Recently, I was mocked by a commenter who wanted to know if I feared the United States was in danger of being forcibly converted to Islam. I started answering that in the comments, but it started running a bit long, so I figured it’d be better suited to its own posting.
Do I think that the United States is in danger of being forcibly converted to Islam? No. But do I think that is the clearly and repeatedly stated goal of countless Islamists around the world? Yes.
Here’s an analogy: the seven-year-old boy who lives next door to you constantly screams that he hates you, hates your whole family, and wants to kill you. His parents just dismiss this behavior, saying “he’s just a child, he’ll outgrow this.”
Do you worry much? No. But suppose you see that boy heading towards your house with a baseball bat or a knife. Now, he’s still not very likely to be able to kill you, but he’s a determined threat and at that point you ignore him at your own peril. Because you might be able to take away his weapons and send him home unarmed, but sooner or later he’s going to come back with a gun or a can of gasoline.
That’s much like how I see the war on militant Islam, with nuclear or biological weapons being the equivalent of the gun or gasoline. The kid has already gotten in one good shot with the baseball bat, back on 9/11, and that woke us up to the fact that this little psychopath isn’t in need of “understanding” or “compassion,” but some serious attention before he gets someone killed — us or him.
It is the clearly-stated and oft-repeated goal of the militant Muslims to bring the whole world to their vision of Islam, and while I don’t believe they will succeed, I do believe that the effort to stop them will cost more and more, the longer we wait.
Great strides have been made so far. We’ve deprived them of two significant bases and sources of support in Afghanistan and Iraq, and other nations are finding it a good idea to curtail their support as well (Libya for one, the increasingly-nervous Syria and Iran for two more).
Many “bad guys” tend to telegraph their intentions. Hitler outlined his plans and beliefs in Mein Kampf, over a decade before World War II. Imperial Japan spelled out its vision with the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” And the Soviet Union never made any secret of their vision of worldwide Communism.
We’ve ignored these warnings to our own great detriment in the past. I’m relieved to see that we’re not doing so this time.
Jay,
Comes down to 3 words: “Honor the threat.”
I think it’s a naval quote/saying but couldn’t find the orgin in the 2 minutes I was willing to look.
You didn’t read enough, Gordon. Your talking points are so 2004.
The article about Muslim assimilation of Europe quotes the jihadis themselves along with their most popular media outlets. Make sure to ignore that and keep chanting the talking points.
The very recent news article talks about how a large number of foreign fighters were found in (no doubt) old Saddam bunkers, and how Iraqi forces were instrumental in getting them.
This article is one of many, many articles that keep using the word “insurgents” and then go on to talk about foreign fighters. The enemy consists of more Jordanians, Syrians, Egyptians, and Iranians than Iraqis. The fact that suicide bombers keep attacking Iraqi police stations and Iraqi military recruiting posts, not American bases, should have given even someone like you a hint.
If anything, the “insurgency” is pushing more and more young Iraqi men into the Iraqi armed forces to fight the foreign jihadis.
But keep reading stuff from Michael Moore, CommonDreams.org, and other communist tripe, because they keep the proles well fed with pablum. Year-old pablum.
The article debunking the 100,000 Iraqi CIVILIAN dead (which I’m sure is what you’re implying – you couldn’t POSSIBLY be talking sympathetically about JIHADIS, could you?) shows how flawed the only peer-reviewed study of Iraqi war deaths is.
The ADMITTED statistical margin of error in the report is over 90,000 deaths!
Let me help you with the calculations: that means that the actual number of Iraqi civilians is SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 8,000 and 194,000 DEATHS!
In other words, like your “common sense” response, it’s almost completely artificial and arbitruary.
Also, notice the source of the debunking: Slate. Slate slants towards anti-Bush and anti-war. It’s not sympathetic to Republicans at all. If I had really wanted to only get articles that supported my viewpoint, I would have gone to the right’s equivalent of Democratic Underground – Free Republic.
Darleen
You seem like a good person but I’m amazed you actually feel comfortable stepping outside your door in case some axe wielding Zarqawi lookalike is waiting behind the rose bushes.
It’s the aim of every religion to spread their gospel, Christianity too, and the funny thing is there is probably some Muslim blogger who is paralyzed with fear waiting for you to knock on his door.They are scared stiff because Christians control the world’s finances.How are muslims ever going to take over the world if they don’t have 2 cents to rub together?
In short, Darleen, enjoy your life, enjoy your kids and stop worrying about the all conquering Muslims.
Sue
You are obviously convinced that you will be wearing a yashmak next year so no matter what i say is going to help.
Go over to Europe, see for yourself what the place is like, you might be pleasantly surprised.
Be careful though, you might get converted.
And as for the foreign fighter thing, you seem surprised. Didn’t 911 tell you something?
15 of the 19 were Saudi Arabian. BL is from there too. Maybe it’s just me but if I was going after a terrorist organization I’d attack them where they came from. It’s like trying to defeat the IRA by attacking the Ivory Coast. The whole premise for this war is a joke.
Gordon —
Don’t you know that the sinister Islamofascists can get us through the water supply? Yes, it’s true! As we speak they are plotting to defile the purity of our bodily essences! Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper where are when we need you!
Gordon, according to the left, the Eeeeevviillll Jooooooossss (TM) are controlling the world’s finances. C’mon, get it right. Sheesh.
I never insinuated that the Bible was mentioned in the Constitution. Neither is God, per se. The interesting thing is that every man who wrote and signed the Constitution believed in God, and all but 2 actively participated in church activities. Almost everyone who came to the Colonies in the first place did so because they wanted the freedom to worship God as they saw fit, not as the Anglican Church told them to. Read the Declaration of Independence. Things might become clearer when you do.
Framenone, what I was attempting to say earlier was that if everyone was fighting the war, there would be no one available to pay for it. By, you know, producing the equipment needed by the soliers, or by other people paying taxes to pay for the war, by, like, working. At a job. That pays money.
And as has been proven in the past, if you lower the individual’s (or the business’s) tax burden, by lowering taxes, you actually increase the amount of tax revenue generated during the tax cycle. It’s simple macroeconomics. People who pay less in taxes have more discretionary income. Those that own businesses find they have more money to hire new people and increase wages voluntarily (increasing the minimum wage is just like raising taxes: BAD). The more people who are earning money, the more tax revenue is generated, and the more the government has to work with, all because they lowered taxes.
I realize that this kind of thinking is difficult for a leftie who believes in the zero-sum economy, but that’s the problem: it’s NOT a zero-sum economy. I didn’t get screwed over just because Bill Gates earned another $2 billion last week. I didn’t lose any of my money just because he got more. There’s this little thing called interest, which lets people or banks earn money on their money, which increases the amount of money available in the economy.
In my book, taxation is a sacrifice. Certainly nothing on the level of magnitude of people like my brother, 2 grandfathers, 2 uncles, and 1 great-grandfather who have all served in the Army or Navy in various wars over the last century (my brother in Iraq), but it’s something anyway.
The point of Jay Tea’s original post, I think, was to indicate that the radical Muslims were trying to destroy Western Civilization, not that they would actually, you know, succeed. Just because we have taken out 2 of the worst Muslim offenders over there, some of the others are scared spitless. Libya came clean about their nuclear program. Syria pulled out of Lebanon without a shot fired (the hundreds of thousands of Christians and moderate Muslims certainly didn’t hurt). The dominoes are falling.
One more thing, to Gordon: the French can’t keep the Muslims under control. They’ve already had a number of incidents where French non-Muslim women have been attacked just because they were wearing current Western fashions, just because it displeased some sicko camel-felcher in the neighborhood. Theo Van Gogh got assassinated just because he had the gall to tell the truth about Islam in a film. There are too many instances to count. You would be wise to heed the warnings. They won’t stop until they realize the true purpose of war: “The point of war is not to die for your country. The point of war is to make the other poor bastard die for his.” Once they understand that we will kill them if they attack us without provocation, they will eventually back off. But we have to be swift and strong; we can’t be “sensitive” as some former Presidential candidates would have liked us to be.
“Framenone, what I was attempting to say earlier was that if everyone was fighting the war, there would be no one available to pay for it.”
Well that’s the first time I’ve heard macro economics used to explain away why someone doesn’t have to risk his life to defend his country. That is what we are supposed to be doing in Iraq right? Defending our country? Because it isn’t like the United States has ever issued war bonds or anything like that finance a vital war effort. Oh wait, I forgot, this is different kind of war, one we can win by shopping.
The Muslim moderates keep insisting that it’s a very tiny percentage of Islamofascists (my word) who are perpetrating these terrorist attacks and I believe them. But how tiny a percentage is it?
If it’s 1% (just to pull a number out of thin air), then that means that there are 12 MILLION Islamofascist terrorists in the world. Even if it’s 0.1%, that’s still 1.2 MILLION. And there are between 6 and 7 million Muslims in this country today, and more arriving every day. So if my guesses are even close to being right, and the percentages hold, that means that there are 6 to 7 THOUSAND Islamofascist terrorists in this country right now.
Now that may not seem like very many to you, but consider what 2 or 3 men did in Oklahoma City ten years ago. Or what 19 men did on 9/11.
Now the point to all this is that even though the Islamofascists probably can’t force Islam down our throats YET, they can kill a hell of a lot of people trying. We in the meantime, are not going out and summarily executing, raping and torturing everyone we think is a terrorist, the opinions of frameone, whocares (aka Joser-rhymes-with-loser) and others not withstanding. So how DO we stop them?
To paraphrase an old boxing saying: kill the head and the body dies with it. That’s what we have to do. That means going after anyone who provides the Islamofascists with safe haven, money, training and material. Saddam Hussein did at least 3 of these things, as well as starting two wars, deploying chemical weapons against the Kurds (and ,I think, the Iranians)and engaging in the mass slaughter of Shi’ites. He provided safe haven to (among others) Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, ignoring Jordanian King Abdullah’s request–BEFORE the war–for extradition. He paid bounties of up to $25,000 to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. He allowed the operation of at least one terrorist training camp–at Salmon Pak, 40 miles south of Baghdad–complete with an airliner fuselage so the “students” could practice hijackings. As for material, I won’t claim that he provided weapons, explosives or money to them since I only STRONGLY suspect that he did.
I leave you with the words of Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya news channel. Writing in the Arab News, an English language daily, he said: “It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.” To read the whole article go to:
http://www.arabnews.com/9-11/?article=32&part=2
Jeez, was that last one long! And in the fifth paragraph, last sentence (^^), delete the word money. Lack of sleep got to me.