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Seven years have passed since the mujahedin murdered nearly 3,000 office workers in what was a clear declaration of war against the United States, and the situation is more muddled than ever.
Some think, as I noted yesterday, that the "war on terror" is in its final stages: Al-Qaeda is in disarray, with even its foremost theorists questioning its methodology. Unfortunately, there is less to that than meets the eye.
Some think that the "war on terror" never existed at all, but was and is merely a concoction of the Bush Administration that would enable it to carry out its imperialist designs.
Neither view can comprehend the prospect of a man in Britain plotting mass murder and explaining: "We are doing this in order to gain the pleasure of our Lord and Allah loves us to die and kill in his path."
Both major political parties in America -- and, indeed, virtually all national political figures -- as well as all the principal spokesmen of both the liberal and conservative mainstream media remain firmly and unquestioningly committed to the proposition that Islam is a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists.
Holding this view does not preclude, as George W. Bush has demonstrated, fighting energetically against jihadists in some arenas, but it does create blind spots. It means that the stealth jihad is advancing almost completely unnoticed and unimpeded. It means that organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations continue to be treated by both government and media as benign groups that wholeheartedly and unconditionally accept American Constitutional republicanism and pluralism, despite all the evidence to the contrary. It means that jihadists have been able to infiltrate American government and law enforcement, due to the anxiety of officials not to appear "anti-Muslim."
It also means that there has still never been a full and comprehensive discussion of the jihad threat in the American public square. Maybe television news is no place for a full and comprehensive discussion of anything, but it is worth noting that seven years after 9/11 there has not been a single documentary aired on a major network that explains the full magnitude of the threat. (Obsession is superb as far as it goes, but it does not explain the provenance of the jihad ideology, or the extent to which Muslims in America and around the world may adhere to that ideology.) Most of the media (again, both liberal and conservative) is completely in the bag for CAIR and Co., having swallowed whole the ridiculous claim that to speak honestly about Islamic supremacism amounts to "bigotry" and "racism." Other don't care to discuss it because it's low ratings material.
Meanwhile, those cries of "bigotry" and "racism" coalesce neatly with the worldwide effort by Muslim groups to criminalize criticism of Islam -- which would effectively muzzle the West, preventing Western non-Muslims from publicly discussing or strategizing about how to defeat the jihad threat. And that, of course, is just the point of such efforts, which the Western media has unwittingly abetted by accepting, for years now, the Muslim claim that such discussion is out of bounds.
So seven years after the Towers went down and the Pentagon was wounded, the jihadists have every reason to smell victory -- not in Iraq, where they are indeed on the run, but in their efforts to cow and intimidate the West into giving up all resistance to Islamization. It's happening, but no one notices or cares, because it is happening in small steps.
Maybe the next seven years will bring better news.
Posted by Robert at September 11, 2008 8:34 AM
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Bravo, Robert.
If we can learn anything from the 1400 years of Islamic history, it is this: the Jihad never ends.
Posted by: tanstaafl![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at September 11, 2008 9:04 AM
Coincidentally, seven years of this POTUS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXk0LFVAgHE
at September 11, 2008 9:07 AM
I think the next seven years will bring more sudden jihadists, like the guy in Philly a couple days ago.
And I believe we'll see buses and trains going BOOM! here in the USA and Muslim "yoots" finally raising up on their hind legs to provoke cops to a use of force, with whining and litigation to follow.
It's going to get bad.
Posted by: undaunted at September 11, 2008 9:10 AM
Vid of my favorite A-sole:
http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ai=214&ar=1846wmv&ak=null
at September 11, 2008 9:11 AM
Try asking a school-age child what 9-11 was all about. They'll give you an honest answer:
NO IDEA!
That's right. Someone tell me one "pedagogical" or memorial-related event being held today for the edification of your youth....
someone....
Didn't think so.
Here's an idea: Rent "Flight 93" and sit down with your family and watch the whole thing. If you do NOTHING ELSE, do that much.
Posted by: Ynkedoodl at September 11, 2008 9:11 AM
Of all the poignant thoughts I have on this anniversary, there are three that stand out...
1) How the hijackers were instructed to scream "Allah O Akbar" to terrorize the infidel passengers. Surah 9 of the Quran couldn't have said it better.
2) How an associate of Muhammad Atta quoted him as saying - when questioned about the probabilities of success of the impending operation - "the enemy is stupid"
He apparently knew quite well the extent to which we were physically and ideologically disarmed by our slavish devotion to the twin Gods of politically-correctness and multiculturalism.
3) My heart breaks for the children on those jet-liners...who must have been terrified by the hijackings, who were no doubt reassured by their parents sitting next to them that everything would be allright...and then endured the horror of death - however brief - as they were betrayed so heinously by the adult world that they trusted so.
May God rest the souls of the victims of that infamous day, and please comfort the surviving family members who one can imagine must be tormented by grief on this sad anniversary.
at September 11, 2008 9:11 AM
And how would things have gone under President Al Gore?
I'm not so sure the media is "unwittingly" abetting this takeover. They're being very shortsighted but they know what they are doing and it will come back to bite them - big time.
And there will be no one left to speak for them because they refused to speak for us. That will be their tough luck. No one in the Muslim world will appreciate their political correctness.
at September 11, 2008 9:15 AM
Islam is a deadly plague on all humankind. Like all religions of human sacrifice, someday it will end also. In the end, in the annals of human history, Islam will be noted as one of the greatest killer of the human race of all time.
What other belief system causes humans to kill off their children, mothers to blow themselves up, men to attack and kill their wives and children, and every believer to attack, torture and kill the children, mothers and neighbors. What a heinous belief system. There is no question who the god of Islam is, and it is NOT the Father of Lights of Christians. The "magnificent 19" are honored only in hell.
I hope that people in the West will wake up to the stealth jihad and stop appeasing the unappeasable. We need to stop the immigration of Muslims to the West and cut off all dealings with Muslim countries as soon as possible.
at September 11, 2008 9:37 AM
This isn't a war in the classical sense. This isn't even some new type of warfare. But make no mistake, this is war on all fronts. islam has but one purpose, and that is total domination. Domination of both the individual and of society. I read on another site an article about having forgotten. The writer stated that they wanted to remember the Towers as they were, not what became of the Towers, in short they didn't want to remember the anger they felt. The problem is once you forget the anger you felt when an event happens, i.e. 9/11, you begin to lose the will to fight. You lose the will to fight, you end up losing far more than that. I am not talking about dwelling on that anger, that just leads to the same justification process used by the cowards of islam. But one must remember the anger one felt when they saw what happened on 9/11 so as to never forget the events that have shaped our lives to this point in the new millenium and therefore understand to continue the fight on all levels against this insidiousness known as islam.
Posted by: Kevin at September 11, 2008 9:37 AM
Hearing someone shout Allah-hu akbar in this country might and should properly stir any number of us to quickly and safely draw properly-trained-with weapons and begin rapid target acquisition.
Posted by: undaunted at September 11, 2008 9:38 AM
"On Monday in Michigan, Obama became exercised when talking about the need to give even suspected terrorists legal rights.
“We may think this is Mohammed the terrorist,’’ he said at a campaign rally, but “it might be Mohammed the cab driver. You might think it’s Barack the bomb thrower. But it might be Barack the guy running for president.’’
Continuing, he got more heated, his voice booming. Referring to the Constitution, he said: “Don’t mock the Constitution! Don’t make fun of it! Don’t suggest that it’s un-American to abide by what the founding fathers set up! It’s worked pretty well for 200 years!!’’
He finished with a sigh: 'These people.'"
-- from littlegreenfootballs
Of course "Mohammed the terrorist" might not be the same as "Mohammed the cab driver" -- though he might, come to think of it. But "Mohammed the terrorist" might be offered financial, political, and moral support by "Mohammed the cab driver." There is no one way to participate in Jihad. You do not have to participate in violent acts yourslf. You can support those who do. And clearly, a great many Muslims are doing exactly that -- supporting those who participate in violent Jihad, by defending and protecting and making excuses for them, by giving them financial or moral support, by showing up in courtrooms or to picket trials, and to help use the liberties, the ones that our Constitution guarantees and of which Barack Obama claims he is so fond, to undo, in the end, those very guarantees of those individual rights and to put, in their place, something modelled on the Shari'a, or the Shari'a itself.
And, of course, "Mohammad the terrorist" or "Barack the Bomber" are not the only people to worry about it. Such a list overlooks so many others. "Mohammad" the campaigner for Da'wa, "Mohammad" the buildger of mosques and madrasas, "Fahd" the Saudi who spends tens of billions on propaganda for Saudi Arabia (and, by the way, to prevent any intelligent energy policy from being put in place), and obviously for the Islam on which Saudi Arabia rests, and "Fuad" who smilingly defends the Egyptian government from its failure to protect the Copts from inhuman mistreatment, or "Nuri" -- a recent arrival, an apparent "refugee" though it is entirely unclear exactly what he is a refugee from, as either a Sunni Muslim or a Shi'a Muslim for whom vast swathes of Iraq are open and welcoming (or is just that he'd like to be in America, and we are ready to accommodate his desires?), and "Mahnaz" the very sweet and plausible Pakistani lady who comes to your children's elementary school, with a pretty prayer rug, and pictures of families (family values!) sitting down to their Iftar dinnners in Pakistan, in Indonesia, in Syria, in Morocco -- see children: Islam is so diverse! Islam is so unmonolithic!), and passes around pictures of mosques in Islamabad, and Jakarta, and Istanbul, and Jerusalem and Rome and London and Washington (diverse! unmonolithic!). But neither the delighted children, who get to touch the prayer rug, and after they have listened, in rapt attention, to hear a tape of a muezzin calling the Faithful to prayer (a sound that Barack Obama said he found so hauntingly beautiful, but non-Muslims awakened by such a sound at an ungodly hour may beg to differ), if the teacher permits ("may I"" asks the Pakistani lady, sweetly, as she has been carefully instructed), the kids even get to lisp the shehada, and then to go home, proud and excited about the nice lady, and their first memorable encounter (with all kinds of possible after-effects, later on, when that first impression is so sweet, so innocuous, and they so very young and deeply impressionable).
No, there's much more to the Jihad than the caricature provided --- about "Mohammad the Terrorist" and "Barack the Bomber" -- by that man who knows so little of Islam, that is so little of what is in the Qur'an, the Hadith, the Sira, but dangerously thinks he knows all kinds of things about it, because he too, from the ages of 6 to 10, was just like those impressionable children, but with just a little more southern exposure to it, but hardly enough, it is clear, to give him the sense that perhaps there was something there he needed to find out more about, and had he found out more, and based his opposition to the war in Iraq on the only grounds that make sense - that is, the grounds presented by me here, as to why the only "victory" in Iraq that makes sense -- an end-result that leads to a weakening of the Camp of Islam -- can be achieved not through Americans staying, but by means of Americans withdrawing. That, which is an argument that cannot be refuted so is simply ignored by the Bush loyalisets, is one that Barack Obama cannot make because he, you see, cannot bring himself to talk about, or even recognize, the need to divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam, nor to talk about the other instruments of Jihad, such as the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest (as in Western Europe). And why can't Barack Obama do this? Because he, Barack Obama, has a sentimental attachment to Islam. He, Barack Obama, cannot see what is wrong and dangerous, civiliziationallly dangerous, about Islam. He, Barack Obama, who though he has never written a single law article in his life, thinks of himself, with his ill-concealed self-preening about his "passion" for the Constitution that he "loves do dearly," as the Constitution's True Defender, but he gives no sign of remembering Mr. Justice Jackson's "the Constitution is not a suicide pact" nor, I'm afraid, has he seen fit to explain why, and how, the Constitution "of the country that I love so dearly" is flatly contradicted, in letter and spirit, by the Shari'a.
For that alone, his world-view, and his grasp of things, should raise eyebrows, and arouse skepticism about his touted intellectual gifts, which so far seem to have been confined to a gift of the gab, an ability to slither out of tight spots (Rev. Wright, for example), and an o'erweening arrogance that, given his actual intellectual abilities, puts one in mind of the line in "Lolita" about the little girl "wearing a halter with little to halt."
Posted by: Hugh at September 11, 2008 9:42 AM
Hugh,
So how are non-Muslims supposed to tell the difference between "Mohammed the terrorist" and "Mohammed the cab driver" and "Mohammed the donator to Muslim charities that just happen to have wings of jihad", and "Mohammed the Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only"?
The last three can be counted on to vehemently deny any connection to "Mohammed the terrorist" after people have been killed. Before the terrorist did his job or was apprehended, they might have been a foursome - going to the same mosque and hearing the same imam. Afterward, the survivors are a trio who indignantly deny any responsibility for the actions of their former comrade.
at September 11, 2008 10:06 AM
...It also means that there has still never been a full and comprehensive discussion of the jihad threat in the American public square. Maybe television news is no place for a full and comprehensive discussion of anything, but it is worth noting that seven years after 9/11 there has not been a single documentary aired on a major network that explains the full magnitude of the threat.... (In the article)
Not only has there been no public discussion of the magnitude of the threat on major media, there is a complete obsession on the part of government to bring more potential Islamic terrorists into the country as immigrants without a bit of hesitation as to the consequences of such actions.
Posted by: Spot on at September 11, 2008 10:23 AM
Not only has there been no public discussion of the magnitude of the threat on major media, there is a complete obsession on the part of government to bring more potential Islamic terrorists into the country as immigrants without a bit of hesitation as to the consequences of such actions.
Posted by: Spot on at September 11, 2008 10:23 AM
Spot on, I often wonder where is the need for a war when POTUS and Sec. of State are inviting the ummah in 'Dar al-Harb'?
Good point.
at September 11, 2008 10:59 AM
The next 7 years won't bring better news, because the only time most people wake up is when a major catastrophe, directly impacting them or 'people like them', happens. I.e. it'll take at least another 9/11 or worse. My bet is actually on 'worse', given the widespread acceptance of moral equivalence concerning 9/11, i.e. that the US invasions of Iraq and even Afghanistan caused more deaths than 9/11.
This absurd viewpoint is espoused by pretty much everyone I talk to and it's not unreasonable to conclude that this attitude will present a major obstacle to a military response to further attacks.
Posted by: Aylios at September 12, 2008 8:52 AM
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