The Response Options

Yesterday, I quoted extensively from Andrew Sullivan’s blog on the “religious roots of today’s era of terrorism”. Today, he had a follow-up with many good points. He seems to feel that many flinch at the prospect of calling Islamic terrorism what it is because they fear the world may go Nazi on the Muslims. Actually a fear of the world going all George W. Bush on the Muslims is a more valid fear:

“I think it’s perfectly possible to agree with that analysis of what is going on, while disagreeing on what to actually do about it. There’s this tendency to conflate a willingness to recognize some core illiberal parts of Islam as the problem with an invade-occupy-and-torture strategy of the last administration. But the two are easily separable.”

An all-military approach won’t work: it’s been tried and not only did it not work; it also added fuel to the terrorist recruiting fire. Reforming them from outside is not possible (how can the hated, lowly kafir point out anything to improve in the perfect religion?). So what can we then do? Sullivan says we need to stop giving in all the time within our own borders:

“We must not give an inch on freedom of expression, especially blasphemy. We need to drop the double standards and not self-censor with some religions, while ripping on others. We should have the right to rip on them all. If you’re going to publish photos of Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ, you sure can publish the rather innocuous cover of Charlie now at large.”

(As an aside, remember how Charlie’s artist, Bernard Holtrop, said, “We vomit on all these people who suddenly say they are our friends”? Well the Pope, a so-called supporter of Charlie, just showed his true colors on freedom of speech:

“If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”

Sir, yes, sir. We know how the Church deals with criticism: burning at the stake, Galileo, it’s a long list. I can almost see the Pope salivating over the good old days…)

Now back to how we should respond to the religious terrorists. Sullivan says we need to start accepting the lesser of the two evils: eternal surveillance even though it seems to border on eavesdropping:

“Do I prefer that kind of surveillance to drone wars that seem to be fomenting more Jihadism than they eliminate? I’d say so. I’d rather not do either, but it’s clear we have a real problem, and that terror directed at basic freedoms of travel and expression requires vigilance. If that means a retreat on privacy, that’s a trade-off I’m prepared to make.”

I don’t like that part anymore than Sullivan does. Then again, we don’t live in a vacuum. Also, kind of puts all that Facebook and Google bashing on privacy grounds seem so, well, secondary and unimportant, right?