But Daniel Pipes is a scholar, and an important one. The fact that he sees the world in a different way than you do does not make him less of a scholar.

[my emphasis]

It's really not that hard to understand.

--Anonymous

Any fool can form an outlandish opinion as easily as an "educated" fool. It is just more difficult to talk the educated fool out of his absurd ideas and beliefs because he is usually better equipped to defend them no matter how outlandish they are.

To Military Retired Patriot.

I kept thinking of your counsel and am not reduced to the basest feeling of despair. Mercy or whatever...I was wishing for a gentle rain today. Yesterday was one of those days I listened to funeral dirge music to cheer my heart. The things they (soldiers) carry within can kill or make one stronger. RMP, and other who identify with a vicarious and pure desire to understand are warriors or heroes, in my legal lay-person, opinion.

Taking a bath I felt I needed to respond for a sense of my own absolution, but not to plead for a vague notion in the cerebral head a notion of a god of compassion.

My parole meeting started to be monthly. I was glad. In a month the mental disorientation can happen. In my mind I was to report the following Friday. A week off ain't too bad of a disorientation?

I took my three year old grandaughter to Cowans Gap Pa.'s lake. It was a memorable and beautiful day. Light ripples on the lake, ice cream cones, and many questions and answers. The more young and innocent a person is and postponing snide judgements...the better hope of being in friendly terms. She is my favorite person to loiter, read with, and we entertain each other endlessly. I forgot. I will always remember the day with her at the lake.

*Okay- so, now it has come to today.

While walking along with two bare feet,

I say, let's all toil together in peace.

Let's enjoy peace and happiness-- each.

Regardless of the misery we may endure.*

__

'Um will murder, rob, enslave us and give their plausible reason for doing so They always have a reason. They talk all day with a series of contradictions and we know we do not matter to them at all. Since they have no heart capacity for the truth, nor justice, nor fairness, nor mercy, least of all God: all one needs is to think on our feet before a Judge in the court of Law the best one can. There is a notion of glorious defiance in the assertion of our despair.

The Prometheus theory is NOT a symbol of victory but of defeat. I shun overt mysticism but I'll accept negative quality about Life if it is dished toward me. One can accept Fate. One can make a victory ("weird") in its own despair. But that realization of who is negative-weird and full of harmful deceit can be met and shared.

When there is an acceptance of one's death, convinced, in advance, that one will die a mortal death. No big deal or problem. There are hordes of neocons who got mean-spirits and big-problems.

M. de. M says, *"The fact is, one man will bury his mother, father, lover, comrades, friends and someone will bury that man/women. All of this in a short amount of time.* apologies for taking a bit of pure intended liberty. I need to rush! I go floss and brush my lucky bucky front teeth! thanks. I am dead serious!

Let the flaming begin.

-- pluege

You have a point (AIPAC and the Israeli Lobby) and certainly this has exacerbated an existing problem but what did Israel have to do with Vietnam?

You kids play nice, now.

We just redirect "shooter" (and "bucky1" too, for that matter) to the below site. Through the wonders of modern technology, and the mmiracle of modern AI science, our back is covered:

http://faultline.org/index.php/site/blogwarbot/

Cheers,

Folks. The ranks of competent scholars of Islam or Islamic political thought in this country are extremely limited. Mr. Pipes -- for all his pretense, degrees, and academic accolades from Yale and Harvard is not among them. Pipes is an ideologue, who cannot seriously claim any mastery of islamic political thought, culture, history or language.

A few of the competent ones are:

Patricia Crone at the Institute for Advanced Study is an extremely competent scholar of Islamic thought.

Nelly Lahoud at Goucher College in Baltimore is an extremely competent scholar of contemporary and classical Islamic political thought. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.alqaida03aug03,0,4040490.story

Mona El-Ghobashy at Columbia is also extremely good as is

Rashid Khalidi, also of Columbia.

Best of luck today. Most of my juicy figs are gone now, but the tree still has plenty of large leaves if you need them. Keep in mind that giving in to a "ridiculous" demand from the P&P crew could be worth it to have more time with your granddaughter.

Peace.

Great interview. Good film. See it again, or for the first time if you haven't. Errol Morris and Phillip Glass are a powerful collaboration.

And if Ms. Power wielded real power, would she herself be "led astray by reckless ideology, shoddy intelligence and liberal hubris"?

-- sysprog

That would depend on how focused she can remain on what is right in front of her nose and how willing she is to admit a mistake.

"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proven wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right... To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."

But Mr. McNamara's views can be inferred from the film. ''What makes us omniscient,'' he asks, rhetorically. ''Have we a record of omniscience?'' He concludes, ''If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merits of our case, we better re-examine our reasoning.''

Re-examining our reasoning is not something that has come naturally to American statesmen. In fact, Mr. McNamara is one of very few senior American government officials ever to admit major error without being forced to do so. In an interview last month, I asked him why. ''People don't want to admit they made mistakes,'' he said. ''This is true of the Catholic Church, it's true of companies, it's true of nongovernmental organizations and it's certainly true of political bodies.

Solve this problem and people will probably ignore you rather than beat a path to your door.

''In order to do good, recognize that at times you will have to engage in evil.''

The problem with total war, any conflict really, is that even though there are some mutually agreed upon rules or guidelines for legal conduct there are no referees to enforce them. They are self-imposed or enforced after the fact by the victor which is an incentive for actors to not follow the rules to begin with.