Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Gonads Gone?

There are over a billion Muslims in the world, about one out of five people. Not all are jihadists who want to destroy Israel and the United States, but how many? One percent? Ten percent? Half? Nobody really knows but it’s a very important question. Even if it’s one percent, that’s ten million. When news of September 11th spread around Muslim countries, there was a lot of celebrating in the streets. Were most Muslims glad we were attacked or was there only a small minority celebrating in the streets that day? Is there a “silent majority”? Hard to say.

Some analysts claim our enemies belong to a fast-growing group within Islam variously labelled Islamofascists, Jihadists, Islamists, and so on. President Bush’s strategy is to establish Muslim democracies to give a presumed silent majority voting power. But in Palestine, Muslim voters elected a terrorist group called Hamas to run the Palestine Authority. What will happen in Lebanon’s next election? Will Hezbollah win control? Both groups call for the destruction of Israel and the United States.

Bernard Lewis, America’s foremost historian of the Muslim world, says jihadist, radical Islam was first espoused by an Arab named Wahhab in the 18th century. Wahhab was allied to the House of Saud which eventually conquered Arabia. When oil was discovered there in the early 20th century, the Saudis gained power and so did Wahhabism by association. Our petrodollars fund its propagation. Last April, Lewis said Wahhabism is to Islam what the Ku Klux Klan is to Christianity. If he’s right and I hope he is, jihadist Islam will be bothersome for a time, but fade away to the wacky fringe as the Klan has but I’m not confident it will.

The KKK got fairly strong in the south after the Civil War and spread north a few decades later. Mainstream Christian leaders, however, publicly condemned it. Ordinary Christians were horrified by KKK terror tactics and said so openly. Yet I’m hearing very little condemnation of Jihadist terror from Muslim clerics or Muslims in general. Instead, we see them burning American flags, Israeli flags and Danish flags. They jump around, yell, shake their fists, burn President Bush and Pope Benedict XVI in effigy, behead captives and blow themselves up to kill infidels all over the world. In European cities, Muslim minorities demonstrate with signs exclaiming: “Behead Those Who Insult Islam” and “Kill Those Who Insult Islam.” Now they want to kill the pope.

I’ve learned a lot from Bernard Lewis but I have to ask myself: was he downplaying Jihadist strength? He made the KKK comparison in April, but by August he was warning that mad Muslim mullahs who control Iran might try to trigger an Apocalypse on the 22nd of the month. They didn’t, thank God, but Lewis got me nervous and I listened to the news more closely that day than usual.

Lewis’s 1990 essay in the Atlantic Monthly called “The Roots of Muslim Rage” first opened America’s eyes about what motivates jihadists who have since become a threat to civilization itself. Jihadists blame the decline of a once-great Arab/Muslim civilization on western oppression. To regain power, they would impose a purified, 8th-century brand of Islam on themselves and everyone else. They would return to the beginnings if Islam and that’s what al Qaeda means: “The Source.” Then they would rise up again to smash the west and Christianity as they did fourteen hundred years ago.

How many Muslims are (take your pick) Jihadists? Islamofascists? Wahhabis? Radical Islamists? We don’t know, but it doesn’t take a majority in any given country or region to turn things completely around. Nazis were a minority in 1920s Germany but they took over in the 1930s. The Bolsheviks were a minority in 1917 Russia, but they controlled the Soviet Union a few years later.

After Pearl Harbor, Americans understood the threat and were ready to do whatever it took to destroy our enemies. Roosevelt demanded nothing short of unconditional surrender and we smashed the fascists in less than four years. Then we fought a cold war for more than forty years to defeat Communism. Do we still have what it takes to defeat the Jihadists? I’m not so sure. We have the strength, certainly, but lack the will. We’re afraid to offend them, much less destroy them. Two generations ago, we summoned the will and the courage to fight. Now it seems our national gonads are gone.

For decades, Muslim terrorists called for the destruction of America and we ignored them. Even after we suffered a worse attack than Pearl Harbor, we still don’t have the will to destroy our enemies. Many insist Islam is a religion of peace and our only enemy is Osama Bin Laden. However, Islam means “submission.” Will we submit? Iran will soon have nuclear weapons and its president threatens to wipe Israel off the map while his proxy army, Hezbollah, chants “Death to America.” Meanwhile, Americans are more worried about global warming than jihadists with nukes. Have we lost our minds along with our gonads?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Tom,

The effete way in which America reacts to crises of any sorts should be traced to feminists and their bra-burning antics -- the reason why a John Wayne or a Gen Patton would never succeed in today's world is because we have determined what is appropriate and what is not, thanks to feminism of the 60's and 70's. Unfortunately, the men of this country have been weaned away from behaving as men. Instead, they've been indoctrinated to be "nurturers" and other nonsencial stuff, instead of doing what they should do -- protect their families and provide for them.

Since Islam has not been affected by the bra-burners' agenda, their men behave like men (albeit in a perverse, misguided way). However, they at least stand for something and are vocal about it -- not like our men (include our politicians, businessmen, journalists, military generals in that category) who are more concerned about playing it politically correctly, about the reactions and condemnations of a pitifully liberal media, about 'hurting' people's sensitivities and feelings. No wonder, a tyrant like Hugo Chavez can get away by calling the President of the US a 'devil' and yet, earn zillions of dollars via a company like CITGO.

You ask where the gonads are gone? A generation of bra-burners chopped those gonads and ran away with them leaving behind a generation of hermaphrodites who call themselves 'men'. Shame on American men and women for making this great country of heroes a weak, flaccid one.

Tom McLaughlin said...

I've seen a lot of it in public schools over the last three decades. Thankfully, people like Christina Hoff Sommers in her "War Against Boys" are calling attention to the problem. Hope it's not too late to turn it around. We still have quite a few good-old-fashioned boys around here in rural Maine. Quite a few former students are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Anonymous said...

Gregdn,

As a foreigner living in the US for the past few years, I can vouch for the fact that the only way to fight this War on Terror is to be brutal and not play the "rules of combat" -- there is a ceratin amount of dignity and honor in that. However, to an enemy that is more keen on embracing death than life, that'll go to any extent to harm innocent people (train bombings in Madrid, London, Mumbai; Jill Carroll, Steve Centani, Danny Pearl episodes; 9/11; etc), they do not DESERVE to be treated with honor and respect as fellow combatants. That is a major attitudinal shift needed in US policy. To give you an eg, when they caught Saddam Hussain in that foxhole, they should have never caught him a. on camera and b. left him alive. That scumbag should have been shot immediately. Why do I say this? Because, today it is us, the taxpayers who are paying for his accomodation, his food, his court trial, etc. Does the Devil himself deserve a trial, I submit to you?!!! No wonder this war is draining tax payers' pockets. We should be swift, ruthless, mean and not waste our resources. To give you an eg, around two years or so back, here in the Atlanta metro area, Afghan refugees were being paid (around) $4,000 per month (gasp!) to teach American soldiers/military officials Afghan etiquettes, cultural do's and don'ts, etc. These guys are REFUGEES, for God's sakes! Why are you paying them $4,000 when you can pay them $400 only! Why are you wasting money like this?!! This sucks!!!!

I miss the toughness of a Patton, the ruthlessness of a William T Sherman to get it done, no matter what! This country can win this war if its leaders stop treating the enemy in a condescending manner. It is very much do-able. If only there is an urgency in Washington to do so and not continue to bleed taxpayers' money.

I revert back to my original comment on the sissification of this nation. It has done a lot of harm to the men-folk of this country.

Sriraj
P.S. -- The first thread of this post was mine. I forgot to write my name. My apologies.

Tom McLaughlin said...

"What more should we do?" A fair question. Several things come to mind:

We should seal up our border with Mexico and scrutinize the one with Canada more closely. We should profile terrorists and then expose the weaknesses in the inevitable charges of "racial profiling" from the mainstream media.

We should indeed question the patriotism and the courage of naysayers in the Democratic Party left.

If we're not already doing it but don't know because it may be classified, we should send in teams of assassins to take out terrorist leaders in the countries where they reside. We did this in Yemen and in Pakistan with drones and Hellfire missiles. We should do it on the ground as well with counterterrorism teams of Seals and the equivalent. If we don't have enough of them, recruit and train more. I read something recently about an effort to do that. If we have to hire local Arab hit men, do it.

We should prosecute the New York Times for leaking classified information. At press conferences, the Bush Administration should call out Reuters, the BBC, the Associated Press, and other media outlets who use stringers in league with terrorists.

In cities like Fallujah, we should drop leaflets saying "All women and children should leave because in three days we're going to send in the Marines to kick serious ass. All other known terrorist strongholds should be dealt with the same way. If we need more troops to do this, send them. If we need to raise military pay to recruit them, raise it.

We should notify Iran that, if they don't allow inspectors to their 44 or so sites where they're developing nuclear weapons, we will take out one with a bunker-buster. Then notify them again that in three days, we're going to take out another one. Keep it up until they realize we've found our gonads and that Bush is in office until January 2009. If that causes more attacks by Hezbollah and al Qaeda assets already in the US, so be it. They would have attacked on their own timetable anyway.

If the UN objects, cut their funding. If they want to move to Caracas, tell them not to let the doorknob catch them in the ass on the way out of New York. They're useless and we're better off without them.

If Chirac objects, tell him to shut up until he can summon up some gonads. Then maybe we'll listen to him. The world knows he doesn't have any and neither does any other French leader except maybe Sarkozy.

Is that enough? I could go on.