JOHN GALT
February 6, 2014
Part I Can Be Found - HerePart II Can Be Found - Here
Working in the Arab world during the last decade, I have met many
Muslims who insisted that they had nothing to do with terrorism. The
problem is that they remain silent, in fear of the so-called extremists.
They do not publicly condemn terror, and they continue to donate money
to the mosques and charities and cover organizations that offer moral
and financial support to the terrorist movement. They, just like most
Germans during the Nazi regime, do not want to know. In any event, we
should not be confused by this silent minority regarding the true nature
of Islam, just as the world was not confused about the nature of Nazism
because of the small anti-fascist movement inside Germany.
I was in a hotel in Tripoli after the fall of Khadafy,
watching Arab TV showing gruesome images of beheadings. A few men were
on their knees, blindfolded, with hands tied behind their backs. A young
man took a butcher knife and start cutting the neck of the first
victim. The executioner did not appear to know what to look for in order
to cut through the spine quickly; it took him some time. It was
horrific beyond belief! Finally, he found the spot, cut through, and
severed the head. A huge crowd of bearded men and boys cheered loudly. I
was sick to my stomach. That was the moment I realized the contrast
between Muslim extremists and moderate Muslims. The extremists carried
out the execution, while the moderates cheered, recording the event on
their iPhones and enjoying watching it on TV. We should not be
apologetic for judging all of them by the behavior of most of them. The
Left's position on the Muslim threat is inconsistent, immoral, and
reprehensible. But that should not surprise us: the Left did not
consider Hitler extreme at the time, and supported the proposal to
nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Left has always had a
natural attraction to totalitarian, bloody regimes. They admired Stalin,
Mao, and in more recent times Castro, Che Guevara, and Hugo Chavez.
Americans have been in denial about this danger since the early
1970s when the Palestine Liberation Organization began committing
terrorist acts against Israelis, but the world was silent because the
victims were Jews and we are not Jews. Adding logs to that proverbial
fire, the world endorsed and encouraged the terrorists by awarding the
Nobel Peace Prize to PLO chief terrorist Yasser Arafat. Since then
terrorists have taken to Europe, but we are not Europeans; and Asia, but
we are not Asians. The evolving history of terrorism is captured well
by what German Lutheran Pastor Niemoller wrote about the Nazis:
In Germany they first came for the communists
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist.
They came for the Jews
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade Unionists
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.
Today in the United States, the terrorists are living
among us, but the administration still practices appeasement. The
president and the former mayor of New York City, with the support of the
Left, were perfectly willing to let the Muslims build their Mosque of
Triumph in close proximity to the destroyed World Trade Center, just as
they built the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the site of the Second Temple in
Jerusalem after conquering the city in the seventh century.
In Afghanistan, the administration's policies are just as
confusing as on the domestic front. During an interview with
Newsweek,
the vice president told the magazine, "Look, the Taliban per se is not
our enemy. That's critical." If the Taliban is not our enemy, who are
our military men and women fighting? And why are they dying in
Afghanistan? Can anybody make sense of this? If we do not know who our
enemies are, how can we defeat them? As Yogi Berra said, "If you don't
know where you are going, you might never get there." And, we are not.
The first order of making sense is to acknowledge that we
are in the age-old struggle between freedom and tyranny, and that the
value of human life in the world of Islam is dramatically different from
ours. Saddam Hussein said it best: "If you kill a man, you are a
murderer; if you kill hundreds, you are a hero; but if you kill
thousands, you are a conqueror." This is the mentality of the other
society, where terrorism is an instrument of power. Whether it is a war
on terrorism or a war in Iraq or Afghanistan, if we are not prepared to
kill thousands, we cannot be respected. Conventional thinking embraces
the belief that democratic civilizations are based on humanitarian
principles, and those principles separate us from the barbarians. About
which Henry Kissinger wrote,
"While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive."
Whether we can do what needs to be done to
survive,
or we have watered down our genes and become impotent and ineffective,
history will be the judge. In the past, civilized society had little
hesitation to use all means at its disposal to protect and defend its
ideals. Bombing Dresden in 1945 was a clear act of terrorism aimed at
German civilians in order to break their resolve. Dropping two nuclear
bombs on Japan was hardly a humanitarian act. Our contemporary American
challenge is not the military aspect of killing a lot of people; it is
the moral issue, regardless of reasoning and justification. The
undeniable truth is that terrorism is a weapon of tyrants, and it is the
enemy of liberty. Whether this nation is prepared to conquer
terrorists with greater terror is an open question. What is not in
question is the imperative for survival of our civilization. How we
define and articulate American foreign policy toward the Arab world and
how we, as a nation, deal with terrorism are interrelated. Although the
purpose of terrorism is to terrorize, a war on terrorism is not just a
psychological assault, it is also a military confrontation and a
political affair.
Introducing Wilsonian principles in the Arab world,
calling for self-determination and democracy, without understanding the
fundamentals of tribal societies, has proved disastrous for this
country. The goal of building democratic nations in recent U.S.
incursions in Iraq and Afghanistan has proved impossible in the face of
an Islamic culture that violently rejects Western values. The fallacy
that by removing a tyrant and getting in the middle of civil war we
could build a nation
and create democratic institutions at the
same time has driven the U.S. into protracted and costly military
conflicts with no end in sight.
It is becoming evident that our country has not learned the lessons of 60
th and has repeated the same mistakes with grave consequences.
"Wilsonianism[1] of the early 60th
had lured us into adventures beyond our capacities and deprived us of
criteria to define essential elements of our national purpose."
Thus wrote Henry Kissinger, the best-known American diplomat of our time, in his memoir,
Years of Renewal.
We should have learned from Kissinger that the most important task
before our nation in this war on terrorism is to define our interests
and shape our commitments-not to allow existing commitments to define
our interests. Once we clearly define our interests and commitments, it
will be the time for Americans to find out, to paraphrase John F.
Kennedy, whether we are free men standing up to our responsibilities,
and whether the United States has the will to face up to the enemy.
In the name of the missing Twin Towers and the thousands of
victims of this heinous terrorist attack, in the name of the thousands
of fallen men and women in the war on terrorism, in the name of the
Israelis, who have suffered Islamic terrorism for decades, the United
States must have the will to face up to the enemy. The American
challenge is to abandon denial, define our enemies, stop appeasement,
face the threat, and acquire the will to use all means at our disposal
to grant the ultimate wish to those who proclaim that they love death
more than we love life.
[1] Wilsonianism
refers to the idealistic principles of conducting foreign policy by
applying American democratic values, as set forth by Woodrow Wilson. It
includes the notion of a new global order based on national
self-determination and proliferation of democracy.
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