Posted on 09/03/2006 9:59:52 AM PDT by UnklGene
Chestlessness -
August 30, 2006
The case of the two Fox News journalists, held hostage in Gaza, is worth dwelling upon. They were released after their captors had made tapes of them dressed as Arabs and announcing they had changed their names and converted to Islam.
Lately I have been looking at the large -- at how the West is proving unable to cope with a threat from a fanatical Islamic movement, that it ought to be able to snuff out with fair ease. (See my column last Sunday.) But the large is often most visible in the small.
The degree to which our starch is awash is exhibited in the behaviour of so many of our captives, but especially in these two. They were told to convert to Islam under implicit threat (blindfolded and hand-tied, they could not judge what threat), and agreed to make the propaganda broadcasts to guarantee their own safety. That much we can understand, as conventional cowardice. (Understand; not forgive.) But it is obvious from their later statements that they never thought twice; that they could see nothing wrong in serving the enemy, so long as it meant they’d be safe.
I assume they are not Christians (few journalists are), but had they ever been instructed in that faith, they might have grasped that conversion to Islam means denial of Christ, and that is something many millions of Christians (few of them intellectuals) have refused to do, even at the cost of excruciating deaths. Christianity still lives, because of such martyrs. Not suicide bombers: but truly defenceless martyrs.
You don’t necessarily have to be a Christian, to be Western. Two years ago, an heroic Italian captive, Fabrizio Quattrocchi, asked to make whimpering statements as part of the video of his execution in Iraq, ripped at his hood and instead declared, “This is how an Italian dies!” to his contemptible captors. He must have upset them: for they shot him instead of sawing off his head. In making his stand for human dignity, he also turned one of their propaganda videos, into one of ours.
But Quattrocchi had three friends, who all successfully begged for their lives. And the two Fox journalists, whom I will not stoop to name, begged for their lives even though, in retrospect, their lives probably weren’t in danger.
Why did Fatah bother to make the video? Didn’t they realize conversion under duress means nothing? That no one, East or West, would take it at face value?
They didn’t make it for face value. They made it to show the whole Muslim world, via satellite television, what wimps these Westerners are. That they’ll do anything at all to save their lives, that they don’t think twice about it. That is the substance of most Islamo-fascist propaganda: that the West consists of straw men, of men without chests, of men easily pushed over.
These two journalists were captured and held under nasty conditions by a branch of Fatah: the Palestinian party associated not with the “radical” Hamas, but with the supposedly “moderate” party of Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Authority. They were for use as chips in prisoner exchanges. They could be sold, or exchanged for other prisoners.
President Abbas could have had them sprung at a word, but did not do so at first, for he had nothing to lose by “playing with the crisis”. At no point, for instance, was he told he could either release the prisoners, or have his compound at Ramallah levelled. We don’t “overreact” in the West, the way we used to do -- we don’t like to put out little fires, we prefer to wait until they are big ones. And we prefer blaming ourselves to blaming the enemy, when the enemy lights the fire. We assume they only do it because we must have done something to annoy them.
Jean-François Revel: “Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it.”
At the time Revel said this, the enemy power was Soviet Communism. The intellectuals, the smart journalists, the fashionable academics, the smug urbane of all descriptions, were hardly pro-Communist. They were more ironical than that, they were “anti-anti-Communist”. Today they are anti-anti-Islamo-fascist.
I created a scene with a column, many years ago, when I wrote about the young men in the corridors of the University of Montreal, who stood by and watched while Gamil Garbi (alias Marc Lépine) shot fourteen women to death. To a man (if you could call them men), they explained afterwards, “We couldn’t do anything, he had a gun.” As I pointed out at the time, we have bred young men who will stand by and watch a psychopath shoot defenceless women, so long as he assures them he will not shoot them. And we have bred the young women these young men deserve.
Men without chests, men without character, men who don’t think twice.
David Warren
(No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo! )
You need to read Steyn's article further to see the similarity in the Warren quote and Steyn...
"If you're a Muslim, the video is anything but meaningless. Not even the dumbest jihadist believes these infidels are suddenly true believers. Rather, it confirms the central truth Osama and the mullahs have been peddling -- that the West is weak, that there's nothing -- no core, no bedrock -- nothing it's not willing to trade."
" It doesn't matter how "understandable" Centanni and Wiig's actions are to us, what the target audience understands is quite different: that there is nothing we're willing to die for. And, to the Islamist mind, a society with nothing to die for is already dead."
I agree. Though it's easy to say from the comfort of my living room, I believe that living with the consequences of a poor choice in a life or death situation can be worse than death.
Reminds me of that scene from the movie Braveheart: "Aye, fight and you may die. Run and you'll live -- at least for a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they will never take... OUR FREEDOM!"
The Japanese probably felt the same way about Americans, that we were unwilling to commit to suicide charges and that we were willing to be captured alive.
Gee, we won that war, didn't we? Victory isn't about willingness to die. It is, to paraphrase Patton, having a willingness to make the other side die in very large quantities until they cannot and will not fight any longer. THAT is what has been missing from this war to date.
That would be a pretty sad world.
Utterly utopian and pointless.
Ezra Levant, editor of the Western Standard, made this same observation today in his paper.
Ironically, our enemies agree with you. Personally, I don't want to play their game and believe "we live in a time where literally nothing (especially religious beliefs) is worth dying for"
Well, if you don't think it's important or not that a billion Muzzies think of us as cowards.
(No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo! )
:~ ) Now I know I'm alert & I've had my quota of caffeine for the day
(No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo! )
Until such time as David Warren demonstrates that he himself has a chest--or even puts himself in a position where he might actually have to demonstrate that--I don't put much stock in what he has written.
Well, what did you think of their statements made after they were released?
I just hope this never scares a single journalist away from coming to Gaza to cover this story because the Palestinian people are a very beautiful, kind-hearted and caring people that the world need[s] to know more about.Neither has repudiated this so far as I am aware, now that each is free to do so.
ML/NJ
That's part of the problem. Gawd, look at the attitude in the US during WWII. Songs like "You're a sap, Mr. Jap." And a complete willingness to unleash total war on the other side.
Now, the greater war is not in Iraq, but at home between those with Vietnam goggles and those without such (we've discussed that one before). During the Cold War, the battle between the US and the Soviet Union was largely fought through proxies abroad. With this war, the Islamists largely fight their battles through their proxies in the far left and far right in this country. And that is just insane.
Exactly. Besides, their intended audience is much more aroused by the beheadings of those who adhere to this author's doctrine than by the "converts".
Like I've said elsewhere, the Japanese thought Americans were cowards in WWII because our soldiers would not engage in suicide raids and were captured as POWs. However, we kill Islamists in great quantities in Iraq and Afghanistan because they are willing to die. Our greatest problem with this war is not how Islamists view us, but how our friggin' Democrats view Islamists. It is not about being unwilling to die at gunpoint over a forced conversion. It is about the likes of Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi being willing to sandbag our national security WITHOUT A FRIGGIN' GUN POINTED AT THEIR HEADS, BUT OF THEIR OWN DAMN FREE WILL.
Very well put! I agree with you. :~)
Though we might all cringe when we see kidnappers get what they want, I can't blame a man for wanting his life more than he wants to be thought-well-of-in-death by a bunch of armchair critics who have never had a confrontation with barbarians who would not hesitate to die for 'their' God. And no, I don't think that aspect makes them better people at all, merely more zealous.
If these two had been killed, we'd have never known why, and these critics who judge them harshly would have probably blamed them anyway just for being over there.
Normandy Bastogne, Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal and the list goes on! Muzzies had better learn a little of history in the last century. The day is coming. Most of us know that. And when push comes to shove, they will know how we can fight for our country and our principles.
They would also do well to remember General George S. Patton's famous remark :
Son, you're not here to die for your country. You're here to make the other dumb bastard die for his!
And those two journalists were not there to die for their country.
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