{"id":1018,"date":"2001-10-24T17:26:35","date_gmt":"2001-10-24T22:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=1018"},"modified":"2001-10-24T17:26:35","modified_gmt":"2001-10-24T22:26:35","slug":"the_moral_low_g","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/10\/24\/the_moral_low_g.html","title":{"rendered":"The moral low ground"},"content":{"rendered":"

Taking the moral low ground<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

The Taliban are, according to refugees, hiding military equipment in civilian neighborhoods, around mosques, etc.<\/p>\n

And these are the folks screaming bloody murder when any US bomb goes astray?<\/p>\n

The Washington Post <\/i>story goes on to note a Taliban rocket that exploded above the bazaar in Alliance-controlled town of Charikar. Will we hear any regrets or apologies from the Taliban government for the deaths and injuries? Surely it wasn’t intentional!<\/p>\n

Following the same line, Ramadan is coming up. This is the Muslim holy month, in which fasting, inner reflection, devotion to God, and self-control are practiced. Ramadan this year (it’s based on the Islamic lunar calendar) is 17 November to 16 December.<\/p>\n

There are already calls for the US to stop bombing (or whatever we’re doing by then) during that period. That it will demonstrate how barbaric and evil and anti-Islamic the US is, make for great publicity-fodder for Al Quaeda et al<\/i>, and generally be a bad idea. This column<\/a> from the National Review<\/i> discusses this.<\/p>\n

Muslims have been killing each other, and other people, during Ramadan for centuries. Mohammed himself opened a clay urn of whup-ass on tribes outside Mecca during Ramadan, in 624 AD. Iraqis and Iranians killed each other over Ramadan with great aplomb during their war. Anwar Sadat of Egypt launched the Yom Kippur war on Israel during Ramadan, with little respect to his own religion and even less for Israel’s. Besides, as Tod Linberg of Policy Review <\/i>points out, if we did stop bombing because of Ramadan, that would send the signal that we are <\/i>waging war against Muslims – instead of against terrorists, as we keep insisting.
\n[…] Now, I know that bin Laden and al Qaeda aren’t truly representative of the more than 1 billion Muslims in the world. But that’s not really the point. The point is that the people we are at war with – and there may be untold millions of them – couldn’t pass a multicultural sensitivity-training course even if some fatwa said they’d get 72 virgins in this <\/i>life for doing it. If they believed the West and Islam were in a holy war before September 11; if they thought the Pope was a legitimate military target; if they believed America was a crusader nation – it seems pretty unlikely we can change their minds now, when we’re dropping bombs on Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Harshly phrased, and the author may have some axes to grind, but his key points are sound ones. While we like to think of ourselves as better than the immoral butchers of Al Quaeda, or the intolerant xenophobes of the Taliban, we should also not let ourselves be too <\/i>bound by ethical restrictions by which they clearly are not. We are not at war with the people of Afghanistan. If that’s not already clear, there’s not much we can do about it — and declaring a month-long cease fire or withdrawal during Ramadan isn’t going to accomplish anything except the agendas of our enemies.<\/p>\n

(Via InstaPundit, various places today)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taking the moral low ground The Taliban are, according to refugees, hiding military equipment in civilian neighborhoods, around mosques, etc. And these are the folks screaming bloody murder when any…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitical-brouhaha","category-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1636,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/12\/02\/the_agony_of_de.html","url_meta":{"origin":1018,"position":0},"title":"The agony of defeat","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 2-Dec-01 2:32pm","format":false,"excerpt":"What's happened to all the big pro-Taliban, anti-American rallies in Pakistan? The collapse of the Taliban seems to have taken the wind out of them. 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