Francis W. Porretto at Eternity Road aims to influence your opinions.
Money quote(s):
"I've received a fair amount of email this past week, inquiring about whether I planned to write something on the tenth anniversary of Black Tuesday: September 11, 2001, when Islam openly declared war on the United States. Yes, I said Islam, not "terrorists," "extremists," or "fundamentalists." We have it on the authority of a head of state -- Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey -- that there is no "moderate Islam;" there is only Islam. Any number of imams, mullahs, ayatollahs and so forth have said the same -- and have proceeded to justify the atrocities of Black Tuesday as a response to the "humiliation" Muslims have endured at America's hands.
What humiliation? Daring to rise and progress out of the seventh century. Proclaiming a doctrine of individual rights beyond what their scriptures allow. Treating persons of all races, sexes, and faiths as possessing a perfect right to be as they are and believe as they do. Letting women read, drive, and go about in attractive clothing, unaccompanied by a male chaperone.
We "humiliate" Muslims and Islam by being Americans: believers in freedom, a secular state, and an objective rule of law and justice." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)
There're what, a billion muslims in the world? That's almost as many muslims as there are Catholics! Surely all of them aren't at war with the United States?
"If you're a person of wholesome values and rational mind, you were as outraged about Black Tuesday as I was -- and you remain so, as I do. If we differ at all, it's in what would constitute the appropriate responses, short and long-term, and the enduring stance America ought to take toward the perpetrators, their enablers, their apologists, and their co-religionists.
Needless to say, even among men of good will, that's a wide spectrum of opinion. What I'm here to do, today and every day, on this and every subject of public import, is to pull your opinions toward mine. Anyone who writes op-ed is trying to do the same. " (Bold type added for emphasis. - CAA.)
I know it's supposed to be a bad thing to hold onto anger all this time, but frankly I've come to doubt whether the veracity itself of that bit of modern-day folk wisdom. Anger isn't always a bad thing, it seems to me. It can help keep you focused on whatever, presumably important, thing that has angered you. After all, if the thing is still making you angry, maybe the fault isn't you after all.
Not to rule that out, you understand. Let's not rule anything out, let's keep an open mind to all the possibilities and then start to rule them out, based on facts and observations.
Regarding the bolded portion of the excerpt above, I have no quibble with Mr. Porretto's wording except the final three (including one compound-) words: "and their co-religionists." And I'll tell you why:
My issue, my anger, my "eternal hostility" remains with "the perpetrators, their enablers, (and) their apologists." And while I certainly don't limit that hostility to "their co-religionists," nor do I intend to categorically sweep them into the "eternal hostility" category unless, by their perpetration, their enablement, and their apologetics, they place themselves therein.
Frankly, those who are in essence accessories, before and after the facts of 9/11, constitute a sufficiently broad category within both the non-Muslim and Muslim worlds as to provide no end of enemies.
But, as we are in a war, not a criminal court, the object is not conviction of the guilty (including the accessories) but their defeat. So let not your heart be troubled.
"We are at war with Islam, and have been since Iranian "students" stormed the American Embassy in Tehran, took 52 Americans hostage, and kept them for 444 days.
Don't bother to argue with me about this. Either we are or we aren't. If we aren't, the evidence for the proposition demands a better explanation than any I've heard. Worse, there's no objective evidence that we aren't, and no Islamic apologist has dared to present any.
But we're not fighting that war. We're acting, in large measure, as if some other force were responsible for the crimes and atrocities committed in Islam's name. We're acting, in other words, as if Islam and Muslims generally are the victims rather than the cause and the perpetrators."
A couple of points:
First, while certain Islamic actors (including entire governments) have been at war with the U.S., indeed with Western civilization, for at least since the Tehran embassy takeover, we have not ourselves been at war back. At least not until 9/11 when the war which had been being waged against us abroad for all these years came crashing into the home front. No pun intended.
Second, the first (and last) victims of the Sharia-based ideology of militant, fundamentalist (and occasionally socialist) Islam are always muslims themselves. Muslims who disagree, muslims to aren't fundamentalist, aren't militant, aren't murderous enough; they are always the ultimate victims of our Islamist enemies.
This is not to minimize our role as an obstacle to a Sharia-controlled world where muslims may be terrorized and murdered without hindrance, since there won't be anyone else left to terrorize and murder; we're the Great Satan, after all. And with that greatness comes great responsibility.
"In part, it's because of the barrage of propagandization we've received about Islam, about American "imperialism," and about our duty to "tolerate" this totalitarian creed. Like it or not, people's attitudes and unconscious assumptions are shaped by the Legacy Media even today. They see, hear, or read a "news report" and accept it as undiluted, unpolluted fact. They read a bit of op-ed from some eloquent columnist with whom they agree on less weighty matters, and they accept his rendition rather than performing their own. They hear persons whom they admire, and whose good opinion they crave, declaim in this or that fashion, and they accept it and parrot it back to him for no better reason than their need for his approval.
And in part, it's because we've become uncomfortable with the concept of evil. We simply dislike the idea that there are persons in the world whose ultimate aim is our subjugation or destruction. And since it's an abstraction, not represented by any individual we have close at hand, we scowl and shrug it away.
Got a hot flash for you, sports fans: There is evil in the world. Now and then it's codified into a creed and set down between book covers. The Communist Manifesto. Mein Kampf. The Koran. Those who embrace such a creed are embracing evil.
Yes, it's a Christian's part to hate the sin but forgive the sinner and pray for his repentance. But it's a free man's part to fight the evildoer with all his power -- especially when at the end of the contest, one of you will be dead, and the other free to go on as he's done.
We are at war with Islam. We've been at war with Islam for forty-one years." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)
See my remarks above. Islamic terrorists (including entire governments) have been at war with us for each of those forty-one years, but for much of that time we brushed aside the insults, the murders, the treachery, and the attacks against our military, our diplomats, and our civilians, as mere nuisances to be ignored or somehow bought off. Actual warfare, at least since the Jefferson administration, against Islamic terrorists, bandits, and pirates (but I repeat myself) has been quite rare, and more the occasional skirmish indicental to various rescue or other reactive and defensive missions.
"Try reading this concise report on Muslims' behavior in Western countries to which they've been admitted. Try rationalizing its evidence against any other conclusion than that Islam is an aggressive program of totalitarian conquest of the world, with a few theological trimmings as protective coloration.
Try imagining how "tolerance" for such a creed could eventuate any other way than in mass slaughter of the "tolerant" and the subjugation of the survivors."
Those with eyes to see need only observe developments in the erstwhile "Arab Spring" nations for a sneak-preview of what may be in store, Ralph Peters notwithstanding, for Western Europe.
9/11/11
