An Anatomy of Surrender

City Journal ^ | Spring 2008 | Bruce Bawer

[Dawnsblood]

Even military leaders aren’t immune. In 2005, columnist Diana West noted that America’s Iraq commander, Lieutenant General John R. Vines, was educating his staff in Islam by giving them a reading list that “whitewashes jihad, dhimmitude and sharia law with the works of Karen Armstrong and John Esposito”; two years later, West noted the unwillingness of a counterinsurgency advisor, Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen, to mention jihad. In January 2008, the Pentagon fired Stephen Coughlin, its resident expert on sharia and jihad; reportedly, his acknowledgment that terrorism was motivated by jihad had antagonized an influential Muslim aide. “That Coughlin’s analyses would even be considered ‘controversial,’ ” wrote Andrew Bostom, editor of The Legacy of Jihad, “is pathognomonic of the intellectual and moral rot plaguing our efforts to combat global terrorism.” (Perhaps owing to public outcry, officials announced in February that Coughlin would not be dismissed after all, but instead moved to another Department of Defense position.)

Enough. We need to recognize that the cultural jihadists hate our freedoms because those freedoms defy sharia, which they’re determined to impose on us. So far, they have been far less successful at rolling back freedom of speech and other liberties in the U.S. than in Europe, thanks in no small part to the First Amendment. Yet America is proving increasingly susceptible to their pressures.

The key question for Westerners is: Do we love our freedoms as much as they hate them? Many free people, alas, have become so accustomed to freedom, and to the comfortable position of not having to stand up for it, that they’re incapable of defending it when it’s imperiled—or even, in many cases, of recognizing that it is imperiled.

[MrLee]

We’ll never defeat Islam fighting them like this!! But, I already knew that......

[SandRat]

These are American Values and they are 100% incompatable with Mohammadism.

Remember....

[Mr. Mojo]

“That Coughlin’s analyses [that terrorism is motivated by jihad] would even be considered ‘controversial,’” wrote Andrew Bostom, editor of The Legacy of Jihad, “is pathognomonic of the intellectual and moral rot plaguing our efforts to combat global terrorism.”

Well said.

[ought-six]

Well, islam offends me. Get rid of it.

[twntaipan]

This should be required reading. Every time I see one of those idiotic “Coexist” bumper stickers (they use the symbols of world religions to write the word) I want to puke. The issue is not intolerance in the west (unless it is the intolerance of the leftists); it is the creeping dhimitude that Western elites seem all-too-eager for.

[neverdem]

BTTT!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Good reading,...thanks for posting.

[Marine_Uncle]

Good read.

[SunkenCiv]

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Decline and Fall: Europe's Slow Motion Suicide by Bruce S. Thornton

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