Posted on 08/04/2006 6:59:09 AM PDT by Lando Lincoln
Why is it that the West seeks appeasement with Islam when it is so clear that Islam has never sought co-existence with the West?
Islam seeks our destruction. No honest observer of this World State ideology could possibly marshal enough facts to deny this singular fact. To an untrained observer, it would then come as a bit of a surprise that most in the West are not prepared to name and fight this threat. Even after the relatively recent lessons learned in Europe in the first half of the last century, and the disastrous consequences of our capitulation to the Soviet threat at the end of the Second World War, one must wonder how it is that the West, and especially the Bush administration, refuse to confront this threat in any serious way. Put differently, why is it that the West seeks appeasement with Islam when it is so clear that Islam has never sought co-existence with the West?
There are two appeasement camps in America and the West today. The largest camp in the West by far is the active appeasement crowd, or what many call liberals. Because liberals (this includes libertarians) have such an aversion to national existence and peoplehood (see here, here, and here for a more detailed explanation), the failure to confront challenges to national existence is not hard to understand. Liberals seek a World State democracy, notwithstanding that few are honest enough, or have the intellectual integrity, to admit it. They cannot justify a People superior to “others” that should garner a man’s loyalty or sacrifice. Liberty, human rights, civil rights, women’s rights, homosexual rights, native Indians’ rights, native Hawaiians’ rights, immigrants’ rights – legal and illegal, disabled rights, childrens’ rights, right to choose, right to die, and so goes the ever growing list of UNIVERSAL rights. These rights are simply superior to national existence and peoplehood. This is how the Supreme Court could rule in Hamdan that terrorists who actively seek our destruction and who abide by no rule of law should be afforded the universal rule of law.
In this view, Man is not a soulful being tied to his family, his People, G-d, and world through meaning and purpose; rather, he is a material thing, measured by science, and demanding his heart’s desires all spelled out as rights. All of these rights collectively are the juridical approach to guaranteeing the absolute uncertainty of all opinion. The perfect democracy. In such an Open Society, multiculturalism is not a result of “pluralism” or freedom, it is a sine qua non for the existence of pluralism and freedom. In other words, democracy is the political expression of the collapse of political order into Uncertainty by virtue of the philosophical understanding of human existence as either scientific (i.e., certain) or mere opinion (i.e., uncertain). As such, democracy demands that man as political being not make political distinctions certain. If I have no certainty about my People as superior to others, or my national existence as inviolate, then invariably I will actively seek an appeasement of those who would claim otherwise and I will attempt to internationalize and democratize the conflict by garnering the support of the World State in making – the “international community” or “world opinion.”
The moment you begin to speak of a People, of citizens and their privileges and immunities apart from “others,” of nations one against another, you have violated the preeminent rule that these are all just unaccounted for opinions, which can only be subject to the method of democracy. Since truth is not certain except in method or due process as the lawyers speak of it, then the greatest truth is a World State democracy. Fighting for and defending America’s national existence is unjustifiable. Indeed, as we hear from the Elites, it is wrong, if not criminal (i.e., violates “international law”).
Conservatives, as the second appeasement camp, are only marginally better equipped to defend national existence, which is to say that practically they are failing miserably. Because they too buy into the science-democracy obversion, they are not prepared to demand absolute allegiance to national existence and Peoplehood (see, e.g., here). Instead, they speak of national existence and Peoplehood as if they were opposing opinions or ideologies to throw into the democratic mix. They battle other “opinions” through the vote and on radio and television talk shows and insist that the politics as usual approach is the way to defeat “bad” opinions. In their gut, most conservatives know that something is very wrong with this approach. They understand that just like Hamas’ electoral victory in Gaza, if the Liberals win at the polls or even among the nine Supreme Court justices, they must concede to the truth of the democratic method. We saw this in the president’s wholesale capitulation to the most unconstitutional usurpation of power in the recent Hamdan decision. Instead of declaring that the opinion was illegal and without precedent, the Bush administration announced that terrorists would now be governed by the Geneva Conventions, a policy that no rational man could or should defend.
Similarly, instead of declaring a war against Islam, conservatives define the war exactly as the Liberals — as a war against Terror, as if there is some “terror” ideology separate from Islam threatening the West. There is none. Even if you add up all of the non-Islamic terrorist cells that actually threaten the West, you’d have possibly 1,000 individuals making up little cells wholly unrelated one to the other with little ability to recruit new members. Islam is quite another thing. Here you have the world’s second largest religion, which has never had a peaceful existence unless it was itself conquered and subjugated or it had acquired an empire to rule over tyrannically where non-Muslims existed as subjugated infidels. In Islam you have one billion Muslims acting as a reservoir with the pumps of Jihad and the hatred of the West operating quite efficiently. In Islam you have the sovereign and oil-rich nation of Iran directing an international war against the West on several fronts. We can add to that list the Sudan, and the collective majority of Muslims that live in such countries as Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Saudi Arabia. And, lest we forget the latest polling data, a sizable percentage of those westernized Muslims enjoying the benefits of living in countries like England and Canada. And, because conservatives are as beset by and beholden to the uncertainty of democracy as liberals, they are incapable of condemning Islam and targeting its adherents as the enemy.
There are of course those conservatives who recognize that Islam is not a “religion” in the Western tradition but rather a license to murder by the wretched of the world. But, they are frightened by a “religious war” against the Muslim Umma. Of course, it is only a religious war because Islam deems it a religious duty to destroy the West. It is hardly a religious war for us. For Americans, it is simply a war of national survival. But when we deny the fundamental threat posed by Islam, we do away with the only weapon we have to defeat the enemy: reality. Reality tells us that Islam is a World State ideology that seeks the destruction of the West and our national existence. Reality tells us that faithful Muslims and even not-so-faithful Muslims support this result. Some support it actively with their bodies; some with money; some with political support; and some passively in their prayers. If you believe polls, this group is somewhere between 35–75% of Muslims worldwide. The nations that house these terrorists and potential terrorists are not a military threat to the U.S. America could use aerial and economic warfare to isolate and marginalize these nations. The approach in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran should not be the establishment of a democracy, but an Ataturk-style military regime that establishes a secular government prepared to keep the peace.
But to do so, we must be prepared to fight a full-scale war against all nations and people who advocate, accommodate, or acquiesce to the Islamic world view. If we take the position, hardly supported by reality, that we cannot win the war against the Muslim Umma, then we have given up before the fact. We will never defeat “radical Islam” without defeating Islam itself because they are one and the same. Trying to defeat the “bad Nazis” or the “bad Bushidos” of Japan would have made the defeat of the Axis powers impossible. There could have been no justification for the mass civilian killings and bombings by the Allied powers if we had taken the “just kill the terrorists and jihadists” approach in that war.
In any war, whether it is against a nation, or a group of nations, or world-wide terrorists linked by a common ideology, the failure to identify the enemy and the failure to prosecute the war fully and unremittingly will always end in defeat.
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David Yerushalmi is an attorney who has been involved in international legal issues for over 25 years. He is Of Counsel and sits on the board of trustees of the Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies, a policy think tank. He has published op-eds in the American Spectator, the Wall Street Journal Europe, Ha'aretz, Globes (Israel business paper), and the Jerusalem Post. David is President of Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE).
dyerushalmi@saneworks.us
http://www.saneworks.us
"Islam seeks our destruction."
Pretty well sums it up, doesn't it? Why don't people understand that simple statement?
Bump for later.
War on Terror is too ambiguous.. start at least, by declaring war on known Terrorist States. Begin with Iran.
Sadly, the West has yet to admit that it really is a war. We are pretending it is a police action, which is a great way to loose wars.
The first sentence should go on a battle flag !
Our religious upbringing, which ingrained in us the propensity to 'live and let live', is going to get us and/or our children killed. We won't be 'let live' ourselves, because the anti-civilization hordes are taking over through the sheer magnitude of their expanding population and sphere of influence.
Partially we CALL it "war on terror" for PC reasons, as you know. But there are also rational, non-insane reasons for this vagueness - to freeze/de-fang a lot of our potential enemies from teaming up. For example, if Bush were on TV declaring out and out every day that this was a "war against militant Islam", a lot of fence-sitters in The Islamic World(tm) might be spooked into joining/aiding the other side. Do we want that?
I don't think so.
So why the obsession on what we CALL it?
Whatever we're CALLING it, we have invaded two sovereign countries. "Police action"? Come on. Look at the reality, not the terminology.
It's very simple, because the West cannot or will not accept the alternative, which is war for complete and utter dominance over the other side. The idea of declaring war on an entire religion smacks loudly of persecution and the history of war and persecution in the West condemns that in the harshest of ways - it's ingrained in the consciousness of the West. We feel that they've progressed beyond that, and think that by engaging in a world wide religious war, we'd backslide society by hundreds of years. Yell, scream, jump up and down, nothing short of a nuke will change this.
If this was an all out war in a building and positioning phase, one side would benefit greatly by having the other side refuse to acknowledge it was actually at war.
For later.
Well said. It's not looking good for the West.
Great points. We all have known (here at least), that we are fighting Islam in a religious war, not terrorism. But the key to this article is pointing out that we should be installing secular Attaturk style governments, not necessarily democracies.
You need to post more often. I love your little graphic.
However, for Bush to come out and declare things along the lines in which the author points would be to stir up more of a hornet's nest than has already been done by our actions. Does anybody remember Bush #41's comment, "Wouldn't be prudent"? Methods of action are passed down from Father to Son. 'Prudency' at the present time dictates we accomplish each designated task one at a time because it seems we are very alone in this struggle. Most of the rest of the 'Civilized World' (ie. Europe, etc.) seems to be, at best, uninvolved, and at worst, downright contrary to our overall mission. We are stretched at the present time, yet we must not fail, for Civilization depends on our success. 'Prudency' dictates a 'methodical' approach: First Afghanistan, then Iraq. Syria, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela........."Take a number, we'll be with you shortly".
I truly wish Bush would call a spade a spade! However, realistically, I know he can't. Not yet at least.
I am going to make a BIG assumption that the lack of belicose language on the Adminstration's part is actually a concious attempt to slow things down a bit and pick off these idiots one by one.
JMHO.
Thank you.
Lando
Excellent article ping!
Because it means seeking the truth about a given situation, it means recognizing that there is evil in the world, it means being willing to stand up for what you believe in, it means taking up arms and fighting. Americans have been conditioned away from all of these through PC, multi-culturalism, humanism. Too many Americans have no true core. We have become the Hollow Men...
I am glad most Americans aren't as irrational is this guy.
Exactly so. Well said.
Not me.
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