Posted on 09/09/2006 11:10:24 PM PDT by Prospero
Finally, the President of the United States has validated the name of our nation’s intractable enemy. On the morning Britain (hopefully) busted at least one plot to blow up American passenger jets over the Atlantic, in a first, brief response to the round up of suspects in the U.K., I wasn’t the only one who noticed him say Americans must understand “we are at war” with “Islamic Fascists.”
Interestingly, the reaction from the self-anointed voices of Islam in America was predictably quick and loud, but short-lived. The sky did not fall, mosques were not torched nor Muslims lynched, even as polls showed increasing fear of Islam in general and of Muslims in particular.
After a long, terrible, costly struggle, America remains stubbornly tolerant, blessed with an arguably fragile but, far and away, the freest and, simultaneously, the most integrated culture and social order in world history. American Liberty should never be taken for granted.
Bob Woodward, no genuine friend of any Republican administration, in his book Bush at War, wrote that the very first thing President Bush expressed concern about upon returning to the Oval Office September 11, 2001 was how to engage in war against a largely invisible enemy, without compromising civil liberty in the United States.
This is, of course, a remarkable contrast with the ridiculous characterature painted of him by his domestic political enemies five years later. As a kid growing up in Washington decades ago, “everyone knew” the NSA, or “the Puzzle Palace,” or as “No Such Agency” was then known, had been monitoring all international telephone calls probably since the Truman administration.
But “Fascists?” I chafe at Kurt Vonnegut’s insistence that Nazi Germany was a “Christian nation,” and I suppose if someone insists our victories in the European battlefields of World War II were triumphs over “Christian Fascists,” it might easily start a heated argument. Nevertheless, and amazingly, there were and are self-described “Christian” Fascists in our world, in Latin America, Lebanon and elsewhere, and throughout history. It is, of course, a ridiculous and political stylization. The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that anyone can call himself or herself a “Christian” and anyone can call himself or herself a follower of “The Prophet.”
What is refreshing about the president’s use of the word “fascists” comes from the historic context, the false assumption that the strain of virulent Mass Movement most Americans during World War II called “fascism” died with Germany’s surrender in May 1945. For most of my life it has been one of those words used so often and improperly that it has almost lost all historic meaning.
As a Mass Movement, among its followers, genuinely terrified of Liberty, anxious to escape responsibility for “knowing Good and Evil,” and equally anxious for self-annihilation by surrender to almost any group promising “inevitable victory” and release; for a certain type of individual, well-prepared already with a sense of being a hopelessly flawed person living in a hopelessly flawed present, the nationalistic strain we once called “fascism” is very much alive and well.
So is it’s twin, the international strain we still call Communism. And all Mass Movements compete for and recruit followers from the same pool of remarkably intelligent, often relatively affluent and educated people who, in their heart of hearts, are no different than Adam and Eve “fleeing for the tall grass” fearing the nakedness of their responsibility before God because of their knowledge of Good and Evil.
In each case the abstract cover provided can range from an extended “family” to nationalism and internationalism or self-annihilation by a total loss of self by merging with the Infinite. And nearly all Mass Movements are unified by hatred of those “outside.”
Before Islam (the nation and religion) began its return to historic roots, becoming little different from the other modern Mass Movements with which American Liberty could not “co-exist,” during World War II, before the Cold War and Israel’s declaration of independence, European Fascism sank deep roots in Islamic and Arab nationalism.
Even The History Channel recently devoted two hours tracing the roots of Arab Nationalism directly to Nazi Germany. It has long been noted by historians this present “new war” has battlefronts amounting to long-neglected mopping up operations aimed at remnants of European Fascism.
Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime in Iraq, and that same Party’s equally nasty regime in Syria trace their ideological lineage and methods directly to Adolph Hitler, most visibly through a little remembered fellow named Mohammad Amin-al-Husayni, the “Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,” who had a wonderful garden party with the Fuhrer in 1941, together hoping to prepare for a front in the Middle East, but succeeding in developing a strain of fascism that survived the fall of Berlin and inflamed a mostly dormant anti-Semitism. Eventually, what appears to the West now to be an almost “stateless” terrorism grew from the root a more broadly planted fascist nationalism than Hitler could have dreamed.
Islam is a nation, with undetermined borders; a concept rooted in its Holy book and ancient ideology, stretching from the Eastern Pacific, interrupted only by China and India, all the way to West Africa, with colonies holding to and enforcing their own national law everywhere in the world. Taking an interesting opposite course from that of its European stepfathers, this rising strain of fascism, this true Islamic nationalism, appears to be undergoing its internal conflicts after consolidating its conquests, working out internal strife similar to the murderous gang wars among German fascists from which Hitler eventually emerged to become the unquestioned ruler of the German nation and who only afterward proceeded with his territorial conquests.
An interesting point, though religion is generally pushed off in the realm of the subjective as are nearly every method of measuring a religion's validity.
More interestingly is your point about children. Taking the chance that someone will accuse me of being a fan, "Sting" wrote a song twenty years ago, at the hight of President Reagan's deployment of mid-range nuclear missles in Europe entitled "I Hope the Russians Love Their Children, Too."
One essential difference, very broadly speaking, between the clerics of "Radical Islam" and the same atheist priesthood running Soviet Russia is the former's unhesitating willingness to kill anyone and everyone.
Again, BROADLY SPEAKING, an examination of Islam and shows they really may not "love their children, too."
In a display of "Orwellian Logic" (one of many in the islamic "play book", the Koran condemns suicide but is interpreted to ignore this admonition when it is a "Martyr" involved in the act. In addition, their killing of children (whether their own or others) merely accelerates a "believer" into paradise or..., eliminates an "infidel" who is "an abomination in the eyes of Allah"!
At some point in time, the west will learn to deal with the islamic mindset in a manner which accomplishes both parties' interests...
Islamists seek death as a means of being "rewarded" in paradise so, their deaths (by the millions) will please them and..., eliminate their threat to western civilization!
You are absolutely right, Islam is the only word that needs to be said.
However, since my earlier post, I have been thinking about this, and I wonder, if the President feels he needs to add another word to make the idea of Islam=enemy understandable to people, if the term "Islamic totalitarianism" might do. It is, after all, a totatalitarian system, seeking to impose itself; neither the definitions for fascist nor communist states fit it precisely, but "totalitarianism" is broad enough to cover this type of Mass Movement.
The only problem is that it's a long word and not very catchy as a phrase for the evening news...
That's not true.
In time, and it is NOW, the full truth has to be told. Islam has been at war with the non-Muslim world for 1450 years. It is not playing into the hands of the terrorists, it is simply stating very much in the open what we have been thinking the last 5 years. Those that are not doing the fighting will often support those that do.
Another case of "playing the victim." The real victim is the one who had to leave after 36 of employment.
One exception : Islam.
That situation could have been better used, but someone had to pay. So there was negative results and negative attitudes created. Poor job by HR.
Sadly, our institutions will take the side of a Muslim any day. I suppose it's because they consider Muslims to be a "minority," and hence protected. The Muslims are finding out that all they have to do to silence criticism is complain that they are offended minorities. Even without threatening to behead anybody, they can make people afraid to even discuss them.
"Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Qur'an should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth"
--Omar Ahmed, Chairman of the Board of CAIR (Council of American Islamic Relations), San Ramon Valley Herald, July 1998
Exactly. We are at war with Islam. So why do we not deport these idiots immediately under the Sedition Act?
Come on. We can learn Arabic from several good sources that don't involve keeping these fools around.
Actually, the Protestant churches were the ones that tried to set up true theocracies (where the secular government is run by the religion and members of the clergy). Catholicism has always had a very clear distinction between the leader of the secular state and the religious authorities, and has endured much persecution when secular leaders (such as Henry VIII) attempted to take over religious authority.
There have been times when the State and the Church have worked together, and these times have never been good for the Catholic Church, because the State always wins. The Spanish Inquistion, for example, which was originally intended to be an internal disciplinary activity aimed at rooting out tendencies that had crept into the Church in Spain during its Islamic captivity, as well as immoral practices particularly among the clergy, was transformed into a State-sponsored persecution because the Church relied upon the State for certain administrative things and thereby gave itself into the power of the State and its politics.
However, in Christianity, these things are fundamentally separate, and even modern Protestants do not hark back to Cromwell and wish they were members of a state and church like his, which were one and the same. That is because theocracy goes against the nature of Christianity. Even Protestant Christianity, which does not have a temporal head, rejects the idea of a state controlled by religious authorities.
But Islam has been a theocracy since the beginning. It is a syncretist cult that took bits of Jewish ritual law and the concept of the "prophet" from Judaism, some historical figures and the concept of multi-nationality from Christianity, and its black rock at Mecca and demonic concept of a remote, unpredictable god that must be placated at all times by bizarre bloody acts from Arab paganism. Islam requires the imposition of sharia and in fact also rejects the concept of the secular state that it has been forced to accept. I think that unless we understand that Islam wants to impose itself on the totality of human life - because that is its nature, not a corruption of it - we are being fools.
Of course, one look at Islamic societies will tell you how well this model functions! Interestingly, as you point out, it is riddled with strife - but that's because the nature of Islam is such that if it becomes more moderate (from contact with non-Muslim societies, for example), the more orthodox, who actually have the support of Islamic scriptures, rise up and overthrow the moderates. That's what we're seeing right now, but that's what we've seen for 1400 years.
Islam doesn't have a head (although the direct descendants of Mohammed do have primacy), but I still believe it could be destroyed by destroying Mecca because that's where its cult-object is. On the other hand, bombing the Vatican and even killing the Pope would be upsetting, but have no effect upon Catholicism. This is because the Pope is not an object of worship and another Pope would be elected; the main office of the Church could be (and occasionally has been) established anywhere; and while the loss of the symbolic significance of Rome would be sad, it would not destroy either Christianity in general or the Catholic Church in particular. But I think if the Muslims lost their black rock with the hole through the middle and the strange vagina-shaped silver lips around the hole - well, the entire religion would vanish as if its people had been released from a wicked enchantment.
Ooops - I should have added, btw, that I think it's highly unlikely that we would ever do this (destroy Mecca). And the Muslims know this, too.
Sounds good to me. I seriously think it will be the only way to put an end to Islam. Sort of like in the Lord of the Rings - the thing must be destroyed in order to save goodness and civilization.
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