Dan Simmons' April Message-Update

Several days ago, I posted the full message of Dan Simmons' April Message here, because either technical error or a hacker's intent had caused the message to be removed, and because I thought that it was important that that Message should be read.

Mr. Simmons has since put the text back on his website, here. A mirror site which has the full message may be found here. Since Mr. Simmons' Message is available, I thought it best that people get that message directly from the source. I have thus set up these links, but have removed the text of that message.

Nonetheless, there has been a lively debate regarding the Message in Mr. Simmons' Forum, with some people (apparently genuinely) believing that the Message was just the expression of "hateful vitriol". I decided to take part in that debate, and (of course) I took the other side. What follows is the text of my reply:

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If the assembled multitudes at www.dansimmons.com and its forum will permit a comment from a newcomer, I would like to counter the thesis of William Lexler, who has asserted that the April Message is Hateful Vitriol. Mr. Lexler’s thesis appears to be that a subtext of the April Message is that the West should kill millions and millions of Muslims, which is genocide, and which in turn is hateful. If it is true that Mr. Simmons’ message posits that, then Mr. Lexler would have a point.

It is unfortunate that Mr. Wexler does not bother actually to read the April Message, or to point out in it where Mr. Simmons is saying that we should begin a genocide of Muslims. I find, however, that if one were actually to read the message, and to read between the lines of it, Mr. Simmons is in fact saying something entirely different.

In my reading of the Message, Mr. Simmons is presenting a science fiction/horror story of the type: “If this goes on.” George Orwell’s 1984 is one example of this genre. Orwell’s story is an explication of “what would happen if English Socialism were to prevail in Great Britain. Simmons’ story is likewise an explication of what would happen if the West were to remain conflicted over whether to take steps to prevent radical Islamic nations or groups from manufacturing or using nuclear weapons.

I come to this conclusion from the words which the Time Traveler gives as hints of what is to come in the year 2006: Ahmadenijad, Natanz. Arak. Bushehr. Ishafan. Bonab. Ramsar. Anyone who would bother to Google these words, or to check on them at www.wikipedia.com or www.globalsecurity.com, would know that Ahmadenijad is the name of the current President of Iran, who is pushing for Iran’s development of thermonuclear weapons, who has vowed the destruction of Israel, and who has even been insane enough to posit that the Holocaust did not exist. The remaining words are the names of Iranian cities or towns in which Iran’s heavy water program, its nuclear plants, its plutonium purification program, its nuclear technology, and its sources of uranium are located.

The remaining words are just as indicative: General Seyed Reza Pardis is the General of Iran’s Air Force, who has sworn that attempts by Israel to disable Iran’s nuclear capabilities would be responded to with retaliation with all weapons at Iran’s disposal, including nuclear ones. Shehab-one, Shehab-two, Shehab-three are the names of Iran’s continental and intercontinental ballistic missile programs. The remaining names, from Tel Aviv to Dimona, are likely targets of Iran’s efforts: from cities in Israel to U.S. Army and Air Force bases in the mid-east.

Whether or not the United States would respond to nuclear aggression by Iran with a nuclear response, it is certain that Israel, a nuclear power, would respond with such weapons: since the 1970’s, the Government of Israel has quietly, but repeatedly, stated that if Arab or other Muslim nations were to succeed in the destruction of Israel, Israel would have no choice save to exercise its Samson Option: the retaliatory bombing of all Arab or Muslim combatant countries, which at present include Syria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, etc. The most likely result of that would be the genocide of both Jews and Arabs, a pan-Muslim Jihad against the West, global thermonuclear war, and a protracted conventional war. A “Century War” would not be outside the realm of possibility, or probability. The destruction of Western Civilization for centuries thereafter would be a more than likely consequence.

In this context, the Time Traveler’s (or TT’s) comments about Category Error and the War against Terror, the miscalculations of the Athenians at Syracuse, and the related Allied miscalculation regarding Iraq, make much more sense: I personally would tend to agree with the TT that a crucial mistake of Bush II after 9/11/01 was in framing the war as one against terror, rather than as against a radical ideological movement within Islam. The mistake is understandable, in that some of our allies were and are Muslim countries, and some of their leaders are sympathetic to that movement.

Nonetheless, in framing the conflict in those terms, Bush II inevitably lost support when he turned his attack from Afghanistan, the center of Al-Qa’ida’s efforts, to Iraq, which appeared to have little connection with terrorism. The facts that Iraq also attempted to obtain or develop thermonuclear weapons since the late 70s, that according to the U.N. Report on the subject, came within six months of achieving such weapons in 1991 (when Operation Desert Storm intervened), that Iraq’s leader had repeatedly stated the intention of using such weapons against Israel, and finally, the fact its leader appeared to be continuing to obtain such weapons in 2002, would have been valid reasons for toppling the government of Iraq, had the conflict been defined in terms of a war on a nuclear belligerent form of Islam, rather than a “war on terror”.

But Bush II miscalculated in two ways in his war on Iraq: 1) he was unwilling or unable to read the intelligence analyses which would determine whether Iraq was a current nuclear threat (and in fairness to Bush II, his predecessor had spent the previous years in dismantling the intelligence agencies and analysis communities which would have made such analysis either possible or accurate), and; 2) Bush II appears to have entered the war without a clear idea of an end game. Instead of returning the so-called nation of Iraq to its pre-WWI partition of a northern Kurdistan, a middle Sunnistan, and a southern Shiastan (and perhaps the ceding of the oil-bearing land to Kuwait for reparition for the 1991 war), Bush instead poured most of his military, economical and political capital into the “democratization of Iraq” for a people who either did not want democracy, or, if they did, to exercise the franchise in a way entirely inimical to the interests of the United States (much in the same way as the Palestinians are now exercising their democratic franchise).

Unfortunately, while Bush II had invested so much energy into the neutralization of Iraq as a nuclear threat, Iran continued, unchecked, to develop its nuclear capability, to the point where estimates now indicate that Iran is within three to six months of obtaining both thermonuclear weapons. Further, it appears that Iran is more than likely, especially with its current president, to carry out the intentions earlier expressed by Saddam Hussain regarding the destruction of Israel.

At this point, it is good to point out a mistake that a number of westerners, including those posting on this forum, are making: they are assuming that people of the Muslim world are proceeding on the same rational self-interest and desire to live and let live that we are. It is a reasonable, and indeed a charitable mistake to make, and perhaps, in the cases of many Muslim families outside of the Middle East, it may be not a mistake at all. But for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people in the Middle East, they are not proceeding on that basis at all.

They are instead proceeding on the basis that their religion tells them that they are the rightful owners of all of the property and people of the world; that at present, there is the Dar al Islam (or House of Islam) and the Dar al Harb (or House of War); that the job of all believing Muslims is to turn the Dar al Harb into the Dar al Islam and to subject all People of the Book (that is, Jews and Christians) into submission as dhimmis, to convert all pagans to Islam by the sword, and to condemn all apostates from Islam, Christianity, or Judaism to death. By the bye, all you secular humanists, atheists, agnostics and general non-believers who have Christian or Jewish roots are considered to be apostates, as is the secular state of Israel and the post-Christian United States of America.

That is the reason why the Arab and Islamic world has rejected the state of Israel for more than the past half-century: Muslims believe that once a land, like Palestine, has been claimed by the Dar al Islam, it can never be permitted by Allah to be returned to unbelievers. That is why Al Qa-ida has called for the fatwa against the United States and the Allies for their unspeakable act of occupying the land of the Dar al-Islam. And that is why Iraq has called the United States “the Great Satan”, and seeks its destruction, along with that of Israel, even now.

It is hard for someone who has not gone to the mid-East, or read Arab or Persian newspapers, or watched their television, to understand the depth of that conviction, or that hatred, among many Muslims there. I recommend that those who are doubtful on this point start reading the English version of al-Jazeerah. I also recommend that they Google and start reading DhimmiWatch. Finally, as the most illustrative effort, I recommend that those with sufficient internet capability watch the newsclips of Islamic television around the world to be found at this web address (http://www.memritv.org), and to read the transcripts of what these people are saying: they are speaking truly poisonous and “hateful vitriol” against Israel, against Jews, and against the United States and the West, and are expressing their firm intention of destroying each and every one of these “enemies”. The most interesting thing about the newscasts are the thousands to hundreds of thousands of Muslims who are cheering, while this “hateful vitriol” is being uttered.

Thus, it appears that we of the West have two options, as both the facts and the April Message of Dan Simmons indicate: we can continue ruthlessly to suppress Muslim extremist attempts at developing thermonuclear weapons and using them against Israel and the West, or we can expect a thermonuclear and a conventional war, in which the ultimate aim is to subject Western Civilization to the “cleansing” effect of Islam and Shari’a law, and which, if we are to resist it at all, would mean a war involving the genocide of the Muslim peoples.

I leave as an exercise for the student the question of which of these two options would be the true expression of “hateful vitriol”.