The near total control of American life by the Left is so thorough it goes unnoticed. We just accept it, like background noise. Every once in a while their slip shows like in this column by Jonah Goldberg.
About the second point reasonable people can quibble. The terrorist army that calls itself the Islamic State is certainly trying to build a state — and not just a state but a super state, or caliphate. They’re not there yet; their delivery of social services seems spotty at best, though they do collect taxes and uphold the law (in a fashion).
More relevant, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a state. Morally, this weed stinks just as much whether you call it a state or a soccer league that rapes, tortures, and murders people on the side. And legally, statehood would matter — and not very much — only if the U.N. and other bodies agreed to recognize the fledgling caliphate’s legitimacy. That’s not going to happen even if the Islamic State opens up post offices and DMVs on every corner.
Advertisement
The president’s first assertion is trickier. Is the Islamic State “not Islamic”? Moreover, is it really “clear” that it’s not Islamic?
Not even a little? Is it Islamic-ish?
If we’re talking clarity, I’d say the Islamic State is clearly not Mormon. Or Lutheran. Or Buddhist. It most certainly is not the most extreme example of Quakers gone bad ever recorded.
As for its not being Islamic, that’s at best unclear, if not just clearly wrong. And the fact that the majority of its victims are Muslim is irrelevant. Lenin and Stalin killed thousands of Communists and socialists; that doesn’t mean Lenin and Stalin weren’t Communists and socialists. If such terrorists who kill Muslims aren’t Muslims, why do we give them Korans when we imprison them?
The president faces the same dilemma that bedeviled George W. Bush, and I sympathize with him. It is not in our interest for the Muslim world to think we are at war with Islam, not just because it is untrue but more specifically because we desperately need the cooperation of Muslim nations. That’s why Bush constantly proclaimed “Islam means peace.”
That last paragraph is a strange bit of self-delusion or perhaps a necessary lie. Jonah makes his money as a TV pundit. His role is to be the nerdish conservative, like a part time character on Big Bang Theory. His character is allowed to say bad things about politicians and some of the fads popular with the Left, but he must always be careful to bite the hand that feeds him. Fumble a line about a touchy subject and his struggle session is his next TV appearance.
There’s also some chance he believes it. Take someone off the street, drop them into Utah and there’s a good chance they eventually become a Mormon. Jonah Goldberg is more than a toady for the Left. He is a creation of the Left. He could very well believe we should not be at war with Islam and that it is important Muslims not think we are waging war on them, notwithstanding the 100,000 tons of ordinance we have dropped on the Muslim world.
Reality, the thing that does not go away when you stop believing in it, is nothing like Jonah imagines. Muslims have thought we were at war with them for decades now, maybe even centuries. That’s why they’re pissed, by the way. They are not fooled by the religion of peace nonsense. Further, the only people who fear this truth are Americans, particularly members of the Cult. Just as they cannot face their war on black people, they cannot face this war on Islam. So, they pretend to care about and respect a religion they personally detest.
Reality be damned.
It is not disturbing that people believe the “religion of peace” tripe, it is that few people seem to have the gonads to speak up and denounce it, when almost everyone with a brain, including Muslims, knows exactly what is going on.
We Americans gave been trained to politely look away or mumble agreement when the crazies, supposedly representing some significant, downtrodden group of people, go off and say or do the most idiotic things. I hope that someday, soon, people will find the nerve to push back, firmly and persistently. We cannot go on like this. Most people, deep down, know better. They just have been trained to not let on.
Islam is an interloper, and a fairly recent one. The Middle East was pagan and Christian for 700 years before the Muslims buzzed out of their sandy hive. It was pagan for 1000’s of years before that. Palestine (named by the Roman conquerors after they destroyed the temple and scattered the Jews) was a Jewish homeland since around 1300 BC. Constantinople was the center of the Eastern Greek Empire up until, what, the 15th century?
Of course we are at war with Islam. They are certainly at war with us. In fact, the West was at war with the East long before the arrival of Islam. Just ask the Greeks. Does Jonah Goldberg read? Does he remember Salamis? Of course not. And he’s the best Conservative Inc. has to offer.
In a sense, the Greco-Persian Wars made the West. When it ended, the Greeks turned on each other, and destroyed themselves. There is nothing better than a genuinely threatening foreign menace to focus a civilization.