The murder and five attempted murders last week at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle were explicitly linked by the alleged killer, a self-proclaimed Muslim-American, to U.S. support of Israel and America's presence in Iraq. The political dimensions of Naveed Afzal Haq's stated motivations require Seattle's liberal elite ostriches to finally take a very difficult, honest look at radical Islam's global prerogatives. Some perspective from Victor Davis Hanson in NRO.
It is now nearly five years since jihadists from the Arab world left a crater in Manhattan and ignited the Pentagon. Apart from the frontline in Iraq , the United States and NATO have troops battling the Islamic fascists in Afghanistan. European police scramble daily to avoid another London or Madrid train bombing. The French, Dutch, and Danish governments are worried that a sizable number of Muslim immigrants inside their countries are not assimilating, and, more worrisome, are starting to demand that their hosts alter their liberal values to accommodate radical Islam. It is apparently not safe for Australians in Bali, and a Jew alone in any Arab nation would have to be discreet -- and perhaps now in France or Sweden as well. Canadians' past opposition to the Iraq war, and their empathy for the Palestinians, earned no reprieve, if we can believe that Islamists were caught plotting to behead their prime minister. Russians have been blown up by Muslim Chechnyans from Moscow to Beslan. India is routinely attacked by Islamic terrorists. An elected Lebanese minister must keep in mind that a Hezbollah or Syrian terrorist -- not an Israeli bomb -- might kill him if he utters a wrong word. The only mystery here in the United States is which target the jihadists want to destroy first: the Holland Tunnel in New York or the Sears Tower in Chicago .In nearly all these cases there is a certain sameness: The Koran is quoted as the moral authority of the perpetrators; terrorism is the preferred method of violence; Jews are usually blamed; dozens of rambling complaints are aired, and killers are often considered stateless, at least in the sense that the countries in which they seek shelter or conduct business or find support do not accept culpability for their actions.
.....Here at home, yet another Islamic fanatic conducts an act of al Qaedism in Seattle, and the police worry immediately about the safety of the mosques from which such hatred has in the past often emanated -- as if the problem of a Jew being murdered at the Los Angeles airport or a Seattle civic center arises from not protecting mosques, rather than protecting us from what sometimes goes on in mosques.
....It is now a cliche to rant about the spread of postmodernism, cultural relativism, utopian pacifism, and moral equivalence among the affluent and leisured societies of the West. But we are seeing the insidious wages of such pernicious theories as they filter down from our media, universities, and government -- and never more so than in the general public's nonchalance since Hezbollah attacked Israel .
These past few days the inability of millions of Westerners, both here and in Europe, to condemn fascist terrorists who start wars, spread racial hatred, and despise Western democracies is the real story, not the "quarter-ton" Israeli bombs that inadvertently hit civilians in Lebanon who live among rocket launchers that send missiles into Israeli cities and suburbs.
Meanwhile, "this first piece of Jihadi shrapnel" in Seattle's flesh is much on the mind of local blogger AskMom.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at August 05, 2006 01:55 PM | Email ThisInterestingly Michael Ledeen has had the same perception pertaining to NOW and the 1930's:
Certainly there is lots of bad news, most of which confirms what we already knew: The Western world hates Israel; the taboo on anti-Semitism is off; the Western world has been P.C.?ed to the edge of death; there is no stomach for fighting the war against Islamic fascism.
Sounds like the Thirties to me.
The Conservative scholars and writers are beginning to have the courage about things I have been blogging and writing about for nearly two years. there is a sense in the air that a crisis will transform into a global brawl.
If you live in the West, get over concepts of Appeasement. It did not work for pre-WWII Prime Minister Chamberlain with Hitler, it certainly will work with the likes of Islamofascist terrorists like Hezbollah, Hamas, al Qaeda, et al. Nor will Appeasement work with Islamofascist nations such as Syria and Iran (I could include N. Korea, but those psychos are not in the Middle East).
Posted by: Theway2k on August 5, 2006 04:58 PMThey are not crazy. That's the reverse of the insanity defense. It says,'they are not responsible for what they say or do, they are harmless nutcases.' Not so.
Since you cite Hitler, among others, I'd like to point out that many people in the U.S. and Britain ridiculed him as a 'paperhanger.' Charlie Chaplin ridiculed him in a movie making him look like a stupid, awkward little dork.
Well, millions of deaths later, I think it is safe to say Hitler should have been taken seriously from the start.
Leaders of enemy states should be taken seriously. Leaders of Russia should be viewed as enemies at all times, whether they say they are Communist or not.
Posted by: mac on August 5, 2006 08:49 PMwe discount and ingore these modern 'crazies' at our own peril--and--in this age of modern weapons and bio threats, we can't afford to be neutral or slow in reacting; that's not advocating hawkish agression, but simple self-preservation;
Posted by: Jimmie-howya-doin on August 6, 2006 06:35 AMI recommend it as an honest history with very little pro- or anti-Islamic bias.
Too much in the book to give a real review here.
Posted by: John McDonald on August 6, 2006 08:51 PMBottom line is that Middle Eastern theocracies expressly promote, support and finance violent hatred. It's taught and preached every day in mosques throughout the Middle East. It's no surprise that a percentage of the flock takes the ideas to heart and goes out to commit terror.
The question is when the West will galvanize its resolve to confront the peddling of Islamic Hatred at its source. We only need issue the simple demand that all terror sponsoring theocracies in the Middle East police their mullahs and renounce the fatwas in short order. If the demand is not met, overwhelming force should be applied to these theocracies until the demand is taken seriously and then met.
There is a pain threshold for Islam, just as there is for the West. It's only a question of which comes first.
Do we need to wait until another violent and massive attack occurs in the West? Or do we have the courage to admit that as long as Islamic Mullahs are peddling hatred and violence daily in their mosques, the problem will continue?
Every irrational justification and minimization of terror in the US media, buys Islamic Mullahs more time to preach violence, hatred and calls for Jihad.
Posted by: Jeff B. on August 6, 2006 10:34 PMBeing on the brink of madness does not make one mad. It means that one is still, to some degree, in command of one's faculties. These terrorists are not mad; they are virulently hateful. And that's what makes them dangerous. If they were truly mad, they would not have the mental capacity to string their own individual daily lives together, let alone unite as a very large body with singularity of purpose.
But let us not dismiss them as mad and thus not take them- or their threats- seriously. The act of this lone Islamic murderer should have caused a few sleepy-headed Seattle liberal twits to briefly stop singing "Imagine" and look around at the reality of our situation. Even for a moment...
Evidently not.
There is only so much that one can do to try to rouse a sleeping drunk who has passed out on the railroad tracks in front of an oncoming train. One can only try for so long before the train makes further attempts too dangerous for one to continue. One must save oneself or perish on the tracks with the drunken fool.
Let us get on with the business of fighting these murderous Islamic thugs and let the ostriches die in their ignorance. Lord knows, it's not like any of us have not tried to talk sense into them. And if you were to ask any of these fools (and some will scream it at you whether you want to hear it or not), they would insist that they are the ones saving us from ourselves- while the terrorists continue to murder liberals because they stand stupidly on the tracks bleating lustily, All we are saaaaaaaaaaaaaay-innnnnnnnnnng is give peace a chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaance...
And they think that the terrorists will actually listen to them. Now that is madness...
Posted by: ERNurse on August 7, 2006 09:14 PM