The Desert of the Real

Every once in awhile people need to be reminded why it is that this kind of thing doesn’t happen very often here. Particularly the young people get careless and forget what our culture is really like – despite some in the media’s attempt to downplay it around here.

Police said three suspects wearing yellow bandanas robbed customers and cashiers in an Albertson’s grocery store in southwest Fort Worth around 11:30 Tuesday night.

The husband of an employee was waiting in the parking lot for her when another employee called him from inside the store to tell him the store was being robbed.

The husband entered the store with a handgun and confronted one of the robbers, witnesses said. The suspect allegedly pointed his gun at the husband and the husband opened fire.

The husband is not facing any charges, as well he shouldn’t be. The variance in reporting on this has been interesting. On the one side, you have news organizations like CBS 11 with statements like this:

“We certainly don’t encourage that,” said Lt. J.D. McCarthy with the Fort Worth Police Department. “We ask that, most of the time, contact the police department and let patrol officers handle those situations.”

Yeah, because we’re going to wait for the police to show up while our wife or other loved one is in danger, walking around outside twiddling our thumbs. I don’t think so. Particularly when your arrival will likely result in a standoff, rather than a solution like the one today. We greatly appreciate the police, and the efforts they’re making now to find the people responsible. But it’s not really their role to stop crime as it’s happening. That’s up to the people who are there when it happens and can do something.

Then you click over to the Dallas Morning News with this headline: Police praise man who shot at robber:

A Fort Worth man who only wanted to protect his wife stuck in an Albertsons store during a robbery is being hailed for his heroics by police.

This one quotes the official police spokesman. So either we’re dealing with one cop with a bad perspective, or with CBS News leading a cop into a quote to support their personal view.

The Dallas Morning news goes into some greater detail:

aw two of the men walking around nervously before they entered the store. The witness said he called 911 when one of the men pulled out a gun and fired as he walked into the store.

About 20 seconds later, the witness’s wife tried to call him from her cellphone inside the store. But he never got to talk to her.

“I just heard her saying, ‘There is nothing in my purse,’ ” he recalled. “And there was a ‘pow.’ The phone went dead.”
[...]
“I really thought I’d find her in the store shopping and get her out the back door,” he said. “That was my intention. ... I had no intention of confronting these armed bandits.”

So, he’s not a vigilante, just a husband doing whatever it takes to protect his wife.

He goes on to say:

“I don’t feel good at all that there is an 18-year-old guy who’s been injured and is going to go to some terrible place because it was a horrible mistake that somebody talked him into,” he said. “I was worried about my wife. I just wanted to get her out of there.”

No callousness. Shooting another human being has a profound impact on the shooter even if the suspect is only wounded, as in this case (hit in the buttocks and the foot). The next time politicians and the VPC come around with their gun-grabbing ideas and silly gun-control laws, remember that the only people impacted by such things are men like this guy. Law abiding citizens that seek only to protect themselves and others from predators.

It’s amazing to me the way we can so easily see only what we want to see. When we have our own preconceived conclusions about the world and we see things that can fall within that view we automatically assume it supports it.

I speak here specifically of terrorism and its causes and motivations. On the one hand, you have utterly ignorant demagoguery from shameless men like Rudy Giuliani, stating that the only reason we are attacked is because we’re free. Utterly ignoring the research of qualified people who have actually studied and operated in these areas which states quite clearly otherwise. Not to mention the glaring inconsistency that countries who are not acting within Iraq are not being attacked by terrorists.

You also have bleeding heart leftists who presume that all muslims are as peaceful as their neighbor who happens to be Muslim, and has never openly been hostile towards him. Therefore it must be entirely the work of a few misguided extremists, so if they’re attacking us it must be entirely our fault, those poor poor men.

Then on the other side you have people like Mike Porter who are otherwise sound thinkers, but who likewise fall into the mistake of adapting information to fit their conclusions. Mike links to an interview with a British Jihadist who states that it has nothing to do with Western Foreign policy. Now, I’m not going to speculate on his motivations for saying such things (the muslim that is, not Mike). I’ll assume for the moment that A) he is who he claims to be, and that B) he is telling us the truth.

Mike goes on to comment:

So, if I understand the reasoning here, since Islam is not in power in the UK and in America or other nations, we will continue to see escalated violence until Islamic rule is established. And when Islamic rule is established, we will see peace. You know, like that peaceful country Iraq which had numerous torture chambers, executioners, and even some guys who described their profession as “defiler of women’s honor.” Peace, like that stellar example Iran which sealed an anti-US treaty with Venezuela.

So here, the tenor of the post overall seems to lean towards again stating that the sole reason for these attacks is theology. This is, sadly, naive. It reflects a weak understanding of the historical realities of war, of movements, of governments, and of human nature (in terms of war).

The reasons for war are generally multifaceted. You usually have a group of people who want war on one side, and a group willing to make war or defend themselves on the other. Each side is going to have to have people to actually fight that war, so they need to recruit. Historically, there have never been that many terrorists. Recruiting has always been low. Despite promises of 99 virgins or whatever else might be made there simply hasn’t been a lot of people jumping at the opportunity to commit acts of terrorism against foreign countries.

Now, suddenly, we have terrorist networks, and attacks going on in various places around the world (interestingly, only in countries that have been a part of the nation building effort in Iraq). Recruiting has suddenly become easier. Why? Because the message of hatred spewed by those doing the recruiting resonates with a lot more people, because of our western foreign policy. We have created an ideal environment for recruiting. What they have to say about overthrowing these nations sounds good to them, and they sign up.

These people that they are recruiting to go blow themselves up are not brain surgeons, and they’re not theologians. They’re just angry people who are being manipulated by Muslim theologians. Doesn’ t make them innocent victims, but it does paint a more accurate picture of the situation. Wars are made by a few, but fought by many. Those many have to have motivation to fight and give their lives, and the few give them whatever they need. A righteous cause is generally the order of the day. Like Slavery in the civil war, or liberation for Iraqis in our day. In this case, it’s almost reversed – the “righteous cause” is the real reason for the few, but the opportunity to preach it comes through our own aggressive foreign policy.

As to the rest, I don’t disagree at all that Muslim’s have an eye towards Muslim rule everywhere. However I disagree that they will all be trying to accomplish it through constantly escalated violence in every country. There are, I’m sure, more than enough Muslim’s in Britain to have caused a lot more destruction than they have. If their goal was to conquer Britain through violence they would’ve done it already. Yet the attacks are only sporadic. In any given country you have a far greater chance of dying from mundane everyday things like a car accident than you do from terrorism. Hardly a cause to surrender national sovereignty.

If our countries were to start respecting national sovereignty, and adopt a proper non-interventionist foreign policy and worry about our national defense only, etc then we’d see recruiting drop off significantly. The opportunity for attacks would shrink even more. And with fewer red-shirts being recruited there’d be a lot less motivation to throw people away in suicide bombings.

It wouldn’t change their theology. It wouldn’t change the fact that there are Muslim’s out there who hate unbelievers, and wouldn’t change that many of them seek Muslim law for all nations. But it would largely deny them the means to that end. They would be roughly akin to the semi-violent reconstructionist arm of Christian post-millennialists. Just not a big threat to us with their limited resources.

And sadly, as long as we’re unwilling to look at the real truth of this situation, we will continue to be manipulated by our government’s attempt to point the finger elsewhere and use that to justify our actions. Thus sending ever more of our men and women to die overseas for a cause which is unconstitutional, and does not fall under the category of a Just War. They will use it a as a launching pad to extend us into further engagements in the middle east, even with our existing stretched resources. Eventually they will compensate for that with a draft, and really decimate our numbers.

An interesting thought … when we’ve sent nearly all our young-people to die overseas, and decimate our next generation’s numbers…how do we deal with the influx of Muslim’s into this country? Our birthrate may be high, but our death rate is climbing and our average lifespan is dropping due to the constant wars…