It's much, much easier to point to the failure of the Oslo/Madrid/Quartet III Subsequent Agreement as a cause of terrorism than to believe that there is a culture of billions out there that wants your blood and the blood of your children.If more at State felt like this, we'd have the War over in no time!
Because, damn, what reasonable person wants to believe that?
The Zarqawi Audiotape
On January 23, Jordanian terrorist leader Al-Zarqawi released an audiotape regarding the upcoming elections in Iraq. Zarqawi is, of course, a very important terrorist leader and the undeniable head of the jihadi insurgency against the Allawi Government and its American allies. Which is why the audiotape is of vital significance.
Here is a major Islamic terrorist leader, telling us in his own words, directly, what he believes, what motivates his fight, and why he wishes us dead. And what does he say?
"The speaker said democracy was based on un-Islamic beliefs and behaviors such as freedom of religion, rule of the people, freedom of expression, separation of religion and state, forming political parties and majority rule.
He said that freedom of expression is allowed "even cursing God. This means that there is nothing sacred in democracy." He said Islam requires the rule of God and not the rule of "the majority or the people."
Let's break that down:
1) Freedom of Religion: The most basic, most cherished of our freedoms is a gigantic affront to the jihadis since there is only one God and only one religion: that which they say exists. Because we are free to worship as we choose, they wish us dead.
2) Rule of the People/Majority Rule: The basic tenent of Democracy, that the will of the majority carries sovereignty, is inherently offensive to the jihadis. Only the "Rule of God" (meaning the rule of people like Khomeni, Zarqawi and Bin Ladin) will be allowed. All other states must perish.
3) Freedom of Expression: The very freedom of our minds arouses murderous hatred in the mind of the jihadi. Our ability to express ourselves, to debate, to argue, to agree, to disagree, is an affront to God in their eyes. Under their rule, no one will be allowed to express anything but Islamic thought.
4) Separation of Religion and State: There can be no secular state, since we are ordered by God to live under his laws. Thus, all secular states are inherently God-less and must be destroyed.
5) Formation of Political Parties: Our right to associate with like-minded individuals is nothing more than a sign of our decadence, our distance from God. Anyone who takes place in the democratic political process, even good liberals, are evil and deserve to be decapitated.
This is the word directly from an Al-Queda leader. Notice the complete lack of the usual grievances about Israel, about Western colonialism, about the inequity of our bargaining position in the oil market. No, instead we are told directly that we are to be killed because of who and what we are, because of who and what we believe.
What Is To Be Done?
Dear readers, the Zarqawi tape should (but won't) end the debate between the Muslim Rage School and the Clash of Civilization School. Like the Nazis before them, the Islamists are telling us without mincing words exactly what they think of us and what they have planned.
We hope we will not strike you as illiberal when we admit that we felt it was a grave, near-fatal error for the West not to declare war against Iran when it, as a state, threatened to kill a Western author. Because until they know that our most cherished values, like freedom of speech, are as important and meaningful to us as their Koran is to them, and that we are just as willing to kill and to die to protect them, we will be on the defensive.
In the long run, we have hope. Because, like the Nazis before them, the Islamic leaders keep ruining the efforts of Western appeasers and cowards by continuing to bluntly state the bloody obvious: that they want to kill us and destroy our way of life.
We can fight them now, or we can fight them later, but, eventually, fight them we will. And I wouldn't bet against us.
"Liberals" better get on the Right Side of History.
One comment-writer on that site leaves the cogent remark,
Liberals want to make friends with decapitators and see if we just can't all just get along. From that perspective nothing is more hateful (and rude) than people like Bush who want to go to war to destroy them.
These people are so scared that they are simply unable to state a position in which the main, very simple and very obvious, intentions of these people are not systematically elided from conversation: they want to kill you and will do anything to accomplish that goal. "Kill me? You can't be serious. Why would anyone want to kill me? I'm a good person, I believe in social justice, ... I can understand their anger, even sympathize with it. They have a right to their anger, it's only justice." And so on.
Thus there is a kind of viscious symbiosis between terrorist and bourgeois liberal: the terrorist wants to kill and the liberal wants to be killed. And both are agreed that the people who want to defend themselves and kill the terrorist instead are the true vessels of evil.
One unaskable--because possibly unanswerable--question arises from this analysis: is it going to be possible to kill the terrorists without sooner or later having to kill the western liberals who are the terrorists' secret ally?
