Mark Steyn's Letter Of The Week: Feeding Time

Not only do you view Muslims as a people devoid of culture, you now liken us to predatory animals (despite your clarifications at the end). Well, just as humans SHOULD look into why predators attack them (you fail to mention the well-known fact that these attacks are rare, and only happen in extreme cases i.e. hunger/defense/human encroachment), the West/Islam should look at each other's grievances without myopic, culturally-bounded prejudices. You can argue that you were not writing of all Muslims, just extremists. I have a feeling that you are not really interested in making this point, and you would describe those who do as namby-pamby, politically correct equivalents of tree-hugging "enviro-sentimentalists". Now, if you excuse me, I must get up early for breakfast, or as we zoo-dwellers call it, the Mid-Morning Feeding.

MARK REPLIES: Well, I didn’t say anything about Muslims, just Islamist terrorists. And, with respect to them, the comparison is valid: a shark is a killing machine; you can’t negotiate with him. You can’t say, “Let’s sign an agreement whereby he'll promise to chew up only three fingers on one hand.” Likewise, I take Hussein Mussawi, former leader of Hezbollah, at his word: “We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.” However, you’re astute to note that I can’t be bothered going through the “I hasten to add most Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding…” routine, because the underperformance of the Moderate Muslim is one of the most salient features of the last two years. The vast majority of Muslims are not shark-like terrorists but many of their leaders — the Prime Minister of Malaysia, the Vice-President of Indonesia — help maintain the fetid waters in which the sharks swim. And, when you look at the Jordanian Parliament’s recent vote in favour of the grand old Islamic tradition of “honour killing”, you realize “moderate Islam” has plenty of problems of its own. That said, I’m happy to send you this week’s free copy of The Face Of The Tiger . Even if you don’t read it, it’s excellent for lining the grate as you light your fire on these chilly autumnal Ontario evenings.

Predators Aren't Looking for Peace

Here's a news item from the too-lame-to-be-true category. But it is. It seems Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev have collaborated on a retelling of Prokofiev's beloved children's classic, ''Peter And The Wolf.'' In the original, you'll recall, Peter and his friend the duck are out frolicking in the meadow when the slavering wolf shows up and embarks on his reign of terror. He gulps down the duck as his hors d'oeuvre, and has the cat lined up to follow. But fortunately, Peter gets hold of a rope and uses it as a noose with which to muzzle the wolf and take him into captivity.

In the Clinton version, you won't be surprised to hear, Peter realizes the error of his lupophobia and releases the wolf back into the wild. The wolf howls a friendly goodbye. Which is jolly sporting of him when you consider that it's all our fault in the first place. ''Forgetting his triumph, Peter thought instead of fallen trees, parched meadows, choked streams, and of each and every wolf struggling for survival,'' narrates our Bill, addressing the root causes and feeling the wolf's pain. ''The time has come to leave wolves in peace.''

No word on the fate of the duck. Is she left in peace? Or in pieces?

And so the 42nd president brings us full circle, back to where we came in, two years ago. On the Eastern Seaboard, the weeks leading up to Sept. 11, 2001, were the summer of shark attacks. Jessie Arbogast, an 8-year old lad from Pensacola, Fla., had his arm ripped off, but his quick-witted uncle wrestled the predator back to shore, killed him, and retrieved the chewed-up limb from his jaws. In a thoughtful editorial, the New York Times came down on the side of the shark: ''Many people now understand that an incident like the Arbogast attack is not the result of malevolence or a taste for human blood on the shark's part,'' explained the Times. ''What it should really do is remind us yet again how much we have to learn about them and their waters.''

In other words, we need to work harder to understand ''why they hate us.'' Just blundering into their waters in ever more culturally insensitive bathing suits will only provoke the vast majority of nonviolent members of the shark community to hate us even more.

Two years after ''the day America changed forever,'' the culture is in thrall to the same dopey self-delusion it held on Sept. 10, 2001: There are no enemies, just friends we haven't yet apologized to. The terrorist won't be a problem if, like young Jessie with the shark, we just give him a helping hand. Or, as the novelist Alice Walker proposed for Osama bin Laden, ''I firmly believe the only punishment that works is love.''

-snip-

(Mark Steyn in the Chicago Sun-Times, September 7, 2003)
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You can object that America's enemies in this war are not animals, though the suicide bomber seems to me not fully human, either. But nor are wild animals merely the creatures of their appetites. They're also astute calculators of risk. Aside from the boom in Islamic terrorism, the 1990s was also the worst decade ever for shark, bear, alligator and cougar attacks in North America. One can note that there are more of these creatures than ever before--the bear and cougar populations have exploded across the continent. But there's also the possibility that these animals have not just multiplied but evolved: They've lost their fear of man. Not so long ago, your average bear knew that if he happened upon a two-legged type, the chap would pull a rifle on him and he'd be spending eternity as a fireside rug. But these days it's just as likely that any human being he comes across is some pantywaist Bambi Boomer enviro-sentimentalist trying to get in touch with his inner self. And, if the guy wants to get in touch with his inner self so badly, why not just rip it out of his chest for him?

ROFL

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