Quote:
Originally Posted by SRT31B
Just as Islam is really more of a totalitarian system of control for an entire society which stifles all thought and opposing views, so is political correctness in our society..
|
I think you're conflating authoritarianism with totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is generally regarded as possible only under a modern state in which the government expands a political philosophy--not religious beliefs--to cover every aspect of everyday life. As Islamicists are avowedly
antimodern and want religion--not politics--to drive everyday life, their doomed quest for a global caliphate cannot, by definition, be regarded as totalitarian in nature.
Also, is your characterization of the impact "political correctness" on American society historically sustainable? Even during those intervals when the pressure for "political correctness" reached a peak, dissenting thoughts and opposing views actually flourished. For example, following the Compromise of 1850, notwithstanding a wide spread effort among Americans to present the package of legislation as a "final settlement" of the debate over the extension of slavery, the debates over America's peculiar institution began anew with little delay.*
Furthermore, your implicit comparison between Islam and American liberalism
may be slightly hyperbolic. The News Corporation, not the left, pulled the plug on Glenn Beck. Despite calls for his job, Rush Limbaugh continues to do his thing. And Fox News remains Fox News. Meanwhile, people comment relentlessly about the president, his incompetence, and his misguided policies on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and on BBs like PS.COM. If, as you suggest, liberals are as determined as Islamicists to silence debate, what accounts for the persistence of these many avenues of dissent?
As for LTC Dooley, one does not need to have an opinion one way or another on the fundamental nature of Islam to have concerns with his instuction. IIRC, a fundamental premise of modern war is that military operations are an instrument of policy. By suggesting a strategy that would result in a global war against 1.6 billion people in approximately 200 countries, the wholesale slaughter of civilians, and the destruction of historically significant places, he seeks to turn the relationship between national security policy and war on its ear. (He specifically changes this relationship on slide seven.)
As you are a person who has an interest in "reading about US history," can you point to any example of a state taking that approach to warfare and coming out on the other side saying "We won"?
Finally, given your studied view of Islam and Muslims, would a war of "all against all" that pits non-Islamic nation states against Muslims world wide strengthen or weaken the Westphalian system that the Islamicists want to overthrow?
_________________________________________
* On this point, see David M. Potter,
The Impending Crisis: America Before The Civil War, 1848-1861, comp. and ed. by Don E. Fehrenbacher (1976; reprint, New York: Harper Perennial, 2011), 121-124. Other examples include the persistence of dissent throughout the Second Anglo-American War, following America's entry into the Great War, and the response of many Americans to the Second Red Scare.