Posted on 02/25/2003 4:45:26 AM PST by conservativecorner
September 11th, 2002, came to the United States without another major catastrophe to lay at the feet of Al-Qaeda. The only near catastrophes were some of the memorials that flooded the country with confused sentiment and sometimes even vulgar displays. One cannot help but look with dismay at the glut of dead birds from a New Jersey ceremony and wonder what people were thinking when they decided to release these birds as a fitting memorial to the dead. The only ceremony I saw that had taste and dignity was in Britain. Flower petals falling from a chapel dome was as dignified as it was memorable. Americans seem doomed now to suffer a type of national repetition-compulsion every time September 11th comes around. Because we suffered a national trauma with the fall of the twin towers and have not yet figured out what it means, we will repeat the trauma again and again until meaning dulls it from our national unconscious.
Now, the debate about going to war with Iraq consumes the attention of the nations leaders and political commentators. The same lack of meaning about the events of September 11th, 2001 hover around this debate like a flock of vultures. The Democrats want to continue the war against the terrorists by going after Al-Qaeda and the Republicans want to invade Iraq with a preemptive strike. Both parties act like squabbling members of a dysfunctional family that have different points of view because they refuse to say what ought to be said. No one wants to admit that father is an irredeemable drunkard, so they argue over how best to pay his bounced checks. Instead of saying the truth we pretend another position and offer a solution to that. Just as the country refuses to say the truth about the events of September 11th, so now the political parties refuse to say the truth about the next step in our foreign policy. What is that truth our country and its politicians refuse to say? It is a very simple truth that most working class Americans already know. The truth is we are at war with Islam.
Once we see that the coming war with Islam is the defining moment of our age, then much that seems to exist in a fog comes into the light of day. The United States of America was attacked on September 11th, 2001 by the advanced forces of an Islamic army that is international in scope, global in its reach and representative of the Islamic world as a whole. We are not fighting a war on terror, but we are fighting, to the chagrin and dismay of Democrats and Republicans alike, a religious war against many nations. No one in high public office wants to admit this because their vested interest make it necessary to be silent. The Democrats do not want to face a religious war because the ideology of the party prevents it from being stated. Liberalism refuses to recognize that it has come up against practical limits. The political enterprise that began with the Enlightenment and the American and French Revolutions, the ideology that is at the core of the Democratic party, cannot imagine that a religious war will be the defining moment of the 21st century. Nor can the Republican party admit that we are at war with Islam. If the Democrats are made mute by their ideology, the Republicans are dumfounded by their economic interests. How can they admit a war with Islam when the fortunes of many in the party are tied to Islamic countries and their oil reserves? To declare war on Islam or to invade Saudi Arabia, would be to end the fortunes of many who fund the Republican party and have their fingers on foreign policy. Neither party speaks the truth for the country as a whole. They both hope their silence can buy a few more years of office and power. No one wants to take the drastic steps that a war with Islam requires. The very meaning of America and the integrity of our nation remains in the balance.
So, we have the two parties attempting to set a foreign policy that will never solve the problem. Unlike Columbus who believed the world to be round, our politicians after September 11th refuse to give up their beliefs in a foreign policy that is flat and meaningless. Our nation will never benefit from the truth not being spoken. The two political parties will protect, however, their constituency by not sailing off the edge of the earth. The Democrats will not abandon their minority interest groups and the Republicans will not abandon their wealthy businessmen, so we are to go into the future with a captain that neither tells us where we are sailing nor speaks the orders the sailors need to set the sails. Some say go after Al-Qaeda, other say invade Iraq. None say the future will be a war with Islam. The house of our country is wide open and all the politicians can do is to say that maybe if we close the window no one will notice they are coming through the door.
Anyone who undergoes military training knows that in war there is a difference between tactics and strategy. Tactics are the small steps we take on a longer, strategic journey. One platoon occupies a hill, another destroys an enemy ammunition dump by using fire and maneuver tactics. All of these small steps are part of a larger strategy that brings about the defeat of a nation’s army over the course of a protracted campaign. Sometimes, those who are involved in small unit tactics are unaware of the army’s larger strategy.
Up until now, both the Republicans and Democrats have been proposing tactics. Neither party has been forthcoming about a larger strategy to deal with the consequences of September 11th and a war with Islam. The Bush Administration's plans to invade Iraq is the closest thing we have to a tactic that is part of a larger, unspoken strategy. It is possible that some in the Bush Administration have concluded that indeed we are at war with Islam, and even though we cannot say that, we can plan a strategy for it. The events of September 11th, 2001 can be seen as an attack equal to the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor. The only reason we have a “war on terrorists” is because the politicians are reluctant to say the truth about the matter. Attacking Iraq may be the first utterance of a truth that has up until now stuck in our political throat. We already have troops on the ground in Afghanistan and are building up troops and supplies elsewhere in the middle east. Defeating Iraq and disarming Sadam Hussein will send a message to the rest of the Islamic world and will divide that world geographically in half. It will then be possible to pick off one at a time other Islamic governments. Over the long run, this could be a strategy that will defeat Islam without such a defeat being outspoken. Eventually, Saudi Arabia will fall to American power if this strategy is going to succeed.
The defeat or transformation of a world religion is no easy task. Our ultimate strategy may have to be geographical containment and national limitations imposed upon the number of Muslims living in the United States. I suppose this is an unconscious fear many European politicians have as well. In some countries like France, Muslims make up a significant part of the population. Thus, many Europeans prefer to do nothing. Yet doing nothing will not avail because the Muslim world is on the move and they will act out their resentment and dislike of the West no matter what we do. “Why can't we all get along?” will seem a naive question when the first terrorist A-bomb explodes in some western city. We can't get along because under present historical conditions some ways of life are mutually exclusive. This is why there are nations and why mighty nations have well guarded borders.
By defining our national crisis as a war with Islam we go a long way to assessing our foreign and domestic policies. Furthermore, we will have to deal with nagging problems like our porous borders, the crisis in American education and corporations, and the decay of our national culture. Needless to say, these problems will engender a debate about just what it means to be an American. This is something the patriotic working class has been expecting for a long time. Many in the American working class have strong religious values, and have watched with dismay the abuses of Affirmative Action and greedy corporate executives. The working class is patriotic to a fault and is disappointed that the American dream has been stretched thin abroad and abused at home. Their unrecognized sacrifice and patriotism makes one wonder if the “new America,” with its class of wealthy transnationals, Affirmative Action bureaucrats, self-serving politicians, incestuous corporate boards, illegal immigrants and alienated youth can survive the conflict to come. When a country’s values become as porous as its borders, who can stop the storm of true believers from invading. A screen may stop the flies, but not the wind.
Only a foreign and domestic policy that recognizes the coming war with Islam can make a difference in our national security and prosperity. “Yet how can this be?” many politicians ask. Have we not succeed in excluding religion from our debates and have we not created a multicultural world where religion is marginal at best? Must we open again the can or worms that is religious strife? Look what happened in Europe during the hundred years wars. These questions, are all important, but they miss the point. The point is that Islam has a history of conflict with the West for over a thousand years and the actions of Al-Qaeda are nothing more than a continuing unfolding of what has been going on for a long time. Modernism and globalization has done nothing more than lengthen the arm and the reason by which militant Islam can strike out against the West. The United states was sooner or later going to come up against this problem with Islam. Because we have projected our culture around the world, it is little wonder that our way of life has come up against an alternative way of life that cannot be swayed by our materialism. This is why the Democrat’s policy of only going after Al-Qaeda will not work. Al-Qaeda is not one of those rootless ferns that grows on air, but the flower of a plant that has both branch and root in a wide and international Islamic culture. Unless we go to the root of the problem, we will suffer the bloom of numberless blossoms of terror. Today it is Al-Qaeda but tomorrow it will be another group born from the soil of Islam. The very nature of Islam has to change before we are free from this struggle. If that change is culturally impossible, then we have to draw our borders clearly, define our national objectives, and secure an understanding of American citizenship. Seeing even farther ahead, we must be prepared as a nation to confront the growing Confusian-Islamic alliance about which Samuel P. Huntington warns us. If not, then will a new Sennacherib come down like a wolf upon the fold. __________
ROBERT KLEIN ENGLER lives in Chicago. He was a department chairman and labor union leader for many years at R.J. Daley College until he was ethnically cleansed and banned by the Chancellor in 1997. His book, A WINTER OF WORDS, is available from amazon.com.
Glad to see that some are finally getting it.
This appears to me to be a truth we must accept -- which will be very difficut, if not impossible, for many who are under the illusion that the enemy will respond to good will and reason.
"O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her.?Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind."- Common Sense, 1776.
The United States of America was created as a refuge for an ideology, admirably described in Thomas Paine's few, pithy words above.
I do not suppose that his generation saw themselves as anything but refugees and survivors. It has taken 227 years (not really a lot, in historical terms) for the descendants of those who oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant to bestride the world like a Colossus-but that we do.
Our ancient enemies are not defeated, however, and our great power and expansive reach have created for them a commonality of interest.
America is born of a theory. Boldly stated, "We hold (certain) truths to be self evident".
Our enemies emphatically disagree. Only one of us is right.
The test has come to us, unexpectedly to be sure, but it is at hand.
Just as the USSR vanished in an eyeblink when its organizational principles (State Socialism and Red Terror) were exposed as false and/or inhuman, so may we if we are not endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, if governments do not derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, if it is not true that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.
The EU transnational socialists certainly recognize what is at stake here, as do the Islamists.
Do we?
"In the last century, America was threatened by a global communist revolution. Avoiding all-out war, we outlasted it. And we can outlast this Islamist revolution. What we must avoid is a war of faiths, a war of civilizations between Islam and America. And those who propagandize for such a war are the unwitting or willful collaborators of Osama bin Laden."---Pat Buchanan
Clueless bigot zealot alert would have been more appropriate.
Our refuge for mankind is in danger.
Apparently yopu've never read the koran. Or even the out takes of it that have been quoted various times on this web site. Islam by command of the koran must fight against all other religions and belief systems. Islam by command of the koran must work to dominate and control the entire world, by word if possible by sword if necessary. Islamics are commanded by the koran to fight the unbeliever near to them. Someone will always be near to fight with until either islam or the rest of the world dies.
We are at war with islam. All islamics may not be terrorists, but all islamics support terrorists. All islamics may not be at war with the US but all islamics support the war with the US.
Due to the koran's command for the islamic to lie to unbelievers you can't even trust them when they say they've converted. This war will only end when all the islamics are gone. Preferably we can just isolate them until several generations of Christians inhabit what once were islamic lands. Until then every islamic is a threat to this country and to the peace of the world. Read their book.
It is not a racist thing. There are black islamics, arab islamics, asian islamics and white islamics (may even be some red islamics, I don't know) Each of these is an enemy of freedom.
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