Picking at scabs

I'm sure that conservatives and libertarians have some of the same mental tics, but why is it that Liberals constantly rehash the same flimsy arguments over and over again, like a acne-riddled teen picking at his scabs?

'The Case for Calling Them Nitwits

They blow each other up by mistake. They bungle even simple schemes. They get intimate with cows and donkeys. Our terrorist enemies trade on the perception that they’re well trained and religiously devout, but in fact, many are fools and perverts who are far less organized and sophisticated than we imagine. Can being more realistic about who our foes actually are help us stop the truly dangerous ones?'

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-case-for-calling-them-nitwits/8130/

This is about the fifteen-thousandth variation on this argument:

Many Muslim terrorists are badly trained -->

Badly trained terrorists are easy to defeat, and often defeat themselves -->

Muslim terrorism is very little actual threat to us -->

Our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our huge anti-terrorism apparatus are completely out of proportion to the threat.


Interestingly, the very same people who aver this will also aver very shortly thereafter that even a tiny threat from man-made global warming means we should dismantle industrial society, live like stone-age paupers and send all our money to Bangladesh, but that is bye the bye.

The most important thing to understand about this argument is that terrorists don't stay incompetent. People learn, they develop skills, they mature into much better terrorists. Nineteen mainly Saudi Muslims demonstrated this quite clearly on September 11, 2001.

Left to their own devices, in their safe havens like the FATA region of Pakistan, the southernmost islands of the Phillipines and Somalia, the terrorists will develop skills and weapons which can cause immense harm on an immense scale. They intend to, and will, unless we stop them.

Lefty nuances about what we should call terrorists did not defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq. Lots and lots of squaddies, Marines and special forces hit squads did. Unpopular though this is with many on the left AND right, that is what will have to happen every time Al Qaeda set up shop somewhere- viz Mauritania, Morocco and Burkina Faso.

All the young men who poured into Iraq to fight the Crusaders, who then died in the great meat grinder, are young men who will not be available in the Maghreb, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan and the other battlefronts of our war on Muslim terror. They cannot become undercover terror operatives either. And the ones who went back home, having confronted our might, took with them stories of disillusion and defeat.

In this war, victory will come when the enemy learns that his cause is hopeless. Implacable will to fight on the fronts that exist is what will bring that about. Bone-headed flim-flam like this argument seek to disguise both the nature of the enemy, and the conditions of his defeat.

Shall we ask the government of Somalia whether Al Shabab are nitwits? I don't think so. Or the government of Algeria about Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb?

The time is coming very shortly when we will need to send a big ****ing army to Somalia, and destroy Al Shabab root and branch. The alternative? Another Afghanistan.