The Path from 9/11: Six Years’ Hindsight (Part 2)

« Continued from Part 1

So the myth of the Afghanistan Good War is here shown. And yet, whether you think the invasion of Afghanistan was a good move or a bad one, there is one thing shared by both sides regarding it: the knowledge of its inevitability. No one, and that really means no one, was in doubt that the USA had its eyes on invading Afghanistan. This was so because it was the most obvious, and, dare I say, knee-jerk—but not in the way the Leftists mean it—reaction.

Today, six years after, we have new footage of Osama Bin Laden (may he go to hell soon, amen, or burn there long if he already is there), with him sporting a modified beard to give him a younger, more healthy look, probably to serve as an allegory of the state of the worldwide jihad for the infidels. Whether that is really him, or someone dressed up as a look-alike, or perhaps the fruit of the wonders of Photoshop (which the Muslims got acquainted with in the 2006 Lebanon War), the focus on Osama Bin Laden (and, therefore, on his hiding place of Afghanistan) was as erroneous then as it is now.

What foolishness has gripped both sides of the political map as to think that this war is tied with the fate of Osama Bin Laden? What would the capture or killing of Bin Laden do except provide us a few moments of cheering, only to be followed by the continuance of the same, same, same process we have been going through all these years? Did the killing Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi (long may he roast in hell, amen) end the terrorism in Iraq? Is Osama Bin Laden the sine qua non for the Demographic Jihad of Muslims in Europe, or for rioting and demands for appeasement after every perceived outrage toward the Muslims? What are the Taliban even, if not a localized branch of the global jihad, on an equal footing with the Kashmiri jihadists, with Hizb ut-Tahrir in Britain, with the Kosovo and Southern Thailand “separatists”, and with the fictitious “Palestinian nation” in Israel? Osama, the Taliban and Afghanistan are non-issues now, as they were on September 12, 2001.

“We fight them there so we won’t have to fight them here”. But they are here, in great and ever increasing numbers. And wherever they are found in sizable numbers, there the state has to take costly anti-terrorism measures, and to go through “racial strife”, so misnamed by the left-leaning Mainstream Media, that would never arise without them.

Every state in the world today can be seen to be in one of four stages regarding Islamification:

1. Small numbers, sufficient only for forming interest groups and litigation forums (such as CAIR). Examples: the USA, Australia, Eastern Europe.
2. Large numbers, forming effective Islamic colonies, each a law unto itself. Examples: London, Brussels, Malmö.
3. A fully armed grouping, within or on the border or even both, forming a physical threat. Examples: Israel, Serbia, (Southern) Thailand, Ethiopia.
4. Islamic. Non-Muslim subjects face discrimination in court at best (Egypt, Malaysia), regular persecution in most cases (Pakistan), and at worst the threat of elimination (Iraq).

The biggest mistake is the particular, parochial, piecemeal view of this conflict, taking every part of the world in isolation. To talk of “Kashmiri fighters for self-determination”, of “Malay separatists in Southern Thailand” or of “The Palestinian struggle” bespeaks cluelessness about the whole conflict. Many of the Leftists do better than that: by talking of “the desire of Muslims for real freedom from the increasing political domination over the Islamic peoples by Western (Christian and Jewish) parts of the world” (thus from CounterPunch’s Bill Christison), they get things completely backward, but they don’t make the mistake of viewing every part of the world to itself. The pattern of suicide terrorism, rearing children to be suicide terrorists, riots following every small outrage, and demands to accommodate the needs of Muslims after every such rioting or terrorist attack, just recur all over the world. The same everywhere. It has turned out to be an elephant in the room, such that one needs to be a “reality-based thinker” in order to miss it.

And there is another mistake: the Western sense of obligation. In his essay from October 10, 2006, Recommendations for the West, Fjordman says:

The West is declining as a percentage of world population, and in danger of being overwhelmed by immigration from poorer countries with booming populations. Westerners need to adjust our self-image to being less dominant in the 21st century. As such, we also need to ditch Messianic altruism: The West must first of all save itself. We have no obligation to “save” the Islamic world, and do not have the financial strength nor the demographic numbers to do so even if we wanted to. We are not all-powerful and are not in the position to help all of the Third World out of poverty, certainly not by allowing all of them to move here. [Emphasis mine. —ZY]

While Afghanistan was born of the error of focusing on Osama Bin Laden, Iraq—under the premise that it was about “winning hearts and minds” through democratization—was born of that error, the sentimental sense of obligation, that carryover of Rudyard Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” days. So it is that American soldiers, meant to fight wars and kill enemies, could be seen in Iraq, and later also in Afghanistan, giving sweets and toys (among others, footballs with the name of Allah imprinted on them, which “provoked” swift outrage from the parents of the beneficiaries) to children, like a group of Europeans giving presents to the natives upon whose island they had stumbled. “Winning hearts and minds”—a phrase directly from the Vietnam days! And a patronizing mindset at that. For, as Rabbi Meir Kahane (HY"D) said, in a different time (1990) and concerning other people (the Arabs of Israel), in his last essay, Israel: Revolution or Referendum:

For years, the contempt of Jewish leftists and liberals for Arabs was stupefying. The myth of the happy Israeli Arab, so much better off than the Arabs of Iraq or Egypt. We have given them electricity and indoor toilets and now they sit happily grateful. Loving us. What contempt! Is there one person with a shred of respect for himself who believes that Arabs will trade their national pride for electricity or indoor toilets?

Yes, that patronizing error, of “winning hearts and minds” by giving people the opportunity to improve their material situation, when, all the time, their hearts desire the fulfillment of an ideological goal.

“Tiny minority of extremists”. “Material improvements will moderate them”. “Religion is just a dress for pragmatic goals”. Wrong, all wrong. Jihadists may be few, but their support base is huge, making up the majority of Muslims worldwide. Material improvements only increase their loathing toward “the corrupt and immoral West”, just as they did for Sayyid Qutb when he spent time in the USA as a student in the 1950’s. And religion for the Muslims, unlike for many Christians today, is all-pervading, and taken seriously by all. You talk of secular Jews in Israel, and everyone accepts its reality, even if they do not approve; but if you talk of “secular Muslims”, eyes widen in disbelief. They pride themselves on “being untouched by the tide of secularism”; and whoever of them wishes to eat during daytime in the month of Ramadan must do so in secret. Think of Medieval Europe, not of your own present existence, and you will gain some understanding of their mindset, remnant of an age when being an open unbeliever was not an option. They really do nearly all of them take their religion seriously—including its supremacist doctrines, which are supported by canon. There is no “moderate Koran”.

Thus the USA plodded from Afghanistan to Iraq, when, as one Hot Air commenter said, the surge should have been carried out in Europe. And now the sights are set on Iran. Considering that Iran is being made into a suicide-martyr country by its nuclear mullahs, that move probably makes sense—if only a way can be found to take out all the threats, which could be hidden underground anywhere in that vast country. But I cannot help saying that this could be the culmination of nearly a millennium and a half of a great tragedy. The Persians are an ancient and noble people who have been forced to wallow in the excrement of the Arabian camel for over 1,300 years. Some may be in glee over the prospect of “turning Tehran into glass”, but I, if alive to see that, could not regard it as anything but the tragic end of the cultural rape of what was once the light among world empires. Such a fate for the cities of Saudi Arabia would leave me thinking, “Ishmael has met his reward”; not so for those of Iran.

It is on this note that I count the movie 300 as a notable expression of erroneous thinking. Perhaps the timing was coincidental, but it has not been interpreted as such, so I too take that movie to be as rallying for the war of Freedom (Sparta) against Oppression (Persia). I view that in utter contempt, for it makes not one but two errors: the assumption that the present conflict is about Iranian nationalism, and the construing of Sparta as a bastion of freedom. Iranian nationalism, just as Russian nationalism was during Uncle Joe’s day, is occasionally used as a tool for agitation, but that is a disingenuous use; in reality, Iran is being led by the interests of Islam against its own, even to the detriment of its very existence. And Sparta—Sparta as a bastion of Western freedom?! Sparta was one of the first fully-documented fascist states! Sparta, with its top-down micromanagement of every man’s life, from cradle to grave, a bastion of freedom?! Sparta was an abomination that foreshadowed Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and from which the fighters for the Islamic Caliphate do not hesitate to learn a thing or two! Sparta, where unfit babies where left on Mount Taygetos to die—a model for eugenics and abortion. How can any lover of freedom not recoil in disgust from identifying with Sparta?!

In the end, the only argument that had any merit for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq was the argument that they were support bases for the jihad—that arms and funding flowed from them. But then that leaves as a wide, gaping hole the treatment of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, with whose fanatical Wahhabi leaders President Bush unashamedly holds hands; Saudi Arabia, with which Bush has made student exchanges, thus bringing more potential terrorists to his own soil; Saudi Arabia, which is regarded as an ally of the USA, all while churning out anti-non-Muslim, anti-American, anti-Western and anti-Jewish literature with no holds barred; Saudi Arabia, whose oil money finances the Demographic Jihad in Europe and the Legal Jihad over all the West. If there was ever a case for invasion and complete takeover, this is it. But no, that could not be done, for it would “alienate all the Muslims of the world”. As if the Muslims needed a good reason to be alienated.

Six years after 9/11, the man in the non-Muslim street is in various degrees of having come to those insights, away from the past errors; the leaders, however, have mostly not, and even if they have, lack the will to act upon them. Mass deportation or expulsion, for example, is, in my opinion, among the first steps for Fjordman’s vision of saving the West, but how could it possibly be put into practice when the academics, the media and the chattering classes insist on portraying such measures as “racism”?

It has been asked, “What would it take to wake people up?” Some have said it would have to be a nuclear attack (God forbid), but I disagree: if 9/11 didn’t do that, nothing of that same sort (violent attack) will. The Danish Cartoons Affair woke up much more people than 9/11 did. My question is, instead, “Will the fall of some Western state to shariah law wake people up?” 9/11, in hindsight, could never wake people to the threat, because the best analogy they could come with for it was Pearl Harbor, while the enemy at hand is not dependent on a state (Afghanistan or any other) and not dependent on a charismatic leader (Bin Laden or any other). 9/11 was a demonstration of intent; but it was the Danish Cartoons Affair, and the Pope Benedict Quotes Affair, that did something in the way of showing the nature of the threat. A military threat on the part of Muslims is only the third stage, a late one; the first two are equally dangerous, and perhaps more so, because they can catch a country unawares, especially when aided and abetted by the Muslim-sympathizing media of today.

In a way, 9/11 might be remembered one day as a saving grace of the non-Muslim world, waking it up to what could have been a silent takeover through the Demographic Jihad. But whether the non-Muslim world will be saved depends on having the correct interpretation of it, and on the ascension to power of those who adhere to that interpretation.

In the prairies of North America, in the fens and heaths of the British Isles, near the lakes and rivers of the Balkans, on the snowy mountain-tops of Ethiopia, at the foot of the world’s highest mountains in India, in the rice fields of Thailand, in the vast deserts of Australia, and last but not least, on the holy soil of the Land of Israel, may HaShem be with you all in this fight. “And he shall be a wild ass of a man: his hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the face of all his brethren.” (Genesis 16:12)