Yesterday, in reporting the Hit And Run Jihad story, I wrote the following:
It's a media blackout.
You can see why bloggers are becoming more and more popular.
... if our governments and media do not stop lying to us about Islamofascist terrorism, the people will stop believing that authorities understand the problem.
If the people don't believe that those who run our society understand what we are up against, then the people will begin to take things into their own hands.
The government and the media are playing with fire.
Today, the Anchoress says the same thing:
What the hell is wrong with the press, what the hell is wrong with the leadership? Why are they so incapable of calling anti-semitism what it is, of calling a terrorist action what it is? Newsflash, folks, when someone decides to drive his car into people as they’re crossing the street, it’s the same as tossing a molotov cocktail at them, it’s the same as tossing a grenade. It is destructive, it kills people and terrifies communities, that is called t-e-r-r-o-r-i-s-m! Hey, guess what, fellas, we don’t need no stinking anthrax to kill and terrify…we can use our cars.
... I’m getting weary of watching the press and the people “in charge” go out of their way to downplay it anytime someone with an “Islamic” sort of name drives a car into people on a city street, or on a campus, or starts shooting people in a synagogue, or raises cain at an El Al counter at LAX.
I know that somewhere in the minds of these movers and shakers they think they are protecting Muslims-in-general from reactionary prejudice, distrust and bias from us unruly, racist, mouth-breathing Americans (because we went nuts and burned down mosques after 9/11, right? We took to the streets and rampaged and lynched anyone named Abdul back then, right?) but the truth is, by their incessant downplaying, their knee-jerk move to protect-and-explain perps like this, they’re just making some people very resentful, and in the end, I think that’s going to do more to foment prejudice and bias, distrust and hate toward decent Muslim persons than would simply acknowledging the fact that when these Fundamentalists DO this crap, it is what it is - an act of aggression, hate and terror - and not some “mistake” that can be cooed away.
The government and the media had better get the message.
The leadership in this country is setting up Muslim-Americans for some nasty experiences and the Muslims here don't realize it.
ReplyDeleteOur leaders better get on the ball and call a spade a spade and name the enemy and tell those who don't support them to get vocal and get loud and do it now! For when the next attack comes – from homegrown jihadists which it most certainly be - that kills hundreds of thousands of Americans, the public is not going to listen to anyone except those that call for retaliations on anyone that even smells of a Muslim or supports the Islamists. The response to another 9-11 will not be restraint t his time from the public. I would not want to be a Muslim in this country when that happens.
The clock is ticking and I’m afraid that we will soon be heading towards a constitutional crisis the day we find it necessary to intern the Muslims in this country to protect ourselves.
Today's "Best of the Web" in OpinionJournal (the Wall Street Journal's free online site) offers an example of how a supposedly tough-minded stand can be diluted into mush.
ReplyDeleteJames Taranto writes:
We need to face the following questions:
* With the growing lethality and availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow vicious extremists can be appeased?
* Can we really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists?
* Can we truly afford the luxury of pretending that the threats today are simply "law enforcement" problems, rather than fundamentally different threats, requiring fundamentally different approaches?
* And can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America--not the enemy--is the real source of the world's trouble?
These are central questions of our time. And we must face them. . . .
These may be valid questions, but they are not "the central questions of our time." They are an evasion of the central question, which might be posed: "What is the best way to defeat the worldwide Muslim jihad, whose aim is to replace Dar al-Harb (the world of War, i.e., non-Muslim societies) with Dar al-Islam (the worldwide ummah, or brotherhood of Muslims)?"
Defeat. Muslim. Jihad. The WSJ chickens out of using any of those words. Instead it tries to perpetuate the "War on Terror" mythology, based on the idea that there are a bunch of "vicious extremists" and "terrorists" — members of a fringe group — who must be … what? Taranto isn't very clear, except that they must not be appeased or approached as a law-enforcement problem.
Thus, as in the rest of the mainstream media, the enemy has no characteristics except extremism or terrorism. It isn't the product of any particular politico-religious ideology, or at most represents an "extreme" form of an unnamed ideology. If there is no enemy except some people who are vicious or extreme, what "fundamentally different approaches" can we adopt? If the goal is not victory, what approach is there except law enforcement?
Taranto ends with a safe, lame rhetorical question about whether we can "afford to return to the destructive view that America — not the enemy — is the real source of the world's trouble." He implies that the danger we face is to our reputation, not to our lives and liberty.
We can't afford to kid ourselves about what's at stake in this war. The enemy doesn't.
Consider yourselves all seconded and thrice-huzzah'd.
ReplyDeleteI find it increasingly difficult to believe in the "goodness" and "decency" of those Muslims who remain silent. Maybe it's just my age talking, but they smack of the "good" Germans who "knew nothing" of what was going on in the ghettos and the camps. No, it is not easy at this point for a "moderate" Muslim to stand up against the jihadists and their enablers. But if I may be excused for quoting a Harry Potter novel in this company, "you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy". Too many of the silent "majority" of Muslims seem to be choosing the easy way, and I am beginning to suspect most of them are hoping to ride the coattails of their jihadist brothers right into the worldwide Dar al Islam.
And wc is right -- once the first dirty bomb goes off in Manhattan or Washington or Disney World it will be too late for them. Through their timidity and political correctness our leaders are reassuring them that there will be no real consequences for their actions. At the same time, the MSM's coddling screens them from the realization of how many of us have begun to wake up and realize that we have to take some responsibility for our own self-preservation.