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4play See other 4play Articles Title: Jonah Goldberg: Terrorists' 'Excuse du Jour' Jonah Goldberg: Terrorists' 'Excuse du Jour' If there were no Iraq war, extremists would just find another rallying cry. September 28, 2006 OF COURSE the war in Iraq has made us less safe, and I didn't need the National Intelligence Estimate to tell me so. Who could possibly deny that Iraq has become, in the words of the NIE, a "cause celebre" for jihadists? One need only read the newspaper to conclude that Iraq is spawning more terrorists. (Indeed, one fears that all the authors of the NIE did was clip from the newspapers). If you've ever stood up to a bully, you know how this works. Confrontation tends to increase the chances of violence in the short term but decreases its likelihood in the long term. Any hunter will tell you that the most dangerous moment is when you've cornered an animal, and any cop will tell you that standing up to muggers puts you in danger. American colonists were less safe for standing up to King George III, and the United States was certainly safer in the short term when we stood on the sidelines while Germany was conquering Europe. Heck, we would have been safer in the short run if we'd responded to Pearl Harbor by telling the Japanese they could have the Pacific to themselves. After 9/11, there were voices on the left warning that an attack on Afghanistan would only perpetuate the dreaded "cycle of violence." Today, Democrats tout their support of that "good" war as proof they aren't soft on terrorism. Fair enough, I suppose. But guess what? That war made us less safe too — if the measure of such things is "creating more terrorists." A Gallup poll taken in nine Muslim nations in February 2002 found that more than three-fourths of respondents considered the liberation of Afghanistan unjustifiable. A mere 9% supported U.S. actions. That goes for famously moderate Turkey, where opposition to the U.S. ran three to one, and in Pakistan, where a mere one in 20 respondents took the American side. In other words, before Iraq became the cause celebre of jihadists, Afghanistan was. Does that mean we shouldn't have toppled the Taliban? Going back further, it's conventional wisdom that we helped "create" Osama bin Laden, or his Taliban and mujahedin comrades, when we supported the Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union. So we shouldn't have done that either? Every serious analysis of the Islamic world today describes a genuine tectonic shift in a vast civilization, an upheaval that cuts across social, religious and demographic lines. This phenomenon dwarfs transient issues such as the Iraq war. Are we to believe that once-moderate and relatively secular Morocco is slipping toward extremism because we toppled Baathist Saddam Hussein? Do we believe that those mobs who burned Danish embassies in response to a cartoon wouldn't have done so if only President Bush had gone for the 18th, 19th or 20th U.N. resolution on Iraq? Millions of young men yearning for meaning and craving outlets for their rage would have become computer programmers and dental hygienists if only Hussein's statue still towered over central Baghdad? Would the pope's comments spark nothing but thoughtful and high-minded debate from the Arab street if only Al Gore or John Kerry were in office? Iraq is the excuse du jour for jihadists. But the important factor is that these are young men looking for an excuse. If you live your life calculating that it's a mistake to do anything that might prompt murderers and savages to act like murderers and savages, you've basically decided to live under their thumb and surrender your civilization in the process. For me, the truly dismaying news this week didn't come from the NIE but from the German media. A German opera house announced that it would cancel its staging of Mozart's "Idomeneo" because Berlin police concluded that staging the opera — which includes a scene in which Jesus, Buddha, Poseidon and Muhammad are beheaded — would pose an "incalculable security risk" from jihadists. Germany, recall, proudly opposed the Iraq war — but still narrowly missed a Spain-style terrorist attack on its rail system this summer. A leading Muslim spokesman in Germany explained that he was all for free speech, as long as it didn't offend Muslims. The Germans' all-too-typical appeasement of terrorism no doubt makes them "safer" and "creates" fewer terrorists. And all it cost them — for now — is Mozart.
Poster Comment: Of course, Goldberg leaves out the simple fact that it is the policies of the plutocrats which has brought us to this point in time. Maybe we should review this speech by Joseph Goebbels where he calls the people to total war. (...) That is a direct threat [not only to our existence, but also] to every European power. No one should believe that Bolshevism would stop at the borders of the Reich, were it to be victorious, because of a treaty on paper. The goal of its aggressive policies and wars is the Bolshevization of every land and people in the world. In the face of such undeniable intentions, we are not impressed by paper declarations from the Kremlin or guarantees from London or Washington. We know that we are dealing in the East with an infernal political devilishness that does not recognize the norms governing relations between people and nations. When, for example, the English Lord Beaverbrook says that Europe must be given over to the Soviets, or when the leading American Jewish journalist Brown cynically adds that a Bolshevization of Europe might solve all of the continent's problems, we know what the Jews have in mind. The European powers are facing the most critical question of life itself. The West is in danger! It makes no difference whether or not their governments and intellectuals realize it or not. The German people, in any event, is unwilling to bow to this danger. Behind the oncoming Soviet divisions we see the Jewish liquidation commandos, and behind them terror, the specter of mass starvation, and complete anarchy in Europe. International Jewry is the devilish ferment of decomposition that finds cynical satisfaction in plunging the world into the deepest chaos and destroying ancient cultures that it played no role in building. The threat is, and always has been, the Zionists, and Goldberg is one of them. This fanatical war mongering and Islamophobia are the result of the Zionist desire to rule the world from behind the scenes by establishing "an international, Bolshevist-concealed capitalist tyranny." We have got that in spades right now, with Bush, Cheney, Rummy and their neocon cohorts beating the drum for total war.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 2.
#2. To: BTP Holdings (#0)
(Edited)
You got to love fat cherub chickenhawks like Goldberg. "Of course Iraq is making more terrorists- but that is just more proof that we need to step it up a notch and make total war- look at what happened in Germany . . ." Unserious boob. War pays his bills.
#4. To: Burkeman1 (#2)
Yes, he is all that in a nutshell, isn't he? What a dispicable loser, who got "the lift" he needed in the field of joy- nalism from his equally porky mother, Lucianne Goldberg, who just happened to be a confidante of Linda Tripp and who advised her to record all her conversations with Monica Lewinsky. It's a small world after all...
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