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| Home Front: WoT |
| Facing the Islamist Menace |
| 2007-01-22 |
| by Christopher Hitchens Hitch reviews Mark SteynÂ’s America Alone. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #2 Welcome also Pakistani and Bengladeshi Christians and Ahmadiyyas (? the so-called heretics who claim a Muslim prophet subsequent to Mohammed), openly offering refuge from Muslim persecutions. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-01-22 15:28 |
#1 Some of Hitch's solutions, with comments:1. An end to one-way multiculturalism and to the cultural masochism that goes with it.Might as well say an end to modern liberalism and its one-sided promotion of of cultural suicide. until recently only those who apostasized from Islam faced the threat of punishment by death.-- apostates from Islam still face a death sentence, this hasn't changed at all we should insist on reciprocity at all times. We should not allow a single Saudi dollar to pay for propaganda within the U.S., for example, until Saudi Arabia also permits Jewish and Christian and secular practices. No Wahhabi-printed Korans anywhere in our prison system. No Salafist imams in our armed forces. 2. A hugely enlarged quota for qualified Indian immigrants and a reduction in quotas from Pakistan and other nations where fundamentalism dominates.How about a zero quota from Pakistan & such countries "for the duration"? Exceptions must be made for those Muslims who stood by our fighting forces in Afghanistan & Iraq, among other places, and determination of who is eligible for immigration to the US under such circumstances taken out of the hands of the State Department, which is on the other side. 4. Partition in Iraq would be defeat under another name (and as with past partitions, would lead to yet further partitions and micro-wars over these very subdivisions). But if it has to come, we cannot even consider abandoning the one part of the country that did seize the opportunity of modernization, development, and democracy.Partition in Iraq would not be a defeat. The only thing holding Iraq together was Saddam's regime of terror. The unity of Iraq is the business of the Iraqis, who seem to have decisively rejected it. OTOH, the American electorate has no idea of how well things have gone in Kurdish Iraq, courtesy of the MSM (and the politicians who fail to direct our attention.) If any US Senator has visited that part of the country, it hasn't made the news. Nor do I wish to concede that Serbo-fascist ethnic cleansing can appear more rational in retrospect than it did at the time.Ethnic cleansing has a rationale of its own. See Spengler's take on the related issue, cited here. Some political differences (such as slavery in the pre-1865 US) are sometimes settled violently. The alternative is for countries like the US to put its young people on the line to enforce law & order between groups like the Iraqi Shias and Sunnis, a task not in the job description of this country. The Islamist threat itself may be crude, but this is an intricate cultural and political challenge that will absorb all of our energies for the rest of our lives: we are all responsible for doing our utmost as citizens as well as for demanding more imagination from our leaders.The American electorate is still asleep to this issue, but very slowly attitudes are changing. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-01-22 14:32 |