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| Terror Networks |
| Opinion: Thoughts On the bin Laden Tape and America's Policies |
| 2006-04-24 |
| Our own Charles Martel links to the latest bin Laden tape, but I wish to comment on one specific issue. The Caliph wanna-be has called for Jihad in Sudan: In it, the speaker identified as Bin Laden described the situation in Iraq and Sudan's troubled Darfur region as evidence of a "Zionist-Crusader war against Islam", referring to Israel and Christian states. The thing is, bin Laden is absolutely wrong about there being a "Crusader-Zionist" conspiracy. (I wish!) We are doing absolutely nothing to help African Christians and Animist fight Islam. And no wonder; helping them would weaken both the policy advanced by the present Republican administration and the policy favored by the Democratic opposition. The Republican administration favors "The Forward Strategy of Freedom", e.i., promoting "Democracy" in the "Arab" world. It is hard to know what the Democrats favor, since they'd rather win by default than engage in a battle of ideas, but whatever it is it will surely involve a lot of apologizing for non-existing sins and pointless diplomacy. Let's call it, with deliberate abusiveness, "The Hasty Retreat of Cowardice." The Forward Strategy of Freedom is praised on the grounds it will earn us the love of the all-powerful, always fickle, Arab Street; that is, since we will be advancing the interest of the ordinary Muslims, they will love us for it. But if we fight against Muslims, again, in Africa, this will make it easier for the Islamist propagandists to paint the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a "Crusader and Zionist conspiracy." The Hasty Retreat of Cowardice criticizes The Forward Strategy of Freedom for not being "pro-Arab"[2] (read: pro-Islam) enough. In their worldview, we must demostrate our love for Islam by defending the "great faith" at every turn, or at least being an "honest broker" in conflicts where Islam is involved.[3] We must push the Israelis to make concessions, the Phillipinos to initiate a dialogue with their Islamic terrorists, etc. Both The Forward Strategy of Freedom and The Hasty Retreat of Cowardice are premised on the urgent need to change "the hearts and minds" of Muslims. They want the enemy to love us. This is allegedly morally better than killing the enemy and destroying its will to fight because fewer people would die, it will lead to a more permanent peace, and whatever other utopian fantasies I have forgotten. But even granting such a thing is likely, let alone possible, we are forgetting the hidden cost of such policies: we are abandoning victims of naked aggression to their fates. The bodies of dead Africans, the cries of raped women and enslaved children speak against the moral superiority of the utopian policies. Notes: [1]The blacks under aggression in Darfur are indeed Muslims. To which I say; let them kill each other. That should be the price for following the teachings of the warlord Mohammad. On the other hand, the peoples under aggression in southeast Sudan are not Muslim. We should help them. (It is quite telling "the International Community" did not pay attention to the Sudanese civil war until the victims of aggression were Muslim.) [2]Why is the racial term "Arab" favored to the detriment of the proper, religious term, "Muslim?" To protect Islam's image and tar critics of Islam as racists, of course. [3]Intervening in the Yugoslavian civil war on behalf of Muslims earned us the contempt of Muslims and has lead to the creation of a de facto Islamist State in Europe. Those are the wages of utopian idealism. |
| Posted by:Clavirt Hupomock8193 |