From this article:

In 1992, I was recruited to the Hamas shock troops in the camp by a friend in the movement. Our task was to defend the organization against infiltration by undesirable elements and to wage war on corruption, negative social trends like theft, prostitution and drugs and, of course, on traitors.
As members of a cell, we attacked suspected collaborators with Israel, some of whom were put to death. In order to get the truth out of suspected collaborators when we interrogated them, we used to break their legs and arms with iron bars and chains and to stab them with knives. It was not cruelty for its own sake, but the way an underground organization has to operate in occupied territory.
…
Fatah is a good, positive organization, but mistaken in its ideology and deeds. I have brothers who support Fatah, and despite the great arguments between us, I love and respect them. Still you must understand that Fatah, in its concessions to Israel, its recognition of the state of Israel and its joining in the peace process, is totally unacceptable to me. You also realize that it was Fatah as the Palestinian Authority that arrested me for seven months.
…
As for the peace process, I personally am against it. It entails recognition of Israel, and that runs counter to Islam and Hamas. Even if [the Israelis] were to withdraw to the 1967 lines, give us Jerusalem and the right of return, we should not recognize Israel. All of Palestine, from the sea to the river, must constitute the Islamic Palestinian State.
I am not a murderer. A murderer is someone with a psychological problem; armed actions have a goal. Even if civilians are killed, it’s not because we like it or are bloodthirsty. It is a fact of life in a people’s struggle against a foreign occupier. A suicide bombing is the highest level of jihad and highlights the depth of our faith. The bombers are holy fighters who carry out one of the more important articles of Islam.
I always saw Israelis as murderers and as an occupying enemy who had inflicted pain on us, and who were still hurting us, and who must be expelled from our land by whatever means.

We had dinner last week with Dave Trowbridge, of Redwood Dragon and his talented and lovely partner; she asked a pointed question:”How do you let the heat out of this issue?” How do we stop growing terrorists?
Because I believe profoundly that we not only need to defend ourselves against them in the short term (which is best done by attacking them on their territory, rather than waiting for them to attack us on ours), but to somehow stop growing them (which unfortunately is possibly encouraged by attacking them on their territory). Tough problem.
Read the interview…

Posting will be very light in the next few days; today we must box all the books, bedding, and dishes; we’re on a mission!!
Spent the last two days watching Tenacious G run through an introductory handgun class for women taught by Lewis Awerbuck. It was a terrific class; I’ve never trained with him, but now would like to.
So we played for two days and now need to pay by working harder.
Lots of good comments to respond to; I’ll start catching up next week (as soon as the DSL is in at the new house). Or when my back gives out, I’ll take a break and respond to a few of them.
Had a great 4th, and am glad that I was wrong (in predicting a major terrorist action on the anniversary of the Battle of Hattas).

White House defends Bush handling of stock sale
Look, Bush is a corporate oligarch. He and his country-club blacklisting, inside trading, factory-job exporting buddies have played the US economy like a pinata for the last fifteen years.
But then again, Gore is too. And so are most of our millionare-occupied Senate.
That’s why they want to build SkyBoxes in the Capitol building…so the corporate sponsors can watch their teams play.

Howard Owens, in this article (what are these things, anyway? Posts? Articles? Blogs? Let me know…) titled ‘Where Are The Patriotic Muslims?’
Personally, I’ll guess that they are quietly being soldiers, sailors, airmen, police officers and firefighters.
But damn, it would be nice if the leaders in that community stood up and took a position other than ‘Islam is, of course, a religion of peace’.

Kevin Reybould, of Lean Left comments (and blogs):

[quoting me]”, I’m firmly on this team, and I think that thinking folks of all stripes should be as well.”
The problem a lot of us have is that this statement is very often used (and I am not saying you do this) as an excuse to demonize the “other team” (Raymond’s notion that the West is somehow less violent than the Islamic world is a joke, and bad logic. It ignores every other factor that shapes a society and the decisions it makes in favor of the one factor that differentiates the given society from ours) and to paper over or ignore our side’s contribution to the problems.
Many of the things that people broadly criticize the Islamic world for are things that we help create. We are the largest supporter of Egypt, we are the largest customer of Saudi Arabia, we are the nation that overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran. Those actions have the consequence of suppressing democratic forces in the Arab world. In a very real sense, the West has chosen to back those who would make the Qu’ran a book of war.
That is what is so infuriating about pieces like Raymond’s, and the whole notion that the Arab world is just inherently violent. Not only is it bigotry, it is exceedingly dangerous bigotry. By ignoring our own actions, and steps we can take to correct the consequences of those actions, we merely run in place. Killing terrorists is not enough – we must try and make a world where terrorists can gain no foothold. We cannot do that by hiding behind comforting illusions.

I think I disagree. I say “I think” because I’m consciously withholding a decision on a core set of issues here. I’m not 100% convinced that we are at war with the Islamic world; I am sure that a group within that world is trying to foment a war. But we’re at a crucial point where we will either decide that there are elements in the Islamic world to make peace with…because they themselves step forward…or not.
There are two places where I’ll expand, though: Yes, the “other team” is more violent than we are…in the sense that our violence is contained, managed as tightly as an encompassing legal system and bureaucracy can make it. We can turn it on and off like a switch. The violence in the Islamist (and possibly the Islamic) world is ingrained in the daily lives of people who, as a celebration of a wedding, try and fire a live mortar, and who routinely celebrate by firing guns into the air.
Yes, we have often chosen our commercial interests over the “will of the people”, in places all over the globe. And ultimately what makes me a liberal is that I share the belief in humanity’s ultimate perfectibility. But I don’t think simply “declaring democracy” and withdrawing is going to work.
I’m just not certain that we’re anywhere near there yet, and that simply, as Fly Over Country so eloquently put it:

Some people, and I mean liberal in the current defintion, think they can dream up the way it supposed to be, snap their fingers, and the whole world will be remade over in their image. Fishing allows me to not fall into that mindset. Fishing, like hunting, allows me to plug in on the ground floor of a market economy and begin to piece together the relationship between what I get from the grocery store and the forces it took to get it there. Running cattle offers the same sort of insight, only it is a lot more messy and the potential for getting hurt is exponentially bigger. But, that is for another time.

When it’s democracy time, countries develop democracy. It is not a plant that can simply be transplanted onto violent tribal roots.

Jeff Cooper (the law professor) responds to my comment about removing settlements with a reasonable post:

Given the continuing suicide bombings, this isn’t an appropriate time for large-scale removal of settlements, as any such action would likely be seen as proof that terrorism works. And the settlements present a practical political problem for Sharon, whose governing coalition depends in part on those who support the settlements. At some point, though, it’s going to have to be made clear—both as a carrot to the Palestinians and as a message of reality to the Israeli far right—that the majority of the settlements ultimately will have to be dismantled.

I agree that it would be a mistake to reward murder-bombings through a meaningful reduction in Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza; in fact I think the reoccupation is a Good Idea.
But in part, I negotiate for a living, and one principle I’ve found to work well in contentious negotiations (like the ones we’re going through right now on the house we will buy on Tuesday) is to periodically show the other side a little daylight. Show them that they can in fact get something if they cooperate.
Now I remain unconvinced, as I’ve said earlier, that there is anyone to negotiate with on the Palestinian side. But if I’m wrong, and there is, the question is how to show them some daylight without giving up anything material. And it looks to me like the Israelis have done exactly that.

Mike Kielsky has a good post about the ICC (International Criminal Court) in Uncommon Sense, his blog. Like me, he’s against it. He puts it well:

Personally, I couldn’t care less whether we’d have to go invade the Netherlands, Nepal, or New Zealand. If one of OURS is being prosecuted by a politicized court composed of members primarily from nations with anti-U.S. views, then so be it.
I say this with straight face, because I can quickly dismiss the legitimacy of a war crimes complaint issued by a brutal dictatorship, but this court cannot. As organized, it will be skillfully manipulated by those governments opposed to true freedom and justice within and without their own borders, just as the U.N. finds itself so manipulated.

The reality is that the international bureaucracy is reflective of the governments that support it in a roughly democratic proportion. The notion that Zimbabwe or Albania might have an equal voice with us in judging one of ours will never be acceptable to me.
I once described myself to someone as having the politics of “Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and Harry Truman having been run through a Cuisinart”. One of the core things our government should do is protect our citizens abroad from threat and violence.
I think Instapundit also put it well: “Kill an American, and you’re toast.” I have zero problems with that policy.

This came in as a comment from Michael Greene on the post below concerning Eric Raymond’s articles on the bleak future of Islamic/Western relations, and seemed interesting enough to move up from comment to the blog. As usual, my comments are interspersed.

If war is ‘built into’ the Islamic faith, why have they fought such comparably fewer wars than the West has? Millions and millions have died in European wars, what was the last major war the Islamic world participated in, Iran-Iraq?
I think the whole idea of Europe and America trying to pretend that the Islamic people are more war-like is joke given the past 100 years of modern history.

First, I’ve never said that Western culture isn’t warlike. I was overly casual in my statement; the argument made is that war is built into the conflict between the Western and Islamic cultures. Having said that, I’ll point out that the West has been and is moving away from war and toward markets and diplomacy, while in the Islamic world militancy (in the military sense) is rising. This is partly caused, I would guess, by the need of increasingly dictatorial governments to stay in power, and partly by the real or perceived threats from their neighbors and the West. Let’s see…Iran/Iraq, Iraq/Kurd, Iraq/Kuwait, Pakistan/India, Kyrgyzstan, Chechnya, the Moluccas…that’s just off the top of my head.

Furthermore, Eric Raymond has apparently done absolutely no research on Islamic history. The entire history of early Islam and the later spread of the relgion has many instances of war, but virtually every one of them is seen as a final step necessary only after negotiation has failed. Furthermore, a fundamental aspect of Islamic war is that you must treat your enemy with respect and dignity once the battle is over.
To go even further into this poorly constructed argument between this site and Eric Raymond’s, Huntington does not say at all that Islamic society is more war-like than Western, rather that the two are destined to war over a clash in ideas and values.

As noted above, that was my careless construction. I’d love some evidence (cites) on this. As I noted, I’m relatively ignorant on Islamic history (which still probably means I know more than a lot of folks), and would love to see some examples which lead one away from Raymond’s bleak conclusion.

While I agree with you that diplomacy might mean different things to different cultures, there is absolutely no evidence that one society is inherently more warlike than any other. In fact, on the basis of the evidence it would seem that Europe and the United States are the most war-like, but certainly that could not be the case, could it? Furthermore, the things being asked for by the respectable (non-fanatic) Muslims are all very reasonable things. Mostly they are asking for a fair solution in Israel/Palestine, and for greater democracy and freedom in their lands which leads to more economic prosperity (or vice-versa). My own travels have revealed a world whose people (if not governments) are rapidly coming together. It would be a huge mistake to listen to an Eric Raymond type who sees fundamental differences in humanity itself that make one group “more warlike” even though the evidence is clearly against that view. Such divisions are precisely what is not needed to engage the moderate majority of people in the world who want economic prosperity first and foremost.

The points I see here are:
1) not clear which society is more warlike; I’ll say it is more a matter of trends than absolutes. I think it is clear the we are militarily the strongest power on earth, and in an earlier post, I worried that if the conflict between the West and the Islamic world got serious enough, there might not be an Islamic world any more.
2) Your point about ‘respectable’ Muslims would be taken a lot more seriously if I saw any evidence of them in the Muslim media I read here; similarly I think we might have very different ideas of what constitutes a ‘fair solution’ in Israel/Palestine. I’d love references and reading suggestions.
3) You suggest that your travels show you people who are rapidly coming together; mine have shown me that we see things that tell us that is the case superficially (we all like Coke, and love Britney) but that at the deeper levels of culture and politics, there is a lot of room for conflict. The ‘Lexus and the Olive Tree’ suggests (in part) that we’re all coming together into one global set of brand-conscious consumers; I’m not completely sure I agree.
Look, as in most arguments, there are certainly cases to make on both sides. But I have a hard time (as I’ve said over and over again) with the ‘moral equivalence’ position, that delegitimizes all of U.S. history because we took the land from the Indians (and so on). Comparing civil life, political freedom, personal freedom, and a whole bunch of things that I value highly, this is a much better place to be than there, and while I’d never force anyone to adopt our lifestyle at the point of a gun (can we say that about them?), I’m firmly on this team, and I think that thinking folks of all stripes should be as well.

Blogging may be somewhat lighter than usual over the next week, as we’re moving next Tuesday (a sure sign that the housing market has peaked…we are buying a house…wonder what Brad DeLong thinks?) and then off to Chicago for the weekend to visit Tenacious G’s family. Sadly, I’ll miss the LA Blogger Bash, and my chance to meet the Olsens…but soon!!