About a year ago, I began subscribing to an online newletter generated by Colonel Harry Riley, U.S. Army, Retired. Our initial interaction began after I contacted him in March of 2008 regarding an e mail circulating around the internet to which his name had been attached, which I suspected was a hoax. It turned out not to be, and in the course of establishing its authenticity I began a correspondence with him. The Colonel was just setting up his new cyberbase, Colonel Riley's Corner, so when he asked if I'd like to subscribe, I said sure. By then, through our burgeoning exchange of e mails, Harry and I were conducting fairly civil discourses about the upcoming elections, certain articles of legislation that had been or were about to be taken up by congress, and other current events. I decided to subscribe to his newsletter for the same reason I watch Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity: I like to monitor what people with differing viewpoints have to say. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, the adage goes, so I occasionally listen to Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, and their ilk with clenched teeth in order to stay informed about what they're spewing and doing. I subscribed to Harry's blog with great optimism that my unbridled passion for peace and prosperity (coupled with my persuasive way with a word) would eventually budge his unyielding, hard-line stance against his "enemies" and cause him to relent in his narrowminded pursuit of the evil he thinks Islam and its disciples (including, according to him, our president-elect) represent.
How wrong I was.
After only ten months of reading his increasingly frantic and unhinged diatribes against everything that isn't white, male, and American-born, my stomach churned even more than usual when this post landed in my inbox today. I don't really feel like being civil to him anymore, but I also don't think my response to him, posted below his letter, is technically rude. Harsh, probably; brutally frank, indubitably; but actually quite restrained, considering.
Salaam, shalom, and happy 2009, everybody!
Mr. Shapiro says it the way I see responsing to terrorism......Israel can start the message by dropping leaflets on Gaza advising the population they have 48 hours to abandon Gaza City and perhaps one or two other major cities. At the end of the 48 hours, Gaza City and perhaps one or two other major cities will be flattened, demolished, destroyed, and any person that remains will be killed. Terrorist must feel the bite of "enough".
Enough of Radical Islam
http://www.creators.com/opinion/ben-shapiro/enough-of-radical-islam.html
Ben Shapiro
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Enough with the pseudonyms. Western civilization isn't at war with
terrorism any more than it is at war with grenades. Western
civilization is at war with militant Islam, which dominates Muslim
communities all over the world. Militant Islam isn't a tiny minority
of otherwise goodhearted Muslims. Its a dominant strain of evil that
runs rampant in a population of well over 1 billion.
Enough with the psychoanalysis. They don't hate us because of Israel.
They don't hate us because of Kashmir. They don't hate us because we
have troops in Saudi Arabia or because we deposed Saddam Hussein.
They don't hate us because of Britney Spears. They hate us because we
are infidels, and because we don't plan on surrendering or providing
them material aid in their war of aggressive expansion.
Enough with the niceties. We don't lose our souls when we treat our
enemies as enemies. We don't undermine our principles when we post
more police officers in vulnerable areas, or when we send Marines to
kill bad guys, or when we torture terrorists for information. And we
don't redeem ourselves when we close Guantanamo Bay or try terrorists
in civilian courts or censor anti-Islam comics. When it comes to war,
extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the
pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Enough with the words. Talking with Iran without wielding the threat
of force, either economic or military, won't help. Appealing to the
United Nations, run by thugs and dictators ranging from Putin to
Chavez to Ahmadinejad, is an exercise in pathetic futility. Evil
countries don't suddenly decide to abandon their evil goals -- they
are forced to do so by pressure and circumstance.
Enough with the faux allies. We don't gain anything by pretending
that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are true allies. They aren't. At best,
they are playing both sides of the table. We ought to be drilling now
in order to break OPEC. Building windmills isn't going to cut it. We
should also be backing India to the hilt in its current conflict with
Pakistan -- unless Pakistan can destroy its terrorist element, India
should be given full leeway to do what it needs to do. Russia and
China, meanwhile, are facilitating anti-Western terrorism. Treating
them as friends in this global war is simply begging for a backstabbing.
Enough with the myths. Not everyone on earth is crying out for
freedom. There are plenty of people who are happy in their misery,
believing that their suffering is part and parcel of a correct
religious system. Those people direct their anger outward, targeting
unbelievers. We cannot simply knock off dictators and expect
indoctrinated populations to rise to the liberal democratic
challenge. The election of Hamas in the Gaza Strip is more a rule
than an exception in the Islamic world.
Enough with the lies. Stop telling us that Islam is a religion of
peace. If it is, prove it through action. Stop telling us that
President-elect Barack Obama will fix our broken relationship with
the Muslim world. They hate Obama just as much as they hated
President George W. Bush, although they think Obama is more of a
patsy than Bush was. Stop telling us that we shouldn't worry about
the Islamic infiltration of our economy. If the Saudis own a large
chunk of our banking institutions and control the oil market, they
can certainly leverage their influence in dangerous ways.
Enough. After the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the plane downed
in Pennsylvania, the endless suicide bombings, shootings and rocket
attacks in Israel, the Bali bombings, the synagogue bombing in
Tunisia, the LAX shootings, the Kenyan hotel bombing, the Casablanca
attacks, the Turkey synagogue attacks, the Madrid bombings, the
London bombings, and the repeated attacks in India culminating in the
Mumbai massacres -- among literally thousands of others -- its about
time that the West got the point: we're in a war. Our enemies are
determined. They will not quit just because we offer them Big Macs,
Christina Aguilera CDs, or even the freedom to vote. They will not
quit just because we ensure that they have Korans in their Guantanamo
cells, or because we offer to ban The Satanic Verses (as India did).
They will only quit when they are dead. It is our job to make them
so, and to eliminate every obstacle to their destruction.
So enough. No more empty talk. No more idle promises. No more happy
ignorance, half measures, or appeasement-minded platitudes. The time
for hard-nosed, uncompromising action hasn't merely come -- its been
overdue by seven years. The voice of our brothers blood cries out
from the ground
Col. Rileys Corner Subscriber Information:
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Here is my reply:
Harry, you have outdone yourself, no mean feat. You have bottomed out. Once you were emblematic of mere bigotry and ignorance, but you have now graduated to full-fledged, breathless advocacy of the murder and slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians. That makes you no better than the terrorists who slammed the planes into the World Trade Center towers, or any other bomb-wielding radical fundamentalist. How you can, with a straight face, condemn the 9/11 attacks and then in the same breath, turn around and propose doing EXACTLY the same thing to people whose overriding interests lie NOT in taking over the world but in merely surviving, is beyond me. The twisted, superficial scope of your grasp on reality is both sad and stunning.
I have, during the last ten months, veered precipitously from admiring certain aspects of your activism to pitying you for your blind, intractable adherence to the arrogance of your positions on just about everything. Now, at the start of this remarkable new year, your own words lead me to the inescapable conclusion that you are a rage- and hate-filled hypocrite of the very worst kind, and that you are way, way, worse than any of the "radical muslim fundamentalists" you so blithely advocate murdering.
You say: Mr. Shapiro says it the way I see responsing (sic) to terrorism... Israel can start the message by dropping leaflets on Gaza advising the population they have 48 hours to abandon Gaza City and perhaps one or two other major cities. At the end of the 48 hours, Gaza City and perhaps one or two other major cities will be flattened, demolished, destroyed, and any person that remains will be killed. Terrorist (sic) must feel the bite of "enough".
Without even mentioning the poor spelling, inept syntax, and atrociously inconsistent parallel structuring of your prose - all that in just four sentences! - I feel compelled to point out to you that Gaza is a city behind walls, a prison from which there is no escape. There is no way to "abandon" it, Harry. And most of its citizens are not "terrorists." They are ordinary people with families, children, and dwindling hopes for the future trapped in a maze of political and religious quarrels, who for decades have been systematically starved, abused, terrorized, cut off from the basic amenities of nutritious food, medicine, and water. And you, a citizen of a foreign country viewing these complex troubles from your far-off, lofty perch, are advocating murdering these people, who can't run away from the Israeli attacks on them anymore than they can from the cute little leaflets that drop from the sky like manna from heaven, giving them ample warning - all of about fifteen seconds - that they are about to be marked for slaughter. And what's an extra major city or two, while you're at it? Hey, throw in a third, maybe even a fourth! We are democracy in action! Freedom on the march! What's a few hundred thousand more dead and maimed muslims or arabs, radical islamists, whatever the hell they are. It doesn't matter to you in the least, does it, Harry? To you, sitting comfortably at your computer with the TV on and a cold beer within easy reach, those people are as inconsequential and deserving of misery and death as cockroaches. So what if a few innocents get killed along with the "terrorists"? Who cares? They're only muslims, arabs, towelheads, subhumans, collateral damage, the price they pay for us to so patriotically shove "freedom" down their unwilling, ungrateful throats.
Don't you get it, Harry? This is exactly the way the men who flew the planes into the towers thought about us.
That makes you exactly like them. And because you are, in fact, exactly like them while insisting you are the opposite, that actually makes you worse than they are.
The Israelis have been running Gaza as a grim detention center for forty years, Harry. Forty years of Gazans being treated as no better than animals by people they regard as interlopers who, after thousands of years, "reclaimed," meaning took away, their territory without regard for the rights of those already living there, and systematically over the course of decades have deprived them of almost everything that makes a person human. Children in Gaza are growing up sick, stunted by malnutrition and poor medical care, scarred by fear and deprivation, lacking even a basic education. And now the Israelis are slaughtering women and babies there under the guise, the sacred aegis, of destroying military installations and weapons caches. This is what marauding, conquering nations have done for thousands of years, Harry, asserting they do so because they are in the "right," trumpeting that their cause is "just." For America and Americans like you and Ben Shapiro, who ought to know better but for some reason DON'T - and you never seem to learn, either - to march in unyielding lockstep with Israel and everything Israel does, claiming that murder committed in the name of "self-defense" is righteous and justified - does any of that have the doleful ring of familiarity, Harry? You mindlessly regurgitate the most shallow, hateful party line about Israel and the Palestinians, with absolutely no insight into what is happening over there or how to resolve it without blowing up the entire freakin' world. That is your solution to the conflict: drop leaflets, then commit mass murder. And throw in an extra major city or two full of innocent people to slaughter! Yeah, that's the ticket! That will definitely keep Americans safe and restore our beleaguered republic's lost glory.
What possible good do you think dropping leaflets will do? Exactly where do you expect the Gazans to go? THEY CAN'T GO ANYWHERE, HARRY. THEY LIVE INSIDE A WALL, like caged animals, deprived of every element of humanity and humanness by the Israelis, who aren't even letting in journalists to report on the atrocities being committed and who are murdering Red Crescent relief workers sent there only to provide aid to the injured. And you, dedicated little wind-up patriot that you are, not only support this indefensible mass murder, you act as though you wish you were there making the blood run yourself. Only that's all it is, an act. A flimsy, unconvincing little ball-swinging, puffed-up chest-thumping, phony, weakling act. Neither you nor Ben Shapiro, the author of the article you reprinted, have the moral courage to actually do what you advocate, just enough to encourage others to do your obscene, bloody work for you. That's totally disgusting, Harry, and you ought to be ashamed. But you obviously have no shame and no sense of decency. In your enclosed, circumscribed universe, the way to prove you're a man and a soldier is to cheerlead for the slaughter of innocent people. Wow. And you have the temerity, not to mention the bad taste, to call yourself a "christian" and send out rosy christmas missives wishing us all peace on earth.
Even a radical Islamic fundamentalist - whatever made-up, dumbed-down, fabricated thing that is - couldn't be that hypocritical.
I have no idea why, except that I'm stubborn, I even waste my time trying to help you see yourself as you actually are, Harry, as opposed to the heroic, avenging super-patriot you see reflected in the mirror of your warped mind. In fact, you are a psychopath with identifiably sociopathic tendencies who enjoys the idea of murder and torture because it excites you in ways nothing else does anymore. So you go around capitalizing on the honorable things you once represented and setting yourself up as a model of modern propriety and christian virtue, but devaluing everything you touch because you yourself are tainted with the poison of extremism and inhumanity. You have a profound lack of empathy for your fellow human beings, which is a red flag for attachment disorder, and an impenetrable mental opacity obscuring your ability to successfully analyze the simplest of social or political interactions. Your talk is indeed, cheap, Harry, because you cheapen the causes you support every time you open your mouth or put finger to keyboard. The tragic, ironic, and truly disturbing thing is, you believe it is you yourself who are fighting the forces of evil with "good." You see yourself as the loyal, trustworthy soldier representative of all that is good and right, willing to step up and do what needs to be done to "save America." Perhaps you once were a good soldier, Colonel Riley, but no longer. In reality, the opposite is true, and your inability to recognize this is the creepiest thing of all. You have devolved into the very thing you seek to destroy.
You have become your own monster.
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