Posted on 09/13/2006 9:00:08 AM PDT by MNJohnnie
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1700725/posts
The enemy within -- and it's not who you think (David Warren nails Islamofascism's 5th column)
Ottawa Citizen - Canada ^ | September 13, 2006 | David Warren
Posted on 09/13/2006 10:43:18 AM CDT 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.
So much for paying back the Boys and Girls Club.
Whooo Hooo! Democrats are saddened, and out a bundle of cash too.
Did we really think that this would not happen?
Yes- at times- but here is the meat -not the hysteria:
Bush's surveillance plan faces a difficult fight in Congress, especially in the House, where GOP leaders favor a different approach.
That measure, sponsored by Rep. Heather Wilson, R-New Mexico, and endorsed by the GOP chairmen of the Judiciary and Intelligence committees, would require the administration to wait until a terrorist attack to open an electronic surveillance program.
The White House has conditionally endorsed one bill, by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, as long as it's passed unchanged -- not a sure thing given amendments that await it on the floor as soon as next week.
Specter's bill would submit the existing electronic surveillance program to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court for a one-time constitutional review and expand the time for emergency warrants from three to seven days.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/12/congress.terrorism.ap/index.html?section=cnn_topstories
Heather Wilson (R) wants us to WAIT UNTIL AFTER A TERRORIST ATTACK to be able to use electronic surveillance...
I got you down for it...
Kofi spoke with leaders in the region. LOL. It is a disaster for them because a democratic Iraq threatens their dictatorships and royal families.
Clint, You KNOW you are so Dancing with the Stars hooked.
I am starting a new reality show, "Hunting with the Vice-President". You do NOT want to be eliminated!
Heather Wilson needs to take away that R next to her name.
I will use Spell Check, I will use Spell Check, I will use Spell Check, I will use Spell Check, I will use Spell Check, I will use Spell Check, I will use Spell Check, I will use Spell Check, I will use Spell Check, I will use Spell Check,
Crush the 'Rats. See them driven before you, Hear the lamentation of their 'Rat women!
That's for sure. By the way, you have my vote for UN ambassador. And if President Hun kicks them out, I'm flying to NYC with my lawn chair, umbrella, and cooler to sit across from the UN building and watch them move.
Can't believe that will pass. Her seat's up so prolly just a normal critter pander for votes stunt.
What ya say Genghis?
Let me guess, no man riding a wolfhound... but they are all for sodomy and teaching it's okay.
Don't worry--as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs you'll have plenty of staffers to check your spelling!
I'm making the list now...
You would have more fun up on Embassy Row. Besides, the Donald would have the Secretariat down in a flash!
Has anyone ever seen the size of an Irish Wolfhound?
It's not really a dog, it's a small horse.
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