Mark Steyn: No other word for it but slaughter

The Australian ^ | September 6 2004 | Mark Steyn

[Pitiricus]

PHOTOGRAPHED from above, the body bags look empty. They seem to lie flat on the ground, and it's only when you peer closer that you realise that that's because the bodies in them are too small to fill the length of the bags. They're children. Row upon row of dead children, more than a hundred of them, 150, more, many of them shot in the back as they tried to flee.

Flee from whom? Let's take three representative responses: "Guerillas", said The New York Times. "Chechen separatists", ventured the BBC, eventually settling for "hostage-takers". "Insurgents", said The Guardian's Isabel Hilton, hyper-rational to a fault: "Today's hostage-taking," she explained, "is more savage, born of the spread of asymmetrical warfare that pits small, weak and irregular forces against powerful military machines. No insurgent lives long if he fights such overwhelming force directly . . . If insurgent bullets cannot penetrate military armour, it makes little sense to shoot in that direction. Soft targets – the unprotected, the innocent, the uninvolved – become targets because they are available."

And then there was Adam Nicolson in London's Daily Telegraph, who filed one of those ornately anguished columns full of elevated, overwritten allusions – each child was "a Pieta, the archetype of pity. Each is a Cordelia carried on at the end of Act V" – and yet in a thousand words he's too busy honing his limpid imagery to confront the fact that this foul deed had perpetrators, never mind the identity of those perpetrators....

[GBA]

Great post! Steyn rocks! The one thing that sits me back in my chair right now is that this kind of school massacre could have happened here. If these Islamist psychos wanted to, why not the school near your house, in your town?

Moderate Muslims better start speaking up as their faith and beliefs are not being served by their silence. I found myself staring at a Muslim woman driving in traffic the other day. She had the window down and was enjoying the same beautiful Carolina day I was, but I was watching her as intently as I was watching where I was going.

And I hated the way I felt, like I should keep an eye on her, just in case she was some lunatic Islamist working on plans for some new 9/11 event. Now I have the thought of little kids being shot in the back. Innocent little kids being picked off as they ran away.

[BIGLOOK]

Translate, please.

[Do Be]

I was talking to a terrorist the other day.

Terrorist: You won’t use my name will you?

Me: What do you mean?

Terrorist: How will you describe me?

Me: Ugly. Smells like a pig in heat. Too much hair. Small backbone.

Terrorist: No, no. I mean, what will you call me?

Me: Call you? You’re not my style. I will never call you.

Terrorist: No, no. How will you refer to me? Will you call me a freedom fighter?

Me: Are you for freedom?

Terrorist: No. Freedom is for the weak. Men must be ruled by Allah or be tortured and killed.

Me: Are you a fighter?

Terrorist: Yes. I will mutilate and destroy your women and children whenever I can.

Me: You would fight women and children?

Terrorist: No. Women are scary. They can be very mean. I will blow them up when they are not looking. Or shoot them in the back.

Me: No, I will not call you a freedom fighter.

Terrorist: How about militant. Will you refer to me as a militant?

Me: Are you in the military? Do you wear a uniform?

Terrorist: No. No. If terrorists wore uniforms we would be shot on sight. Even by women and children. Maybe even by each other. Being a terrorist is a very tricky thing.

Me: No, I will not refer to you as a militant.

Terrorist: Armed militant then.

Me: Why?

Terrorist: We are not so different. We have arms and legs and toes. Referring to me as an armed militant makes me appear more human.

Me: No.

Terrorist: How about insurgent? You could call me an insurgent.

Me: What government are you revolting against?

Terrorist: All of them. All governments are against chaos. Infidels have taken over all governments.

Me: What about the Arab nations?

Terrorist: Praised be Allah. He has given the faithful many blessings. Many acres of rock and desert to call our own. In some places, there are even trees. We have used these lands to build a great civilization.

Me: What are the accomplishments of your civilization?

Terrorist: We are great killers of the infidels. And have many fine recipes for scorpion.

Me: No. I will not refer to you as an insurgent.

Terrorist: How about guerrilla? You could call me a guerrilla.

Me: No. Guerrillas, though they are animals, like you, have a certain dignity. They are somewhat man-like. It would be too much of an insult to those fine creatures.

Terrorist: How then will you refer to me?

Me: I will call you a terrorist. A murderer. Human filth.

Terrorist: How dare you! I am not a republican.

Me: Can you wind surf?

[Coroner]

Google search it. The hauns.com one has a good explanation. Its basically how muzzies lie to infidels to gain their trust and try to blame the Jews for everything. Then once their stronger they resort to slaughtering infidels. It happens over and over again globally!!!

[maxwellp]

Has anyone heard Kerry say anything about what happened in this Russian school?

[crushelits]

[BIGLOOK]

Thanks, have heard of the practice; I've posted many times that all borders of Islam are at war, all cultures and religions at risk. I'll just coin this "buy the lie", an infiltration tactic with consequences for the unwary.

[JustaCowgirl]

And anyone that practices Islam that does not speak against this is for it.

And anyone that practices or supports Islamists and does not speak against this and mean it is for it.

[Gandalf_The_Gray]

It will be known as the "Massacre of Belsan"

The town name is Beslan. Belsan was a WWII death camp. What's in a word...

Regards,
GtG

[Gandalf_The_Gray]

unlike Putin's plan to bomb...Islamists into submission...

I rather like Putin's plan but I don't think submission goes quite far enough.

Regards,
GtG

[Tripleplay]

And I hated the way I felt, like I should keep an eye on her, just in case she was some lunatic Islamist working on plans for some new 9/11 event. Now I have the thought of little kids being shot in the back. Innocent little kids being picked off as they ran away.

I feel the same way except for the "hate" feeling. We have been taught by the actions of muslims all over the world during the last twenty years to suspect each and every one of them of killing our children and grandchildren. These vermin have earned your hatred.

[Gandalf_The_Gray]

This is the War of Islamic Expansion.

How about "The War of Islamic Extinction.

Regards,
GtG

[McGavin999]

said The Guardian's Isabel Hilton, hyper-rational to a fault: "Today's hostage-taking," she explained, "is more savage, born of the spread of asymmetrical warfare that pits small, weak and irregular forces against powerful military machines. No insurgent lives long if he fights such overwhelming force directly . . . If insurgent bullets cannot penetrate military armour, it makes little sense to shoot in that direction. Soft targets – the unprotected, the innocent, the uninvolved – become targets because they are available."

Hmm, nice words Isabel. Too bad that by writing them you reveal that you have no soul. Here's the deal old girl, you can't rationalize terrorism. You can't just come up with a nice, pat explanation and then feel all safe and comfy. They will kill you as fast as they will kill me. The thing is, I want to do something about it. I don't want me, or any of my countrymen, or any of the decent people on this planet dead, just because you can't face the truth.

Cowards need to get out of the way and let those who are willing to fight this horror do what they must.

By the way old girl, how do you manage to keep your rotting, stinking carcass alive without a soul?

[Jack Black]

I see them in the mall, covered in their sick black robes, more death shroud cloth covering their heads and hair. I see them walking with their men. I feel like telling them: "Don't wear that here, this is America, it's not appropriate. Your scaring the children."

In other times and places I have walked up to teenagers and young adults wearing Che shirts and told them I thought they were stupid. I have walked up to bikers and told them they were idiots for wearing SS patches and Swastikas. Miraculously I still have all me teeth. Evil can not be ignored, certainly not at the risk of offense. Not even at the risk of assault.

Still I've held off with the Moslems in our midst. We are raised to appeciate religion. What if Nazism has claimed first ammendment rights? Then too some are women, perhaps controlled by their men. Stil, my patience is running out.

The great Nigerian singer Fela played in California a few years before his death. One of his songs was "Islam is Bullshit for Africa". It included his beautiful nubian dancers clad only in tribal beads immitating the prayer ritual of Moslems, with booty shaking.

Maybe Jay-Z should cover it.

Because more and more we know: Islam is bullshit for America. The bounds of tolerance have been exceeded. Either leave your sick death-cult suicide-bombing child-murdering jew-hating vagina-multilating "religion" or leave the USA, please.

We are sick to death of you and don't want to see you here, wearing your costumes. They are the swastika of our era.

Be gone!

[TheLawyerFormerlyKnownAsAl]

Great!

[KTpig]

"Has anyone heard Kerry say anything about what happened in this Russian school?"

As far as I know he has not commented on the terrorist child-killers. So I guess, UN approval and being more sensitive are still the "plan."

[Ichneumon]

What would Bush to if our school children were slaughtered? What would kerry do?

[GBA]

I don't hate the woman I saw driving, but I hate the terrorists and what they do, no doubt about it. And I hate that where I once saw a woman who happened to be a Muslim, now I see a Muslim who might be a terrorist. And I hate that I feel the need to watch "them" because "they" hate us and want to kill us. And I really hate the silence and lack of condemnation from members of that faith.

And "they" ought to know that I'm probably not the only average American who feels like this. I know that's not fair, but that's the way it is.

[Happygal]

The reality is that the IRA and ETA and the ANC and any number of secessionist and nationalist movements all the way back to the American revolutionaries could have seized schoolhouses and shot all the children.

But they didn't. Because, if they had, there would have been widespread revulsion within the perpetrators' own communities. To put it at its most tactful, that doesn't seem to be an issue here.

So the particular character of this "insurgency" does not derive from the requirements of "asymmetrical warfare" but from . . . well, let's see, what was the word missing from those three analyses of the Beslan massacre? Here's a clue: half the dead "Chechen separatists" were not Chechens at all, but Arabs. And yet, tastefully tiptoeing round the subject, The New York Times couldn't bring itself to use the words Muslim or Islamist, for fear presumably of offending multicultural sensibilities.

Steyn makes some magnificent points.
However, I wouldn't allow the IRA and ETA etc. off the hook so easily. Enniskillen, the Madrid bombings - no minor acts of terror in their own right.

[ApesForEvolution]

Steyn calls it how he sees it. Right on!

Muhammmadan 'Moderates': You are the only ones that can solve this problem quickly, but you don't. So, you ARE the same as the terrorists you two-faced cowards...