If you haven’t heard already, Benazir Bhutto is dead.
She is a former Prime Minister of Pakistan, scion of a family known for leadership in that country’s government, and until recently, had been living in exile due to charges of corruption from the military and former political figures.
She was shot twice, once in the head, once in the chest, before a suicide bomber got close enough to blow himself up, along with her car, her entourage, and a few members of the crowd surrounding her. You can couch her assassination in whatever terms you’d like, but the fact is that she was a woman leader of a predominantly Islamic country. She is friendly with the West, progressive on the human rights front, and a proponent of democracy. In short, she is everything that conservative Islam deplores.
I have gone back and forth in my thought process. Shortly after 9/11, I believed that every government known to harbor terrorists should have been purged from the face of the planet. I include Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, the PLO, and Yemen. Other governments that have active terror campaigns in their countries, such as Indonesia, the Phillipines, Pakistan, India, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia should have been put on notice. Stop it now or the U.S. will, and damn the consequences. Such a stance is dangerous and provides the catalyst for a global war that courts nuclear annihilation, so after I cooled down a bit, I could see our measured response in Afghanistan (Iraq is a different kettle of fish).
After a while, I began to think of people in the Middle East as just “plain folks.” They don’t blindly follow their leadership any more than we in the West do. Most want to be left alone, to raise their families, and turn a profit in whatever business they’re involved in. I began to gave the bulk of the population there the benefit of the doubt.
After I became comfortable with this attitude, something like this happens. Any society, in any corner of the globe, has the responsibility to police itself and protect the people in that society from harm. When this is no longer possible, you have a breakdown in that society that becomes the breeding ground for extremism, civil war, and terrorism. In the Middle East, this degradation is done in the name of Allah, to take revenge on us for our success and our wealth. You can blame it on colonialism (popular in Europe), you can blame it on religious differences, but the fundamental reason why we are hated so much is that we are free, we are wealthy, and we are seeking to make the world in our image.
The last part is really the sticking point. I don’t know that any of your average Americans would put it so bluntly: “I want to export our culture of equality, democracy, and materialism to the rest of the world so that an open market becomes a check against future warfare.” Often I think that most practitioners of Islam who are not familiar with our country think we’re out to convert them. Most of us could care less who/what they worship. We just want to buy their oil and sell them luxury goods and technology. Everyone wins in our scenario.
Time and again, through the past one thousand years, it has been conclusively demonstrated that the core of Islam is rooted in violence. While the West has managed to overcome our violent pasts and move toward peace and diplomacy, increased standards of living, and freedom, this transition escapes the people of the Islamic crescent. Their people choose to remain ignorant and choose to allow the violence and evil of their forefathers to gain a foothold in their progeny. The sooner the West realizes this, the sooner we recognize that we have a new Cold War of ideology brewing in a part of the world that is essential for our infrastructure.
Once again, I am moved to a solution that contemplates annihilation. It is only a matter of time before some radical manages to obtain a WMD (biological, chemical, or nuclear) and release it on U.S. soil. It is my profound hope that we wake up to the threat that this poses and take the necessary steps to secure our future before the choice is taken from us by a radical with visions of virgins dancing in his head.
If we don’t have the stomach to do what is necessary, then I fear we will end up on the scrap heap of history. Islam collectively are the Goths to our Rome. I pray it doesn’t come to a dark age before we realize it.
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There are passages of the Koran that put chills down my back. I am like you and hope we will always do whatever it takes to keep them at bay. Personally if it was up to me I would of picked a city after the first attack and pulled a Truman on them. I guarantee the attacks would of stopped. And if they didn’t…
Hi, Peter. I’m sure you can guess how I discovered your site (yes, authors get curious and Google, too). I wanted to share some thoughts on your latest blog entry.
I will not argue that radical Islam is a threat to America and the world. It is one that we cannot afford to ignore. But I do not believe it is our greatest threat. Our greatest threat is a disease for which there is no prescribed cure. It is a disease of the mind, and if it left unchecked, it will spread its tentacles through every aspect of our culture until it is driven to its knees and destroyed. It is the disease of political correctness.
Political correctness states that facts must be dismissed if those facts may cause emotional harm. It instructs us to turn a blind eye to what is blatantly obvious, regardless of the consequences that action (or the lack of action) may bring. It says that sometimes, the truth is too offensive to be acknowledged.
America must realize a cold truth: there are evil people in the world who want to kill us. They cannot be negotiated with. They cannot be reasoned with. There is no room in their hearts for compromise. They will not go away if ignored. Their driving purpose in life is to destroy what is not in their image. We are at the top of their list.
This kind of evil must be destroyed, not in a spirit of vengeance, but out of respect for those -they- wish to destroy first. It is not pleasant to think in these terms. But survival is not always pleasant. This is a war to survive.
Before we begin to win the war against radical Islam, we must realize the war within ourselves. Unless we have the fortitude to acknowledge that reality is not always pleasant, we will forever be entrenched in a losing affair.
Lee,
First of all, thanks for stopping by! I’ve still got a mini-review you of Dawn of Destiny to get to in the near future!
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with your analysis, but I would add that apathy of our citizens is a close second to political correctness. The bottom line is that most people in my generation (Gen X) simply can’t muster the energy to be invested in the political process, except when mass media goads them. Those that are involved in the political process are those who pander to the politically correct; we grumble about it under our breath (we do in Texas, at least), but no one actually does anything that could be described as “activist.”
I’ve issued the challenge time and again to my friends and work associates to vote and to become a voice in the machinery of our government, but most of the time, I’m met with a stubborn argument in which everyone says that their vote doesn’t matter. “Texas is always Republican, so what does it matter if I go vote Republican or Democrat?”
I think the point is that many of us feel as you do. Political correctness has indeed shackled our culture, but no one feels empowered to do anything about it. Only by casting our votes and raising our voices in the big discourse do we become change agents.
You’re correct about apathy. The problem is that most Americans are not affected by terrorism in the conventional sense. If a car bomb explodes in Baghdad, X-Box Live will not stop working. ‘Deal or No Deal’ will not go off the air. The conversation around the coffee machine will still be about season 4 of Lost, what someone saw on YouTube, and whether or not the Patriots will go undefeated.
This is a good thing and a bad thing. It is a good thing only because it reflects the sheer power of our country. These horrible events can take place across the globe, and life still goes on. It is a bad thing because we will not realize the true danger of terrorism until a terrorist is shooting through our front door. By that time, it will be too late.
We do not realize how blessed we are. One day that may kill us.
but she just hit her head right?
Yeah, Doug, I saw that. The latest reports say that she died of a skull fracture!?!
On a lighter note… If someone is willing to die for their cause, the only way to stop them is to kill them. Blitz
“catalyst for a global war” I’m not just for it, I’m planning to be a part of it!
Every nation on earth has harbored terrorists in some form or another. So what is the benchmark for justified US retaliation? Our freedom fighter is someone elses terrorist (i.e. Cuba) I find it difficult to pick a side unless they are attacking the US which in that case, they are wrong even if they are right. Gotta cheer for the home team