re: "Army Size" and "Toying with Genocide"
Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit for linking to this essay by Gerard van der Leun at Anerican Digest.
Money quote(s):
"(B)oth sides think that in some way "Islam is broken." Is it?
Finding myself in neither political camp, it strikes me that Islam -- especially if you look at the fertility rates of Muslims, mosque construction and attendance, and the retention and conversion of the faithful around the globe -- is doing just fine. It strikes me that a religion that doesn't view itself as broken is unlikely to take kindly to the notion that it needs fixing. Still, that's the proposition advanced by both camps in our broken and shattered society. But it is a proposition that is advanced only sotto voce, in whispers, because to ask, right out loud, if Islam wants to be "fixed" or indeed can be "fixed," is to know the answer in the act of asking.
The answer is a resounding "No." "
"ALL WELL AND GOOD if the current leaders and policy makers in Europe and America are right; if Islam can be, with enough time and money, assimilated into the Western way.
But what if they are wrong ?
What if, as has been repeatedly stated by Islamic spokesmen in their media and their capitols and their mosques, Islam has neither the interest in nor the capacity for assimilation?
What if Islam continues, as it has for many centuries, to be implacably hostile to the West?
What if, in a series of increasingly violent incidents coming quickly over a relatively short number of years, what we so tenderly term "Islamic radicals" continue to attack the cities and nations in which large numbers of Muslims live in relative isolation from the body politic, and it is known that those attacking come from and fade back into these unassimilated populations?"
"At this point, most aware humans -- Muslim and non-Muslim alike -- assume that whenever and wherever on the globe a terrorist incident takes place it is almost certainly going to have a Muslim signature on it. Even when it does not, the Muslims have been so effective in aligning terrorism with Islam that people assume terror's perpetrators are Muslim even if it is shown later that they were innocent of this or that particular incident."
"For, as much as we should do everything possible to avoid a second 9/11, the blunt fact is that the United States, Europe and the entire edifice of Western Civilization, can ride out a second 9/11. It can ride out 100 9/11s and still, in an inch of time, return and thrive.
This society can even ride out the killing by weapons of mass destruction of any kind of a number of cities. America, Europe, and Western Civilization can survive anything the radical Islamists can throw at us.
The society that will have much more difficulty surviving with its cherished "values" intact will be what happens to the global society of Islam should it continue to attack the West with increasing ferocity."
"The most terrible aspect of the trend of war in the 20th century was to kill as much of the civilian population of the enemy as possible. The methods were skillfully refined over decades until World War II accounted for around 50 million dead. The current approach to war in Afghanistan and Iraq is one which can reasonably be called a "patty-cake war;" one that has been successful, if in nothing else, in minimizing civilian suffering.
I would submit that this approach to war against Islam is clearly one driven by the current policies of the West that aims to, essentially, talk Islam out of its current obsessions and madness. It is the very small stick wielded alongside our softly spoken words of "democracy," "freedom," and "prosperity." In a way, the West's manner of war with Islam at present is essentially a kind of tough love: "Please learn to control your acting out. Please learn play well with others, or we're going to have to give you a time out." "
"A second series of attacks on America at the level of 9/11 or greater will not bring out more B-52s. They are already out. A second series will bring out the one arm of America's war machine that has rarely been asked about, written about, or even mentioned in passing since September, 2001; the ballistic missile submarines."
&
"I have no doubt that, if we feel for any reason threatened enough, we will indeed come to the day when the unthinkable becomes a series of orders yielding a set of trajectories that end millions of lives in less than an instant, with North Korea a brief footnote.
This is why I still deeply believe that the current effort in Iraq and the Middle East to counter and expunge Islamic terrorism and turn Islam from the road it is on towards one of reformation and assimilation is the best path that can be taken at this time. Indeed, for all the ineptitude of the current administration, for all the expense in treasure and lives, this shoot-the-moon, Hail Mary of a foreign policy in Iraq is not just a policy to make America safer at home. It is the only thing that stands between Islam and its own destruction.
Sometime shortly after 9/11 in an online forum I frequented then, an exasperated idealist proclaimed that "After all, you can't kill a billion Muslims." Like so many others he spoke from somewhere outside History. History, especially the world's most recent history, shows us all how wrong that statement is. The hard truth is rather that, "Yes, if you really want to, you can."
And that is the most terrible and terrorizing thought of the 21st century."
Money quote(s):
"(B)oth sides think that in some way "Islam is broken." Is it?
Finding myself in neither political camp, it strikes me that Islam -- especially if you look at the fertility rates of Muslims, mosque construction and attendance, and the retention and conversion of the faithful around the globe -- is doing just fine. It strikes me that a religion that doesn't view itself as broken is unlikely to take kindly to the notion that it needs fixing. Still, that's the proposition advanced by both camps in our broken and shattered society. But it is a proposition that is advanced only sotto voce, in whispers, because to ask, right out loud, if Islam wants to be "fixed" or indeed can be "fixed," is to know the answer in the act of asking.
The answer is a resounding "No." "
"ALL WELL AND GOOD if the current leaders and policy makers in Europe and America are right; if Islam can be, with enough time and money, assimilated into the Western way.
But what if they are wrong ?
What if, as has been repeatedly stated by Islamic spokesmen in their media and their capitols and their mosques, Islam has neither the interest in nor the capacity for assimilation?
What if Islam continues, as it has for many centuries, to be implacably hostile to the West?
What if, in a series of increasingly violent incidents coming quickly over a relatively short number of years, what we so tenderly term "Islamic radicals" continue to attack the cities and nations in which large numbers of Muslims live in relative isolation from the body politic, and it is known that those attacking come from and fade back into these unassimilated populations?"
"At this point, most aware humans -- Muslim and non-Muslim alike -- assume that whenever and wherever on the globe a terrorist incident takes place it is almost certainly going to have a Muslim signature on it. Even when it does not, the Muslims have been so effective in aligning terrorism with Islam that people assume terror's perpetrators are Muslim even if it is shown later that they were innocent of this or that particular incident."
"For, as much as we should do everything possible to avoid a second 9/11, the blunt fact is that the United States, Europe and the entire edifice of Western Civilization, can ride out a second 9/11. It can ride out 100 9/11s and still, in an inch of time, return and thrive.
This society can even ride out the killing by weapons of mass destruction of any kind of a number of cities. America, Europe, and Western Civilization can survive anything the radical Islamists can throw at us.
The society that will have much more difficulty surviving with its cherished "values" intact will be what happens to the global society of Islam should it continue to attack the West with increasing ferocity."
"The most terrible aspect of the trend of war in the 20th century was to kill as much of the civilian population of the enemy as possible. The methods were skillfully refined over decades until World War II accounted for around 50 million dead. The current approach to war in Afghanistan and Iraq is one which can reasonably be called a "patty-cake war;" one that has been successful, if in nothing else, in minimizing civilian suffering.
I would submit that this approach to war against Islam is clearly one driven by the current policies of the West that aims to, essentially, talk Islam out of its current obsessions and madness. It is the very small stick wielded alongside our softly spoken words of "democracy," "freedom," and "prosperity." In a way, the West's manner of war with Islam at present is essentially a kind of tough love: "Please learn to control your acting out. Please learn play well with others, or we're going to have to give you a time out." "
"A second series of attacks on America at the level of 9/11 or greater will not bring out more B-52s. They are already out. A second series will bring out the one arm of America's war machine that has rarely been asked about, written about, or even mentioned in passing since September, 2001; the ballistic missile submarines."
&
"I have no doubt that, if we feel for any reason threatened enough, we will indeed come to the day when the unthinkable becomes a series of orders yielding a set of trajectories that end millions of lives in less than an instant, with North Korea a brief footnote.
This is why I still deeply believe that the current effort in Iraq and the Middle East to counter and expunge Islamic terrorism and turn Islam from the road it is on towards one of reformation and assimilation is the best path that can be taken at this time. Indeed, for all the ineptitude of the current administration, for all the expense in treasure and lives, this shoot-the-moon, Hail Mary of a foreign policy in Iraq is not just a policy to make America safer at home. It is the only thing that stands between Islam and its own destruction.
Sometime shortly after 9/11 in an online forum I frequented then, an exasperated idealist proclaimed that "After all, you can't kill a billion Muslims." Like so many others he spoke from somewhere outside History. History, especially the world's most recent history, shows us all how wrong that statement is. The hard truth is rather that, "Yes, if you really want to, you can."
And that is the most terrible and terrorizing thought of the 21st century."
posted by Consul-At-Arms at 12:30 AM
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