While the bare-knuckled British press condemned the “evil Moslem terrorists,” our media by and large shrugged, preoccupied as they’ve been with more important news, such as the sandbox spat between Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump. You’d never know we were at war with a barbarian culture bent on destroying our way of life.
Though we’ve so far avoided another attack here in America, there’s been no shortage of terrorism around the world. You might say there’s been a silent rampage. The thwarted British plot coincides with no fewer than 655 Islamic terror attacks across the globe in just the past three months. The full list appears on the Web site thereligionofpeace.com.
We can’t vouch for
the list’s accuracy, but based on a quick survey, the data
seem correct. We commend the list to your attention because it
puts the war on terror in the proper light.
That is, this war is truly a worldwide
clash of civilizations and not, as the cut-and-run crowd keeps
telling us, simply a “situation” that requires “managing.”
Following is a sample of atrocities from
the list, showing how peace-loving and tolerant Muslims are. They:
Blew up three Israelis at a bakery.
Slashed the throat of a non-Moslem
teenager in Thailand.
Butchered a Buddhist man in Thailand as
he drove his 7-yearold son home from school. Murdered a teacher
on her way to a girl’s school in Baghdad. Gunned down an
“infidel” advocate for the victims of Armenian genocide
in Turkey. Slaughtered at least 70 students at a mostly women’s
university in Baghdad, using a car bomb followed by a suicide
bomber on foot to kill survivors. Murdered a married couple in
Thailand, pinning a note to the beheaded body of the husband
reading, “We kill all Buddhists.” Beat to death an
Indonesian police officer at a funeral for a fellow terrorist.
Beheaded a newspaper journalist in Pakistan.
Beat to death a
Christian with a metal bar in Ethiopia. Shot and set on fire two
Buddhist teachers in Thailand. Killed three Afghan police
officers with a bomb. Decapitated 26 Afghan men and strung their
bodies from trees. Killed 15 civilians in Chad, including a man
who was disemboweled and a woman set on fire. Hacked to death a
Hindu leader in India.
Blew up a passer-by outside the U.S.
Consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan, using a bicycle bomb.
Blew up two dozen innocents at a Shia
wedding in Baghdad.
As we say, reading the full list (our
download of the data filled 47 computer-screen pages) puts this
war into cold perspective.
We are at war with an
enemy that is driven by a religion that is far from peaceful. And
the battlefront is worldwide, in what looks more and more like a
clash of civilizations — the “mujahedeen” of pan-Islam
vs. the “infidels” of the West. We don’t divide
the war that way, but they do. And that’s the problem.
For us, this is a technical war, one from
which we hope to quickly extract ourselves so we can go about our
business. For them, it’s a perpetual holy war, led by
fanatics who are patient, counting on us tiring of the fight as
it becomes too savage and costly.
The 2004 work, “Management
of Barbarism,” by Abu Bakr Naji, a rising star in the jihadi
movement, is instructive for anyone who doubts their commitment
and ruthlessness.
“O people! The viciousness of the
Russian soldier is twice that of the American soldier. If the
Americans suffer one-tenth of the casualties the Russians
suffered in Afghanistan and Chechnya, they will flee and never
look back,” Naji rallied fellow Jihadists in his Internet-posted
screed. “They have reached a stage of effeminacy that makes
them unable to sustain battles for a long period of time, a
weakness they compensate for with a deceptive media halo.”
Our troops are tough as
nails, hardly effeminate. But our leaders — those who set
the rules of engagement, and targets and strategies — often
hold them back and tie their hands.
Meanwhile, politically correct
politicians and media don’t do anyone any good by
downplaying the Islamic threat we face. They may be costing us
victory.
“We are losing in Iraq and
Afghanistan,” asserts former senior CIA analyst Michael
Scheuer, “because the political leaders of both parties
— and their politically correct acolytes in the media, the
academy and the general officer corps — refuse to square
with the American people about the enemy’s motivation.”
That motivation is
their 1,400-year-old faith, said Scheuer, who closely tracked
Muslim terrorists like Osama bin Laden over the last decade.
Indeed, the biggest myth going is that
Islam has been “hijacked” by the terrorists. No, the
only thing that’s been hijacked is the truth about
fundamentalist, radical Islam, which makes holy war against
infidels a sacred duty for Moslems.
The terrorists are
getting all their violent ideas — the jihad, the martyrdom
for virgins, even the beheadings — right out of their holy
book. To pretend otherwise, to brainwash soldiers and cops on the
home front into thinking the enemy is simply a ragtag network of
random thugs and not part of a larger movement — is to set
them, and us all, up for failure.
The almost endless stream of terrorists we’ve seen
committing almost unspeakable acts of violence all over the world
aren’t the irrational fanatics they’ve been portrayed
to be. Hard as it is to believe, they have a calculated worldview
based on religious and historical assumptions.
They don’t act willy-nilly. These aren’t common street hoods who will mug their own mother for drug money. They are disciplined soldiers in a holy war. While their bloodshed may seem random, they have a purpose, a religious purpose, sick as it may be. And they are relentless. Denying this unpleasant truth so we can feel nice and tolerant is politically correct suicide. We need an honest assessment of our enemy. Wishful thinking is not going to win this war. Jihadists have declared war on America and the West, yet we are reluctant to even identify them with the religion in whose name they kill us. It’s time to take off the gloves. We must declare war on jihad — and all its participants and supporters — before they can make even deeper inroads.
Created: 04 Jan 2007