Posted on 06/12/2004 7:09:22 AM PDT by ovrtaxt
Wanted: A Reagan to fight global jihad
By Robert Spencer
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
Mark Steyn reminds us that "only Reagan could have stood there and declared without embarrassment: Tear down this wall!" In the warm glow of this week's encomia it's easy to miss the reason why anyone might have felt embarrassed at all. With the dreaded wall long made into paperweights, it's easy to forget that before (and during, largely) the age of Reagan, the idea that communism was evil, and the Soviet Union an "evil empire," was, among the intelligentsia in America and Western Europe, in the worst possible taste.
It should be remembered today that the vicious caricature of the amiable dunce that dogged Reagan throughout his political career originated in great part not from any bumbling or forgetfulness on his part, but from what the media and political establishment regarded as the sheer outrageousness of his political views. In the eyes of the elite, Reagan was primitive and limited primarily because he lacked the sophistication and intelligence necessary to see that the United States and the Soviet Union were essentially the same; talk of good and evil, or of the rights of man, was only rhetorical fodder for the lumpenproletariat, nothing more. No one, the pundits huffed, with even a rudimentary grasp of the subtleties and necessities of realpolitik would dare use such moral language to describe the Cold War. How dare he depart from the gospel of moral equivalence that the media establishment had dinned into the ears of the reluctant faithful for decades? You just couldn't say the things that Ronald Reagan said, and his success so stunned and enraged his opponents that all they could do was try to smear him as a puppet and a fool.
The same scenario is playing out today. America is once again locked in a death struggle with a relentless totalitarian foe about which most people are reluctant to tell the truth. Substitute "Islamophobe" for "Red-baiter," and you can adapt learned political analyses from the 1970s by the ton for use today, except for a few small details.
It is a great failing of our age that there is no Ronald Reagan on the scene. Today's stifling orthodoxy remains largely unchallenged. Not just liberal publications and spokesmen, but conservatives who claim to wear Reagan's mantle temporize and dissimulate about our current despotic antagonist in a way that the man himself would have found contemptible. Leaders and pundits must cling to fond fictions about Islam being a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists. They thus pass up the opportunity to call for a worldwide reform of Islam that starts by identifying the elements of Islam that give rise to violence and extremism and finishes by repudiating those elements – so that Muslims and non-Muslims can live in peace as equals.
"How do you tell a Communist?" Reagan asked in 1987. "Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin." How do you tell a jihadist? Well, a contemporary Reagan might say, it's someone who reads the Quran and Sunnah. How do you tell an anti-jihadist? It's someone who understands how these Islamic texts are used to recruit and motivate terrorists – and who is willing to call upon self-proclaimed moderate Muslims to face this fact and initiate an honest, definitive and thoroughgoing reform. And if they will not? Then at least they should know that the lines have been drawn and that the lovers of freedom are not going to stand for more mayhem wrought by those who would enclose non-Muslims and women behind a wall of oppression.
If Islam is no part of the problem, such reform cannot be part of the solution. By vilifying and attempting to marginalize those who dare tell the truth about Islamic radicalism as Reagan did about communism, today's intelligentsia provides ample cover to radical Islamic terrorists, allowing them to operate under the radar screen of media scrutiny and even law enforcement.
Freedom is under attack by the warriors of jihad; the battle lines do indeed resemble those of the Cold War.
"There are very useful analogies to be drawn between communism and Islam," says Ibn Warraq. "Communism has been defeated, at least for the moment; Islamism has not, and unless a reformed, tolerant, liberal kind of Islam emerges soon, perhaps the final battle will be between Islam and Western democracy."
This is the war we're in now. If only we had a Reagan to fight it.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and the author of "Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West" (Regnery Publishing), and "Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest Growing Faith (Encounter Books).
And the method to destroy it remains the same.
Excuse me but I think W is standing firm on the WOT. Yes, Reagan would have done the same thing. And W is carrying the "torch" now.
find a way to define Islam as an ideology rather than as a religion
I see it more as a political ideology rather than theology. It controls every aspect of your life from which hand you eat with to how to have sex to how you can invest your money. It is a form of enslavement as far as I am concerned.
I agree with you with heart, mind and soul.
May God bless you, President Bush.
Bush is standing firm. And his "axis of evil speech" is a close parallel to Reagan's "evil empire speech."
Note that Bush used these words after the clinton administration outlawed the use of the term "rogue states," and substituted PC euphemisms for the unvarnished truth.
Like Reagan, too, Bush is soft-spoken, polite, and gentlemanly, but always firm and straightforward. What Bush lacks, perhaps, is Reagan's gift for speaking. Bush speaks well, but he is not quite so moving as a speaker. His voice is higher and somewhat lacking in resonance--which is hardly a moral failure!
We have the right man to fight terrorism, and President Ronald Reagan would be the first in line to back him. I think "Winning one more for the Gipper" should be on everyone's mind who understands and loves this country as Ronald Reagan did. President George W. Bush is a Reagan conservative if ever there is one, and that is exactly what galls the Clinton crowd that runs the DNC, "A National Party No More". Did you all see both of them, the Clinton couple asleep sitting in the FRONT row at the funeral in Washington? They continue to shame all Americans in front of the eyes of the world. The Clintons put a stain on the Presidency that will take a long time to erase, but nevertheless, it is the CLINTON LEGACY.
Yes, but Bush has continued to say that Islam is a peaceful religion.
I forced myself to listen to the comments being made this past week, comparing W to Reagan. So many times the question was posed, "Would Reagan have invaded Iraq?" Each time, the answer was "No." Each talking head never posed the true question, "What would Reagan have done on 9/11?" Perhaps it was asked, but I didn't hear it.
It would have been amusing, if it was not so sad, that the critics of then have become the critics of now, choking on the accolades of Ronald Reagan for fear the viewing audience just might hear the similarities between the two Presidents. Even in death, Ronald Reagan confounds the media. Whatta guy.
Yes, but Bush has continued to say that Islam is a peaceful religion.He recognizes that the enemy is an offshoot of Islam, and that they are also an enemy of moderate Islam.
-Eric
Boy, does this hit the mark.
"Your either with us or against us".
Outrageous, yea right. LOL. Some things never change, this includes media elite condesention towards cowboys.
I think Reagan would not have made the mistake of going to the UN in fall 2002 and wasting all that time while the WMDs were slipping into Syria. He would be undermining Iran the way he undermined Nicaragua, with Freedom Fighters that would topple that regime quite easily with a little bit of support. He would be threatening Syria with severe retribution if they didn't stop sending terrorists into Iraq, and they would fear him.
George Bush has done the best job that we can expect of any politician on the scene today in the WOT. But he's no Reagan.
As long as the mullahs and imams can preach...and as long as they have unlimited amounts of cash to spend....
They will kill us and our leaders will sell us out to them.....
Take away their cash and shut down their mosques and islamic centers in western nations and its all over...
We wont...and our leaders wont let us...
imo
We pay so much money to the United Nations that we ought to milk that cash cow for all that it can give us, which isn't much.
Here's a start.
MEIN KAMPF = MEIN KORAN
ALLAHU AKBAR = HEIL HITLER
"Allahu Akbar!" is the "Muslim call to murder."
Doubt it? Ask Nick Berg or the other millions who were slaughtered with that scream in their ears.
"Moderate" muslims who disagree need to rally by the millions in every muslim city to condemn the jihadists.
If they don't, and they have not, then their silence equals approval of the madmen who murder in the name of allah.
I believe this is because he is not yet ready to publicly make the jump to outlawing islam entirely...which must eventually occur because islam IS a demonic cult appealing to the sociopathic mind. Islam provides a vehicle by which the psychopathic killer is enabled to commit mayhem against innocent people under the umbrellow of religion and thereby gain support from the self-proclaimed "intelligentsia"...i.e., libs, aclu, amnesty international, lib politicians and college profs, etc. The civilized world will only be secure when the "immunities" for all the above are cancelled and they are destroyed.
What is a "WOT?" This is as asinine as a "War On Blitzkrieg" or a "War On Kamikazes."
Terror is only a strategy, not an ideology. You can't make war on a strategy.
Every time you read "War On Terror," you should be reminded that we are still too PC-ridden to even name the enemy.
Our enemies all have something in common: when they are slaughtering innocents, they scream "ALLAHU AKBAR!"
That should be a clue about who our enemies are.
Our enemy is not "Terror."
I couldn't agree with you more!!!!! Carry on Dubya!
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