David Warren on the West, Islam, and Liberalism

Real Clear Politics has published an excellent piece by writer David Warren arguing that Islam's threat to the Western world has been realized not due to Islamic strength, but because of the West's moral and intellectual decline. (i.e. because the West has become too leftist.)

I don't know much about Mr. Warren, but he has really hit the nail on the head. The West has the power to thoroughly defeat jihadism this very moment, but restrains out of a supposed moral "sensitivity" that resultingly allows our evil enemies to fight another day. In order to win the war, we must shed this ultra-liberalism and return to the principles that allowed us to win World War II and the Cold War. As Warren concludes,

It is the recovery of our own sense of what we are, what we believe, and what we are about, that would defeat Afghan cave-dwellers and shrieking ayatollahs fairly quickly.

I agree, and let's hope this happens soon.

Coming up on TheSolidSurfer.com: Look for new site features, plus a brand new report from our Washington correspondent "K-Swiss", who will keep us up-to-date on the political, military, and cultural winds from our nation's capital.

Comments

[Dukakis88]

Our "moral sensitivity" is what makes us better than our enemies. It's what we're ostensibly fighting to preserve. Warren's very notion that "Islam is the enemy of the West" is extraordinarily ignorant.

Religious freedom and equal protection under the law are fundamental American values, and if we can't guarantee those fundamental rights then we really need to reconsider what we stand for.

Your intimations that the West invites attack because it institutionalizes racial and religious tolerance and human rights is as patently fallacious as the Pat Robertson saying God permitted the attack because America was too tolerant of homosexuals.

If we are made vulnerable to attack because of our refusal to revoke all personal, procedural and privacy rights, or because we are too "morally sensitive" to commit genocide against a civilian population because a few guerillas may be hiding among them, then the cure is worse than the disease.

Personally, I favor morally and intellectually declining.

[KuhnKat]

Dukakis88 you moral midget,

to extend rights, the person you are extending them to must also extend them in turn to you.

With Islam looking to convert, subdue, or KILL the rest of the world, exactly how are we to extend these rights to them?? Exactly what rights can we expect them to extend to us???

In other words MORON, it is reasonable to allow your neighbor to run around loose with freedom of speech religion movement weapons... because he/she has never done anything to have those rights legally infringed. Are we to extend the same rights to a serial killer or rapist who has been PROVEN to be such in a court of law??

Are we to extend those rights to members of a religion that colonised the Middle East, Northern Africa, parts of Europe, the Balkans, as far east as India, and who is now claiming that every bit of land they ever owned STILL BELONGS TO THEM?!?!?!?!?!

Oh, and that they will achieve Peace by conquering the WORLD?!?!?!?!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Now, in your third paragraph you just started making up sh!t about revoking rights and committing genocide. Only the Islamists have exhibited consistent TARGETING of civilian populations primarily WITHOUT military targets near and removing rights from anyone who doesn't CONVERT to Islam. you LEFTARDS whine about Israel being an apartheid state, but, the actual apartheid states are all the Islamic ones!!! If you ain't Muslim you ain't SH!T!!

As far as genocide, we bombed a countries civilians and infrastructure from high altitude and barely touched their military. We did it without the UN and with fewer allies than either Bush got for their wars. We did it alledgedly to STOP a genocide. Of course, the Dhimmicrats and the MSM worldwide jumped on the bandwagon for Bill Clintoons big war of appeasement to the Islamists in the KLA!!!!! Try to find that UN report that shows less than 3,000 bodies, less than half POSSIBLE atrocities who could have just as well been killed by the KLA as the SERBS!!!

How about the genocide Islamists are committing on native populations in the Horn of Africa area?? Not a problem huh??

You LEFTARDS get sucked in because you WORK at being STUPID!!!! You have been soooo propagandised that you suck up everything your handlers feed you with absolutely NO BRAIN INVOLVEMENT!!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

He did not intimate, he flat out SAID that the West is being attacked by the Islamists because they see us as weak and feel they can BEAT US due to MORONS LIKE YOU who REFUSE to accept REALITY!!

You listened to any of Nasrallahs whining lately about how he didn't expect such a large reaction to killing and kidnapping a sovereign nations soldiers from inside their sovereign borders??? THAT is the kind of idiocy our policies are promoting!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Need a little more brainpower?? Check with your leftard buddies. They ALL have fresh unused brains they could give you if you could just figure out how to work one!!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[Dukakis88]

Maybe I'm a moron, but I still believe that America stands for something just and decent, and I believe that the Constitution is more than just an inconvenience in the way of bludgeoning your perceived enemies.

Freedom of speech and freedom of religion in America and equal protection under the law are not conditional on reciprocity in other countries. They are guaranteed and inalienable rights of all Americans. If you can revoke that with regard to Islam, what protects any other faith? If you want to ban a religious group because of past atrocities and colonization, Christianity doesn't hold up as well. And if you strip away the bedrock protections for minority faith, you put Judaism at risk of a future politicization of Anti-Semitism.

That's why you have to respect rights even when they're used in a way you disagree with. They have to be unconditional, because once you start chipping away at them, that becomes precedent for chipping further, and there's no limit to how far someone can take it.

And we do, in fact, allow religious freedom and free speech for imprisoned criminals up to and including serial killers.

Islam is a major, established religion. There are a billion Muslims in the world, and Al Quaeda is, at most, a few thousand strong. And because of this small cult of fanatics, you're going to retaliate against a major world religion with a billion followers because it's "the natural enemy of the West"? You've got to be out of your mind!

Islam is something that the West has to coexist with, because it is not something that we can exterminate, either as a moral matter, as a practical matter, or consistently our values.

[KuhnKat]

Thanks for proving your ignorance.

You ignored everything I said about a person needing to abide by the laws to EARN the rights that we all have.

Keep blathering FOOL!!

When they give you a choice of head chop or conversion I know you will love bowing toward Mecca 5 times a day!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[Dukakis88]

Everything you said about people needing to abide by the laws to earn human rights is wrong and stupid. Did you never take high school civics? Do you pump your fist and wave your flag with no conception of what the United States Constitution is about? I guess if you're that dumb, you've found the right blog here.

People who don't obey the law have a lot of rights. The Fifth Amendment right to due process of law, and the privilege against self incrimination, the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial and the Eighth Amendment right to protection from cruel and unusual punishment are all rights that are put in place explicitly for people who don't break the law. The whole point of rights is to protect people who might be disfavored by the state for some reason, and criminals are such people, as are disfavored ethno-religious groups.

In fact, we never revoke freedom of religion, despite any transgression. Timothy McVeigh got to keep his bible and consult with his clergyman before they executed him. All the alleged terrorists get to keep their korans and prayer mats. And it doesn't make us any weaker.

Are you seriously arguing that American Muslims have no rights under the Constitution? How can you have such contempt for core American values and call yourself a patriot?

And people who haven't commited crimes certainly have rights. There are a lot of law-abiding Muslims in the world, and placing restrictions on the Constitutionally protected practice of Islam would be no more acceptable than banning Christianity because of abortion clinic bombers.

If you ask me, preserving the absolute right to worship as one sees fit is the best way for me to guarantee that I'll be able to practice the religion of my choosing.

And you think the terrorists are going to conquer the United States? With what army? With what navy?

The ability of Al Quaeda to function in any meaningful way as a top-down organization is severely disrupted. Most of its leaders are captured or killed and the rest are in hiding.

There may still be cells operating with the resources and capabilities to kill a few dozen or a few hundred people a year, though I doubt their ability to do even that on American soil.

It appears that the five-year war on terror has been somewhat successful in diminishing the capabilities of international terrorists, and I highly doubt that Al Quaeda will ever again be capable of conducting an attack like Sept. 11.

[Solid Surfer]

Islam in its fundamentalist form *is* the enemy of the West and of all other peoples (both non-Muslims and Muslims who aren't fundamentalist). Read the Koran. They have a religious duty to subjugate the world and covert it to Islam through terror and violence.

I don't think the US should ban Islam outright, but anyone who advocates and works toward overthrowing the U.S. government and replacing it with Sharia law (and there are many Muslims doing this, not just Al Qaeda) should be subject to being thrown out of the country. This is not a religious matter; their Muslim religion may be the factor that motivates them, but I'd advocate the same thing if, say, it was a group of neo-Nazis who want to overthrow the government and replace it with a neo-Nazi government. (Or if it was any other group that wanted to overthrow the goverment).

[Rastaman]

Dukakis88, you just don't quite have a handle on Islam yet. Have you studied Hitlers Germany at all? If so, then you know what Nazism is Fascism. Same thing. Fascism is of course a doctrine of total repression and dictatorship.

That's what Islam is. If you are a muslim and you decide to become a Christian or some other religion, your life is forfeit. Did you know that? Did you know that Islam has historically been spread by force, by terror and the sword? That's what's behind the Islamic terrorism now, it's simply a resurgence of Islamic Conquest.

The mistake is in accepting Islam as a religion when in fact it is NOT a religion, any more than Nazism was. The worship of idols, of goats or chickens or the worship of satan or evil, none of these are considered by humanity at large to be valid forms of religion. Religion worships God and values human life.

Islams Allah is a copy of Satan. Islam worships death and places no value on human life other than what might be accomplished by dying for Islam. Christianity and other religions give their practitioners a reason for living. Islam gives its practitioners a reason for dying.

Islam promotes torture. Death by slow stoning, the amputation of limbs, the common practice of torturing enemies before killing them, is all a part of Islam. The rape of non-islamic young girls and women is allowed and promoted, and this is becoming a major problem in Euro nations with growing Islamic populations. Slavery is allowed. Only muslims are considered worthy to live, all others are "infidels" and deserve to die.

Muhammad, its founder, had regular sex with a little nine year old girl. He promoted torture and terror and mutilations. He invented Allah. This so-called "deity" was entirely a figment of his crazed mind, and always found an excuse for anything horrible that Muhammad did. He suffered from frequent hallucinations. Islam makes no allowance for any other way of life. Everyone must become a muslim or die. There can be no form of government except under Islamic law, known as Sharia Law. This is why the muslims can't be assimilated into other cultures. Islam forbids it. The other cultures must be forced to become Islamic.

It goes on, and gets worse, but hopefully this is enough now to give you the idea. We aren't fighting a religion, we are fighting a form of totalitarianism that is the most dangerous on Earth.

As to the topic of this blog, Leftism has been partially to blame, but so has appeasement from the Right. The other major factor, that wasn't mentioned, is simply lack of public education and awareness. "Political Correctness" is an enemy of knowledge. Critise Islam and the muslims start screaming Discrimination. They play our sense of fair play off against us, and utterly lack one themselves. We need to turn this around. Islam needs to be exposed.

Rastaman
www.islamanazi.com

[Dukakis88]

If you were aware of the legal tradition in the United States, you'd know that even advocacy of violent overthrow of the government is protected speech.

That's also why we allow neo-Nazis and white supremacist groups to exist. Because the founding fathers, who had overthrown their government through force of arms, and were wary of overbearing state power, didn't think it was wise to give the government the ability to ban disfavored ideologies.

And fundamentalist Islam is the enemy of the West the same way a mosquito is the enemy of an elephant. Anyone with a gun can kill another person, and that's the central appeal of terrorism. But to conquer a country, you need a lot more. There's no Islamic fundamentalist movement capable of conquering any Western state through force of arms.

If I were concerned about someone setting up an American theocracy, I'd be looking to fundamentalist Christians before fundamentalist Muslims.

[Solid Surfer]

According to your logic, then, if a totalitarian force wants to take over the U.S. government and overturn our freedom, you'd just let them.

That's exactly what fundamentalist Muslims want to do. They may not have the strength now, but over a long period of time, they certainly aim to do it through immigration, through conversion, and especially through terrorist attacks designed to demoralize the American people into submitting to them.

How do you think Islam, in the past, conquered North Africa, Persia, Afghanistan, Indonesia, and parts of India and Central Asia? By doing precisely what I described above over a long period of time.

They want to do the same thing to America and the rest of the world. If we don't want that to happen, then we need to nip it in the bud before it gets out of control. Any Muslim who wants to take over America and turn it into a Sharia theocracy doesn't belong in this country.

[Dukakis88]

First of all, I can't understand why you're obsessed with Islamic imperial conquests from a thousand years ago. You sound like Osama Bin Laden, obsessing endlessly about the Crusades. Second of all, Christianity was also spread by military conquest. But it sort of seems beside the point.

Second, in this country we wait for people to commit a crime before we lock them up. We allow even very radical political speech because we don't trust the government to determine which beliefs are unacceptable.

We have strong laws against criminal conspiracies that allow us to lock someone up when they've committed a single overt act in furtherance of a conspiracy. We also lock people up for giving material aid to terrorists. We don't need to start imprisoning or deporting people for having radical ideologies.

Third, in your zeal to fight terrorism, you tear every page from the racist, anti-Semitic playbook.

One of the major anxieties of white supremecists is that, through immigration and large families, minorities will become a majority and displace whites. That's why they're so upset about illegal immigrants.

Right-wing groups in Europe call themselves "nationalist," and spout largely the same ideology you do about Muslim immigrants. Of course, similar ideologies fed the whole history of European anti-Semitism.

The same kind of political movements are still operating, and the fact that they've made Muslims their scapegoats makes them no less odious.

There's serious anti-Semitism on the Left these days. These people's anxieties about capitalism and American global military power have led kooks on the far left to identify and romanticize terrorists the way they used to romanticize communists, and it's disgusting. But the proper response certainly isn't to align oneself with the anti-Semites on the right because they also hate Muslims.

[Solid Surfer]

You have just answered your own question. I'm concerned about the past *exactly* because Bin Laden and his ilk are. The Islamic drive for jihadism has never changed. Their past conquests matter because they're trying to do the same thing today. This isn't just me speculating - Bin Laden and other terrorist leaders say it all the time. Those who forget the past are often doomed to repeat it. You may be content for America to be conquered by jihadists, but I'm not.

Secondly, I don't like the European far right. In many ways, they brought their problems onto themselves, because they killed all their Jews, who were no danger to them, and replaced them with Muslims, who are. Once again, I have no issue with non-Muslim immigrants. But Muslims are a serious problem. Look at this poll of Muslims from England once again: http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/1379
Do you want a bunch of terrorist and terorrist supporters in your country? I seriously doubt it.

[Dukakis88]

How, exactly, is Osama Bin Laden going to conquer America.

What tanks does he have? What ships? What planes? What army does he control?

We've captured his closest lieutenants, destroyed his camps and broken his organization.

I expect there may still be cells capable of getting bombs onto trains, but he was unable to follow up Sept. 11 with any attacks on America in five years, Al Quaeda has only been behind two attacks in Europe and the bombing in Bali.

How can they conquer America?

[Solid Surfer]

Bin Laden himself may not be able to at this point, but he isn't nearly the only terrorist trying.

Here is one method Iran is likely trying to use: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43956

[Dukakis88]

Okay. Ahmadinejad is stealing his plans to destroy the West from "Ocean's 11."

I'm gonna lose sleep over that.

Seriously, even if one of these rogue states managed to get an intercontinental ballistic missle that could reach the United States (North Korea might be able to hit California. Iran's nuclear aspirations are a threat to Europe and Israel), they'd launch one, and that would be it.

No Islamic (or Russian or Chinese) army could be moved to occupy the United States because our naval supremacy is absolute. If a US city were hit with a nuclear attack, I expect our reprisal might be less restrained.

[Solid Surfer]

But why even give Iran or North Korea the chance? Even if they can only nuke just one American city, that's still millions of people at risk. Given Iran's leadership's fanaticism, it'd be immoral and irresponsible of us to let them develop nuclear weapons. They are a threat to the whole world.

[Dukakis88]

So what? We should nuke them first? That just puts us in more danger.

Kim Jong Il and Ahmadinejad are outsized personalities, and maybe a little kooky, but they're not suicidal. This is a diplomatic struggle, and they're trying to secure a more prominent place for their regimes on the international scene. Neither of them wants to provoke annihilating reprisal from the United States.

Stockpiling weapons is a diplomatic ploy, and there's a diplomatic response to it, which is economic sanctions to put these dick-waving tinpot wannabes in their proper place, without getting drawn into another military quagmire.

I think global warming is a much bigger problem than Iran's nuclear aspirations.

[Solid Surfer]

Economic sanctions may have worked in the past with other regimes, but they almost certainly won't here.

Sanctions have already failed with Kim Jong Il, who lied to the US and developed nuclear weapons when he said he wouldn't. And now, Iran is saying that nothing, not even sanctions, will stop their nuclear program.

This is not so much of a worry with Kim, who is indeed not suicidal. But Ahmadinejad is another story. Maybe he isn't personally suicidal, but he could care less if his whole country is destroyed as long as he takes down America and Israel. He believes that he has a divine mission, and will not compromise this, regardless of sanctions, negotiations, or anything else: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/14/wiran14.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/01/14/ixworld.html

This means that the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), which successfully deterred the Soviets, will likely not work with him. Because of this, America cannot let him develop nuclear weapons under any circumstances, even if that means having to attack Iran in order to bring the regime down.