Category: Terror

One year ago today, the World Trade Center fell in flames. And that very day, just a few hours after the event, I wrote the following: QUOTE BEGINS Some friends have asked me to step outside my normal role as a technology evangelist today, to point out in public that a political panic reaction to… Continue reading One year later…

One of the problems we face in the war against terror is that al-Qaeda is not quite a conspiracy in the traditional sense. It’s something else that is more difficult to characterize and target. (I wrote what follows three years before 9/11.) Political and occult conspiracy theories can make for good propaganda and excellent satire… Continue reading Conspiracy and prospiracy

Ta-daa! In ritual obeisance to the customs of the blogosphere, I now perform my very first fisking. Of Der Fisk himself, in his 8 Nov 2002 column “Bush fights for another clean shot in his war”. “A clean shot” was The Washington Post’s revolting description of the murder of the al-Qa’ida leaders in Yemen by… Continue reading My Very First Fisk

It’s out. The Manifesto site is here. The Manifesto has been submitted to PetitionOnline. To show your support, please add one of thw web buttons to your splash page. Blogspot comments

Changes are deliberately not marked. Read the whole thing, this is a final pre-publication draft. Most of the changes from version 4 are deletions of excess verbiage. Counting email, this now reflects approximately 200 comments from across the blogosphere. Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. Since this process has to close sometime, I’m declaring that… Continue reading Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 5)

I am planning on publishing the Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto soon, via petitiononline.com and possibly other channels. My hope is that enough bloggers will sign it and talk about it to get the position it describes some notice in the more blog-friendly of the mainstream media. Towards this end, I’m seeking volunteers to design a web button… Continue reading A request to web artists

Substantive changes from version 1 to 2 are marked in red; changes from 2 to 3 are marked in blue; changes from 3 to 4 are marked in purple. Counting email, this now reflects approximately 200 comments from across the blogosphere. Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. Since this process has to close sometime, I’m… Continue reading Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 4)

Substantive changes from version 1 to 2 are marked in red; changes from 2 to 3 are marked in blue. I think the changes largely speak for themselves. I will say that I think some of the criticisms I received reflect a conservative bias in the blogosphere population, and that for appeal to a wider… Continue reading Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 3)

Substantive changes from version 1 are marked in red. I think the changes largely speak for themselves. I will say that I think some of the criticisms I received reflect a conservative bias in the blogosphere population, and that for appeal to a wider audience it is necessary to excoriate the Right a little harder… Continue reading Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 2)

WHEREAS, the year since the terrible events of 9/11 has exposed the vacuity and moral confusion of all too many of the thinkers, politicians, and activists operating within conventional political categories; WHEREAS, the Left has failed us by succumbing to reflexive anti-Americanism; by apologizing for terrorist acts; by propounding squalid theories of moral equivalence; and… Continue reading Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 1)

I just sent the following letter to the Boston Globe after reading Elaine Scarry’s excellent piece Failsafe!: Congratulations on having the bravery to publish Elaine Scarry’s “Failsafe”. She is right to point out that distributed threats require distributed countermeasures. She is right to point out that centralized defense of the U.S. massively failed us. She… Continue reading Failsafe

Steven den Beste wrote a long, intelligent and insightful essay on who the enemy is. I think he is right to see Afghanistan, Iraq, and the suppression of Al-Qaeda as phases of longer, wider war — a clash of civilizations driven by the failure of Islamic/Arab culture (though I would stress the problem of the… Continue reading Imperialists by necessity?

(Final essay of the series.) In previous essays in this series, I have described Islam as a warlike and bloody religion subject to periodic fits of violent fundamentalist revival. I have analyzed the roots of Islamic terror in the Koranic duty of jihad, and elucidated Osama bin Laden’s goal as nothing less than the destruction… Continue reading Winning the War Against Terror

(Fourth essay of a series.) In Mirror, Mirror: Why Americans Don’t Understand the Threat of Jihadism, What al-Qaeda Wants and The Mirage of Moderate Islam, I have described Islam as a warlike and bloody religion subject to periodic fits of violent fundamentalist revival. I have analyzed the roots of Islamic terror in the Koranic duty… Continue reading Why Diplomacy Is Doomed

(Third in a series.) In What al-Qaeda Wants and the first essay in this series, The Mirage of Moderate Islam, I have described Islam as a warlike and bloody religion subject to periodic fits of violent fundamentalist revival. I have analyzed the roots of Islamic terror in the Koranic duty of jihad, and elucidated Osama… Continue reading Mirror, Mirror — why Americans Don’t Understand the Threat of Jihadism

(Second in a series.) In a The Mirage of Moderate Islam, I have described the Koranic roots of Islamic fanaticism, and observed that Osama bin Laden’s terror war on the west is part of a recurring pattern of fundamentalist revival associated with jihad in Islamic history. In this essay, I’ll get more specific about what… Continue reading What Al-Qaeda wants

Diplomatic lies notwithstanding, Islam is anything but a `religion of peace’. Any honest scholar will tell you that Islam is a religion of violence, martyrdom, and conversion by the sword. The duty to wage war for the propagation of the faith is plainly written in the Koran; Osama bin Laden’s suicide bombers are part of… Continue reading The Mirage of Moderate Islam

This afternoon I was reading a quote from a woman who had left a comment on Tim Blair’s weblog. She wrote: rld, I feel it’s my duty as a woman to wear clingier clothing, flirt more outrageously, have more orgasms, and get on top more often. In short, anything that’s taboo to the islamofascists.” Boo-yah,… Continue reading We are all Jews now

The recent controversy over arming airline pilots against a possible repetition of the 9/11 atrocity misses a crucial problem that makes arming pilots relatively ineffective: terrorists would know in advance where the guns are, and be able to game against that. Let’s say you are a terrorist executing a hijacking. You know the pilots are… Continue reading Arm the Passengers