I’m the webmaster for http://www.ratemyblog.co.uk and I’ve just read some of your blog posts as part of the review process for my site. All I can say is – wow – excellent blog and great to see well thought out and balanced arguements for what is a very sensitive subject. It’s always nice to see a blog such as yours, I get so many spam blogs submitted these days.

Keep up the great writing and I hope that maybe one of your readers will take the time to submit a review of your blog, it’s certainly worthy of it!

Best regards, RMB.

http://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/2007/12/16/if-the-statement-is-true-your-religion-is-vile/

Please read the comments (you can ignore the original post), particularly mine (DoubtingThomas426) and whiteman0o0’s and leave a comment addressing this issue. I truly appreciate it.

Thank you and I apologize for taking up space on this page with my plea.

DoubtingThomas

http://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/

*** Fair enough, I stick by my title, though, as I believe that Atheism needs defense from people who won’t look past the confines of their faith (whatever their faith may be). I don’t see the need to believe in something to know that is needs defending. I will defend your right to faith to the death, without believing in the same God as you. I probably could have come up with a better title, but it was 4 in the morning my time… thank you for reading, though.

What you say, in essence, is that we are all too decadent to defend ourselves. That’s the very same thing jihadis say.

The thing is, if I agree on everything you say, then we are doomed. The reason they hate and attack us is not because we had bases in Saudi Arabia (we pulled them out), not because we support Israel (do we support Israel?), not because of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (they weren’t there on 9/11), but because we exist: because we have freedom and democracy, because we can choose what to believe, because our women can go unveiled, we can drink alcohol and we listen to music, go to movies and ballet, and don’t kick dogs. Because we are kaffir – their religious equivalent of the N. word.

And therefore, the enemy will not stop if we withdraw, but will intensify its attacks. If American withdrawal from Somalia signaled our weakness to bin Laden, think of what would withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq signal. Now that Iran is about to go nuclear and nuclear Europe is about to become Islamic (and particularly jihadist, as new converts typically are), can we afford to remain as decadent as we are at present?

And let’s not stick too close to democracy. “Democracy” is a word for our presidents to sell their foreign policy at home. Did Kuwait become democratic after the Gulf War? No, but it became free from Iraqi occupation, and that’s satisfactory to us and to Kuwaitis. In the present situation, it is our democracy too that needs to be curtailed. We are entering the new Dark Ages, when democracy is hardly an option. The issue is not longer democracy, it is our basic survival.

So here are a few simple recipes about improving our situation:

We are too dependent on the world opinion? We shouldn’t be. It’s better to be alive and cursed than dead and praised. Besides, I remember how Reagan’s America was cursed by everyone, just like Bush’s America is now, and 4-6 years later everyone praised it.

We are a soft nation? Then we should be a hard nation.

We don’t have a sense of purpose? We should have it. And it should be to defeat the jihadi scourge. Just as in WWII the purpose was to defeat the Nazi scourge. And that can make us as tough and united as our enemies. Maybe even more united, judging by the bombing of Shiite and Sunni mosques by Sunnis and Shiites, or Afghan warlord armies battling each other.

We are too compassionate to outright kill them? Then stop. Excessive compassion is only sentimentality, anyway. Kill them.

We are too impatient? We’d better drop it. The blame is not so much on “pop-culture, 295,000 channels of cable television, and 900 different medications for ADD” as on ourselves.

If we cannot pull together as a nation and back our president in his global endeavors for more than 6 months after 9/11, we deserve to be exterminated. And we will be. So pull together.

“We cannot continue this war, because it is costing us billions with no results.” Please, the result is that we are still alive, and there hasn’t been another 9/11 on American soil. And if we want to win, we’d better not just continue, but intensify.

“We cannot target other terrorist groups, because we have not been provoked.” Nonsense. We can target anyone we please. Do we need to wait for some Abu Sayaf to do a 9/11 to us until we feel in the right to target it. Should we actually help them? This is ludicrous.

The real problem is that so far there is no clear victory. Our victory on the Gulf War (for example) made all our critics shut up. And yes, we are spoiled brats, who take a total victory for granted and a lack of total victory as a defeat. So we should stop being spoiled brats.

We don’t have enough troops in the army. So I think we should begin general mobilization. (I don’t believe in draft anyway, its’ mechanism is too corrupting.) Every male between 18 and 30 should be in the army, either fighting in a foreign war or training to be a fighter. Serious physical or mental illness would be the only excuse. That will not only greatly increase our fighting force, it will also shut up most of those critics who undermine us – they will be training in the army. As for the rest, it wouldn’t hurt to introduce some degree of censorship. Abe Lincoln did it, Franklin Roosevelt did it, we can do it too. And shut down a few organizations that become a real thorn in our side.

Don’t think that jihadis’ plans to conquer the world are too far fetched. If we do nothing, they will win.

This is the Dark Ages. 9/11 was our equivalent of the Fall of Rome.

We have no other choice. It’s a matter of our survival.

It’s not exactly fair to say that impatience is why the nation is so against the war in Iraq. Remember what we were sold: Saddam had nukes and was best friends with Osama, the war would be very fast and cost $1.7bil taxpayer dollars, we’d be greeted with sweets and flowers and greeted as liberators and once Chalabi got put into place we’d be outta there.

By now the war is aiming to push the trillion dollar mark, we know Saddam had no nukes, was enemies with Al Qaeda, we were not greeted as liberators and there’s no end in sight (Bush wants to put in PERMANENT BASES for chrissakes). When you combine our knowledge that the war was far from necessary with the fact that it’s dragged on far longer and for far more money than we were told, that is why the nation has turned so vehemently.

Had we stuck it through in Afghanistan and not mucked around in Iraq, and I mean really buckled down to get the job done, I believe on our side there would be far more support even if we weren’t done now. At least we would know our premise for going in was legitimate.