harangue the Chinese for their oppression and call for the end of the cycle of violence as the nations of the world would rush to pledge money and support for his Tibetan state. Those who proved to be the most compliant would be able to count on being spared the wrath of the Buddhist Jihad.
I wished we lived in a world where terrorism was not rewarded; where any cause that was tainted by adherents who turned to terrorism would be forced to the back of the line particularly if this was terrorism targeted against civilians. In such a world, Palestinian terrorism would have gotten the Palestinians nothing and we might actually have peace in the Middle East with the states of Israel and Palestine living together side by side. In such a world a man of true moral courage such as the Dalai Lama would be rewarded for his decision not to turn to violence with a peace conference where peace actually did come before soccer and where he could arouse the world’s moral indignation against China causing countries such as the United States to decide that the freedom of the people of Tibet was more important than Chinese manufactured products.

Until we live in this world my advice to those with a cause, whatever the cause might be, is to turn to terrorism. Blow up some buildings, kill some people, the more grisly the deed the better. Until we live in a world where modern liberals no longer fall over themselves to make excuses for those who turn to violence, taking attention away from those who do not use violence, than terrorism must be the choice of every reasonable and rational person.