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THE HATE MAIL COMETH

In today's e-mail, along with the usual expected daily items, general mail, and all that Spam, was a forward from a friend, with a note that this was interesting reading.

He usually forwards either ribald prose or racy graphics, almost always humorous. Every now and again he sends something either a little more serious, or something political that caught his eye. His politics and mine are pretty far apart, but as friends we agree to disagree. And sometimes our diametrically opposed views end up being oddly the same, just from completely different perspectives.

When it comes to the Middle East his attitude is very simple: "start at Northern Africa, work one's way down,and blow the whole place and all its inhabitants to Kingdom Come. And good riddance to them. That puts a stop to all their fighting. Then go get the oil and enjoy the better world."
Opening up the mail item he forwarded I found a long letter, explaining the writer's position on the war on terrorism. It is a well crafted letter, with footnotes, references, links, the whole shebang. The gist of the message is that the war on terror has been going on since 1979, when the hostages were taken in Iran, during Carter's term.

The writer lists Beirut in 1983, citing the embassy and Marine barracks attacks; the Pan-Am Lockerbie flight, the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the Dhahran,
Saudi Arabia Khobar Towers Military complex 1996, the attack in Nairobi, Kenya on the US Embassy in 1998; the Dar es Salaam, Tanzania US Embassy bombing 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen in 2000, and the September 11th attacks. He adds a note that during the period from 1981 to 2001 there were 7,581 terrorist attacks worldwide.

He cites the reason for all these attacks as follows:

Envy of our position, our success, and our freedoms. The attacks happened during the administrations of Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2. We cannot fault either the Republicans or Democrats as there were no provocations by any of the presidents or their immediate predecessors, Presidents Ford or Carter.

All of this, so far, is reasonable. Do I agree with the reason he provides as cause for the attack? Well, I might state it dieferently, I might characterize it in other ways, the language might be different. But an argument might be made that my way of looking at it and his view are not necessarily so very far apart.

I see it more as religious zealots with a fundamentalist bent that drives them to radical action. I also perceive a certain megalomania about them, driven by their religious fervor, mania, and inability to accept any school of thought or way of life other than that which they consider both holy and singularly acceptable.

Or, to be more blunt about it: religious nuts out to rule the world.

I do perceive them to be a danger to their enemies. As Americans, we are their enemies. They have come to this conclusion, it is their choice that we are the enemy. Many other countries, religions, and people are also their enemies, again, their choice.

In my way of thinking this is why the government needs intelligence operations. We need to know when these zealots intend to attack. So be it via infiltration, spying or other covert operations, informers --whatever-- these zealots are indeed a threat, and need to be monitored.

Back on September 12, 2001, the day after the Twin Towers, and Pentagon attacks, I wrote the following in a DeanLand blog post:

I dread the thought of the finger-pointing and the general, non-specific, bigoted hatred response. We must be sure not to subject Middle Easterners to "Guilt by Turban." Middle Easterners surely were among those who died in yesterday's carnage. The suffering was aimed at anybody and everybody having the misfortune of being in one of those buildings, those planes, etc.

To this day I feel the same way. It is small-minded, and just plain wrong to distrust all members of any nationality or religious group. That does not mean one should not feel wary or suspicious, but these feelings must be tempered with the realities of knowing that the crazed political and religious zealots are a small percentage of the total of most groups.

Which brings us back to the hate letter.

After citing loyalty to whomever is President no matter what their political party, and developing the argument that a war of terror has been waged against the US since 1979, the timbre of the letter changes. A sharp turn, at that.

The author of the letter asks two questions, and answers them, setting the tone for the rest of the letter:

Who were the attackers?
In each case, the attacks on the US were carried out by Muslims. What is the Muslim population of the World?
25%

Then he explains that despite the Muslim religion being peaceful, this is not the point. He explains that the Germans, who under the Nazi regime slaughtered tens of millions of people, were also a peaceful people. And he adds that they were Christians, as was Hitler. But this did not stop them from following a murderous, treacherous path in their goal for world domination.

The point here is that just like the peaceful Germans were of no protection to anyone from the Nazis, no matter how many peaceful Muslims there may be, they are no protection for us from the terrorist Muslim leaders and what they are fanatically bent on doing - by their own pronouncements - killing all of us infidels. I don't blame the peaceful Muslims. What would you do if the choice was shut up or die?

He then declares that the enemy in this war is the Muslim terrorists. And that winning this war is vital to the maintenance of the freedoms and way of life we now know and enjoy. He opines that winning this war is different from other wars, where we come home and feel proud. In this event, he explains, winning this war means not losing, and not being killed off as infidels, sworn enemy of our enemy. This is their mission, we win only if we prevent them from doing so and stop them perpetrating this attempt any further.

He alleges that France, currently 20% Muslim, is nearly under Muslim occupation as is, and that the Muslims are taking over the country. He argues that the Muslims have already begun to exert control over Spain, after the Madrid election-eve attack:

They already hold Spain hostage. It doesn't matter whether it was right or wrong for Spain to withdraw its troops from Iraq. Spain did it because the Muslim terrorists bombed their train and told them to withdraw the troops. Anything else they want Spain to do, will be done. Spain is finished.

As the letter continues the writer argues in favor of short-term restrictions of various human and individual rights in the name of winning the war. He argues that this was the case in WWII, and all went back to normal after the war was won. He argues that the US weakens its position by openly questioning and debating the merits of prisoner treatment and other acts of war. He then explains that the public and political outcry over the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse and torture was counterproductive to the longer term goal of winning the war against the Muslim terrorists.

We have recently had an issue involving the treatment of a few Muslim prisoners of war by a small group of our military police. These are the type prisoners who just a few months ago were throwing their own people off buildings, cutting off their hands, cutting out their tongues and otherwise murdering their own people just for disagreeing with Saddam Hussein. And just a few years ago these same type prisoners chemically killed 400,000 of their own people for the same reason. They are also the same type enemy fighters who recently were burning Americans and dragging their charred corpses through the streets of Iraq. And still more recently the same type enemy that was and is providing videos to all news sources internationally, of the beheading of an American prisoner they held. Compare this with some of our press and politicians who for several days have thought and talked about nothing else but the "humiliating" of some Muslim prisoners - not burning them, not dragging their charred corpses through the streets, not beheading them, but "humiliating" them. Can this be for real? The politicians and pundits have even talked of impeachment of the Secretary of Defense. If this doesn't show the complete lack of comprehension and understanding of the seriousness of the enemy we are fighting, the life and death struggle we are in and the disastrous results of losing this war, nothing can. To bring our country to a virtual political standstill over this prisoner issue makes us look like Nero playing his fiddle as Rome burned - totally oblivious to what is going on in the real world. Neither we, nor any other country, can survive this internal strife. Again I say, this does not mean that some of our politicians or media people are disloyal. It simply means that they absolutely oblivious to the magnitude of the situation we are in and into which the Muslim terrorists have been pushing us for many years. Remember, the Muslim terrorists stated goal is to kill all infidels. That translates into all non-Muslims - not just in the United States, but throughout the world. We are the last bastion of defense.

He closes the letter with this:

Democracies don't have their freedoms taken away from them by some external military force. Instead, they give their freedoms away, politically correct piece by politically correct piece. And they are giving those freedoms away
to those who have shown, worldwide, that they abhor freedom and will not apply it to you or even to themselves, once they are in power. They have universally shown that when they have taken over, they then start brutally killing each other over who will be the few who control the masses. Will we ever stop hearing from the politically correct, about the "peaceful Muslims"?

I close on a hopeful note, by repeating what I said above. If we are united, there is no way that we can lose. I believe that after the election, the factions in our country will begin to focus on the critical situation we are in and will unite to save our country. It is your future we are talking about. Do whatever you can to preserve it.

Some of the writer's arguments are pretty strong. But there is a seeming tone throughout, a message, the subtext, that
all Muslims are the enemy. Or are connected to the enemy. This would mean, using the writer's logic for a moment, that 25% of the population of the world is out to annihilate all the non-Muslim population of the US, and everywhere else.

There is a undertone of hatred and separatism, as well as a certain self-righteousness, throughout the letter. It is, though, written very evenly and without the obvious sort of hawkish or protectionist pleadings one might expect in such a screed.

I perceive it as hate mail. It would seem the subtext (and not too very deeply vieled) is an attempt to stir up fear, hatred, distrust, as well as a call to arms.

This is very upsetting. This is the sort of tone that masks the venom within. And the declaration of the enemy seems to evoke a mirror image of the enemy as depicted -- eliminate them before they eliminate us. Take hatred and fear as rallying calls, and do the patriotic thing: clobber the enemy in this war. And, as characterized by the writer of the letter, this would seem to call for genocide.

History repeats itself, we are often warned.

If you'd like to see a copy of the whole letter [as I received it] just send me an e-mail and I will forward it to you. Hopefully this will prompt some interesting discussion.