Total Bore

The idea that we are at total war (tip to Real Clear Politics) with our population being dragged by extreme rhetoric into viewing the Moslem world as deserving of total defeat or annihilation is ludicrous. First, it flies in the face of the competing complaint that our population is not "sacrificing" for the war. When Moslem organizations in America like CAIR can still bully people [Link added later] into not mentioning that whole jihad thing, clearly we are not waging a total war (though our enemies are [link added later] and we might yet).

So this argument that we are whipping up our people into a frenzy of xenophobia is just laughable:

"I think the rhetoric that is used today has opened us up into being dragged deeper and deeper into a series of conflicts," says David A. Bell, a historian at Johns Hopkins University and author of "The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It." In his book, Bell stresses how ferocious nationalism and revolutionary fervor led the French to view their enemies as people who needed to be exterminated, not just defeated -- a decisive shift from an earlier Great Power style of warfare. The conscription of hordes of French civilians into the army, too, swept away aristocratic traditions that placed certain limits on war's conduct. Anti-revolutionary opponents, whether French peasants or Austrians, were now "sanguinary hordes," "barbarous," and "vipers": all deserved disembowelment.

It's that kind of invective Bell has in mind when he hears phrases like "the evil ones" today.

Why is the expression "evil ones" cause for concern? This designation has certainly been used by President Bush but it has not been applied to Moslems in general. Given that descriptions of the actual jihadis as "evil ones" is almost always paired with the caveat that Islam is a "religion of peace," I don't see any demonization of Islam at all. Or is Bell saying that the jihadi killers themselves are not evil or that we shouldn't call them evil?

My God, when Bill friggin Arkin is the voice of reason in the article, you know you are dealing with an idiotic argument. Bell needs to knock off the chai tea or something.

Academic idiocy is frightening to behold.