It matters little that “the overwhelming majority of Muslims are not terrorists,” to quote a familiar Western mantra. It matters a great deal that most terrorists are Muslims. The sooner Western leaders and Western media begin stating what is obvious to most people; the quicker the real root cause can be dealt with.
The excuses given by Westerners and many Muslim clerics for terrorism are just that: excuses.
Tag: liberty
The Federalist Patriot started a three-part series in this past Friday’s Digest (PDF file) titled “U.S. National Security: Imminent Threats.” I feel it is worthy to reprint here (with permission). All emphasis has been added by yours truly.
Doug Giles poses the questions to so-called moderate Muslims that so many of us, perhaps afraid of being politically incorrect, are afraid to ask:
As a moderate Muslim, can we rest assured that you do not believe that warfare and terror are any way to establish your religion in people’s lives? Can we also be certain that those of us who do not believe and will not believe your particular take on divinity can feel completely safe around you and that we can confidently expect you to work with us to build our world into a better place without condemnation being breathed down upon our heads?
Support, among Muslims, for suicide bombing against civilians has also faded. (Only Muslims were asked this question.) The percentage saying the practice is “never justified” jumped since March 2004 from 35 to 46 in Pakistan and from 38 to 79 in Morocco, and jumped since the summer of 2002 (the last time the question was asked in these countries) from 54 to 66 in Indonesia and from 12 to 33 in Lebanon. (The Turks held stable on the issue, with 66% saying suicide bombing is “never justified,” statistically identical to the 67% who gave that answer in March 2004.) Most interestingly, opposition to suicide bombings in Iraq specifically was higher, in several countries, than opposition to suicide bombing in general; 56% of Pakistanis and 41% of Lebanese oppose that “insurgent” tactic, along with 43% in Jordan, where only 11% oppose suicide bombing in general (and by “general,” obviously, they mean “Israel”).
Concern over the threat of Islamic extremism is widespread in several of these countries, with the percentage deeming the threat “very great” or “fairly great” at 47 in Turkey, 53 in Pakistan, 73 in Morocco, and 45 in Indonesia. Interestingly enough, respondents in different countries define “Islamic extremism” differently. In Lebanon, Jordan, and Morocco, the prevailing view is that Islamic extremism means “Using violence to get rid of non-Muslim influences in our country.” But to pluralities in Turkey and Indonesia, it means “advocating the legal imposition of strict Shari’ah on all Muslims.” The respondents in those two democracies, it seems, are less worried about their Muslim extremists killing people than they are about their getting elected — another point in democracy’s favor, I’d say.
As Mr. Tarbin says, it’s not all good news, but at least it’s trending in the right direction.
So what’s amazing isn’t the number of attacks we’ve lived through — it’s the lack of attacks. September, 2001. Bali, Indonesia, October 2002. Madrid, Spain, March 2004. Now London, July 2005. On average the terrorists seem able only to strike once a year. And note the death tolls: U.S., some 3,000. Bali, 202. Madrid, 191. London, about 50.
Now, if terrorists could strike more often, of course they would. If they could kill more people in each strike, of course they would. So it’s reasonable to conclude that, since so much time goes by between attacks and since fewer people are killed in each attack, our policies toward terrorism are working.
What are those policies? Well, fighting back, for one.
As eight of the most powerful world leaders were convening in Gleneagles, Scotland for the G8 Summit trying to figure out how to battle poverty, salvage human lives, stop the AIDS epidemic in Africa and keep our globe from warming … what does militant Islam do to help? Well, they set off four bombs in the heart of London killing 50+ people and seriously injuring over 700.
David Limbaugh reveals the Democrats’ plan to paint constitutional originalists as “extremists”:
They are hoping to convince the people that any nominee who is reputed to be an originalist is an extremist — “outside the broad mainstream.” Because they view the Court as a co-equal policy-making branch of government, they are treating the confirmation process as another national election.
Their bogus praise for O’Connor is simply the first step in their ruse. By lauding her as a “mainstream conservative,” they lay the groundwork for labeling anyone less activist than her an extremist.
There is an idiom in the sports world that “a win is a win is a win.” In other words, it doesn’t matter if you’ve beaten your opponent by 50 points or one. It doesn’t matter if you win the race by .0001 of a second, or if you blow away the field, with the rest a full lap behind you. A win is a win is a win.
So, in the case of politics, is a majority a majority a majority. It doesn’t matter if the majority is 80-20, 70-30, or 50.1-49.9. A majority is a majority is a majority.
I only bring this up because there is no apparent end to the pitiful whining eminating from the political left. I suppose when you have nothing constructive to offer the nation, the best you can do is complain about what the party in power is doing, without offering any alternatives whatsoever.
Jeff has delivered, in few words and using simple math so the left can keep up, a majority primer on why the Republicans have a large enough majority to legitimately run the country.
There is no greater threat to American liberty and the future of the Republic than a central government not bound by the limits and constraints placed upon it by our Constitution. Thus, it was providential that on the eve of Independence Day this past week, there were two significant Supreme Court assaults on liberty, capped by the retirement announcement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (with that of Chief Justice William Rehnquist likely to follow). It was providential because, as we contemplated the birth of American liberty and the sacrifice it has taken to sustain it, we were confronted with what has become the greatest threat to our liberty — judicial tyranny from within, or what Thomas Jefferson called the “despotic branch.”
The idea that al-Qaeda was no threat until we created it does not stand the slightest scrutiny of events in the 1990s — from the first attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993, to the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and, of course, the September 11 atrocity a year later. And no one seriously thinks that only America was in their sights. The ideology of Islamism doesn’t stop at the superpower’s borders; its ambitions sweep through Europe; indeed that is where it is breeding so many of its jihadists.
The fight in Iraq is not, as the opponents claim, a self-inflicted wound, suddenly giving rise to new threats on our homeland from people we should have left well alone. We are, steadily, beating the terrorists in Iraq. Not only in the military operations, but also by demonstrating who and what the enemy really is. And thereby creating the only real long-term conditions for safety from Islamo-fascism —- free states that do not deny the most basic human rights to their peoples. The people who murdered innocent Londoners yesterday are the same people who are murdering innocent Iraqis.