Yes – they are traditional. And the conservative temperment acknowledges the accumulated wisdom in tradition, and seeks to defend it from the contemporary delusionaries who believe they should sweep all or much of it away. But this traditional behavior of the Muslim world does have its own moral content, and it is connected with the the international system that has prevailed since WWII under American sponsorship. Several billion people – including hundreds of millions of Muslims – depend on this system.

It is the considered opinion of most conservatives and neo-conservatives that the relationship of these traditional Muslim societies is essentially parasitical: after all, the contribution of oil has only to do with geography, not culture. The point is that, given the efficacy and ubiquity of the system on which so many people depend and towards which so many peoples contribute so much, where that system conflicts with traditional Muslim practices, traditional Muslim practices must give way. And after all, we are not talking about private morality here: we are talking about a severe cultural chauvanism, militarism, and rejection of knowledge that at best reminds the historically literate Westerner of the picture that prevailed in his own 18th century.

Had the terrorism we experience today not gained such ascendancy, and not demonstrated hundreds of millions of Muslims’ tolerance or affection for it, we could have gone on muddling along with the recalcitrant Muslim world indefinitely. But the fact is, this jihadism is the characteristic feature of this culture – it is the organizing political, cultural and spiritual impetus that distinguishes this culture from the other major civilizations. It is not some aberation.

That this is so is plain from the governing texts to the people who call in on World Have Your Say. The fact that Europeans in general and on a governemntal level especially choose to regard this analysi as a figment of an “imperialistic” imagination are either lying or ignorant. And the fact that we are not at war with – indeed, are positively indifferent to – the majority of illiterate and simple workaday individuals who subscribe to Islam in one way or another does not undermine the thesis that we do in fact have a Big Problem with Islam – and it’s not a conflict we would have chosen, and would gladly end at any minute that the jihadis and their Sino-Soviet sponsors and directors would relent.

I brought up Jews because we have some of the same traditions. Men and women do not touch. You are expected to respect the codes of decency of those you visit in their home and in their country. Jews avoid touching unclean things and people as well. So what. So long as Jews don’t make war with America and follow the basic parameters of common business practices then who cares what strange customs I hold dear? I don’t care that women are treated as they are in Muslim countries so long as they don’t export that behavior into mine. The second they start threatening my well being, my economy, my way of life, then we have a problem and those are the issues whose focus is worthy of our attention. I agree that Islam is and has been a major problem in the world and that we need to defeat them as quickly as we can. I just don’t dig crapping on Beethoven because I’m at war with Hitler.

I’m not going to force you to tailor your writing to my taste or sense of propriety. I can only advise that you exude more then a warriors wish to protect his family, his city, and his nation. There is an irrational aspect to your criticism and if you have any reason to wonder at this poster, I would be curious as to what irrational notions your sense of wonder has created seeing that you can identify my addictive personality all from a two paragraph comment.

If Jews had a supremacist genocidal ideology which animated them and prompted them to spread their religion through violence, strap on bombs, or fly planes filled with innocents into skyscrapers, then I’d have a problem with that too — wouldn’t you? I don’t see that happening. Do you?

So if I’m not making the equation Jew = Muslim, or Judaism = Islam — then why in God’s name would you? Unless you’re somehow addicted to your sense of victimhood, and so much so, that you enjoy inventing buggaboos where there are none, or misconstrue menace where there is none. Take heed, for in so doing, you engage in a dangerous obscuring of genuine threats. Why would you do that? One can only wonder at such posters.

I’m all for devestating our Islamic enemies. I am all for pointing out the various ways in which the Left hypocriticly holds hands with the illiberal Muslims while painting Conservatives as a shade away from Jim Crow. There are traditions that are odd to the Doodslags of the world but which pose no threat worthy of that vitriol. Your issues with Islam can very easily be extended to other circumcising people and with all you know and rightfully despise in Islam you will have to work quite hard to reconcile in the good and godly Jewish communities.

which is obviously true – but not to the miseducated.

Not just “the summer”. Not just THIS summer. All summers. For all time since infidels built power plants for the Muslims and tried to teach them how to operate them!

Good lord. Americans go over to these Islamic sewers and infer that the state of affairs they witness on the spot, the sewage running in the streets, the burning smell of filth everywhere — they assume that this deplorable statewhich greets them is a sign of recent degradation, or an easy explanation for why the Muslims of Islam are so filled with rancor and hatred for everything. If they had any clue at all they’d know that these things are the consistent backdrop of Islamic societies everywhere, and they’re examples of how average Muslims have lived forever. This isn’t new. These “rolling blackouts” aren’t a harbinger of a failing infrastructure — they’re the face of Islamic management, Islamic incompetence, Islamic “society” itself.

Naive Westerners go over to Islamic nations and meet the Western educated elite. Those elite have a vested interest concealing the horrors of Islam in every regard. They use Islam to rule their slave populations. These gullible Westerners are served sweet tea by these elites, and treated to that putative Islamic hospitality. Some of those Muslims PR agents have even learned to disarm by mimicking our ways, they laugh at the jokes, they talk about sports cars, some have even mastered the unpleasant art of touching filthy kaffir hands with hail-fellow-well-met! handshakes. They’ve mastered the convincing smiles that always fool the stupid infidels.

Other Muslims can’t or don’t try so hard. Some won’t meet with women, or, if they do, they reguire (blamed always on those “conservative religious beliefs”) that said women cover themselves. And even President’s wives comply. The Muslims laugh. Some Muslims don’t do too much at all, they won’t be touched by unclean infidel hands. When they’re asked about it (*never confronted — you must be nuanced with the Muslims, after all…!), the infidels are given the boilerplate false apologys: “It is forbidden! My religion forbids it!” (forfend that the Muslim should ever explain the truth: It’s because I consider you to be unclean, like the pig, like excrement, like the saliva of a dog!) This is sufficient to disarm.

We used to know how to deal with our enemies. We didn’t set about “winning their hearts and minds” until we had utterly annihilated the mind shackles of their poisonous ideology. But with Islam and Muslims, we parrot their PR back to them and assure them we have no problem with Islam.

Look at Pakistan. Look at the ISI. Look at the nukes already in the Taliban hands — for Pakistan in many ways IS the Taliban — now look at Iran — look at nukes in Iran and their calls for genocide of Israel and America by their highest religious clerics — no look at Saudi Arabia — look at the hundred billion they’ve spent so far in the West spreading Islam — look at 15 of the 19 hijackers — look at the billions Saudis place in the Jihadists across the globe.

No problem with Islam?

We have a BIG problem with Islam.

Exactly – remember one of the premises of OIF was that Iraq’s people were relatively developed, educated, with a reasonably large middle class. (This was true – but unfortunately we decided not to follow a strategy of population protection, and the middle class was repressed by the tribes or fled.) Afghanistan, on the other hand, was never developed – reporters like to remind people Karzai’s government exercises little control outside the cities, but of course outside the cities there is nothing but Nothing, which is difficult to control. Afghanistan will have to be built in ways in which Iraq, despite its degredation, was already built (even ruins can be useful).

One strategy I wish we could pursue is the Cleisthenes strategy which transformed tribal Greece into a nascent democracy: you move the tribes around, and you appoint governors of limited tenure in zones where they have no tribal roots. Of course this would be too easy a target for the transnational intelligentsia, and would involve real pain even if it were possible, but short of this it’s hard to see how a country like Afghanistan can be denatured and then reformed into a self-perpetuating set of reasonably democratic institutions. It could very well be that we’re simply going to have to see the policies of imperialism, as the British might have conceived them but as reformed by American norms and international requirements, continue, simply because there’s no other way the international system to which most nations subscribe can survive these barabrians’ incursions otherwise.