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Europe in the Terrorists’ Grasp: We’re Next
Europe’s sense of safety and security is being chipped away — or perhaps I should say “bludgeoned and run over” — by Islamist terrorism. As incidents increase, the French, Germans, and the rest of the European Union are wringing their hands and in a state of bewilderment. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said following the attack in Nice: “France is going to have to live with terrorism.” No one seems to know what to do.
In his most recent column, the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens describes how Europe has found itself too paralyzed by its history and mythology to fight terrorism. I fear that the same reasons for their ineptitude and confusion contribute to our own. Stephens describes the current conditions as the Europeans holding onto to a historic mythology: “Among those mythologies: that the European Union is the result of a postwar moral commitment to peace; that Christianity is of merely historical importance to European identity; that there’s no such thing as a military solution; that one’s country isn’t worth fighting for; that honor is atavistic and tolerance is the supreme value.”
I think that the United States is suffering from the same delusions. I would describe them this way as they relate to the European myths:
- We too, particularly with the control of the Left, still believe in peace at any price. We believe that we can negotiate our way past conflict. As a result, for example, we now have the Iran Agreement, not worth the paper it is written on.
- Secularists are destroying the fabric of our Judeo-Christian heritage. Attacks to rid the country of anything that sounds religious (unless it is Muslim, of course) are ongoing. Particularly Christians are ridiculed for their beliefs and practices. Anti-Semitism is blatant on university campuses.
- Although the Left goes out of its way to praise our soldiers and veterans, it continues to denigrate the importance of a strong military and its importance to national security. We’ve seen the size of the military reduced to historic lows. We’ve also seen the military bowing to Leftist ideas, essentially weakening the military even more.
- Patriotism has taken a beating for years. The term is conflated with anything that relates to nationalism, with the sometimes not-so-subtle comparison to fascistic regimes. President Obama has gone out of his way to let the world know that we’re no more exceptional than anyone else.
- Celebrating “honor” and pride of country is “primitive” and “exclusionary.” Although “tolerance” is celebrated in this country, the Left is clearly talking about tolerance for its beliefs and programs. Our Bill of Rights is in jeopardy, thanks to the actions of the Left and our inability to stop them.
As Stephens also says, “People who believe in nothing, including themselves, will ultimately submit to anything.” We are a people who, like the Europeans, no longer believe in ourselves. The Left is trying to make us into Europe; the Right is trying to preserve our freedoms. Our confusion about who we are and our role in the world makes us unable to fight for ourselves and we’ve demonstrated our ineptness and reticence to deal with Islamist terrorism. And the Islamist terrorists know it.
Thus, we are next.
Published in Islamist Terrorism
I really wish the Israeli and American military and intelligence brass would convene a conference on how to deal with terrorism.
They know things about who’s who in the Muslim community that they have learned (the hard way–through experience) over the last fifteen years that we need to pull into our security discussions.
Only in the sense of them trying to kill us.
We’re not at war with terrorism; we’re at war with Islam.
Okay.
The American and Israeli militaries have been on the front lines in our war with Islam.
This is a religious war. As long as they deny that, they won’t prevail.
I have to believe (maybe it’s wishful thinking, especially with Obama) that we’ve been consulting with them for a while. The question: do we have the will to do what needs to be done?!
Susan,
French Priest-Slayers Were Both on Terror Watch List
This is why for the last few years I have been again and again encouraging all to focus on the concept of Jihad. This is the absolute declaration of war that produces the kind of insane behaviour we have been calling terrorism (only Obama is idiotic enough to call it extremism). Jihadism on its face constitutes, incitement to violence, sedition, and subversion. Once someone has gone full Jihad, as an example swearing allegiance to a Jihadist military leader, they should be immediately arrested on any of my previously mentioned charges. Trying to wait and monitor is ridiculous and unnecessary. Jihad is the differential diagnosis. The party is over as soon as you swear allegiance. Next, it is obvious that anyone who is preaching Jihad or donating to a Jihadist organisation is also ready for immediate arrest as an accessory to the crime.
Full violent military Jihad is a very narrow category. It leaves the vast majority of Muslims untouched. If Muslims object to this then they must accept responsibility for a seditious belief system within their own community. If on the other hand, the majority of Muslims agree that violent Jihad is unacceptable then they can join with authorities putting an end to it quickly thus removing doubts about the remaining community.
Regards,
Jim
I don’t understand this point.
If it is a religious war, what is your next step?
I think in geopolitical terms, so I’m not sure what a religious war is.
What is a religious war? Who fights it? Where does it get fought?
I think in geopolitical terms, so I’m not sure what a religious war is.
Well, then, you’ve really answered your own question, haven’t you?
Well, it’s certainly not a war about territory; jihad is a war of conquering all countries and forcing them under the rule of the caliphate. In the past, survivors generally had to convert to Islam, pay a special tax (jizya) or be killed. The sovereignty of countries, if the Islamists got their way, would be gone. I don’t think anyone can agree on your second and third question, and that’s why we are so feckless.
Okay, so I’m puzzling over this as a way of answering my own question.
Let me ask you this: You have posted a few articles about the Crusades.
Would I be correct in guessing that you envision something like that today? A Christian military supported privately that would wage war on Islamists?
On some level, that makes sense.
I thought this paragraph was worth contemplating. These are part of the demands that Sarkozy made in France (and they were rejected) for the government to pass [from Breitbart]:
Such measures would include: holding in detention centres or electronically tagging individuals suspected of being a risk to national security; barring foreigners from entering the country who may pose a risk to national security, and the immediate expulsion of all radicalised foreigners; closing Islamist mosques; no reduction for sentences of criminals convicted of terrorism; and the interruption of migration from at-risk areas of the world.
Wow. That seems like common sense to me.
I’ve always liked Sarkozy. I guess we think alike.
“Justice is always naive and self-confident; believing that it will immediately win once recognized.
That is the reason why the forces of Justice are so poorly organized.
On the other hand, the Evil is cynic, sly and fantastically organized.It never ever has the illusion of the ability to stand on its own feet and to win in a fair competition. That is why it is ready to use any kind of means without hesitation.
And of course it does – under the banners of the most noble ideas.”
-Vladimir Bukovsky
Being ‘noble’ is Europe continued downfall, their/our enemies have no such intentions.
So who protects the innocents and defenseless from the ‘noble’ and self righteous?
(Certainly not the preening and self-righteous, narcissists in government right now.)
I can’t help but think back to before the Obama term – the Middle East was still in turmoil, but it was contained – we had leadership and we called radical Islam by name. Since O, we have seen the collapse of any stability, millions of displaced refugees from Syria, as well as Africa, where terror also has a foothold. We absorbed South and Central American refugees, remember the influx of children with no parents? Obama closed Guantanamo, told Israel to enter by the back door and has been rude to them ever since, made a deal with Iran, the biggest sponsor of terror in the region, and people want to continue that legacy under Clinton?
Europe is now becoming unstable because of these foolish policies, and Merkel is trying to pay Turkey to take them back! Now Turkey is unstable…..while Russia, who by the way Obama whispered to Putin on an open mike to wait til my second election and we’ll work things out – stirs the pot of instability in it all, including Eastern Europe. It feels like that movie The Perfect Storm – you can see all this swirling, and soon its going to merge. If we don’t have strong leadership on both continents who have the kahunas like Thatcher and Reagan had, many more will suffer and die. As Susan and many others have pointed out, it is getting closer to home and already has. Obama can’t even show support for police – no peace anywhere.
It’s clear to me that we have to get started in developing realistic policies and actions, aggressively and with clarity. We can’t wait for Europe to take steps; who knows if and when they will respond. We may have to work with European countries, a country at a time–those who stood against the influx of immigrants from Syria, for example. It’s time for America to step up and be a real global leader that stands for strength and security.
This post and the words of Bret Stephens remind me so much of similar observations made by Mark Steyn. Steyn says that a big part of the problem with Multiculturalism and its adoption by Western nations is that when you believe in everything then you believe in nothing. This is echoed by Stephens and rightfully so.
Western nations need to stop apologizing for their past success based primarily on Judeo-Christian values along with the reliance on methods of governance implemented by our Founding Fathers in the United States and those of the former British Empire. In the business world, companies look to imitate the “best practices” of other companies in order to increase performance. Multiculturalism does the opposite. It tells its believers that even less prosperous societies have cultures of equal value and that we should not value “best practices” over “worst practices”.
The other thing that is interesting about the disease of Multiculturalism is that it only infects Western societies. In the Middle East and Asia there is very little evidence of Multiculturalism. In fact, Muslim countries under Sharia Law have outlawed it.
Prior to Obama, we weren’t apologizing for who we are. You are right – we cannot help others if we are embarrassed by our strength and values.
There is always truth in a country song.
Seawriter
OUTSTANDING! I’m going to adopt this as my personal theme song!
Yeah, and if they weren’t already here, or if we deport ’em–we wouldn’t need them at all. Any way you slice it, bringing more of ’em in here is only gonna make things worse, not better.
Trump had me from the minute he proposed the temporary ban. I was in Europe at the time, where CNN international covered it as if there had been another terrorist attack. It is only the merest common sense.
Rush pointed out the media’s failure to cover all the protests outside the Dem’s convention (don’t you love it when the Left protests the Left?). All sorts of flags were on display: Soviet Union, Chinese, Palestine, even a North Korea flag.
I don’t need to tell you what flags were burned . . . (United States and Israel)
It just makes me ill, Stad. Especially the flag burning.
Thats usually a major war goal.
All of what Susan writes is true, except “no one seems to know what to do”
This is false. I know what to do.
Fight the war.
Destroy from the air, the Saudi and Qatari oil fields. Thus one removes the funding.
Admit no Muslims to the west.
Expel those non-citizen Muslims now here, including the taxi drivers, convenience store owners, chemists and anesthesiologists. Throw them all out unceremoniously. They have 45 Muslim countries in which to work.
Announce an eye for an eye policy on terror. You behead a priest, we bomb a city in Saudi. You bomb Bataclan, we bomb Mecca.
Then do it, as many times as provoked.
The war ends in two weeks. Three weeks max.
Keep a wide gulf between our civilizations and never, never, never enrich these savages again by buying their oil.
The oft-lamented reform in Islam would follow, as surely as night follows day.
But this would require leaders who are on our side.
While I’m at it, I’d like a flying pony.
Basically, you’re fighting with one hand tied behind your back as long as you can’t recognize that.
Apparently one of the protesters set himself on fire in the process. Must be a karma thing . . .
Given my Zen background, it works for me, sorry to say. Or as we also say, what goes around comes around.