In the latest issue of National Review, Jay Nordlinger interviews former secretary of state George Shultz (subscription required). Mr. Shultz has many noteworthy things to say, including this brief discussion of Islamic terrorism:
Further, says Shultz, if we are to attain victory in the War on Terror, we have to borrow a page from the beginning of the Cold War and come up with a containment policy for today: “Our object is to contain the spread of radical Islam, that uses terror, and help whatever you want to call it — mainstream Islam — learn how to be part of the modern world in a manner consistent with their religion.” Also, the opening up of economies makes a big difference in the opening up of governments: as in Chile, Taiwan, and South Korea, to name three.
I’m a big fan of National Review. It’s the best political magazine around. And I admire and respect George Shultz.
However, this quote illustrates the divide that has opened up between “old school” conservatives, as represented by the Cold Warriors, and the new grassroots activists of the Counterjihad.
Regardless of one’s opinion about the number of “moderate” Muslims (or even whether they exist), resistance to the Great Jihad bears only a superficial resemblance to the anti-communist cause during the Cold War.
There is no “Iron Curtain” behind which Islam sits.
There were no communist no-go zones within capitalist countries in which communism could be practiced with impunity.
It was rare for Western communists to call publicly for the overthrow of capitalist governments, and those who did were often tried and imprisoned when caught.
Capitalist governments did not have an official policy of paying for the training and upkeep of communists within their midst.
– – – – – – – – –
Communists had no vast community of “moderate” sympathizers amongst whom they could hide in order to launch terrorist attacks on the civilian populace.
The struggle against the Great Jihad requires a different paradigm.
The jihad is indifferent to national borders. The jihad is not interested in keeping a standing army, or fighting a conventional war.
Before we can form a successful strategy in the “War on Terror”, we must acknowledge that “terror” is not what we are fighting.
Before we can think of containing militant Islam, we must first exorcise it from our midst.
To do that we must acknowledge our original and fundamental error: we invited millions of Muslims to immigrate to our countries and form enclaves within our cities. Among those Muslims are untold thousands of our deadly enemies, people who wish to destroy our societies utterly and construct a worldwide totalitarian theocracy in their place.
There is no way to “contain” militant Islam when we are so thoroughly infiltrated by Muslims.
First we must address the issue of the enemy among us.
We must also acknowledge the fact that — regardless of how many moderate Muslims walk our streets — the problem is inherent in Islam itself.
Only then will we be able to consider containment.
The two most insidious poisons working in Western societies today are the twins, Multiculturalism and Political Correctness. Multiculturalism is the philosophy of our ultimate destruction while Political Correctness is the method of Multicultural’s enforcement. What is particularly ironic about Multiculturalism is that it is derived from and wholly dependent upon a strong current of Judeo-Christian ethics in a population. Like most things evil, Multiculturalism is a corrupted, bastardization of something good. And like most evil spawn, it seeks the destruction of its parent.
Multiculturalism takes the Judeo-Christian belief in the inherent value of individual souls and twists it into a false and self-contradictory argument for the inherent value of every person’s culture. Just as socialism will always require the use of force and lies to survive, Multiculturalism requires the imposition of state force and lies to survive. Political Correctness provides the philosophical foundations for the use of force and lies to impose Multiculturalism upon the people.
Islamic culture does not suffer from Multiculturalism and therefore Political Correctness is unneeded in its adherents and societies. Belief in something definitive will always win out, in the end, over a belief in nothing. Multiculturalism is ultimately a belief in nothing. Western society, stripped of the capacity to believe in the superiority of its culture, will fall to Islam. When that happens, Multiculturalism and Political Correctness will cease to exist. They won’t be needed.
On the defence side, I think the wedge issue is Sharia Law. Everyone should be able to oppose this because it is a replacement for existing laws in liberal democratic societies.
On the offense side, I think we need to ‘brand’ moderate Muslims, such as the Secular Islam group and the Muslims against Sharia group and others. By ‘brand’ I mean something like ‘Kiwi fruit’ (formerly Chinese gooseberries). By identifying ‘moderate Muslims,’ we can target the huge number, the astronomical number, which aren’t.
[This is also a test comment, btw.]
Schultz said “learn how to be part of the modern world in a manner consistent with their religion..” Isnt’ that right there the problem. Schultz, like every other politician, believes that bin Laden and the thousands of other jihadists are being INCONSISTENT! i.e., ‘hijackers’ of Islam. Wrong and you need only read history and the Muslim scholars’ writings (i.e., Legacy of Jihad, etc) to know that. When you start out with a false assumption, you are doomed.
“There were no communist no-go zones within capitalist countries in which communism could be practiced with impunity.”
What about every college campus in the US?
The Pentagon analyst Stephen Coughlin (who, it now transpires, is to be retained at DoD after all) devastatingly debunks the notion that a benign Islam has been “hijacked” in his thesis, titled “To Our Great Detriment: Ignoring What Extremists Say About Jihad.” It may be accessed here.
OT
All this discussion of containment brought this story to mind:
Sneak into Gaza? End up stuck there.
Funny how the world functions very much in a common-sense manner that eludes many. Is it wrong that I feel some schadenfreude over this incident?
– Sodra
Communism was
(1) not something you are born with,
(2) not something you belong to
Therefore:
(1) It was not common to substitute communist population for non-communist gentile population. Islam can substitute population because being a Muslim is inherited.
(2) Since Islam is a membership (without possibility to exit) it resembles not Communism in general but the Communist Party. Therefore, similar limitations may apply
Communists had relatively few citizens of the host countries helping them in the first half of the twentieth century.
Now, as the Gramscian/School of Frankfurt plan to take over western countries for communism has borne fruit through dominating public education and mass media in the targeted countries, over a third of the population is actively aiding and abetting collectivism, while another third are doing so passively.
This two thirds has put up the worst possible slate of candidates for the presidency, the last bulwark. They’re ripe for totalitarianism and the more ruthless one will win in the long run. Totalitarianism-lite a la the Democrats will soften the ground for the real thing. At this point would anyone put their money on the effete university prof/cushy union communists’ ability to fend off the Islamists?
The new communists are idiot savants. On the one hand they have been diabolic geniuses preparing the ground for totalitarianism. On the other hand, they are enabling another totalitarianism into the driver’s seat. If instead of being just a marxist, Obama is also still programmed with his childhood Islamic beliefs like some Manchurian candidate and wins, then old Red Hillary will have a truly shocked look on her face. Yet everything she has done has paved his way or if he’s not an Islamist, then the real Islamic master to appear.
Only hard core commies can be happy with the backwaters Islamic totalitarians create and female leftists may have a problem with their assigned role in the New World. Communism at least pretended that its tractor-driving gold-star mamas of twelve were equal to their vodka-swilling men.
Laine perfectly and beautifully delineated the current prevailing situation with regard to the Gramsci-Frankfurt School’s Marxist Leninist attempt to destroy all the foundation of Western civilization. One cannot add anything to his/her sound reasoning.
So let’s jump to the future regardless how futile is to foretell events that lies beneath the horizon. The ascent of hardcore leftist presidential candidates presents the proof that the bed for Marxist totalitarianism is about to be made in alliance with Islamists.
However atheist communist totalitarianism is incompatible with Islamist ideology.
How the clash between the two will unfold at some point of time in the future can be an interesting mental exercise for thinkers.
Control of language is a major tool of the PC left. By restricting what can be said they restrict the debate before it starts. So a certain tricksiness with language may be required when dealing with the MSM.
“Containment” is a good example imo. It sounds non-threatening and defensive. It isn’t a PC rage-word. But, without saying so explicitly, it automatically conjures up the thought of immigration control. It also automatically makes a person think “how can you contain something when it is already inside your borders”. Which then leads to other thoughts.
I don’t know if Mr Schultz is using it that way or is just misunderstanding the threat, but either way I think “containment” is a good example of the way language could be used when interacting with the MSM.
Stanley Kurz’s “The Terror Tribes” is probably the best rebuttal for Schulze’s frame of mind.
Kurz points out that Muslim tribal society deeply wants the material things of the West, DVDs, the internet, cell phones, etc. but does not want all the other things that come with it.
This tension, between the desire for modern material things, and the desire causing traditional kin-oriented Muslim society organized by religion (kin and religion being one and the same) causes internal tensions that can ONLY be relieved by Jihad against outsiders.
Parenthetically, the Michael Palin series on PBS on his circumnavigation of the Sahara was quite interesting. In Timbuktu, in poverty stricken and isolated by true poverty, Mali, Palin was greeted by no resentment whatsoever. All people knew was their locality, and had curiosity about him but nothing else. Islam was so dominant it was not threatened, and so poor it had not even a DVD player. Or electricity to run a radio.
Meanwhile, in richer Algeria, with a train system that would be quite comfortable fitting in Germany, the hostility from Islamists and the terror threat was off the charts. Palin had a constant bodyguard 24/7.
Which is consistent with Kurz’s thesis. Which is “Spengler” in the Asia Times also. That Islam’s social fabric of kinship-religion intertwined is coming apart from modernity caused by desire for all the things modernity brings but refusal to adopt society to generate it or accept it.
Not containment of “radical Islam” but of Islam, period.
Since Islam itself is an anti-Constitutional, anti-Universal Declaration of Human Rights, intolerant subversive movement that aims to establish a global theocratic terrorist tyranny.
Islam should be kept out of the West, in all forms, until after it Reforms.
We didn’t allow “moderate” Communists to infiltrate our schools, businesses, scientific establishments, and government in order to appear “tolerant”.
Islam is intolerance apotheosized.
And should be treated as such.
Back to Mecca with the whole bunch.
Until they have an Enlightenment, an Age of Reason, and renounce terrorism as a method of “preaching”.
Islam should be kept out of the West, in all forms, until after it Reforms.
And since Islam cannot reform, it should be kept out of the West, in all forms, period.
Umm, there were Communists openly advocating the overthrow of capitalism throughout the west during the Cold War. There are still such Communists today. In several countries they were a major political party. Also, there were many thousands of Westerners who collaborated with Communism: the Vietnam-era “peaceniks”, the 1980s “anti-nuclear” campaigners, and a lot of “fellow-traveler” intellectuals.
Indeed, far more Westerners (especially intellectuals) were Communists than are believing Moslems today. The Left today is not pro-Islamic at all, merely so fanatically anti-West that they can’t see anything else.
Islam is materially far weaker than Communism was; but it has greater self-assurance. Also, I would say that Communism was an artificial creed, and never had roots. Islam has a genuine appeal – it would not have lasted this long or made this many converts – even by the sword. And at this time, the West is consumed by self-doubt.