The head of Malaysia complained that the world’s handful of Jews (estimated population 13 million) were keeping 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide in a state of ignorance, poverty, and illiteracy. Leaders from Islamic states around the world gave him a standing ovation. Most news coverage of the event have focussed on the Jew-hatred angle, which is hardly new. What to me is remarkable is that these guys aren’t ashamed at having such wimpy enemies. Muslims are at least 100 times more numerous than the world’s Jews and, thanks to some of the world’s highest growth rates, destined to be 200 times more numerous rather soon. Muslims control vast territories underneath which are half of the world’s petroleum reserves. By contrast the Jews have a resource-poor little territory the size of New Jersey.
Do we live in an age of wimpy enemies? In place of Ronald Reagan’s terrifying Soviet Union, George W. has a huge military bristling with modern weapons to wield against… Osama and Saddam.
Wimpy enemies? I’d say illusive and etheral rather than wimpy. Osama and Saddam could cause death and destruction on a massive scale and to retaliate we can…blow up their cows? The Soviet Union was an incredible enemy but a stagnant one because whats the point of using your power when nothing survives? With Osama and Saddam…they don’t see it that way. They don’t mind using weapons that kill everything. Why? Because they don’t want you there.
Thats not wimppy…thats psychotic.
Somewhat related: Has anyone seen a complete transcript of the whole speech? I’ve been unable to locate one online. Many sources, like the Malaysian press, are claiming that his remarks were taken wildly out of context and are not in line with the main point of his speech, that muslims should concentrate on using political and economic tactics rather than violence. (see: http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v3/news.php?id=24548 )
nevermind. found one: http://thestar.com.my/oic/story.asp?file=/2003/10/16/oic/20031016123438&sec=OIC
It seems to me that refering to the Jews or anyone else as “wimpy enemies”, simply because they are less populated, is a grave mistake. With a Muslim population that large and that motivated it is just a matter of time before they figure out how to take what they want. I believe it is in all our best interests to help the Muslims and the Jews live together peacefully.
So what is your desire–more powerful enemies or a weaker US? I should think that having weak enemies is a blessing, or perhaps you’d like to return to the Cold War. Would you prefer a world in which the war in Iraq had been longer and bloodier? If our weapons were 50% as effective, would the world be a safer place? I submit that it would not. The very fact that we can field a fighting force that is overwhelming when deployed is precisely why we fight relatively few large-scale wars. Every dictator’s nightmare is 400,000 US troops massed along the boarder. It means that things go our way without having to fight. Like it or not, that is the nature of the international system. (You must also recognize that this is a burden we bear for the world; Europe has ceded its military role entirely to us, their efforts notwithstanding.)
The fact remains, no matter their size, there are state-sposored actors out there who want to kill as many Americans as possible at any cost. It’s good that our enemies are weak, and I thank goodness that we are strong and are able–we hope–to effectively counter the threat.
BTW, Osama and Saddam are not just the President’s enemy. Anyone who says that his goal is to kill as many Americans as possible as soon as possible is making his intentions pretty clear (eg, that includes you.)
I would hardly refer to Israel, a nation with the 14th largest Military expenditure on earth, as ‘Wimpy’.
(see Data from CIA World Factbook )
According to the link, they spent US $8 billion on their military in 2002.
Of course, the US provided several billion dollars of that military aid.
I recently visited Malaysia (the state of Sabah on Borneo). Some pics are posted at my web site. It’s a great vacation spot. I highly recommend it.
Please pardon the “boarder” typo in my last comment.
Saddam and Osama don’t mind using weapons that kill everything…in theory, that is, if they could get them. But this remains entirely hypothetical, as well as mundane. (What do you think would happen if Osama got a doomsday device and could blow up the planet? Hmmm…he’s so evil, I bet he’d use it! Yeah, I bet that’s right! What a SOB!)
Here in reality, Osama’s biggest attack apparently involved the use of boxcutters, and the US has put him out of business and back in a cave with about 5% of the troops needed for Iraq. As an enemy, he’s wimpy.
And Saddam has proven the effectiveness of weapons sanctions in reducing his vast WMD program to one vial of university-grade bacteria hidden in fridge for 10 years. As an enemy, he’s both illusory and wimpy. The only time he can hurt us is if we hang around too long on street corners in Baghdad.
Poor little America so focused on the size of its penis it has no inkling that 90 percent of intercourse has very little to do with firing its gun!
Israel is not a ‘small enemy’ for anyone due to its gargantuan backer (the US).
That said, I’d rather have a big enemy who can be negotiated with and who has a stake in the world, than a smaller, angrier one that’s feeling backed into a corner, desperate, and has very little stake in the fate of the rest of the world.
Also, funny how our ‘big scary enemy’ the USSR wasn’t nearly so big or powerful as we all thought at the time. Overall, I’d say our (the U.S.’s) biggest problem is poor intelligence, and I mean that in both the CIA/007 sense and the general competence and knowledge arenas.
The Jewish nation of Israel must be commended — 13 million people are the _only_ society in the world with the fortitude to stand up to 1.3 billion barbarians. No one else has guts of this order. I am sad to say not even the USA [Our esteemed friends include Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Both hotbeds of extremist Islam]. Not India, the country of my birth. At the end of the day, Israel stands out as a brave and proud nation that will do everything it can to save itself and its culture without capitulating.
Comment in “The Atlantic Monthly” a while ago… each Saudi Prince sires about 70-80 offspring in a lifetime of healthy copulation.
No matter how you look at it, in the long run every other religion and culture will be overpowered by the sheer force of such reproductive frenzy.
Jagadeesh, calling all Muslims “1.3 billion barbarians” is incredibly xenophobic and frankly downright crazy. Anyway, the Israelis are dealing with about 400 million Arab/Muslim “enemies” since many of the Musliams are not in the Middle East. You’d make Dinesh D’Souza proud with your bigotry
Um, those are the princes siring 70-80 offspring during their lifetime. While there are a lot of Saudi princes they don’t constitute a big fraction of the population of Saudi Arabia, let alone Islam as a whole.
Anyway, reproductive rates are limited by females, not males. Human females have a maximum lifetime reproductive capacity of around 30 or so, I would guess, and the average rate even in a hyperfecund culture is probably a lot less.
The most depressing aspect of the palestine/israel discussion is that I’ve yet to hear a single theory for a realistic peaceful settlement to the conflict. It seems destined to be a war of attrition.
I bet you’re really proud of state-sponsored massacres of Muslims back home in India, Jagadeesh.
I grew up in Saudi Arabia, dude–regardless of how many children the princes ‘sire’, it’s not a nation crawling with hate. Just a bunch of people trying to get through life like anybody else.
There’s nothing inherently voilent or extremist about Arabs or other Muslims. Heck, we’ve only been around for 1400-something years, we don’t have a corner on the terrorism market. When the Islamic empire was strong, it was extremely tolerant. Far too many people (including Arabs/other Muslims themselves) confuse political issues with religious ones.
Philip – nice angle.
It certainly could be said that the US doesn’t really have any powerful enemies to speak of. But bogeyman enemies like Osama, Saddam and terrorists in general are great for things like distracting the public from domestic issues, removing some of their irritating civil liberties and looking outwards, for furthering causes like world domination*.
* i.e. Rumsfeld, Cheney and co’s ‘Project for the New American Century’, especially the “Mein Kampf” doc : http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
I’ve been accused of bigotry and India has been accused of state-sponsored massacres of Muslims.
Well, hello but I am sorry — how many people in the Islamic world condemn terrorism? Has _one_ Islamic leader of note had the guts to stand up and criticize Osama? Has a single leader had the courage to say that 9/11 was absolutely wrong and condemned its perpetrators? [I mean Islamic leaders of some standing in the Muslim world. Not the local Imam of Anywhere, USA]
Now, getting back to Israel — how could they negotiate under duress? If there are bombings, left right and center and they negotiate, is that not a sign of capitulation? Would you expect any reasonable nation to do that?
It is the politicians that are not ashamed of wimpy enemies, then, it is the brainwashed public.
Did anyone predict that the US military would not overrun Iraq? No one, except for the day dreaming Iraqi foreign minister. Bush’s aircraft carrier landing and the public poll after Bagdad fell were all about defeating a wimpy enemy.
I thought heros are made not by doing easy, sure, quick fixes and hasty to relish their victories, but by doing the hard (such as North Korea and jobs), unsure (such as Iran and the economy), tedious (such as Iraqi and Mideast peace and UN diplomacy), a lot of times, non-glamorous (such as fighting AIDS and hunger in Africa).
Eistein hated people who find the thinest part on a board and drill holes, then, claim victory (can not find the exact quote).
You’d think with all the suicide bombings those peace loving Muslims would really tilt the population balance in favor of the baby bombers. The sooner we realize we have a Muslim problem and not a Jew problem, the better off the world will be.
Einstein, AK dude. You probably couldn’t find the quote because you can’t spell his name.
Despite the fact that I know how to spell Einstein’s name, I can’t verify this quotation either. I suspect it belongs to someone else. Here is a nicely applicable one, however:
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
Others:
http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html
I believe the quote that AK mentioned is from Bob Vila. 🙂
If anyone actually bothered to read the full text of the speech available at (http://thestar.com.my/oic/story.asp?file=/2003/10/16/oic/20031016123438&sec=OIC) , you can see how the Western Media has once again distorted the meaning of it to fit it’s own agenda.
Yes, “1.3 billion Muslims worldwide in a state of ignorance, poverty, and illiteracy” and that’s why the head of Malaysia says that Islamic people should follow the Jews as a good example on how to use brains instead of trying to use acts of violence to secure a place in this new world.
I read the Prime Minister’s speech. It treats the mystery of how Europeans came to dominate the world, and how to end that domination. His believes the disunity caused by Islamic sectarianism was the cause of their weakness, and the end of such sectarianism would restore Islamic strength. It’s a good answer–for a politician–because it takes the ball out of the politician’s court. Is it at all correct? I note only that Christian sectarianism and Jewish sectarianism–while as strong or stronger than Islamic sectarianism–did not crucially impede European domination.
Jagadeesh–you picked the wrong place for your bigotry. I was surprised to see your name, wasn’t sure if it was really you, but I checked your web site and you’re the same guy at work. Soon to be former place of work
One of the few things I remember from my undergrad education 30 yrs ago was a comment from my sociology prof that there will always be small wars because lots of people get rich from them, but there will never be another big war because nobody will profit. I always believed that, but we may have entered a new age where the second premise no longer holds. What about the doomsday clock? How many milliseconds before midnight is it now?
I encourage everyone to read Douglas Coupland’s Hey Nostradamous! It’s so relavent these days.
“All we need is love.”
> Now, getting back to Israel — how could they negotiate under duress? If there are bombings, left right and center and they negotiate, is that not a sign of capitulation?
It should be mentioned that the terrorist bombings escalated drammatically around the year 2000, when the current right-wing government of Israeli started to push their non-compromise line. And so far I have no impression that throwing more tanks, soldiers and air-to-ground missiles to Gaza will reduce the amount of detonations in busses and bars.
Dying to Kill us – is there a connection between religion and terrorism?
Sooner or later we will have legions of tiny nanobot soldiers positioned on every square foot of the globe. Genetically engineered insect systems will make them energy independent and self-replicating.
When we or the nanobots identify an “enemy,” the little soldiers will crawl into their ear and reprogram their brain, turning him into another Gandhi or Mother Teresa.
Then our enemies will be as wimpy as we want. If we get bored and want less wimpy enemies, that could be arranged too.
Look within:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,1071729,00.html
I will be going to Malaysia later this year Phil to check up on your reports about Malaysia being a hotbed of anti-Semitism. You have called for tourists not to visit Malaysia because it is (in your words) anti-Jewish. I want to see the country for my own eyes. I will be creating a page on my website based on my website, called: “Inside Philip Greenspun’s Malaysia.” It should be uploaded around June 2005!
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