The one Mumbai terrorist still alive, Ajmal Amir Kasab, in action.
Posted on 12/09/2008 5:14:54 AM PST by SJackson
Victims caught in terrorist atrocities perpetrated for Islam typically experience fear, torture, horror, and murder, with sirens screaming, snipers positioning, and carnage in the streets. That was the case recently in Bombay (now called Mumbai), where some 195 people were murdered and 300 injured. But for the real target of Islamist terror, the world at large, the experience has become numbed, with apologetics and justification muting repulsion and shock.
The one Mumbai terrorist still alive, Ajmal Amir Kasab, in action.
If terrorism ranks among the cruelest and most inhumane forms of warfare, excruciating in its small-bore viciousness and intentional pain, Islamist terrorism has also become well-rehearsed political theater. Actors fulfill their scripted roles, then shuffle, soon forgotten, off the stage.
Indeed, as one reflects on the most publicized episodes of Islamist terror against Westerners since 9/11 – the attack on Australians in Bali, on Spaniards in Madrid, on Russians in Beslan, on Britons in London – a twofold pattern emerges: Muslim exultation and Western denial. The same tragedy replays itself, with only names changed.
Muslim exaltation: The Mumbai assault inspired occasional condemnations, hushed official regrets, and cornucopias of unofficial enthusiasm. As the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center notes, the Iranian and Syrian governments exploited the event "to assail the United States, Israel and the Zionist movement, and to represent them as responsible for terrorism in India and the world in general." Al-Jazeera's website overflowed with comments such as "Allah, grant victory to Muslims. Allah, grant victory to jihad" and "The killing of a Jewish rabbi and his wife in the Jewish center in Mumbai is heartwarming news."
Such supremacism and bigotry can no longer surprise, given the well-documented, world-wide acceptance of terror among many Muslims. For example, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press conducted an attitudinal survey in spring 2006, "The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other." Its polls of about one thousand persons in each of ten Muslim populations found a perilously high proportion of Muslims who, on occasion, justify suicide bombing: 13 percent in Germany, 22 percent in Pakistan, 26 percent in Turkey, and 69 percent in Nigeria.
A frightening portion also declared some degree of confidence in Osama bin Laden: 8 percent in Turkey, 48 percent in Pakistan, 68 percent in Egypt, and 72 percent in Nigeria. As I concluded in a 2006 review of the Pew survey, "These appalling numbers suggest that terrorism by Muslims has deep roots and will remain a danger for years to come." Obvious conclusion, no?
Western denial: No. The fact that terrorist fish are swimming in a hospitable Muslim sea nearly disappears amidst Western political, journalistic, and academic bleatings. Call it political correctness, multiculturalism, or self-loathing; whatever the name, this mentality produces delusion and dithering.
Nomenclature lays bare this denial. When a sole jihadist strikes, politicians, law enforcement, and media join forces to deny even the fact of terrorism; and when all must concede the terrorist nature of an attack, as in Mumbai, a pedantic establishment twists itself into knots to avoid blaming terrorists.
I documented this avoidance by listing the twenty (!) euphemisms the press unearthed to describe Islamists who attacked a school in Beslan in 2004: activists, assailants, attackers, bombers, captors, commandos, criminals, extremists, fighters, group, guerrillas, gunmen, hostage-takers, insurgents, kidnappers, militants, perpetrators, radicals, rebels, and separatists – anything but terrorists.
And if terrorist is impolite, adjectives such as Islamist, Islamic, and Muslim become unmentionable. My blog titled "Not Calling Islamism the Enemy" provides copious examples of this avoidance, along with its motives. In short, those who would replace War on Terror with A Global Struggle for Security and Progress imagine this linguistic gambit will win over Muslim hearts and minds.
Post-Mumbai, Steven Emerson, Don Feder, Lela Gilbert, Caroline Glick, Tom Gross, William Kristol, Dorothy Rabinowitz, and Mark Steyn again noted various aspects of this futile linguistic behavior, with Emerson bitterly concluding that "After more than 7 years since 9/11, we can now issue a verdict: Islamic terrorists have won our hearts and minds."
What finally will rouse Westerners from their stupor, to name the enemy and fight the war to victory? Only one thing seems likely: massive deaths, say 100,000 casualties in a single WMD attack. Short of that, it appears, much of the West, contently deploying defensive measures against fancifully-described "activists," will gently slumber on.
Not until the carnage hits a level of unimaginable proportions on our soil will we wake up.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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Could it be also that Western countries dither to justify their every expanding governments? Another 'war socialism.' Just a thought.
You hit the nail, the Marxist have allied with the Islamist for one reason, destruction of the West!
9/11 was unimaginable and we woke up for maybe a few weeks, if that.
You have to understand that there is NO level of carnage and death that will force a LIBERAL to oppose terrorism. An example:
Peoples Republic of Massachusetts. Wife's Irish relatives. Flaming liberal assholes their entire lives. Discussing death penalty: If someone killed your wife would you want him executed? No
If someone killed your entire family, should pay with his life? No
If someone killed 100 people in a town massacre should he be executed? No
If someone killed 1,000,000 people in Boston with a nuclear bomb, should he be executed? No.
These anti-American morons will never be brought to a level of outrage because their liberal catechism does not allow it. They will gladly kill a child in the womb or at birth for their own convenience without the slightest twinge of conscience. But they will oppose executing mass murderers because "he was not responsible, society turned him to a killer and we're all responsible for that........."
So no, the Left will never wake up to the threat of terrorism. Clearly, as Zero has stated, he would sit down with killers without preconditions to talk with them and ask them to be nice. So much for common sense!
Sadly, I think you do as well.
I know journalists don't know much, and much of what they do “know” is wrong, but can't they get it through their thick skulls that Mumbai and Bombay are the same word with different pronunciations. There was no ‘and now we will call it Mumbai’ point in history. It was always Mumbai, and Englishmen preferred to spell it and pronounce it Bombay.
Thank you, Dr. Mumbai.
I documented this avoidance by listing the twenty (!) euphemisms the press unearthed to describe Islamists who attacked a school in Beslan in 2004: activists, assailants, attackers, bombers, captors, commandos, criminals, extremists, fighters, group, guerrillas, gunmen, hostage-takers, insurgents, kidnappers, militants, perpetrators, radicals, rebels, and separatists – anything but terrorists. And if terrorist is impolite, adjectives such as Islamist, Islamic, and Muslim become unmentionable.
Beslan was horrific and should have been yet another wake up alarm. (Let's not leave out London's 7/7.) It wasn't and (among other attacks) we have the horror of Mumbai. So the powers that be hit the snooze alarm. Again. Blissfully unaware. The terrorists are counting on it.
Terrorists--and democrats--are very careful not to step over that line. They go right to the brink, and they sometimes do go over the line, but they've got cover known as "The Left," which encompasses 95% of all media and most politicians, all the way down the line to substitute, sex-ed public teachers.
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