The Spread Of Islamism

Victor Davis Hanson has a great piece in NRO today arguing that the United States and the West still fail to understand the global virus that is jihadism, instead preferring to treat specific incidents of terrorism as mere regional maladies or ignore altogether the progress made in the war against global terror.

Apart from the continual attacks on civilians by terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the West Bank, there have now been recent horrific assaults in New Dehli (blowing up civilians in a busy shopping season on the eve of a Hindu festival), Russia (attacking police and security facilities), London (suicide murdering of civilians on the subway), and Indonesia (more bombing, and the beheading of Christian schoolgirls). The loci of recent atrocities could be widely expanded (e.g., Malaysia, North Africa, Turkey, Spain) — and, of course, do not forget the several terrorist plots that have been broken up in Europe and the United States.

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[] Westerners far too rarely publicly denounce radical Islam for its sick, anti-Semitic, anti-female, anti-American, and anti-modernist rhetoric. Just imagine the liberal response if across the globe Christians had beheaded schoolgirls, taken over schoolhouses to kill students, and shot school teachers as we have witnessed radical Muslims doing these past few months.

Instead, Western parlor elites are still arguing over whether there were al Qaedists in Iraq before the removal of Saddam Hussein, whether the suspicion of WMDs was the real reason for war against the Baathists, whether Muslim minorities should be pressured to assimilate into European democratic culture, and whether constitutional governments risk becoming intolerant in their new efforts to infiltrate and disrupt radical Muslim groups in Europe and the United States. Some of this acrimony is understandable, but such in-fighting is still secondary to defeating enemies who have pledged to destroy Western liberal society. At some point this Western cannibalism becomes not so much counterproductive as serving the purposes of those who wish America to call off its struggle against radical Islam.

Interestingly, Hanson doesn't even mention the week-long Muslim gang rioting (well, "French youth" rioting if you listen to the MSM) that has engulfed Paris, which vindicates his claims. Indeed, Ed Morrissey has warned that this "unrest" "will soon become an al-Qaeda rallying point." If ever the U.S. had an excuse to bomb France, this is it!

All kidding aside, this issue is hardly a joking matter, as the world media, primarily and pathetically led by American journalists, refuse to acknowledge the metastasisation of radical Islam taking place before our very eyes. It's hard to win a war when you can't even identify the enemy - which, by all accounts, is just as dangerous as the enemy itself.