Whoever Laughs Last Wins

Many people in Europe and the United States feel that confronting Islamic fascism is wrong and that we should rather explore the roots of Muslim rage and better understand the views and aspirations of their passionate adherents.

In the spirit of greater understanding among peoples, here are the views and aspirations of Omar Bakri Muhammad, a suspected al Qaeda terrorist, (unjustly suspected no doubt) in an interview in the Portuguese newspaper Publico reprinted in the July issue of Harper's

"We don't make a distinction between civilians and noncivilians, innocents and noninnocents. Only between Muslims and nonbelievers. And the life of a nonbeliever has no value. There's no sanctity in it. ...

"We are not hypocrites. We don't say: 'I'm sorry, it was a mistake.' We say: 'You deserved it.' We assume the purpose is to kill as many people as possible, to spread the terror, so that people in the West think: 'Look what happened to us!' ...

"Terror is the language of the 21st century. If I want something, I terrorize you to achieve it. ...

"The word 'terrorism' is not new among Muslims. Muhammad said: 'I am the prophet who laughs when he's killing the enemy.' It is not only a question of killing. It's laughing while we are killing."

Among the enemies these brave and high-stylin' jihadis recently killed is Afik Zehavi, who threatened the Muslim world by walking to kindergarten with his Dad yesterday morning.

We Can't We All Just Get Along?

Little Green Footballs has a link to an Islamofascist web forum in Sweden on which you can find a charming video of Muslim children reenacting the beheading of Nick Berg.

You can find it here.

Perhaps even more disturbing than the film itself is the unfolding of events leading up to it. These children must have seen the gruesome original. They appear not to be disturbed by it. And some adult supervision must have been involved.

What sort of adults would devote time to this sort of after school activity? Adjectives such as primitive, hate-filled, ignorant, brutal, and unthinking come to mind.

Sure, they’ll always be some people who instinctively grasp for equivalents. “There are teenagers in Texas acting out an Abu Gharib prison fantasy right now,” they’ll reason.

This is a comforting thought only to those who have too much invested in the moral equivalence of cultures. Western notions of superiority are merely arrogance and conceit because, well, that’s what we learned in college.

Yet, I never saw a man beheaded in college nor, until today, had I ever seen children gleefully re-enact the most vivid and disturbing act of violence imaginable.

There is new information coming in and some people unwilling to accept it.

We are under attack from an inferior culture . . . one that has little to offer the world but backwardness and brutality.

Moreover, this culture employs asymmetrical savagery in order to shock us and advance its political agenda. That agenda includes the subjugation of women, the genocide of Jews, religious intolerance, and coercive violence.

That was the agenda on September 11, 2001. It was also the agenda on February 26, 1993 when the World Trade Center was bombed by Muslim extremists aided by the Iraqi government.

The agenda is not a closely held secret. It is public. It has been public for years. And it’s been ignored for years.

Those in Europe and the United States who have tried to raise the issue to the level of public discourse have been fired from their jobs, like Robert Kilroy-Silk or shot dead like Pim Fortuyn.

Yet, the conflict is engaged no matter how much people want to hope that it’s an illusion . . . that it’s some sort of misunderstanding, that with compromise and good will from all sides we can all find a way to live in peace.

Take a look at one culture’s image of a peaceful future.

What If They Had A War And No One Came (around)?

Are we at war or not? Seems like a simple question.

The United States suffered enormous casualties during an unprovoked surprise attack. The President dispatched our most advanced military forces to change the foreign regime that trained and supported the attackers. And for good measure, he also directed the armed forces to work with our last remaining willing allies, namely the British and Australians, to overthrown a brutal fascist dictator who -- through intention and past action -- posed a threat to a strategic region of the world even though he was not directly responsible for the attack that provoked the U.S. response in the first place.

Sounds like a war to me. In fact, that would be World War II.

yet for some reason the clarity of a war against fascism in the 20th century seems lost on people frenzied by BushHate® in the 21st. One such fevered dissenter is Brant Thomas of Brooklyn who writes in today's New York Times letter section:

"I would be fine with the president's citing parallels between World War II and the war on terrorism except that in the case of this war, Iraq did not attack us, and in World War II, Japan did!"

No doubt Brant will be relieved to know that we declared war on Germany and even Italy although those countries never actually attacked us. You might even say Roosevelt acted preemptively since, after Pearl Harbor, he preferred not to wait and find out if we were vulnerable to another attack.

Didn't President Bush do the same thing? In fact, aren't the stakes even higher now? After all, Pearl Harbor was an attack on a military installation thousands of miles from the United States while Sept. 11th was an attack on civilians in downtown Manhattan resulting in twice as many casualties as Dec 7th. And wasn't Saddam a lot closer to building a nuclear weapon in 1993 than Hitler was in 1945?

Public radio also seems confused about the "war" as they would say it if you could hear scare quotes. Listen to this report on a young high school graduate who -- get this -- actually wants to join the army! While there's fighting going on!!

Jeff Tyler of "Marketplace" can barely contain his astonishment. Young educated people are volunteering to to join the "war" in droves. "You heard right," Tyler says, "the army is turning people away!"

"Don't assume they (stupid rednecks) are joining because they can't find better prospects," Tyler counsels. Some are even enlisting after they've completed college foregoing the tuition assistance that is the only possible motivation for military service in the mind of a Blue Stater.

The voice of reason in this story is the high school guidence counsellor Judy Campbell who tries to dissaude graduates from serving their country. If they are "determined" to enlist she advises them to join ROTC instead.

Tyler says, "it's tempting to assume that they join in spite of the war, in fact, many enlist because of it."

It barely registers that there are people who believe we are at war and that they feel a duty to participate and help the United States succeed.

Unstated, of course, is that such misplaced patriotism will only get you shot, or worse, get Bush re-elected.

You see, to the partisans in the Blue States, we are at war. And the enemy is Bush.