Mark Steyn: Wake up, Europe, you've a war on your hands

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | November 6, 2005 | Mark Steyn

[Puzzleman]

Ever since 9/11, I've been gloomily predicting the European powder keg's about to go up. ''By 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on the news every night,'' I wrote in Canada's Western Standard back in February.

Silly me. The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years ahead of my optimistic schedule.

[Loud Mime]

Excellent observations!

Democrats = American's Islamics?

[King Prout]

glad to serve

[ml/nj]

Does anyone not believe that Winston Churchill was one of the greatest men of the 20th century.

Yeah, but he'd be a pariah now in NY, CA, and other enlightened environs.

ML/NJ

[King Prout]

I cannot post on DU - they seem to have a lock on my IP or something

I wouldn't bother, anyway - those 'tards aren't left of center... they're left of left and insane to boot.

the folks whose noses I'd be chaffing are sane, and have only *sipped* the kool-aid

[steveyp]

Another Churchill Quote. I think he was 24 years old when made this. Remarkable, isn't it.

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities - but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”

-Sir Winston Churchill, from The River War, An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan; first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).

[NutCrackerBoy]

In the current issue of City Journal, Theodore Dalrymple concludes a piece on British suicide bombers with this grim summation of the new Europe: "The sweet dream of universal cultural compatibility has been replaced by the nightmare of permanent conflict." Which sounds an awful lot like a new Dark Ages. -Mark Steyn

I read everything by Dalrymple I can get my hands on.

[F.J. Mitchell]

The word "crusade" has never been more present than it is today. We merely need to rescue it from the negative it is portrayed as today, to the positive it really is and was.

We can thank the Crusades and the Crusaders for all the years of semi-rationality the world has enjoyed prior th the politically correct and totally beguiled present.

Like all other fungus and bacteria that threatens the existance of humanity from time to time, Islamism must occasionally be dealt with-and will be, until the law of survival has been rescinded.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Statement: "Mark Steyn: Wake up, Europe, you've a war on your hands"

Response: Wake up America we will have a war on our hands-RIGHT HERE!

Comment: It is not just Moslems.

[steveyp]

Regarding the quote, I believe Churchill is reflecting on science as providing the means to slaughter an enemy wholesale in combat. Leastways, I'm sure there was a technological advantage in the "Reconquest of the Soudan".

Unfortunately, the Mohammedan has more modern means to fight back today. Wish the Europeans (and US) would reflect on these statements in their dealings with Iran...

[fragrant abuse]

Thanks for posting that astonishing Churchill quote. The man truly was a visionary.

What a shame he isn't still around.

[Zechariah11]

GREAT post!!

[Buffettfan]

Sounds like it's time for a version of the French "Minutemen" only locked and loaded. Oh, wait a minute. I forgot. France has disarmed it's private citizens. Scratch that idea.

[P.O.E.]

Cool quote.

[joylyn]

Some posters on DU suggest that Bush and Cheney instigated the French riots using the CIA to funnel money to the rioters (!!!). Their motive? To divert attention from a French investigation of Halliburton.

[wizardoz]

Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne
Blessent mon coeur d'une languer monotone

Wow. I thought I recognized those verses (Verlaine) but I went searching and found what you were really referring to. Learn something new everyday!

[Ben Chad]

Oafs - not! I saw a large sign with these words in Normandy and had no idea about their significance. Alors, from http://www.assassinationresearch.com/v1n2/gtds_4.html: The ultimate proof of Germany's conspiracy was exacted at the cost of a long, bloody war. Starting on June 1st, 1944, the first half of a code message, comprised from the first two lines of a nineteenth-century French poem, was broadcast by the BBC to the French resistance: "Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne [The long sobs of the violins of autumn]." At 10 p.m., June 5th, on orders from General Pierre Koenig, commander of Allied clandestine operations, the last half of the message was broadcast: "Blessent mon coeur d'une languer monotone [Wound my heart with a monotonous languor]." It meant that D-Day, the Allied invasion of Europe, the culmination of a huge conspiration, the time and place of which had been kept totally secret by as many as fifty men, had begun. The tedious, uniform, unvarying inaction against Germany's evil conspiracy had finally ended.

[Ben Chad]

Wow. I thought I recognized those verses (Verlaine) but I went searching and found what you were really referring to. Learn something new everyday!

This is why I love FreeRepublic. It a fountain of news and information that puts LSM to shame.

[CIB-173RDABN]

As is the way with the political class, they seem to see the riots as an excellent opportunity to scuttle Sarkozy's presidential ambitions rather than as a call to save the Republic.

---

Doesn't this pretty well describe the way the Democrats have approached every problem we face today. They do not want to solve any problem, only blame this administration. They do not care how they hurt this nation, as long as President Bush can be made to look bad.

For reasons I do not understand, they seem to think the American people will turn to them if they can just make everything worse.

[G.Mason]

"Democrats = American's Islamics?"

Absolutely, with a few minor [?] differences.

Though Democrats don't seem to have the stomach for the physical part of the fight, they will instigate turmoil, divide, lie, cheat, corrupt and do all those other things to bring the United States to Her knees.

Thanks to the internet and other technologies, the other half of America is awakening. If and when the SHTF there won't be as many of them as there are now.

[kstewskis]

We demand to know what John Kerry thinks.

We already know what he thinks, and we gave him the message in '04.

He is, and has been, ready and waiting to hand our collective arses on a platter to the UN, and their henchmen.

My first gut reaction is, had sKerry and the rest of his elitist, commie ilk been in office right now, we might be the ones dealing with the nightly riots now.