It may well be that the Dutch government has a point in its decision to cease paying for Dutch security personnel to live in the United States, and to guard Hirsi Ali — especially if she is now making money giving lectures, in which case it may have been felt that she can pay for some of this herself.
But Hirsi Ali is also a weapon in the counter-Jihad. And if the Dutch understood that she in awakening the most powerful member of the West to the threat of Jihad (and not merely that “war on terror” that Bush thinks has Iraq as its “central front” and that can be won, or partly won, by “bringing democracy” to “ordinary moms and dads” in the Middle East), they would probably reinstate that protection. Hirsi Ali is of great, possibly unrivalled value, given her mediagenic appearance and her own history.
But in any case, what has the American government been doing? Has it offered to pay for her protection? For that matter, has the American government thought about establishing a permanent security force that can be called on whenever speakers on Islam feel the need for such protection? Otherwise, the situation will become like that in Europe, and in the Netherlands itself — where many will simply fall silent, and a large part of what constitutes free speech will have been silenced.
We have seen examples of people being shouted down in North America, in Montreal and San Francisco, for daring to present a point of view favorable to Israel. We have seen examples of death threats being made. The F.B.I. should be at work, with the police, and all those who make such threats tracked down, charged, and prosecuted.
Even one threat is one threat to many, and should be cause for prompt deportation in the case of a non-citizen. And in the case of someone who managed to become a citizen, then it should be cause for stripping someone of citizenship for “acting in a manner that tends to give aid and comfort to the enemy.” (And that enemy can be defined as consisting of all those who “believe in, or support, or participate directly or indirectly in the effort to ensure that Islam comes to dominate the world”). This might be worked on by the legislative drafters to ensure that it will be approved.
But it is not the Dutch government alone that may be too hasty, or not sufficiently appreciative of the force and fervor and power of Hirsi Ali. Even more shameful has been the failure of the American government to immediately step in and offer to take over. If Blackwater can be paid billions to protect State Department bureaucrats planning to hand out still other billions in Iraq, then some security firm in this country can be employed to protect Hirsi Ali. She is worth many dozens of battalions, if only what she does and says and stands for were properly understood and promoted.
But who does properly understand? So many in Washington can conceive of “war” merely as Boots On The Ground, or Bombs Away. That’s it. Bush and others keep telling us that this war is an “ideological war,” and then proceed to show by their actions that they haven’t the faintest idea how to conduct that “ideological war” that they think they have identified. They think that the “ideology” they are fighting is not Islam: Islam is fine, Islam is swell, Islam is one of the world’s great religions, let’s not touch Islam. Rather, it is some strange modern mutant, something that comes from weird “takfiris” who will be solemnly analyzed by the likes of that Hero of Baghdad, Frederick Kagan, sudden scholar. Kagan is like so many on the think-tank-and-lecture-circuit gravy train, who now recognize that they have to start talking about Islam with an air of great authority. Just read the My Weekly Standard piece by Kagan, the one published a week or two ago, in which he describes those brand-new “takfiris” and the brand-new ideology that explains “Al Qaeda” with not a hint of understanding that this is all classic Jihad doctrine, facing not “modernity” but rather the current conditions of the world, a world in which Jihad can now be pursued using instruments far more effective than direct military combat would be at this point. This is not because some “new” and “fringe” variant — in the kaganish understanding — of Islam has appeared to conduct this thing that new and fringe group calls “Jihad,” but because Jihad can be pursued by traditional Muslims but in untraditional ways, in ways that take advantage of OPEC trillions (ten trillion dollars since 1973 alone), and immigrant-Muslim tens of millions, who pursue this Jihad through their own inexorable overbreeding compared to the indigenous non-Muslims. This overbreeding is supported by the generous subsides in medical care, in housing, in education, in unemployment benefits, in everything, paid for entirely by those same non-Muslim taxpayers and the system of entitlements they created, long ago, for their own poor, having no thought of what a Muslim underclass determined to become a permanent overclass everywhere they went would mean for them, those Infidels, and their children, and their grandchildren.
So Ayyan Hirsi Ali, brilliant and beautiful, who should have been on talk-shows, who should have met with Congressional leaders, who should have addressed audiences of generals and other officers at the Pentagon, who should have met with Bush and the National Security staff and the upper (and lower) echelons of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., who should have met with the Clintons and Barack Obama and all the other Democratic candidates, who should have addressed the Senate, instead was denied what she needed — a life-and-death matter for her — that security detail. And not a billionaire in America, now busily organizing to “support the Iraq war effort,” not a single person in the Pentagon or in the Executive Branch or in Congress or in the media, appears to have taken note and demanded that she be protected. And not just she, but all others who have proven themselves to be articulate enough to be valuable, or invaluable, in the real war effort.
Meanwhile, in Tarbaby Iraq, where no one can explain how keeping Iraq together, and bringing toys and good things to eat to the boys and girls, the “Iraqi people,” on the other side of the goddam mountain will help us. No one can explain, so they don’t explain. They simply force us to accept. And the opposition, unsure of itself but determined not to “look soft” on “terrorism” (in other words, not to analyze the problem, not to speak forcefully out about that carefully-unnamed “ideology” that is tip-toeingly alluded to), keeps Tarbaby Iraq going by the failure to present the devastating and unanswerable critique that can be made, and has been made here, at this website, about a thousand times. And part of that critique was a presentation of What Should Be Done.
And What Should Be Done is for Infidels to arm themselves: arm themselves with a knowledge of Islam, not the Islam of the armstongs and espositos and ernsts and bulliets and safis and assorted MESA-nostrans, but rather the Islam of C. Snouck Hurgronje, and Joseph Schacht, and Antoine Fattal, and K. S. Lal, and St. Clair Tisdall and Henri Lammens, the Islam of Ray Ibrahim and Bishop Moubarec and Habib Malik and Charles Malik and Youssef Ibrahim, the Islam of Ali Sina and Ibn Warraq and Irfan Khawaja and Azam Kamguian and Wafa Sultan and mediagenic, brilliant and beautiful Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whom the government of this country simply couldn’t afford to protect, just couldn’t be bothered. After all, it needs the money to win hearts, to win minds, in Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or Pakistan. Or Jordan. Or Egypt. Or the so-called “Palestinian” territories.
Amazement. Fury. Contempt.