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.
Uh, no. Rule #1 in politics is that you dance with those who brung ya. If Lieberman is re-elected with more GOP and independent votes, he will move further to the right on more public policy issues. He will be a constant headache and unreliable vote in the RAT caucus. Furthermore, he will support the WOT, Israel, and a strong national defense.
Lieberman on November 8 will become the RAT's Chafee.
re: cemetary
What better place is there? They have to be buried within 24 hours anyway... big hole, it was a bonus for them.
F that... I would have wiped them out, the rest would moan anyway, watch for the fallout.
They might as well have formated in the shape of a middle finger.
I wonder what McCain would say? Nevermind.
This woman caller sounded so very upper east side of NY. UGH
Great article. Cair has, I would say, almost unlimited funds to carry on their dirty work.
Excerpt:
[Jamal Hasan of the Council for Democracy and Tolerance explains that CAIR's goal is to spread "Islamic hegemony the world over by hook or by crook."[9] Kamal Nawash, head of Free Muslims Against Terrorism, finds that CAIR and similar groups condemn terrorism on the surface while endorsing an ideology that helps foster extremism, adding that "almost all of their members are theocratic Muslims who reject secularism and want to establish Islamic states."]
Could be upper west side too.
The New Juristocracy
http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110008932
Just throwing this in here. I'm too angry to post properly.
This is gonna get good. Go Rush!!!
Church of the Nativity.
Novak: Armitage Didn't Reveal Everything
http://wizbangblog.com/2006/09/13/novak-armitage-didnt-reveal-everything.php
Rudy nor McCain will get my vote. It is too early for me to determine who I will vote for, But, I know two I WON'T vote for.
LOL
Wilson's Add Armitage to Lawsuit
http://media.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjgxYTQ5OGY5YWIwOWQxODkxNWY3MGMzNDNlYTQ5NGQ=
Just a little teeny bulletin from http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com...
thanks Ali...
And look what happened to Perotistas. Their "Reform" party has split into a half dozen irrelevant constantly squabbling forever minority party's.
It seems to me your fundamental principal is you just dislike the two party system. I guess I do not get that. Parliamentary systems require EVEN more compromising of principals to form a Government. If you object to RINOS, God help you in a parliamentary system that might require you to accept Democrats or Greenies or other moonbats in your cabinet to achieve the parliamentary majority to govern!
The best of both worlds: Smarky!
Billion here a billion there. Just numbers. A billion seconds ago, Christ had yet to walk the earth.
bump for later read. thanks for posting.
Just Damn...
Wholly Shi’ite Alliance?
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5848
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