the red pages

what was said. what wasn't.

Evidently, Michele recently put up a post addressing some of the points I raise in the previous entry ("context"). In that post, she makes some accusations, and denies some others. Let's take a look at some of these, shall we?

Perhaps these two men have never had a gut reaction to terrorism like I have. In fact, I'm willing to bet they never had a reaction like mine at all because, judging from their sites, we're only getting what we deserve. [emphasis added]

I've never said that. Don't believe it. Don't think this site suggests it.

What I have said is that the role of Western intervention in exacerbating the hostility of Middle Eastern Arabs toward the West is worth looking at because it suggests actions that we might take to alleviate the hostility; not because we want to appease the scary terrorists, but because justice makes more efficient foreign policy. A change in our economic and political relationship with the Middle East may save more lives and do more to foster social reform in the region than a direct large-scale invasion. This does not even, necessarily, rule out a direct large-scale invasion. But it does recontextualize it, and create opportunities for more attainable goals to such an invasion.

Many people choose to interpret that as, "let's appease the terrorists," or "we're only getting what we deserve." I tend to chalk that up to panic on their parts (see above re: "gut reaction to terrorism"), but it's still pretty annoying.

Michele again:

Perhaps I might have stayed at their sites and argued my position in the comments, if not for the tone.

Now, for anyone who's ever been to A Small Victory and commented there, this is just plain funny.

More Michele:

The other author, who once declared that he was devoting his entire blog to disseminating my words, parlays his rant against me into a rant against Jews and Christians and, well, I lost interest in what he had to say pretty darn quick.

Okay. "His entire blog" is a little misleading, because of course what I really did was just use a separate space I already had lying around in order to parse my Michele-related rants out from the rest of my writing. Michele has a link you can follow to see everything she's ever written about Micah Wright. This is basically the same thing. But whatever.

As far as this "rant against Jews and Christians" business… the post she's talking about is right here. If anyone would care to point out how that is "against Jews and Christians", I'd be interested to hear what you have to say.

Michele also wrote:

Anyone who claims that anti-Semitism, religious intolerance and extremism are basic tenets of Islam is talking out of their ass.

Well, I never said that. I have said over and over again that the so-called religion the terrorists of the Middle East are practicing is a warped, twisted version of Islam, defined to their own benefit. But don't let that stop you from your baseless conjecture, Josh.

So.

I will concede that she has never claimed that "anti-Semitism, religious intolerance and extremism are basic tenets of Islam". But I didn't say she had. What I did was to turn that statement into a link to a page at A Small Victory. Michele wrote the initial post, but there's also a comments section where a great many things were being said. Some of them are fairly extreme, and several of them advance the possibility of using thermonuclear weapons on the Middle East. One may argue that such an attitude falls short of an absolute failure to differentiate between "Islam" and "Islamofascism". But, even there, I don't make the call. There's a sentence, which is, I believe, essentially accurate. Then there's a link to a web page, where some things are said. The reader is encouraged to draw his or her own conclusions.

With regard to the "I want to go to war with the entire Middle East" comment of Michele's that I quoted several times, she says the following:

They did not reference the rest of the post at all, which would have given their readers a better feel for my anger and a sense of how raw it was at the time I wrote that.

As far as that goes, again, she's right. Sort of. I linked to her blog when I quoted her. Anyone who wanted to look at the quote in context was free to hop over and take a look at it. But, for those of you who don't know how to use a web link, let me be specific: there was more to that post of Michele's. Go read it if you like.

And, more Michele:

I really want to know what Joshua means by murderous indifference, though.

Joshua was fairly clear about what he meant by "murderous indifference". Joshua wrote some stuff about what he perceives Michele's attitude to be, then concluded with "What self-important delusional bullshit. What murderous indifference." See, it's a fairly simple rhetorical device. Sort of like if Joshua had said, "Yellow, orange, lime green. What bright colors."

And then Michele asks, "What do you mean by bright colors?"

And then Michele, after being very specific about what she did or didn't say and accusing me of "baseless conjecture" starts engaging in some very broad conjecture of her own:

I think - and I've said this before - that Josh and his kind are in a state of denial about the war on terror…

And it kind of goes on from there.

You know, I'm reminded here of a time, not so very long ago, when Michele wrote, in reference to Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, a man suspected of helping to plan the 9/11 attacks who was allegedly tortured by the CIA:

Pardon me for my barbarism, but I do think that waterboarding ["strapping a person to a board and repeatedly dunking them under water to make them think they're going to drown" – JN] the man was the very least of what should have been done to him. But Ted Rall thinks that was too much. The horror! The outrage! And Ted wants you to suffer the same fate if you vote for Bush in November. Hell, I'd vote for Bush with less ambivalence than I have right now if he would order all people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammad to be treated as such, and then to be shot afterwards.

So, just to put that in context, Michele has written that she approves of torturing and executing prisoners suspected of having been involved in terrorist activities. No trial. Nothing like that. Just torturing and executing them.

This is one of the ways Michele advocates waging the "war on terror". Never mind that ordering such a practice would galvanize the Arab population against us like nothing else could. That it would drag the war out, resulting in more U.S. military deaths and many more Arab deaths. Michele has had a "visceral" reaction to terrorism, so of course it's perfectly understandable if she advocates torture and murder.

And that, by the way, is a good example of murderous indifference. Michele's fear of terrorism has given her a taste for inflicting suffering on others, even though any fool would know— and Abu Ghraib amply demonstrates —that such a course can only result in a needless waste of lives. Michele believes that her visceral reaction to things she reads about in newspapers and sees on television justifies her attitude.

Disagreeing, often quite strongly, with Michele is not the same thing as being in denial about the war. That Michele uses the war to justify her own bloodthirsty rants is unfortunate on may levels. That she claims those who call her on her bullshit are "in denial" is just fucked up.

Posted by Joshua at June 22, 2004 04:47 PM