Thursday, April 20, 2006

Questions

We've all seen the reports of Iran recruiting suicide terrorists for attacks in the US, Britain and Israel. Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian has a possible, if exaggerated, scenario of Iranian retaliation against a US & British attack of Iranian nuclear sites. While we can debate the scale of such reliatory attacks I don't think anyone on this blogs seriously doubts that suicide attacks aren't possible.

In 2004 it was Madrid. Last year it was London. Which Western city gets bombed this year? Copenhagen? Sydney? Paris? Each is just as likely as another. It is only a matter of time.

Earlier in the week I wrote about the asymmetry between the West and our Enemies. We fight with State organs but the Enemy fights with a whole toolbox filled with non-state weapons, from terror groups and leaderless cells to organized riots and demographic expansion.

All this leads to my questions: Why hasn't the West produced any terror groups? Why hasn't the West spawned leaderless cells and lone assassins? Despite the nonsense CAIR pukes forth about "islamophobia" and anti-Muslim "hate crimes" the US has seen virtually none of this. CAIR writes fiction, pure and simple. In the weeks after 9/11, with Ground Zero still smoking and the dead uncounted I know of one murder motivated by a desire for revenge: a man killed a Sikh in Arizone, mistaking him for an Arab. Dumbass. Hardly a backlash or crime wave, much less an underground movement.

But don't just focus on America. Why, with mosques being erected all over Europe, with the Scandanavian 'rape wave' Fjordman keeps writing about, with politicians under 24 hour guard against death threats, and the supposed racism inherent in European culture have we seen so little (read virutally zero) violence against Muslims in Europe?

The Cronulla riots in Australia were the biggest expression of anti-Muslim anger in the Western world, after years of threats and attacks (including all the Aussies who died in Bali). [Sure, a few mosques (and churches) were torched in Holland after the van Gogh assassination but no mobs gathered and screamed death threats. No one died. Except van Gogh.]

Given the weekly, sometimes daily provocations, this is a very impressive display of self-restraint by hundreds of millions of people. Why is this? Are Westerners so law-abiding that we do not think of acting outside State structures? Are we that moral? Are we so hyper-individualized that we don't identify with a larger group? Do we, dispite our rhetoric, view this as crime to be punished after the fact? Are we so fair-minded that we cannot blame people who share the same ideas as the Enemy but who otherwise obey the law?

Please - I am not suggesting that the West engage in an orgy of mass violence. But it's been 4 1/2 years since 9/11. I can't keep up with the arrests and murders, the riots, the attacks stopped at the last minute, the terrorists deported, the threats, the Westerners tortured, and the open incitements to violence against us. All over. You can't name a European nation without a serious internal terrorist threat. Even New Zealand has to deal with this. Yet throughout North America, Europe and Australia how many Muslims have been lynched? How many imams have been murdered? How many embassies torched? How many Muslim-owned businesses bombed? How many Islamic schools sprayed with gunfire?

To my knowledge the answer is Zero to all the above. Why is this? And how long can it last?

3 comments:

Kiddo said...

I might post an interesting view on the crime aspect of things actually. Very excellent points there Wraith. We have produced no terrorist groups in large part because we don't need to. But also because most in the West would consider such an idea laughable. I've jokingly proposed such an organization to get back at the Turks by having diasporic Mikrasians detonate in Turkey, but it's exactly that. A joke. And a way to illustrate how absurd such an idea would be. Unfortunately, when dealing with the Arab mindset, we are dealing with a totally different beast. I will never understand why some in the West insist on refusing to take Arab ideas of identity, honor, warfare, etc. into account when dealing with that part of the world. Though any Muslim area is also subject, since Islam is the ultimate form of Imperialism.

Oscar in Kansas said...

It's not just Arabs. It's a dozen other nationalities. And disturbingly it's Western converts to Islam: Dutch, American, Aussie, Jamacian, etc.

But why the lack of general, unorganizaed violence? Why, after 7/7, was there no real backlash against Muslims in the UK? Certainly the UK is a violent society, with beating and murders on a regular basis. Sure terror groups require planning and organization but why didn't we see mobs of angry Brits, drunk and pissed off beating up Muslims or torching Islamic buildings?

Kiddo said...

I was referring specifically to Arabs because it is from their culrure and ideals that the messages in the Koran that these were finally collected, and Islam is an Imperialist reigion. In the non-Arab Muslim countries this mindset is so frequently adopted, along with Arab names, etc. The pre-Islamic "period of ignorance" is always stressed and culturally obliterated in so many cases; I need much more tme to read, as usual.