Posted on 09/06/2004 8:50:55 PM PDT by Destro
Cult of Death
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: September 7, 2004
We've been forced to witness the massacre of innocents. In New York, Madrid, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Baghdad and Bali, we have seen thousands of people destroyed while going about the daily activities of life.
We've been forced to endure the massacre of children. Whether it's teenagers outside an Israeli disco or students in Beslan, Russia, we've seen kids singled out as special targets.
We should by now have become used to the death cult that is thriving at the fringes of the Muslim world. This is the cult of people who are proud to declare, "You love life, but we love death." This is the cult that sent waves of defenseless children to be mowed down on the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war, that trains kindergartners to become bombs, that fetishizes death, that sends people off joyfully to commit mass murder.
This cult attaches itself to a political cause but parasitically strangles it. The death cult has strangled the dream of a Palestinian state. The suicide bombers have not brought peace to Palestine; they've brought reprisals. The car bombers are not pushing the U.S. out of Iraq; they're forcing us to stay longer. The death cult is now strangling the Chechen cause, and will bring not independence but blood.
But that's the idea. Because the death cult is not really about the cause it purports to serve. It's about the sheer pleasure of killing and dying.
It's about massacring people while in a state of spiritual loftiness. It's about experiencing the total freedom of barbarism - freedom even from human nature, which says, Love children, and Love life. It's about the joy of sadism and suicide.
We should be used to this pathological mass movement by now. We should be able to talk about such things. Yet when you look at the Western reaction to the Beslan massacres, you see people quick to divert their attention away from the core horror of this act, as if to say: We don't want to stare into this abyss. We don't want to acknowledge those parts of human nature that were on display in Beslan. Something here, if thought about too deeply, undermines the categories we use to live our lives, undermines our faith in the essential goodness of human beings.
Three years after Sept. 11, too many people have become experts at averting their eyes. If you look at the editorials and public pronouncements made in response to Beslan, you see that they glide over the perpetrators of this act and search for more conventional, more easily comprehensible targets for their rage.
The Boston Globe editorial, which was typical of the American journalistic response, made two quick references to the barbarity of the terrorists, but then quickly veered off with long passages condemning Putin and various Russian policy errors.
The Dutch foreign minister, Bernard Bot, speaking on behalf of the European Union, declared: "All countries in the world need to work together to prevent tragedies like this. But we also would like to know from the Russian authorities how this tragedy could have happened."
It wasn't a tragedy. It was a carefully planned mass murder operation. And it wasn't Russian authorities who stuffed basketball nets with explosives and shot children in the back as they tried to run away.
Whatever horrors the Russians have perpetrated upon the Chechens, whatever their ineptitude in responding to the attack, the essential nature of this act was in the act itself. It was the fact that a team of human beings could go into a school, live with hundreds of children for a few days, look them in the eyes and hear their cries, and then blow them up.
Dissertations will be written about the euphemisms the media used to describe these murderers. They were called "separatists" and "hostage-takers." Three years after Sept. 11, many are still apparently unable to talk about this evil. They still try to rationalize terror. What drives the terrorists to do this? What are they trying to achieve?
They're still victims of the delusion that Paul Berman diagnosed after Sept. 11: "It was the belief that, in the modern world, even the enemies of reason cannot be the enemies of reason. Even the unreasonable must be, in some fashion, reasonable."
This death cult has no reason and is beyond negotiation. This is what makes it so frightening. This is what causes so many to engage in a sort of mental diversion. They don't want to confront this horror. So they rush off in search of more comprehensible things to hate.
E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com
John Kerry has a big problem!
Diagnostic criteria for 301.81 Narcissistic Personality Disorder (cautionary statement) A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
(1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
(2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
(3) believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
(4) requires excessive admiration
(5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
(6) is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
(7) lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
(8) is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
HOW MANY OF THESE TRAITS TO YOU SEE IN JOHN KERRY? I SEE ALL OF THEM. KERRY IS SICK LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, AND WE CAN NOT ALLOW THIS NUT CASE TO GET ELECTED.
You are right!
BTTT, read tomorrow
The Dutch foreign minister, Bernard Bot, speaking on behalf of the European Union, declared: "All countries in the world need to work together to prevent tragedies like this.
It would have been nice if they'd spoken up like this a couple dozen years ago.
He gets it.
If this is armageddon, it is lopsided. One - only ONE - Trident submarine could end Islam as an viable movement in the world in under 45 minutes if it comes down to it.
Islam must be contained, rolled back, and eventually defeated as was Communism.
The "death cult" is defined right there in the Koran, in the final "revelation", other than a very small one (surah 110), and therefore not superceded by anything:
[9.29] Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.
[9.30] And the Jews say: Uzair is the son of Allah; and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah; these are the words of their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before; may Allah destroy them; how they are turned away!
The problem is that so few read it. And "moderate" Muslims won't answer questions about it!
"This death cult has no reason and is beyond negotiation. This is what makes it so frightening. This is what causes so many to engage in a sort of mental diversion. They don't want to confront this horror. So they rush off in search of more comprehensible things to hate."
Seems to me these words describe our toleration of abortion and those who promote it.
I nominate this guy to the National Security Council of the United States of America. Permanently.
Correction: The Cult-of-Death Islamofascists are the mainstream in the Muslim world. The non-violent Muslims are the fringe.
If you don't believe it, just slip into a few mosques after the doors are closed and note how quickly the "moderate Muslim" facade vanishes.
these may be the shadows of such (Armageddon) but yet some distance away. The Trident I believe is being reduced to 3 warheads D5's to each missile from its much higher number. All older C4 models of early Tridents were being retrofitted to take the D5 missile which was a bit larger. A D5 W88(IIRC) according to FAS.org is about 475kt.
with 24 tubes, a Trident would be able to target 72 locations under these numbers. Of the 18 Tridents the USA owns, 4 were to be refitted as SLCM platforms, but I don't know if this has started yet.
I think the W87 was on the MX missiles which are being retired.
That is true. So true. The Vatican would be crawling with troops.
Infact let's go even further. Imagine if US Marines in Iraq were to storm an Iraqi school, take Iraqi kids hostage, and kill hundreds a few days later. Imagine the fallout from that.
Or imagine if the Israeli military were to rig a car with explosives, park it next to some restaurant primarily used by Palestinian clientelle, and then detonate it? Imagine the hue and cry from that!
However, as long as the killers are muslim (and the victims non-muslim), for some reason the 'moral supremacists' do not whisper a word! Not a word. But if some silly US soldier puts a pair of panties on an Arab prisoner's head then we read about THAT for weeks on end. How it is 'humiliating' in Islamic culture for men to be photographed naked, or to be told to do certain things by women.
Well, at least those 'humiliated' prisoners still have their lives!
Mr. Brooks' article is an interesting take. I think we need to consider a few points as well. For our consumption and discussion here:
1) All the core leadreship cadre for the Islamist terror groups are Saudi or come from SOMEPLACE on the Arab penisula. Yes there are Chezhans and Pakistani's et. al. in these organizations, but the core Idealogical leadership comes from Arabia.
2) Children are important to Muslims. if you look at at the populations of "overseas" muslims the increasing size of those populations come from predominantly Arab communities. More on this one at the end.
3) Ever wonder why historians have virturally ignored studying one of the largest and most subtley adminstered empires that existed on the earth? Which empire? The Arabic trading empire that existed along the silk road and and along the spice trade sea routes from aproximately 700-1500 AD.
4) Why is it that some so-called Islamic practices (female genital mutilation is a biggee...) don't exist in other parts of the so-called Muslim world (SE Asia)? Because these practices were Arabic traditions and assimulated INTO Islam.
I think it would be useful to re-examine the history of the "Golden Age of Islam" again. Could it be possible that what we are seeing today is an attempt be some elements of the Arab family to re-assert and revive the Arabic Empire and that Islam is ONLY a tool to that end?
It would also be useful to examine the movement of Arab communities throughout the the non-Arab parts of the world to see just how it is that they are populating those areas at a faster rate than the "native" inhabitants....Dearborne Michigan...??? If the Arabs are producing more posterity than the rest of us, would it not be logical that the Islamist "tool" of murder would be directed at the posterity of opponents, hence the massacre's we are witnessing? A) They out populate other peoples in other areas of the world, AND B) They then kill off the posterity of their opponents in other areas of the world.
Martydom can be such a useful tool. Golda Meier once stated that the Arabs will seek peace only when they love THEIR children more than we Israeli's love THEIR children..." She was referring to the fact that Israel had great compassion for the deaths of Arab youth, more so than apparently the Arabs seemd to have. We may have it a bit wrong here, the Arabs, through the tool of "Islam" may INDEED love their children and indeed LOVE ours, even though they kill them. By sending children off as "martyrs" for the cause is served at both ends. Their children reverred, and ours spared the life of an infidel. In my view a VERY clever application for manipulating a sizeable population.
This is more than a cult of death, but part of a long term means to an end.
They make it up as they go, whatever is self-serving.
I really don't care WHY they do it.
That line jumped out at me as weill. (It was also the only time Muslim or Islam was mentioned in the piece.)
If this evil murder cult was only at the fringe of the Muslim world, we would have seen mass demonstrations by tens of thousands of "moderate Muslims" in dozens of cities this weekend, calling condemnation down on the evil ones for murdering children in the name of Allah.
Did I miss the mass demonstrations? I must have.
Muslim silence equals tacit support.
We should by now have become used to the death cult that is thriving at the fringes of the Muslim world.
"He's (the author) on the marriage redefinition bandwagon." Was not that assassinated Dutch and Gay politician and right winger against Islam and immigration? In fact I would think gays and feminists would be first in line to stop Islam.
The cult is not "at the fringes" of the Muslim World.
This is the politically correct thing to say, but it is wrong. This is mainstream islam. Wake up before it is too late.
Good point.
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