Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Romeo Mike Right and Wrong

Read this in Romeo Mike's blog. Makes a lot of sense. Can't find a perma link so

here it is. You can check out his blog here: http://romeomikes.blogspot.com/

The West's long, slow assisted-suicide is succinctly demonstrated in a Catallaxy re-post on Hez and the war, where a few hundred words are devoted to excusing the complexity of Lebanese politics and Hezbollah's social works without one reference to its terrorist tactics. The 1994 bombing of the Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, which murdered 85 Jews and non-Jews alike, is one of those unmentioned achievements that earned Hez, directed from Iran, its 'terrorist organisation' label.

Apparently, we're supposed to focus on its political wing which runs hospitals and schools, and has members in government. I'd contend that any organisation that targets the death and destruction of innocents as one of its core policies would, by what should be an unassailable Western view of rightness, invalidate any legitimacy it claims overall.

Would you excuse a serial murderer just because he did some charity work?

Fundamentalism of any kind is intolerant of different views to its own, and always seeks to impose its infallibility. It's the same with the human rights fundamentalism we're seeing so much of now. Moderates understand that sometimes rules need to be bent, especially when it comes to self-preservation, but fundamentalists see even minor infractions of their interpretations as sacrilege.

It was on display again this week with the Victorian court's quashing of Jihad Jack's terrorism conviction on purely technical grounds. It shows a legal system focused on the integrity of its own methodology at the expense of the public interest and safety. Due legal process doesn't assure the latter, as shown by recidivism generally, or even in the return to jihad by many of those who were released from Gitmo by their governments' diplomacy.

Our society is assured of failure when its leaders are unable to distinguish between basic right and wrong, a social foundation you'd think, but instead equivocate and search for excuses to maintain their conditioning. Yesterday, NSW A-G Bob Debus hosted the lawyer of Gitmo detainee Muhammad Dawood, and invited like-minded lefty journos along. There's also a performance piece about Dawood being staged by gay producers at the Opera House, the ACT Chief Minister nominated his dad as Father of the Year, and on Thursday in their weekly slot Clark and Dawe did a routine in sympathy with him while lampooning Federal A-G Ruddock. What no one's mentioning is that Dawood's a hardened murderer who fought in Kosovo and Afghanistan, was a vital link in Al Qaida, and was fighting as the fascist enemy against us.

Part of the 'enemy within' that will be our ultimate undoing is this perceived intellectualism, amongst those in wider positions of influence, which doesn't take basic right and wrong, common sense, as its starting point. Yes Hezbollah may have popular support in southern Lebanon, but that doesn't mean we should entertain it. It's essentially evil. Yes Dawood may be in detention without trial, but circumstances have made it so. Just keep in mind those innocent office workers who had to make the conscious decision to leap from the top of the World Trade Centre, when they had so much and so many loved ones to live for. Then think of what Dawood had consciously decided to do at the same time.

Moral equivalency about good and evil has no place in a society that genuinely values genuine freedom of speech, genuine liberty, democracy, compassion, tolerance, and human rights. Sure, being able to reason in such sophistication may make you feel superior to the rabble and Fox shock jocks around you, but moral equivalence, and fundamentalism in all its forms, are those values' ultimate enemy.

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