DAVE WINER doesn’t much like the Nick Denton post that I linked and quoted. I think Dave missed a bit of the tone in my reference to Nick “sounding like a warblogger now,” as Nick was, for a long time, rather an anti-warblogger. But, as with Eric Alterman (who at times has been more warbloggerish than the warbloggers) Nick has recognized some unpleasant truths. And if the term “warblogger” means anything at all (and I’m not sure it does) recognizing unpleasant truths about war and self-defense is at the core of it.

Dave isn’t there yet. Nick wrote that the only thing that will change current hardline Arab culture is the humiliation of an unmistakable abject defeat. Dave replies: “Dangerous stuff. Watch out for the humiliation, that’s where holocausts come from.” No. At most, that’s where the desire to perpetrate holocausts comes from.

But the hardline Arabs (who are the ones calling the shots pretty much everywhere) already have the desire to perpetrate a holocaust, as has been made abundantly clear. They merely lack the means. The mentality we’re dealing with isn’t Germany in 1914. It’s more like Germany in 1939. And that Germany was in dire need of abject defeat and humiliation, the sooner the better.

UPDATE: I just noticed that Nick has already replied to Dave: “One could equally well say, to paraphrase Winer: watch out for appeasement, that’s where holocausts come from.”