Let's be honest...

Hello faithful blog readers. Below is an essay (with minor edits) I wrote in response to a request of a good friend. She forwarded to me an email (one version of it can be read on this website) and asked that I keep an open mind and give it a fair evaluation. I tried to do both.

Normally I keep this blog purposefully light with news of our growing family and our adventures. Our life is so full of wonderful experiences and opportunities that I just don't feel justified in wasting anybody's time talking about the many unpleasant things of the world.

But I feel the seriousness of this message merits an exception. The issue I want to highlight is that people will lie to get you to buy into their point of view. No particular party (Democrat or Republican) or political persuasion (liberal or conservative) is immune to this weakness. We each need to determine for ourselves the veracity of our information sources, no matter how authoritative or well-written something may appear.

One final note before the review. I do not know the originator of this email. I would not be surprised if the version I received is the product of purposeful editing by someone or several someones. While I refer to the author of this version of the email as "he" I recognize that it could very well be a woman or a group of people working individually or in concert.


Dear *****,

(I’m writing this little section after having finished my evaluation. I have two favors to ask of you. First, would you please send this commentary to all those to whom you sent the original email? I think it is important they see what they have been given. I hope they read it, even though it is long, for in fact, it is about two pages shorter than the original email. Second, I tried to stick to commenting on the content and logical structure of the email, though I do confess I did comment on the motivation behind the email. I’ve tried to avoid adding what I think should be done or how these issues should be interpreted, since that is not what you asked me to do. But if you are interested, I would like to respond to some of the issues with my interpretation and opinion someday. Let me know if this is what you would like.)

I apologize for not getting back to you sooner in regards to your request to give you a “fair evaluation” on the email you sent me about Muslim terrorists and the USA. I’ve just returned from the second of two back-to-back conferences and feel I now have a bit of breathing space to take an in-depth look at the essay. Since you specifically asked for my commentary on it and you are someone whom I have seen show me and everyone around you great kindness and respect, I felt the very least I could do would be to take a close look.

I will start with a few general comments before looking at each of the basic questions, the two key questions and his conclusions. Then I’ll add a few more general comments in closing. I hope you stay with me in what could be a dry analysis.

General Comments, part I
As a rule of thumb, I try to not take for face value essays written by unknown or anonymous people. The author of this essay seemed to recognize that many people are like this and so attributed authorship to a very respectable and undoubtedly patriotic Dr. Vernon Chong, a retired USAF Major General. But after a quick Google search I found that Dr. Chong didn’t actually write this essay (for one example cut & paste the following link: http://www.snopes.com/rumors/soapbox/chong.asp ). I get very upset when someone lies to me or attempts to manipulate me. You asked me “to open [my] mind…and give [this email] a fair evaluation”, but after having realized that some skulduggery was taking place in the very first line of the email, I confess that my open-mindedness was severely hampered.

The introduction to the email is simply a statement of his opinion and the thesis of his argument. Whether or not I agree with his opinion, he has every right to express it and it’s not my place to evaluate it.

Question #1: When did the threat start?
I found the response to this question unsatisfactory and dishonest. The author seems to pick an arbitrary starting point with the Iran Embassy Hostage Crisis of 1979. In essay writing this would normally have to be supported by some reasoning. Perhaps it is the time he first became aware of terrorists and their evil ways. But I agree that September 11, 2001 was not a start of purposeful attacks against the USA. I’ll address the actual list of attacks in my commentary on the next question.

The dishonesty to which I refer comes from the last statement in which he states that 7,581 terrorist attacks have happened over 20 years. While this number may or may not be roughly accurate (the reader has no way of verifying this, as the author didn’t cite the reference), the author is making a direct connection between the Muslim perpetrators of the 11 attacks he lists and the 7,581 over 20 years. In short, he is trying FIRST, to get the reader to think that Muslim terrorists have conducted more than one attack everyday (379 attacks per year) for 20 years and SECOND, that these 7,581 attacks have been committed against the USA. This would an incredible feat of organizational and strategic prowess never equalled in the history of the world, if it were true. But neither implication is even close to being true. Assuming that 7,581 terrorist attacks have taken place over the specified time period, the author seems to (purposefully) ignore that included in this would have to be the Basque separatist attacks in Spain, the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Irish Republican Army attacks in Northern Ireland and the UK, and the Tamil Tiger attacks in Sri Lanka among others. The latter two of which have been more numerous and killed more people than all of the 11 attacks the author lists above.

Question #2: Why were we attacked?
The author’s answer to this question seems to be purely his opinion. Unlike my no-response to the opinion stated in the introduction, I will comment on this one, because it seems to fly in the face of all evidence. For example, as I understand it, one of the primary motivations behind the 1983 attacks was a desire to get the USA military to leave Lebanese soil and to stop supporting the Lebanese government. The 1996 bombings in Saudi Arabia were as much against the Saudi government as against its close ally, the United States and their military presence in the sacred land of Mecca and Medina. The 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was to get the USA to stop supporting Israel and to leave the Middle East. And using as examples the al-Qaeda bombings in Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Aden, New York and Washington, D.C. is an insult to the intelligence of the general populace, as their billionaire financier and organizer, Osama bin Laden, had access to all the greatest benefits of our position, success and freedoms.

(I would like to add an editorial comment here, if you have made it this far without falling asleep. I am by no means saying the reasons given for these attacks nor the tactic of terrorism are justifiable. They are despicable, cowardly and evil.

And there is something I haven’t told you, but is pertinent here. I was in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania with plans to go to the US embassy on the day that it was bombed. Thanks to what I feel was an act of divine intervention, I didn’t make it and thus escaped possible injury or death. But I happened to know some of the guards that were killed in the bombing. I don’t pretend to say that we were best friends, but we had on several occasions exchanged light banter when I would go to the embassy. I knew their faces and knew I would never see them in this life again.

In addition, I was in Nairobi, Kenya not long after the bombing of the US embassy there and saw the destruction still very evident in downtown Nairobi. I spoke to medical personnel who heroically dropped whatever they were doing, even though not on duty, to respond to the death and devastation. I am no friend of terrorists.

Nor are most Muslims. The disgust and anger that many Tanzanians, including Muslims, displayed after the bombing of the US embassy in Dar es Salaam was sincere and heartfelt. And I lost track of the number of times a complete stranger approached me with an apology for what had happened to our embassy on their soil.)

Question #3: Who were the attackers?
Yes, in the 11 attacks the author lists, the perpetrators were Muslim. But this is where the author begins to set up the most egregious mistake in logic that is perpetuated throughout the rest of the rest of the email. He tries to paint all Muslims with the same broad brushstroke.

Question #4: What is the Muslim population of the world?
Okay.

Question #5: Isn’t the Muslim religion peaceful?
(For the sake of being open and honest about my evaluation of this email, I must add another editorial comment here. It is in the response to this question that my irritation at the author’s dishonesty began to turn to disgust at his propaganda.)

The author’s historical comparison of Nazi Germany to the entirety of Muslimdom is shockingly ridiculous in a number of ways. First, to say that one nation under authoritarian rule is analogous to a non-hierarchical religion that spans the globe and includes large chunks of Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa is mindboggling. The political, linguistic, racial, and yes, even religious diversity across that area is vast and impossible to encompass in one flippant analogy. It ignores the numerous close Muslim allies of the USA as well as the large numbers of Muslim voices that cry out against such attacks and the work they are doing to get stamp them out.

Second, to imply that everyone in Nazi Germany “went along with the administration” treats as naught the great sacrifices that many under the Nazi regime made in order to fight against such horrors.

Finally, the author has seemed to overlook the fact that the Allies did not treat all the citizens of Germany or its occupied territory as complicit in the Nazi atrocities. Even the Allied military recognized this difference and acted accordingly.

Question #6: So who are we at war with?
I think it interesting that the author speaks of honesty in the first sentence of his response, since he has repeatedly expressed himself dishonestly up to this point. But I do agree with his statement, “There is no way to win if you don’t clearly recognize and articulate who (sic) you are fighting.” The problem is, due to the faulty reasoning and a loose reference to fact, the author has totally misidentified the enemy. His identification is both too broad and too narrow. The identification is too broad in attempting to include all Muslims as complicit in this war. It is too narrow in focusing on Muslim terrorism. That’s as foolish as a soldier saying, “I am only going to be concerned about hand grenades and mortars manufactured by Russia.” Any kind of grenade or mortar can kill you. Or, as seems to better fit the author’s argument, any kind of terrorism can put your country at risk.

Key Questions #1 & 2: Can we lose the war? and What does it really mean to lose the war?
Having provided the reader with a bit of background, the author now moves on to the meat of the email, which is a vivid rant/description of what will happen if we lose this war. I won’t go into a detailed analysis because it is simply his opinion based on spurious evidence and, given the low level of intellectual analysis the author has displayed up to this point, I am not inclined to give his opinion nor his biased interpretation of events much weight. And, to be honest, I’m quite tired. I’ve been working on this response for almost 4 hours now. It’s past 6pm and I need to get home to my wife and girls.

But before I go, I will try to finish up per your request.

In the example of how we obviously don’t get that we are in war, the author mentions the issue of profiling. I am led to ask if this isn’t the real thing that has stuck in the author’s craw. If it is, why not come out and say so? Why the need for such a long-winded, pseudo-intellectual argument? Why not just say that we already do profiling in security procedures so profiling Muslim men is just another part of the process? (As another editorial comment, the author must mean Middle-Eastern men, not Muslim men, because given the racial, linguistic, national and political diversity in the Muslim world I mentioned above, there is no way to profile a person through Muslim traits.) We know it happens. Being a young-ish male who often travels alone, I have been the target of profiling by security personnel in many airports. As has a good friend of mine who was detained in the Baltimore airport for a very long time after a flight from Amsterdam, because he fit the profile of a person who might be carrying marijuana back to the USA.

Concluding comments
In question #3, the statement that “Muslim terrorists…kill all in their way” including “their own people” is misguided. ALL terrorists are like this, not just those that are also Muslim. Why single out only Muslim terrorists? Why ignore Political, Cultural and other Religious terrorists, too? Is it because the author feels that no other type of terrorist has attacked or has plans to attack the USA? If so, he has no grasp of even recent history or any ability to see what is taking place in the world today.

After having read through this email multiple times, I am left with the opinion that the author suffers from a kind of intellectual myopia that is of his own making and allows him to cherry pick only those facts that fit what he wants to say, while throwing out all the rest. The sad part is that he is throwing away the fruit and choking on the cherry pit while trying to get others to do the same.

After all of this analysis, one might be inclined to say, “Okay. Despite the dishonesty, uncited statistics and bombast, isn’t the overall idea or argument correct?” My response to this is an unequivocal “No.” The author seems to have an irrational fear or hatred of Muslims. I say irrational because he does not bring rational thought to bear in his exposé. This essay is a wonderful example of propaganda, which is “(chiefly derogatory) information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular cause or point of view.” (Oxford American English Dictionary).

For what purpose is this propaganda being spread, I do not know, but I refuse to be a part of its perpetuation. Thank you for motivating me to not turn a blind eye as I usually do in erasing such emails and forcing me to make my voice be heard. Let’s hope it is.

With love,

Brian