Freedman: Our ticking bomb is political correctness
By Ilana Freedman / Local Columnist
Friday, July 29, 2005July
has been a cruel month. A shocking attack by suicide terrorists left 56
morning commuters in London dead. Scarcely two weeks later, three car
bombs in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt, killed 88 tourists and locals. And the
next day, an early morning bomb under a train in Dagestan, Russia, left
a woman passenger dead.
In one week alone, the city of Baghdad witnessed 22 car bombs, including 10 in one day that killed nearly 100 people.
It
has been a busy and bloody month for terrorists. Their mission has been
to kill as many people as possible. As I have pointed out before in
this column, the victims were not innocent "bystanders." They were the
terrorists' intended targets. Their only crime was happening to be in
the wrong place at the wrong time.
Did
I say "terrorists?" What was I thinking! Britain's BBC and Canada's CBC
have made it policy to avoid using the "T" word, which they call
"judgmental." When referring to the four men who blew up 56 people in
London, they prefer to conjecture that they "may have been
radicalized." These men, who packed nails into the explosives they
carried in order to inflict the greatest suffering possible, were only
"attackers." And the man whose rented car was found in a densely
populated area containing 16, "ready-made" bombs set to deploy, was
merely "a would-be bomber."
Get
real, people! This is not a game. The first rule of war is: know your
enemy. And we'd better start calling it what it is, because like it or
not, we are at war. Our enemy is a global network of radical Islamist
groups who have declared war on America and on our democratic way of
life.
They
have made no secret about their plans to turn our own country into a
Muslim society governed by "sharia" law. They have extended their war
to include our allies. And beyond that, they have targeted their
historic enemies (Europeans), whom they call "crusaders." They also
include the lands where they once held the reigns of power and then
lost it (Spain), and those whom they consider "apostates" (other
Muslims whose Islam is not sufficiently radical to please them).
Radical
Islam is at the center of nearly every conflict in this deeply troubled
world, from the Sudan to Indonesia, from the Philippines to Nigeria,
from Pakistan to Lebanon, from Israel to the UK, from the Ivory Coast to the United States.
These
terrorists justify their violence against civilians by shifting the
blame onto others -- the Americans, the Jews, the British, and in fact,
all dhimmis (non-Muslims). For example, terrorists frequently blame
their need for brutal attacks against the West on the existence of
Israel. It's a nice story, but it's a lie. In reality, Islam's hatred
of Jews goes back nearly 1,400 years.
In
627, Muhammad ordered the massacre of 900 Jewish men in Medina and then
sent their widows and children into slavery. A millennium later,
Muslims were still murdering Jews in Palestine, long before the state
of Israel was established in 1948. The existence of Israel may be a
convenient excuse for terrorism that many are willing to accept without
examination, but it is a perversion of historical fact.
Osama
bin Laden took the lie one step further. When he threw down the
gauntlet with his now famous fatwah, issued in February 1998, he blamed
the United States for the misery of Muslims worldwide. He accused
Americans of "occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places,
the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers,
humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its
bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the
neighboring Muslim peoples." He therefore called on Muslims everywhere
to "kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military."
It
is easy for others to blame us for their own shortcomings, to accuse us
of interfering when we come to their aid. But for us to accept that
blame, and by doing so become the victim, is the depth of folly. When
our overriding need for political correctness prevents us from
addressing the danger that faces us, we put ourselves at great risk.
Our
need for absolution for crimes we did not commit makes us weak in the
face of a violent and cruel enemy. We bend over backwards to avoid
giving offense to those who have offended us and flagellate ourselves
for breaches of manners. But people who murder other people with whom
they disagree and then blame it on their victims, do not have
sensitivities that should be catered to.
The
truth remains that man is accountable for his actions. He who murders
is responsible for his crime. Our enemies has made it clear that their
goal is to destroy us. They will neither negotiate nor accept
compromise, which they view as weakness. It is therefore time for us to
rethink our posture and the manner in which we deal with the threat
that confronts us.
As
long as terrorists confined their activities to the Middle East, we
felt safe. When they struck in Madrid, we were shaken, but we still
felt reasonably secure. The longer nothing happened in the United
States, the safer we felt. Now they have struck in London, a city not
unlike New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles.
Are
we listening? The threat will not be going away any time soon. On the
contrary, the attacks are coming more frequently and they are getting
closer. Do we remember 9/11? Are we naive enough to think it can not
happen here again?
As
long as we refuse to acknowledge that there is danger, we will not be
safe at all. The first step that we must take is to recognize that we
are at war and to stop the insanity of a culture of political
correctness that is putting us all at risk.
Ilana
Freedman is a specialist in counter-terrorism and Managing Partner of
Gerard Group International LLC. She welcomes your comments and
questions at ilana@gerardgroup.com [link] |
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I have a lot of respect for the courage that Ilana Freedman displays when she states that we must recognize “that we are at war and to stop the insanity of a culture of political correctness that is putting us all at risk.” My only disagreement would be with her emphasis. Ilana is focusing on the tool rather than the employer of the tool.
The Left uses political correctness to control public discourse and public action so that western society falls into line with the Left’s agenda. The Left has become intolerant of viewpoints other than its own and works hard to limit the speech of people who think differently. The rules to enforce the Left’s authoritarianism are called political correctness.
Because of Jews' longstanding love affair with the Left, it is very difficult for mainstream Jews to acknowledge that nowadays many of the liberals of the past, have become the bigots of today. Jews have been so blinded by infatuation that they did not realize that the object of their love has abandoned them and has taken up with the “oppressed Arabs”.
In the name of “peace and justice”, the Left has reintroduced a virulent strain of anti-Semitism. It is the Left that exudes contempt for religion, equates Zionism with Apartheid and vilifies Israel. Today the biggest challenge that Judaism faces is the machinations of the Left and the secular Jews who give it respectability.
Posted by: An American Friend | August 07, 2005 at 02:38 PM