Posted on 02/11/2006 12:32:55 PM PST by Exton1
"Muslim Opinion" Be Damned Monday, February 6, 2006 By: Alex Epstein
America's attempts to appease "Muslim opinion" are depraved and suicidal.
As Muslim groups express outrage and issue death threats over cartoons depicting Mohammad, many Western leaders are responding, not with condemnations of the death threats, but with condemnations of the cartoons--and of the newspapers that published them.
This is the latest example of the apologies and hand-wringing that occur anytime there is any widespread display of Muslim anger. To listen to most of our foreign-policy commentators, the biggest problem facing America today is the fact that many Muslims are mad at us.
"Whatever one's views on the [Iraq] war," writes a "New York Times" columnist, "thoughtful Americans need to consider . . . the bitter anger that it has provoked among Muslims around the world." In response to Abu Ghraib, Ted Kennedy lamented, "We have become the most hated nation in the world, as a result of this disastrous policy in the prisons." Muslim anger over America's support of Israel, we are told, is a major cause of anti-American terrorism.
We face, these commentators say, a crisis of "Muslim opinion." We must, they say, win the "hearts and minds" of angry Muslims by heaping public affection on Islam, by shutting down Guantanamo, by being more "evenhanded" between free Israel and the terrorist Palestinian Authority--and certainly by avoiding any new military action in the Muslim world. If we fail to win over "Muslim opinion," we are told, we will drive even more to become terrorists.
All of this evades one blatant truth: the hatred being heaped on America is irrational and undeserved. Consider the issue of treatment of POWs. Many Muslims are up in arms about the treatment of prisoners of war in Iraq and at Guantanamo--many of whom were captured on battlefields, trying to kill Americans. Yet these same Muslims are silent about the summary convictions and torture--real torture, with electric drills and vats of acid--that are official policy and daily practice throughout the Middle East.
Or consider "Muslim opinion" over the United States' handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which the United States is accused of not being "hard enough" on Israel--a free nation with laws that protect all citizens, Jew and Arab alike--for Israel's supposed mistreatment of Palestinians. Yet "Muslim opinion" reveres the Palestinian Authority, a brutal dictatorship that deprives Palestinians of every basic freedom, keeps them in unspeakable poverty, and routinely tortures and executes peaceful dissenters.
So-called Muslim opinion is not the unanimous and just consensus that its seekers pretend. It is the irrational and unjust opinion of the world's worst Muslims: Islamists and their legions of "moderate" supporters and sympathizers. These people oppose us not because of any legitimate grievances against America, but because they are steeped in a fundamentalist interpretation of their religion--one that views America's freedom, prosperity, and pursuit of worldly pleasures as the height of depravity. They do not seek respect for the rights of the individual (Muslim or non-Muslim), they seek a world in which the rights of all are sacrificed to the dictates of Islam.
The proper response to Islamists and their supporters is to identify them as our ideological and political enemies--and dispense justice accordingly. In the case of our militant enemies, we must kill or demoralize them--especially those regimes that support terrorism and fuel the Islamist movement; as for the rest, we must politically ignore them and intellectually discredit them, while proudly arguing for the superiority of Americanism. Such a policy would make us safe, expose Islamic anti-Americanism as irrational and immoral, and embolden the better Muslims to support our ideals and emulate our ways.
President Bush, like most politicians and intellectuals, has taken the opposite approach to "Muslim opinion": appeasement. Instead of identifying anti-American Muslims as ideological enemies to be discredited, he has appealed to their sensibilities and met their demands--e.g., sacrificing American soldiers to save Iraqi civilians and mosques. Instead of seeking to crush the Islamists by defeating the causes they fight for--such as Islamic world domination and the destruction of Israel--he has appeased those causes, declaring Islam a "great religion" and rewarding the Palestinian terrorist Jihad with a promised Palestinian state. Instead of destroying terrorist regimes that wage war against the West--including, most notably, Iran--he has sought their "cooperation" and even cast some as "coalition partners."
Such measures have rewarded our enemy for waging physical and spiritual war against us. "Condemn America," they have learned, "and American leaders will praise your ideals and meet your demands." "Attack America via terrorist proxy," terrorist states and movements have been taught, "and America will neither blame you nor destroy you, but redouble its efforts to buy your love."
Every attempt to appease "Muslim opinion" preserves, promotes, and emboldens our enemies. Every concession to angry Muslim mobs gives hope to the Islamist cause. Every day we allow terrorist regimes to exist gives their minions time to execute the next Sept. 11. America needs honest leadership with the courage to identify and defeat our enemies--"Muslim opinion" be damned. They should begin by declaring that militant groups and states that threaten anti-Western violence in response to free speech will be met, not with appeasement, but with destruction.
Alex Epstein is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes the ideas of Ayn Rand--best-selling author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and originator of the philosophy of Objectivism.
Yes! The problems we are having now are caused precisely by the fact that we have played nice with these guys. To them, nice = weak. And weak = conquered.
Wow. This sums it all up the best I have ever heard yet!
At the micro level...it would like telling a battered spouse or child to "try to understand the abuser"...and for the courts to "reward" the abuser to make him feel better about the abused. After all, nobody would beat the crap out of you without it always being your fault!
So let me get this right. The liberals don't want anyone to violently abuse others, yet it's ok for Islamofascists to do that and we should try to just be nicer to them and they will stop.
You're channeling Gen. Grant during the Battle in the Wilderness, I think.
Great quote - what is it from?
It sums up one of the big problems, though: we are reacting rather than planning. Of course, Islamic strategy has always been geared to getting a reaction - which they have already predicted and for which they have planned their response - to some provocation.This is the phase we are in right now. However, if the attacked country or group doesn't respond to the provocation (as Clinton did not), the Muslims wait for awhile and attack anyway, considering the failure to respond to be a sign of weakness.
We have to have our own attack - not response - plan thought out, and I'm not convinced we have one. I think Bush, who is a good and idealistic man, may be so convinced by his own rhetoric that he is ignoring the simple fact that these people, BASED ON THEIR INSANE IDEOLOGY, hate us and want to kill us. No ifs, ands or buts.
Hmmmm...that's a direct quote that U.S. Grant made to one of his commanders in 1864 concerning Robert E. Lee.
Islamic thought is a virus in the corpulent body of liberalism.
BTTT
One of the best articles I've read in a long time.
If anyone was wondering how to stop the media from hounding them , here is the answer, Give them a threat they can believe. They are Cowards when faced with a real threat.
" they have unwittingly provided the self defense "defense" to any American that shoots the first Muslim that comes screaming down the street in their typical violent manner of "protest"..."
They actually do that. I've always read a lot and have been aware since the 60s that it is common for Muslim men to go postal , usually using a machete, sometimes a cop will use his pistol. I'm not aware that this has become popular in the U.S. but I assume at some point it will become another part of our culture.
There's no such thing as islamic "thought". Their worship of their "allah" controls everything.
Every word true, and worse.
A truth that is very much denied by many Republicans/Conservatives/Freepers.
The willingness of the liberal news media to totally "CAPITULATE AND APPEASE" radical muslims is just astounding. Their capilulation will only be seen as weakness, nothing more--and encourage those 'nut cases' to make even more 'demands' in the future at any perceived slight!
What in the heck are these so-called media elite thinking?? Can they cite any historical examples where 'capitulation and appeasement' in the face of threats from lunatics and maniacs--works?
My foot is itching...
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