The writing on the wall

Today Tony Blankley asks, Is There Writing on the Wall? (emphasis added)

It would appear that the great divide in both public opinion and between politicians is not Republican-Democrat, liberal-conservative, pro or anti-Bush, or even pro or anti-war (or, in Europe: pro-or anti-American). Rather, the great divide is between those, such as me, who believe that the rise of radical Islam poses an existential threat to Western Civilization; and those who believe it is a nuisance, if, episodically, a very dangerous nuisance.

Blankley concludes,

Thus, while others and I will continue to make our case in public, it seems probably inevitable that the correctness or incorrectness of our views will only become persuasive to the multitude when history teaches its cruel, unavoidable lessons. It was ever thus, which is why history is strewed with broken nations and civilizations that couldn’t read the writing on the wall. Of course, it is also strewed with sad hulks of false predictors of doom.

Dr. Sanity has been exploring these issues at her blog. In today’s post, Symptom or adaptation? she asks

Now ask yourself, is the ubiquitous, almost casual, antisemitism of the Islamic world a healthy, adaptive response to some injustices perpetrated by Jews that muslims have to deal with in the real world; or is it a projection that is symptomatic of some serious psychopathology within the muslim culture?

ShrinkWrapped:

In the Muslim mind, where there is no cause and effect, everything occurs at the whim of Allah. Such a world risks becoming a frightening place filled with seemingly unpredictable events and when bad things happen it is because Allah wanted them to happen. A tsunami is then evidence that Allah is displeased with his people…unless, you can find a suitable entity, an almost God, who caused the grief. After the Indonesian tsunami, rumors and conspiracy theories were rampant int he Muslim world that the Israelis (and sometimes the Americans) had caused the tsunami. No longer was Allah angry at his people; now there was an explanation that allowed the Muslim world to avoid looking int he mirror and asking the obvious question: When the Arab world is awash with oil money, how is it that they could not spare a tiny amount for their co-religionists and build a tsunami warning system? (Actually, they would have had to buy a tsunami waring system, a related issue.) If Israel and/or America had caused the tsunami, such a warning system was not only unnecessary but foolhardy. Instead of looking inward, fro one’s own shortcomings that have facilitated or caused disasters, one can look outward, focus one’s wrath on the feared and hated demi-God, and please Allah at the same time. No longer is a disaster a sign of Allah’s displeasure, but an opportunity to gain even more of his approval by attacking his enemies.

In a similar vein, the home grow[n] despair of failed societies, which in other nations has been redirected and used to build modern societies around the world, has no internal outlet; it must be directed outward so that the societies of the Muslim world can pretend to stay unchanged and unquestioned.

This week Sigmund, Carl and Alfred has a series of most interesting posts on the subject which you must read in their entirety since abridging will do them no justice. But one particular sentence stood out in yesterday’s post,

In any event, in the Arab world, any expression of western ideas, ideologies or beliefs are deemed ‘satanic.’ The choice of imagery and words are no accident.

Last week SC&A posted on Crime and terror, which brought to mind the Dem’s former policy of treating “terrorism as a nuisance”, as if it were a criminal matter. One of Siggy’s commenters linked to The Myth of the Invincible Terrorist (emphasis added)

Relativists do not understand the depths of their error when they pronounce that “terrorism is just a word for violence we don’t like,” or “terrorism is a Westerners’ epithet.” Terrorists are living, breathing men and women using vile but calculated means to make political gains, and it is vital that politicians and academics and police chiefs continue pointing that out. Terror is ugly, making terrorists morally ugly; this ugliness is weakness in the struggle for public opinion. More must be made of that, in the service of truth and of counterterrorism. Another lesson flows from the facts above: Groups and their leaders may well be vulnerable to psychological operations. As circumstances allow, counterterrorism can play up rivals around the leaders, or create fissures between working partners, or throw doubt over loyalties of old comrades.

So, as Tony Blankley stated, there are those who see an existential threat from a group of terrorists who have demonized all that is good in our lives and culture and are willing to drag us all to hell. And there are those who just want to ignore that threat and believe it’s such a simple nuisance that, in their grab for power, they are taking ownership of a defeat in Iraq.

They are, indeed fighting on the wrong side of the psychological war. Each of their words, each of their actions, is and will continue to be repeated by our enemies, and will embolden them and motivate them to do more evil.

Note to Harry: “Your words are killing us” now, and will continue to kill us.

And those are no “sad hulks of false predictors of doom”.

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(Note: The writing on the wall refers to Daniel 5 in the Old Testament.)