The Olympic Spirit and the Islamic Spirit

Daniel Greenfield on Jul 17th, 2012 

In a sign of the times, the London Summer Olympics will be defended by anti-aircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles… just as they were in Ancient Greece. G4S, the world’s largest security company, was to provide 12,000 security personnel, but has so far only managed to come up with 4,000. In another sign of the times, not all of their security personnel speak English. So instead the British government will be deploying 3,000 troops, all of whom hopefully do speak English.

This isn’t the first time that the Olympics have come to London. They came in 1908 when the likely threat was from the Hun. They would have come again in 1944, but war intervened, and London needed its anti-aircraft weapons to protect more vital targets. Instead the games had to be rescheduled to 1948 in a Summer Olympics known as the Austerity Games. Still despite the post-war conditions, the games were described as, “a warm flame of hope for a better understanding in the world which has burned so low.”

That flame seems rather cool now when London has to be ringed with anti-aircraft defenses, as in the days of the Blitz. Muslim terrorists showed the world what they thought of the Olympic Spirit in the Summer Olympics of 1972 with the Munich Massacre and ever since then the shadow of Muslim terror has darkened the flames of the torches.

 

Muslim terrorist threats have become a regular Olympic event. Russia is already claiming to have foiled Muslim terrorist attacks aimed at the 2014 Olympics. Even China got into the new Olympic spirit, foiling several attacks against the 2008 games. There is a sort of unity in every non-Muslim nation that hosts the games scrambling to deal with Muslim terrorist threats. A silent unity that no one will dare mention out loud.

 

Terrorism has become the true international sport and newspapers spend almost as much time forecasting the types of terrorist attacks that may be tried, as they do discussing the athletes. Will it be nerve gas this year? A drone attack? Or perhaps an old-fashioned suicide bombing.

In March, there were reports of cyanide hand creams. In May, it was poison drones. In July, it could be anything. Most likely though, there will be no attack at all. And if one comes it will be the usual bomb in a car or bomb in a backpack thing that even the Soldiers of Allah have a 40/60 chance of not screwing up. But that isn’t really the point.

Hitler’s V2 rockets were not terribly accurate, but they weren’t meant to be. They were weapons of terror and those work best when they are random. Sieges are more devastating to morale than actual battles. The fear that an attack could come at any time and in any place drains away courage and replaces it with fear until any demand that the enemy makes is met with relieved acceptance.
Random terror is the weapon of the weak, whether it was the declining forces of Nazi Germany or the armies of diversity plotting to impose Islamic law by killing a few hundred people here or there. The scrum of preparations and the frantic media panics make them feel strong and potent. As much as Islamic terrorists love their inky Korans, they love the sight of their names in the paper even more. Reading that the entire country is terrified of them does wonders for their morale even as it plummets our own.

There are few open mentions of who the enemy might be that all those weapons and soldiers are directed against. All we know is that they are extremists who are extremely keen on blowing things up for the mysterious unknown reasons that extremists do things. Of course everyone knows, but everyone is also polite enough to say nothing. It’s easier to order a few thousand more guards, some of whom may speak English, and throw up some surface-to-air missiles, than to discuss why these things have become as much a part of the Olympics as torches, medals and rings.

The ring of steel around London isn’t there to protect against German warplanes, but against the men and women with British passports and accents, from Manchester, Birmingham and London, who burn with another kind of flame. Not the flame of the Olympic spirit, but the flame of the Islamic spirit.