Five Years, and Hoping
Everybody else is weighing in on the fifth anniversary of our Great Wakeup Call, and in truth I can't think of anything stirring or even especially insightful to say. The whole business depresses me so badly that I'm sure I won't sleep much tonight. Nonetheless, some thoughts:
- The September 2006 Atlantic has an intriguing article by James Fallows arguing that we are doing better in the War on Terror than we may think we are, and although I have quibbles with some of his points, he says things that aren't being said elsewhere: That America is assimilating its Muslim immigrants-and even welcoming them-in ways that ever-so-(supposedly)-tolerant Europe is not.
- As I've said many times before, The United States is catching-people like it here, in spite of the supposed imperatives of their native culture. This includes Muslims, who were awakened by 9-11 to the fact that if America falls into terrorism-induced chaos, they and their families will suffer as much as or more than everybody else. Even as all eyes in America are on Muslims, American Muslim eyes are on their own lunatic fringes, having finally recognized the dangers of those fringes for what they are.
- All that being the case, we need to be contrarian about America's Muslim community, and make it clear to them that we are all in this together. Our anti-terrorism investigators need to be given knowledge of Islamic culture, and coached in respect for Islam as a religion. American Muslims need to know whom to contact when they get wind of a plot from their own fringes, without fear that investigators will jump to conclusions and mistake the messengers for the message. This kind of quiet, below-the-radar police work is really the only way to protect our society against terrorism.
- Islam is not monolithic-in fact, it broke into two frequently warring factions within a few years of the Prophet's death-and it is about as internally coherent as American Christianity, which is astonishingly diverse. A relatively small number of Islamist groups make most of the noise, and just as the "Left Behind" crackpots gleefully give the appearance of being mainstream Christians (when in fact they're borderline heretics, and in the minority) most Muslims are more interested in making a living in their marginal economies than bringing back the Caliphate.
- The sort of Christianity practiced by the Founders bears little resemblance to the sort of Christianity now insisting that we are a "Christian nation." Darbyism and Dominionism are new things-and dangerous in the extreme because they're already here. I bristle at the sort of militant atheism that has become the national religion of the Left, but the point they often make, that fanaticism can and does arise within almost any religious framework, is something we should not forget. The Dominion would be no better than the Caliphate. (And no better than the religion-free Marxist workers' paradise so many of our lefty fringe still dream of. Been there. Done that. Buried 100 million people.)
- Ending the Iraq War will have little or no effect on the stridency of the Islamists or their efforts to attack us. I'm amazed at how many people harbor this little illusion.
- Whatever party is nominally in power will be blamed for any future terrorist attacks, irrespective of any identifiable sequence of cause and effect. I hope my progressive friends who are howling for a "regime change" understand this. The only thing worse than not running the country may be...running it.