The strategic ramifications of fighting an enemy inside the land of the lotus eaters

Submitted by Reuben Horne (Australia), Oct 26, 2005 at 20:49

Dr Pipes,
Here we go again. I can remember a much lauded episode of JAG in which a fairly sanitised version of the Iraqi conflict was presented in which Actress Catherine Bell presented views in rapid succession much akin to her own views on Islam to an embarrassed US General who had pretensions of seeing evil in Islamic ideology: "Did you know that Jihad means struggle as in internal struggle not holy war?" she asked along with a battery of other questions to which his rejoinders were: "Um well you see er that is..." If only if only it had been me up on that stand - a man can dream.

America has been weakened by its struggle with Communism - measures of national loyalty undertaken by Truman such as the famous McCarthyist trials alienated a goodly portion of the liberal media and Hollywood dream factory. Is it any wonder then that a more nebulous opponent such as a religious group of fanatics would be able to shield themselves from censure? The US has provisions that protect freedom of religion thus one need only organise oneself around a religion to enjoy the protection of legions of Civil Libetarians.

The fact remains that a goodly portion of the enemy we are fighting is now inside our own societies. I remember a quote from a Muslim shoe salesman in the US cited by someone else, to the remark: "Welcome to America," his arrogant rejoinder was: "Oh no we're here to take over." Like so many ethnic communities in Australia and the US there is a hardening of the barriers surrounding the migrant body that enters the new country. The Greek community for example upon returning to their homeland found themselves more traditional than their ethnic extended family back home. This phenomena is almost cute with every other community than the Islamic one. I have known a great many Muslims in Australia and two observations could be applied to them: (1) the ones that make the best Australians also not coincidentally are the worst Muslims (they corouse and do all sorts of things forbidden explicitly by the Koran) (2) Even the ones that make reasonably decent Australians are politically problematic - mostly in that they are terror apologists.

The communities that crystallise within our own borders - the suburbs they populate undergo a rapid exfiltration of every other ethnic group that previously populated that area (something indicative of how friendly and comfortable people find it being surrounded by Muslims). Values that may or may not evolve back home become more entrenched and these Islamic communities become ready recruiting grounds for any of the Al Qaeda splinter cells operating in the region (such as JI). Terrorism as I have noted however is the tip of the iceberg in so far as these communities expect our own values to bend and break simply for their convenience (in fact terrorism might help us fight what really is dangerous if Dr Pipe's "education by murder" thesis holds true). Prayer rooms, labour laws, zoning preferences, funding for schools that preach anti-western messages - these all indicative of a slow process of internal decay.

Appeasement takes on a slightly more insidious character when applied to judicial and public policy determination in Australia. PC was originally the concern of the Academic tribunal in the University or the School or simply just the threat of social alienation - now apparently it is the concern of the judiciary and the state. With word games such as this "Islamophobia" being played out in the UK and elsewhere this is a legitimate cause of concern. How long then before such terms have a legal ramification? Not long. In Australia the recent case of the Victorian Administrative Tribunal held Pastor Daniel Nalliah accountable for defaming the religion of Islam and demanding that he pay crippling fines and print full page ads apologising for his words which simply highlighted the deplorable state of human rights for non-Islamic minorities in Islamic states and introducing the word "Dhimmi" into the vocabulary of his students.

Consider also the reaction of a different tier of Government to the recent arrival in Australia of an evangelical style, Malcom-X emulating, African American, Muslim Sheik who maintains adamently that AIDs was developed in a lab in the US and deployed in Africa by Christian missionaries to halt the rapid population expansion in this region. This man wants to migrate to Australia and establish a radio - possibly a TV station. Our Federal Government's reaction to this from the relevant Minister in question: "Obviously this is a matter of concern - we shall have to consider it - subject to the overriding principle of the right to freedom of speech." A right obviously not possessed by Daniel Nalliah or the rest of us infidels. I wonder if a case demanding that the Sheik in question was guilty of "defaming Christianity" would be treated with similar favor in the Victorian Administrative Tribunal - I think not.

It's a case of the weak leading the blind. I cite a recent BBC news feature on the "rainbow nation" Australia - in response to this I point to the old Australian euphemism for regurgitation "technicolor yawn" if this is what they were alluding to then I agree. The first half consisted of a teary eyed, dhimmi, Uniting Church Minister, Christian Left twit balling his eyes out over the beauty of the image of all the children of different colors holding hands in his church. A brief digression from this utopian paradise was allowed in which an Economist working with one preeminent paper said: "I repeatedly encounter the attitude in the Muslim migrant population who refuse to assimilate especially the Lebanese and Turkish quadrants but to a lesser extent others (Iraqi's etc) even refugees that the preeminent cultural norm that if the Anglo Celtic Australian is an evil culture and must be overthrown by means violent or otherwise." The BBC feature went on to say that "attitudes" like his still posed a problem. So the proposition is not weighed, tested or seriously examined but the cynical nature of the man who made it is attacked and drawn to the forefront of the matter. I am reminded in this context of Dr Pipes reference to "Ad hominem" attacks - the reference is to a fault in logic: a person who argues not the validity of the person's proposition but the validity of the person himself or herself (i.e. you're a bad person so therefore your argument is wrong).

Or maybe it's the stupid and the weak leading the blind. One of my mother's friends who was of equal intellectual caliber to any ALP cabinet front bencher said to me at one stage: "I met a muslim couple once in my service station they seemed like nice people so I think Muslims are okay." I think that this woman could be framing our national policy at the highest levels. To this I replied in an exercise that went logically far over her "empathy over intelligence" favoring head: "If Oscar Schindler walked into the room as an exemplar of a Nazi (Oscar being both a member of the Nazi Party and the man who rescued his Jewish workers from the death camps during WW2) would you then conclude that all Nazis were good." She couldn't comprehend this argument naturally but to extend it one might then say "well maybe not all Nazi's were bad but the Nazi's in charge were all bad." One would be faced with the dilemma of dealing with Doenitz second in command of the Reich who recieved only a slap on the wrist for being tangental to war crimes and the mastermind of the overrated Stuka divebomber (whose name I forget) blew his own brains out when he heard about the genocidal practices of the regime he was affiliated with. The point being that good people can exist within the framework of evil ideologies so one cannot use the individual people who exist within said framework as an assessment of the morality of said religion or ideology. One must have reference to the history of the ideology, it's present day record, what are people doing in its name. Such a standard of weighed objectively might certainly impugn Christianities past - but Islam's past and present.

There is a movement to remain kind of "simple and good" since the 1960s - the utopian ideal that can be said to be not only the objective of Communism but also Islam and Christian utopians. The last category are creatures almost unique to Australia and the UK - (the US has its Christian Right and Australia and the UK have a Christian left). I suppose it is not so surprising that Utopianism survives in Christianity since the phrase comes from Sir Thomas Moore's text of the same name (well of a similar name "Utopia"). Perhaps then my remarks are merely aspirational in that I had hoped that after 2000 years we might have grown out of this nonsense. Moving on - these Christian left people are at the heart of the misdirected multiculturalism based around utopianism that allows traditional enemies physically unable to exterminate us from without to slowly chew away at us from within. And Muslims have nominally always returned to the equilibrium position of being enemies. They possess after all a culture, a history and religion that is based around a glorious conquest involving the death, conversion or enslavement of people sharing our ideas, beliefs and value system. Cultures have a tendency to regress into patterns of behaviour that allow them to relive "the good old days." The veil will drop when they're strong enough.

But with these Christian utopian fools crippling national policy in their pretentious idealism, and the indifference of the Conservatives in my country who confine themselves to economic policy and yeild most everything else (save for boatpeople/illegal immigration) to the left wing - it's hard to see any hope. We live in the land of the lotus eaters imprisoned by our own language, cruising towards certain doom.

Cordially,
Reuben Horne.

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