Posted on 09/13/2006 8:43:18 AM PDT by GMMAC
The enemy within -- and it's not who you think
Ottawa Citizen
September 13, 2006
COMMENTARY: DAVID WARREN
Listening to President Bush speak, on Monday's anniversary of 9/11, after a day of distastefully sentimental memorials, my question was not what have we achieved in the last five years, but rather, what have we learned? Bush and Blair -- the captain and vice-captain of Team West in the war against "the terrorists" so far -- are both now in the twilight of their political careers. Both have recently broken with habitual discretion, and made attempts to name the enemy. This has, if anything, added to their unpopularity, for when they mention that the enemy presents himself as Islamic, there are shrill cries not only from radical Muslims, but across the spectrum of the Left in the West.
Mr Bush, much the less eloquent of the two, has now retreated from his use of the term "Islamofascist" -- which as I said in a previous column, is a fairer label than "Islamist" for an enemy that spreads a palampore of traditional Islam, over a stuffing from the Western-bred totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century. As I wrote Aug. 27, from Ahmadinejad to Zawahiri, we hear rhetoric that uses an Islamic vocabulary and crude grammar, but animated with a syntax that owes more to Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, than to the Prophet and his traditional interpreters. The term is thus meant to suggest a skewed Islam, an Islam "adapted to our age" by psychopathic men, whose own Islamic learning is purposefully politicized, and aggressively de-spiritualized. Since the alternative would be to say that Ahmadinejad, Zawahiri, et al. do speak legitimately for Islam, I don't see why anyone should object to the term "Islamofascist".
Mr Blair gave an interview worth reading to the Israeli daily, Haaretz, published Monday. The editors present characterized it as "sombre". The British prime minister was still going through the motions of advocating the "peace process", and the "two-state solution" for Israel and Palestine, without (according to me) any real conviction that it could work. It is just something Western politicians do to please the figurative "Arab street", and it does not please anyone, any more. With much more conviction, he said leaders throughout the West have grasped that we are in a truly "global struggle", for which the people of the West are not prepared. The politicians have failed to explain to us how much is at stake, and how much will be lost if we are not resolute in defence of Western values.
For all its uncharacteristic awkwardness, Mr Blair's answer to a question about British home-grown terrorists donged the bell:
"It's not necessarily what have we done wrong, because part of the problem of what you have in Western opinion is that Western opinion always wants to believe that it's our fault and these people want to have a sort of, you know, grievance culture that they visit upon us and say it's our fault. And so we have a young British-born man of Pakistani origin sitting in front of a television screen saying I will go and kill innocent people because of the oppression of Muslims, when he has been brought up in a country that has given him complete religious freedom and full democratic rights and actually a very good job and standard of living. Now, that warped mind has grown out of a global movement based on a perversion of Islam which we have to confront, and we have to confront it globally."
I frankly admire both Bush and Blair, as courageous politicians, with open minds, doing their best within the limits of what is politically possible in their respective spheres. They are both towering figures, in comparison to the little men who oppose them. We won't know what trouble is, until the little men replace them.
I continue optimistic about what can be done, should we summon the will to do it. I have written repeatedly that a robust and unified Western response to "Islamofascism" could fling it quickly onto the trash-heap of history, to join Nasserism and Baathism and other earlier manifestations of Arab nationalism and socialism. Smack it hard, without apology.
My pessimism is founded in the fear that this robust and unified response cannot be mobilized. We have a huge fifth column in the West, and it is not the Muslim immigrants. They become radicalized only because our "victim culture" encourages them to nurture their grievances. Yet most, despite temptation, remain good, decent people, doing their share of the West's work.
Our real enemy is within us, in the immense constituency of the half-educated narcissists pouring from our universities each year -- that glib, smug, liberal, and defeatist "victim culture" itself, that inhabits the academy, our media, our legal establishment, the bureaucratic class. The opinion leaders of our society, who live almost entirely off the avails of taxation, make their livelihoods biting the hands that feed them, and undermining the moral order on which our solidarity depends.
© Ottawa Citizen
Both have recently broken with habitual discretion, and made attempts to name the enemy. This has, if anything, added to their unpopularity, for when they mention that the enemy presents himself as Islamic, there are shrill cries not only from radical Muslims, but across the spectrum of the Left in the West.
Why is anyone suprised at this. It does beg the question to the Left...who's side are you on?
<< I give Blair lotsa credit though. He has been steadfast in his support for America. >>
"Steadfast" is too strong for me. Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, has been steadfast. Mr Blair, teamed up immediately before and in the early days of the Iraq Expedition with the hapless Colin Powell and his treasonous State Department brahmanas, allowed the Saddamists to move their weapons and slip away -- and thus set up the situation with which we are now dealing.
And his support -- much appreciated as it is and although to be lauded -- has always been for Judeo-Christian/Western/Human Civilization rather than specifically for America.
In ways that every other in post-Christian Europe and most in both the Westminster Parliament and among those who comprise his electorate seem unable to see, Mr Blair knows our fight is for the survival -- or not -- of our very civilization.
And for that, I'll join in thanking God for him.
The NY Post ran a GREAT article from an arab yesterday. I'll see if I can find it.
<< I give Blair lotsa credit though. He has been steadfast in his support for America. >>
"Steadfast" is too strong for me. Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, has been steadfast. Mr Blair, teamed up immediately before and in the early days of the Iraq Expedition with the hapless Colin Powell and his treasonous State Department brahmanas, allowed the Saddamists to move their weapons and slip away -- and thus set up the situation with which we are now dealing.
And his support -- much appreciated as it is and although to be lauded -- has always been for Judeo-Christian/Western/Human Civilization rather than specifically for America.
In ways that every other in post-Christian Europe and most in both the Westminster Parliament and among those who comprise his electorate seem unable to see, Mr Blair knows our fight is for the survival -- or not -- of our very civilization.
And for that, I'll join in thanking God for him.
He sent troops, and lots of them. Gotta respect that.
This is an excellent article.
I do.
And them.
"Holy Hypocracy" is part of all branches of Islam, as I read them. Therefore, I remain convinced that Islam and its believers are inherently antithetical to Judeo-Christian based Western societies.
History, alas seems to support my position. In this debate I wish the facts were otherwise, as I would like to be proven wrong.
I have no interest in eradicating Islam from the face of the earth. But I'm prepared to support such an action if I am wrong.
"We won't know what trouble is, until the little men replace them." Actually, the contrast of leadership from Bush to the feckless degeneracy of the previous eight-year sleaze merchant and his sycophancy who soiled the Oval Office and Oval Office sink IS QUITE stark and bodes an education when the little men who worship the previous degenerate and defended his criminal, degenerate, and immoral behavior return to power over us ... since they defended and gave approval to his degeneracy, we can know they will behave at least as badly, never as morally as President Bush. Their current lie campaign undermining the war is also an educational tool, for adults.
Thanks Bitt
A pluperfect synopsis of my view.
By the same token, I fully understand and appreciate the Guru's stance. My argument is simply that his thinking might be premature.
Don't make a billion-and-a-half enemies if you don't have to. That makes perfect sense, for now. But, just maybe, you have to...
How many in the media could qualify as fighter pilots as Bush has done? How about zero! Bush is also far better educated than most journalists. Also, how many professors could qualify as fighter pilots? It never ceases to amaze how members of the lunar left who cannot spell, who are illiterate when it comes to history, are prepared to attack Bush's intelligence.
Thanks for the ping!
Great article. Thanks for the ping!
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