Evil’s true name Andrew Bolt
We’ve been tip-toeing around the real nature of terrorism for far too long. The horror in Russia compels us to recognise the truth about this evil.
ENOUGH. Finally enough with the evasions and excuses – the pretence that this had nothing to do with Islamism. No, the evil that turned a Russian school into a slaughterhouse is too great and too threatening for more such polite fictions.
Remember 9/11: Stop sanitizing the killers Michelle Malkin
The third anniversary of Sept. 11 is upon us. We remain at war – and the media remain in denial.
How many times have you picked up a newspaper and read about terrorist attacks perpetrated not by Muslim terrorists, but by generic “militants” or “guerrillas” or “rebels” or, as Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes noted the Pakistan Times called them, “activists"?
Contrast the media whitewashing of our Islamofascist enemies with the press coverage of the Waco, Texas, siege in 1993 – which constantly reminded us that David Koresh and his Branch Davidian followers were members of a “peculiar religious sect” (New York Times, March 3, 1993) and “a group of religious zealots with a known propensity for violence” (Washington Post, March 2, 1993) who were steeped in a “culture of Christian extremism” (San Francisco Chronicle, April 20, 1993).
Some get it. But most are still in denial. We won’t have a chance of winning the war until the mainstream media stops euphemising and starts telling it as it is. You can’t fight an enemy without first identifying who the enemy is.
First, curb and eliminate that religion of the Left, “Political Correctness"…..the Newspeak subversion that has for decades been also exported worldwide via Newsweek, for example. Of course even the Right has succumbed to that but not so madly and thoroughly. Leave Europe and the the UN if it still choose to remain with this present level of hopeless ugliness. Let the Eagle team with the Bear.
Comment by wits0 — 8 Sep, 2004 @ 09:27
What he ^ said.
Also, let a major media outlet get bombed (other than FOX, but even they seem to be in the same PC mode) and the hue and cry will be deafening.
Of course, this will never happen as the major media are the greatest ally of the Islamofascist.
Comment by Bill Ewing — 8 Sep, 2004 @ 12:12
Well, there goes the Chechens’ dreams of the sympathies of the world. This particular shtick– where the object of the game was the killing of innocent people, rather than an ulterior political motive– does seem more consistent with the crazed Islamofascists than with the rank and file Chechen separatists (many of whom are rather ordinary criminals, and many more of whom have been mobilized in response to Russian excesses of brutality).
Obviously, you’re coming perilously close to the “Islam = Evil” line… is that what YOU mean (rather than Bolt or anyone else)? If so, go ahead and say it. If that’s not what you’re saying… what are you saying?
Having duly erected that strawman, I will promptly attack it!
What I think we have here is, in fact, a more literal “clash of cultures": people still living in, say, the Middle Ages, who have the mindset of Visigoths rampaging their “inferior” enemies with swords and catapults (think Nazi Germany) or in this case, desert nomads who would ride around attacking tent encampments on horses and camels, now suddenly combining their Middle Ages belief system with space age armaments and technologies, and we gots ourselves some problems.
In short: we have modern weaponry mixing with ancient grudges and pathologies. We really are in a race before these medieval psychopaths get their hands on nuclear weapons– a race which, right now at least, we cannot be sure how the Iraq war effected.
But to declare the religion of 1 billion people (99 plus per cent of whom have no truck with the terrorists) as the enemy is going to commit us to go to war with all of them– and will probably accomplish the ultimate wishes of the worst maniacs: total war to the end of civilization.
It won’t solve our problem: we need to recognize the problem, which while CURRENTLY endemic to Islam, is not CONFINED to Islam (again– its the very same pathology which led to Naziism, or in some cases, to extremes carried out in Rwanda, and others).
The vast majority of humanity is barely removed from lifestyles that have remained unchanged for centuries or millenia, and yet, what is MOST available of the modern era is our weaponry, which is quickly adapted to their mindset.
MAYBE we can crush them with military might alone. Or maybe a better answer is to deploy all appropriate military force, combined with trying to isolate the troublemakers within their own society while trying to bring as much of the world into conditions of modernization as fast as possible, as if our life depended on it (seeing as it probably does).
Comment by the talking dog — 8 Sep, 2004 @ 18:36
I am trying to avoid the “Islam is evil” meme. However, any “One True Way™” religion does tend to attract fanatics who just know that they have the “One REAL True Way™". I have noticed that most fanatics do tend to evil.
I agree with you that it is more a cultural clash than anything else. The big problem with the Islamist ideology (as opposed to Islam just as a religion) is that it exports its cultural pathologies along with the religion of Islam (Saudis funding their Wahabbist mosques is a good example of this sort of thing). The other problem with the Islamist ideology is that it is the “fundamentalist” interpretation of Islam. It is difficult for moderates to answer (the same problem applies to Christian fundamentalists and Christian moderates, by the way). “This is what the book says” has to be interpreted in light of the situation at the time if the message is to become moderate. Fundamentalists interpret anything said as eternal truth.
Islam as a religion is just as subject to interpretation as any other religion. It’s the Islamist interpretation of Islam that encourages evil. (I don’t consider things or ideas capable of evil; only humans are capable of evil.)
Comment by Kathy K — 8 Sep, 2004 @ 19:32
“All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain? ” - the Buddha.
Islam as a religion(it’s not really) claims the certitude of absolute truth and in so doing promotes the death of open understanding that the means does not justify the ends(due to their false assumption of moral supremacy, of Dhimmitude, non-thinking, etc). It’s not a persuasion at all like others are as it is too often refered to but an ‘authorized’ tyranny of control freaks mullahs and their ilks. It alienates others from its very fundamentals like no other religion does. When people are not allowed to think, the human conscience is prevented from evolving and the reverse happens. Add to that the usage of hatred of infidels, unabashed preaching of it in many of their countries and we naturally get the clash of civilization. Making bad group Karmas wilfully brings its due returns.
Comment by wits0 — 8 Sep, 2004 @ 23:28
Face it. The Truth is that Big Media will do anything, tell any lie, slice and dice any story to get their boy Kerry elected.
Look at what 60 minutes did last night. Imagine replaying that old Bush National Guard story. What is this the fifth or sixth time? This from a network that won’t even mention the charges made by the swiftboat vets.
UNFIT FOR COMMAND is now at the top of bestseller lists and 60 minutes pretends it doesn’t exist.
Big Liberal Media is dying. They don’t have a monopoly anymore. Unless the Democrats can find a federal judge to close down the internet and stifle Fox news, Liberal Media like 60 Minutes will be shown for the lying scum they are over and over again.
Comment by Ken Ozanich — 9 Sep, 2004 @ 17:43
Viva FOX!
http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=9597
Comment by wits0 — 10 Sep, 2004 @ 03:22