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Trifkovic: "If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles," says Sun Tzu. Once we get to know the jihadist enemy, his core beliefs, his role models, his track-record, his mindset, his modus operandi, and his intentions, we'll also know his weaknesses, which are many, above all his inability to develop a prosperous economy, or a functional family, or a harmonious society. But the main problem is with those among us who have the power to make policy and shape opinions, and who will reject our diagnosis. Having absorbed postmodernist assumptions, certain only of uncertainty, devoid of any serious faith except that in their own infallibility, members of our own elite class treat the jihadist mindset as a pathology that can and should be treated by treating causes external to Islam itself.
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Abroad, we are told, we need to address political and economic grievances of the impoverished masses, we need to spread democracy and free markets in the Muslim world, we need to invest more in public diplomacy. At home we need more tolerance, greater inclusiveness, less profiling, and a more determined outreach to the minorities that feel marginalized and threatened by the war on terror. The predictable failure of such cures leads to ever more pathological self-scrutiny and morbid self-doubt. This vicious circle is untenable and must be broken.
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Abroad, concealing the rioters' identity fits in with the liberal world view that reject the notion that importing Muslim immigrants may be in any way disadvantageous for the host country. Having reduced religion, politics and art to "narratives" and "metaphors" which merely reflect prejudices based on the distribution of power, the elite class saw the rioters' shout of "Allahu akbar!" as a mere idiosyncrasy that would be cured if the French state gave those "youths" more jobs, more dark-skinned TV anchors, and, of course, lots of "affirmative action" in employment and education.
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One percent of Muslims living in the United States were responsible for over 90 percent of terrorist offences and serious threats in the country since 9-11. A young Muslim man is literally millions of times more likely to carry out a terrorist attack in the United States than an Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, or Orthodox Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, or a Buddhist. Or for that matter a Lebanese Christian. Membership of a group is a valid pointer in assuming and judging unobserved behavioral characteristics of an individual, especially in the absence of specific information about that individual's background. To suggest otherwise is neither moral nor sane.
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The victory in the war on terrorism ultimately has to be won in the domain of morals and culture. It can be won only by an America - and Britain, and France, and Italy. - that has regained its awareness of its moral, spiritual, and civilizational roots. If that happens, the renewed impulse to defend those lands and to procreate will come, too. While the likelihood of such belated recovery remains in doubt, it it is not impossible. Miracles do happen, and therefore they will happen.
http://www.frontpagemag.com
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I'm not big on dreaming. Miracles do happen, but not because we want them to. Things happen when we want them to because we work at the right resuslt and keep trying till we win.
The picture above comes from Kurosawa's film Ran, (Chaos,) his version of King Lear. Above that, Jan Sobieski, and on top, Charles Martel.
We are winners because we are smart and determined. Some of you will be heroes.
2 comments:
That's a great picture from Ran, and the one of the Winged Horsemen. Been looking for something like those myself too.
I know I shouldn't, but I couldn't help chuckling a bit about the actions of the Sikhs you mentioned in the top entry, as it's just the sort of thing they'd have done. I have a huge respect for them, and the Gurkhas from Nepal, feeling that they were some of the finest men in our armed forces. Totally loyal and brave, and the kind of men you need when your back is up against the wall.
Barbara Tuchman writes in The Distant Mirror aobut the assemblies of crusaders in the 13th century, of one group who stayed apart, speaking a language no one else could understand, signing songs, thinking of themselves as the greatest men in the world, even though they came from an island few had ever been to or knew anything about.
We have it still in us.
Personally, I would rather live in a blaze of glory than die in one. But when I watch wave after wave of men going out to battle against impossible survival, know they are meeting their ends as men who are born to live till the end, then my spirit rises up and I am exulted, a part of my own who rose up from the trenches to battle for nothing more than life till it ended.
I saw Ran when it first came out, and since then I've loved the final scenes as passionately any time I think of it as I did in the theatre. I love it because of its moral clarity. That we might have to pass to make room for the better.
Lear was a benign fool, and his actions destroyed all he loved, the good as well as the evil who might not have been so bad had the chance not arisen. Lear is our version of the naive and dangerous multi-culti dhimmi fool who ruins our world. We get chaos out of this. But we also get a chance to rise above anything mudane we might have lived otherwise. It's too bad our enemies aren't worthy of us. However, we get what we have. I am satisfied.
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