A reader asked the following questions, and since they’re asked politely and with seeming sincerity, I’ll answer them.
Question 1: What is a ‘militant Muslim’, how do you suppose you round them up and how exactly do you get rid of them? More to the point, what creates a ‘militant Muslim’?
A ‘mililtant Muslim’ is the same as an ‘Islamist’, the term used by Daniel Pipes and others. I refer readers to an article by him for the answer.
I don’t think all of them (which is millions) need to be “rounded up.” The leaders, the most active ones, must be arrested or killed. The countries that harbor them should be overthrown. Do that for a bit, consistently, and it will break the back of this ideological movement just as the Nazi movement and the Communist movement was broken. Fortunately, if we act sooner rather than later, they are not nearly as entrenched as those former theats were.
What creates a militant Muslim is the politicization of religion, which always means the initiation of the use of physical force to impose one’s religion upon others.
Question 2: On weapons of mass destruction, what countries have actually dropped an atomic bomb and which country set the precedent for the use of biological weapons of mass destruction?
I reject the implication of moral equivalency of America using nuclear force in self-defense to stop wars against them and totalitarian forces using nuclear weapons to destroy peaceful people. Nuclear weapons are tools–albeit special tools–with no more inherent moral standing than a pistol. Pistols can be used to defend oneself or to murder, and so the same goes with nuclear weapons.
Question 3: Why is a militant Westerner morally right?
When I speak of Western civilization, ideals, or ways of life, geography is incidental, just to be clear. When I use the term “militant” I refer to the trait of willingness to initiate physical force to impose one’s beliefs on others (thus violating the freedom of those force is being used against). The Western ideal includes the belief in the banishment of physical force from social relationships, i.e., the respect for individual rights. To the extent one is militant one is not Western.
Question 4: Has the world at large any less reason to fear a militant Westerner (for want of a better phrase) than a militant Muslim?
See my answer above: there is no such thing as a ‘militant Westerner.’ If the question is whether the world should fear the US military might, the answer depends on which part of the world: the savages or the civilized people. Savages should fear, and civilized people unfortunate enough to live amongst savages should get the hell out of the way when the time comes.
Question 5: How can one support a unilateralist militant agenda whilst at the same time, admit that mutilateral economic sanctions etc. are an effective means of controlling a despot?
Again, I reject the term “militant” as used in the question. I do not reject cooperative actions of any kind, so long as the US is pursuing its long-term self- interest and other countries decide to go along. The US should never cede sovereignty to the UN or to any other quasi-governmental body.
Question 6: Why should America be allowed to be the policeman of the world?
This is a most curious question. The word that is curious here is “allowed.” Nobody, or country, or the UN, needs to allow the US to do anything. To allow something means one has power to disallow it–and nothing on earth does. Also the question implies that the US wants to police the world, where the the truth is that the US has always tended to be (and should be) “isolationist,” for want of a better term. But being the superpower of the world, the US is the target of much aggression and must defend itself–and it is often the only country willing, or capable, of ending wars that are started by others. Virtually every free and semi-free country on earth owes its very existence to the US, and all of their citizens should be thankful that the US was willing to police.
