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We lost the war to transform Afghanistan and the Arab world. Our leadership class still refuses to accept the truth that the Islamist ideologues continue to make material and ideological war upon us and our allies. We cannot bear to fully accept that Iran is making war in Yemen, Lebanon, Gaza, Ukraine, and Syria with plans to attack other targets--including us.
We are not permitted to notice, much less discuss, the fundamental problems of trying to integrate Muslim populations into secular Western culture.
The sheer idiocy of George Bush’s use of “the Religion of Peace” rather than a demand for Islam to renounce doctrines of jihad, to John Kerry’s capitulation diplomacy on behalf of Obama’s sophomoric policy vision, to Joe Biden’s sudden weird, disastrous surrender in Afghanistan… We have never had a clear-headed response to the reality and the challenge of Islam.
There is no “moderate” Islam. There is no “reformation” in the works. By its very nature, its traditions, and ideology, borne of the core documents expounding on the “Perfect Example,” will in every age drag adherents back into an orthodoxy wholly and increasingly unsuited to a world constructed under Western influence. The model secular state built by Atatürk has given way to the Islamic nationalism of Erdogan. The Middle East is a disaster because Islam there has only produced peace when under the rule of a militarily strong empire—the set of faux Western constitutional democracies and other imitation Western models (the fascism of the Bathists, the socialist dictatorship of Gaddafi). They were literally founded on sand, and produced chaos that fostered yearning for the security, procrustean certainties (and the tyranny) of Shariah.
The still unlearned lesson of 9/11 is that there still is a war that we do not even fully admit is underway. Islam remains surprised and pleased that we have not pressed its inherent internal weaknesses nor struck back proportionately and consistently to its excesses even as we accept many of its worst to live among us without question or challenge.
Happy 9/11!
Discussion (62)
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Very true. I have to point out, though, that there is not technically a "moderate Islam," but there are moderate Muslims. I point to M. Zuhdi Jasser and his ilk.
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Islam will be even more surprised and pleased when they see some MAGA type politicians, in the not too distant future, warming up to it as these politicians paint our decadent liberal coastal elites as the real enemy who bombs traditional, conservative Muslims.
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This has been a mostly failed exercise for 1000's of years (depends on who 'we' is).
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Exactly. Jefferson, Adams, Teddy Roosevelt and Churchill all knew better than we do. And we are unable or unwilling to make the same observations about behaviour or have expectations of voodoo practicing Haitians who have been drop shipped into America.
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This has been a long battle. From the siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the siege of Vienna to the present day this battle is not over.
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