Hello Friends,
Here is part 2 of the series.
Shalom,
Peter
January 12, 2010
D. L. Adams
Denial and Ignorance – No “Systems” Work
Thereis little cause for rejoicing in this new decade; we are in anexistential conflict thrust upon us by reactionary and extreme forceswhose existence precedes us by more than a millennium. We are not adoctrinaire people and we seem to have difficulty acknowledging that inothers. Our inability to accept the truth of the doctrine of those whowant to destroy our people and our society is a staggering failure ofepic proportions.
Oyou who believe! fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you andlet them find in you hardness; and know that Allah is with those whoguard (against evil). (Koran, 9:123)
Northwest flight 253 landed safely in Detroit not because any system workedbut because private citizens took action for their own safety and thatof their fellow passengers. The passengers who defeated their would-bekiller on the flight to Detroit are heroes much like Todd Beamer andthe heroes of Flight 93 were on 9/11.
We rely on technology for fake security that destroys our privacyand undermines ease of interstate and international travel. In fact,the invasive “solutions” now being pushed by American securityofficials are considered by some to violate child pornography laws.We seek technological solutions because we will not profile; we willnot profile because so many of us are silly multiculturalists,politically correct, post modernist ignorant fools. We should dobehavioral profiling, racial, national – all of it. Profiling must be aweapon of defense, not to use weapons of defense when attacked is folly.
El Al airlines has never been hijacked specifically because they actively profile. They profile because profiling is the most successful methodof preventing hostiles on aircraft. The legitimacy of Israeli profilingis validated because it is effective. In fact, just after 9/11 Logan airport in Boston hired Rafi Ron, a former director of Ben Gurion airport to advise on security at that airport.
Whathas happened to this rationalist approach? It has been subsumed by ourculture of silliness and multicultural political correctness and theabsolute ridiculous need in all sectors to avoid “offense” tominorities. If we deployed the Israeli model of rational security theChristmas “undie” bomber would never have gotten on any America-boundaircraft in Amsterdam (or anywhere else). Our failure to deployeffective security across our society is a profound moral andoperational failure whose origin is political correctness - theridiculous childish fear of causing “offense.”
Ifwe must offend someone to secure our people, so be it. It is alright toinconvenience the entire travelling public to avoid causing offense tosomebody who may well have reason to avoid security checks in the firstplace?
Weare clearly more concerned with avoiding “offense” to a minority, andcausing severe inconvenience, intrusiveness, and creating an obvious security theaterthan actually ensuring the security of our people and our friends thanin actually securing our people and aircraft. This is utterly stupid.Certainly our society has reached the final stage in the Peter Principle process; we’ve advanced to the point of collective denial and incompetence.
Butmore than one-third of all terrorist plots since 9/11 transpired in2009 – despite loud chest-thumping about rejecting the idea of a war onterror, reaching out to the Muslim world, and apologizing for purportedAmerican sins. A non-impoverished Major Hasan or Mr. Mutallab (or Mr.Atta or KSM) does not fit with the notion that our enemies act out ofpoverty or oppression or want. (Victor Davis Hanson)
Theidea that Islamic terrorism, violence and hate against Americans ispoverty-driven, or a response to some particular American foreignpolicy (cf. support of Israel, another frontline state in the jihadwar) is now clearly debunked after the most recent attack by a wealthy, privileged Islamic terrorist. Islamic terror is motivated by Islamic doctrine; we are the target because we exist.
Theadherents of Islamic doctrine attack us because they hate us; they hateus simply because we exist. El Al takes security very seriously, weAmericans do not; Israel is very successful with airline securitybecause they ask questions and are not concerned with ridiculouspolitically correct self-censorship. Relying entirely on technology andignoring the human component of a potential attacker has already failed.
Therehave been no hijackings of Israeli planes in recent years, he(Mordechai Rachamim) says, "because they saw it is impossible to make(a) hijacking."
AndShlomo Dror says that, while there are sky marshals on every flight,they are the last line of defense. If they have to spring into action,it means the security system has failed.
[…]
Until recently, Rafi Ron was director of security at the Tel Aviv airport. He knows how sophisticated terrorists have become.
"We believe that profiling is a very important concept in aviationsecurity," he says. "Finding a bomb is not such an easy thing. Bombsdon’t look any more like a black, round thing with a smoking fusecoming out of them. They take…almost every possible shape. They arecreated out of so many type of materials that it has become extremelydifficult to find the bomb."
That’s why it’s so important to find the terrorist beforehe gets on the plane. And the Israelis say they cannot do that withoutprofiling, or selecting, passengers who match certain profiles. (CBSNews – The Safest Airline)
National sovereignty and its security are the essential purposes of government. The wannabe Detroit “crotch bomber”-
Nigerian-jihad-killer demonstrated to us all that we must do better.
Ithas often been said that if we alter our daily activities, if we don'tfly the "friendly skies" then the terrorists have “won.” We mustunderstand what victory means to the jihadists. For them, blastedcities such as Detroit and the total failure of American society andgovernment to rebuild them is what they are fighting for. They fightfor the failure of American ingenuity, security, and prosperity. Thewould-be killer of the Detroit-bound flight would have preferred adevastated aircraft over a failed city; we were lucky on Christmas Day,2009. As long as America is not Islamic the model for all Americancities to the jihadists is Detroit. The purpose of jihad against us isthe destruction of the United States and the implementation of Sharialaw.
Conglomeration of Failure
Welive in a time of the confluence of dangerous cultural, intellectual,ethical, moral, and political failures. At a time when Americanexceptionalism and importance should be encouraged and understoodacross the country and the world, it is diminishedinstead. When American jobs and livelihoods should be protected andmade safe, they are undermined by open porous borders and animmigration policy that is neither a proper national policy nor ofbenefit to newcomers or citizens. Welive in a time when security considerations are built upon absurdconcepts of extreme tolerance and a total aversion to cause offense toanyone most particularly those who may be threats. We live in a time oframpaging folly.
Welive in a time shaped by definitive concepts of good and evil and rightand wrong; there are those who do not share our concepts and hate usfor the ideals that we embrace. We are hated because we are not Islamicand we are hated because we help Islam, but never enough. There is nounifying this contradiction as we always remain kaffirs to the Islamic umma.No matter how much we help, no matter how “good” we are, the adherentsof Islam fight us as they are commanded to do so by Allah and Mohammed.
So obey not the disbelievers, but strive against them herewith with a great endeavour. (Koran, 25:52)
Despite the experiences and lessons of our founders who experienced jihad themselves during the “Barbary Pirate”conflicts we have chosen to live in a world as we would prefer it to berather than what it actually is. We suffer from a national delusionthat results in the denial of reality; we have placed a matrix of utopian dreams over our eyes to the delight of our detractors and enemies.
Wecannot effectively defend our homeland and our people for fear ofoffending those who attack us; we fight wars for those who hate ourexistence and what we stand for; our president apologizesfor our past greatness, condemning our friends and embracing/appeasingour enemies across the world. It has been said by arrogant and ignorantpeople that we only need to simply “reset” our approach to the world it will magically spin in the direction of our choosing; they are mistaken.
Thisis a great fraud that the deluded would have us all believe. The denialof history and humanity itself in the concepts of radical tolerance andthe bizarre fake “resetting” of human and international relations is atthe core of our inability to respond to existential threats. We livewithin a vortex of the confluence of errors all compounded again andagain as we fail to accept the hard truths, and fail to take steps tomake our country safe and support our friends once again.
An Undeniable Historical Vortex
Duringthe Clinton administration, the philosopher and historian FrancisFukuyama famously stated that with the fall of the Soviet Union we hadreached the “end of history.” This notion is absurd because it suggests that history is finite. Whilehistory has cycles and lines that may themselves come to an end, theexistence of humanity necessarily means that history never ends; it isboth ignorant and arrogant to suggest that we live outside of the flowof history. The horror for those who accepted Fukuyama’s ridiculousassertion (including Bill Clinton) is that the truth of our situationtoday is more particularly difficult to accept. We are caught up in abrutal historical cycle that was created in the Arabian desert over1,400 years ago. This is very difficult for many to accept. Much worsethan the “end of history” is that we now see a violent re-emergence ofhistory.
Toour great detriment, we in the West ourselves in large part facilitatedthe resurgence of Islam with trillions of dollars in oil purchases.Fully financed and resurgent because they (the adherents of Islam/umma)see the retreat and moral and ethical confusion/surrender of the West, Islam has rarely been as emboldened as it is today. Soon, Iran may acquire a nuclear weapon and a horrific new historical phase of the world will begin.
Itis difficult for many to accept a world in which a particular ideologyor concept, especially one so profoundly opposed to us as is Islam, mayso influence the foreseeable future. As lovers of freedom and justicethere are now new warnings that history is not at all an end but is infact brutally influencing our lives.
Multiculturalismand post-modernism are the anti-reality tools that are used by thosewho oppose our existence. If we embrace multiculturalism, andpost-modernism; a world-view of radical equivalence and the abandonmentof meaning in the embrace of universal subjectivity – the outcome ofthis existential conflict must then be of little moment because alloutcomes, as they are founded upon the opposition of equivalent cultures, must be … acceptable.
Wemust take a renewed interest in the preservation of our way of lifewhich must reside upon a foundation of understanding and appreciationof its value. If we do not value our country,if we accept universal equivalence, if we concur that we must never“offend” anyone with criticisms or judgments based upon a comparison ofessential values, we will fail in our defense. The idea of “good” and“evil” must be re-embraced across the country just as it was during thecold war against Communism and the war against Nazism. And once weidentify the evil, it must be decisively opposed.
Theimportance of history has long been doubted by many in ouranti-intellectual society. The answers we require are all available inour own history and in the founding documents of our country.
Forgotten History Illustrates the Present
What does our history teach us of Islam? Regardless of ridiculous, ignorant academics and iconoclasts who deny that history can be known or that its lessons have no meaning anymore - the struggle of today is not new.
AmbassadorsThomas Jefferson and John Adams’ 1785 report delivered after theirmeeting with the head of one of the Barbary Coast states (a jihadist)is instructive; what was true then is true now.
Whenthey inquired by what right the Barbary states preyed upon Americanshipping, enslaving both crews and passengers, America’s two foremostenvoys were informed that “it was written in the Koran, that allNations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners,that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they couldfind and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and thatevery Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go toParadise.” (Source)
We are in the center of a vortex of historical forces, a confluence of error, ignorance, and folly.The key to our security and stability is in our past and ourfoundational documents, Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration ofIndependence; the key to opposing those who want to blow up ouraircraft and destroy our country is found in their foundationaldocuments, Koran, Sira, Hadith.
Multiculturalistsand post modernists supported by the inanity of political correctnesssupport the forces of monoculture and totalitarianism (Islam), thoughthey may not fully know it; if they do know it, they often do not care.A radical amoral view of the world and of humanity, post modernism andmulticulturalism, results in a national lack of will. Why should therebe sufficient will either to oppose or to defend anything if everythingis equivalent – this is the essence of post modernism. For the sake ofthe survival of our nation and to reinvigorate the intellectual life ofour culture post modernism, multiculturalism, and political correctnessall must be delegitimized, abandoned, and destroyed.
Wehave created two nations Afghanistan and Iraq and helped them writetheir new constitutions. These documents identify Islam as the statereligion and law of the land, the law of Islam is Sharia law. Jihad isan obligation for all adherents of Islam, this is specificallydelineated in Koran and reiterated in Sira and Hadith. Jihad isjustified and “legalized” in Sharia law. We fight against jihad at thesame time we create states that will mandate it and support it – wewill always be its victims; this is folly.
Acknowledging Existential Conflict
Ifwe acknowledge that our heritage is worthy of preserving for futuregenerations in as close to the manner in which it was given us by ourFounders then there is great and difficult work that must be done. Theidea of existential defense is not new nor is it unrecognized inhistory, literature, and culture; it is the central theme of thehistory of civilizations. Most recently, a scene in the “Lord of theRings” trilogy captured this concept succinctly.
Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will ofevil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were alsomeant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought. Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring
Itis not for us to deny the unpleasant rhythms of history; it is not forus to flee from our responsibilities. We must accept the world in whichwe live and the challenges that we face. We must understand that we areengaged in a military and ideological war that is global. It isexistential because if we are not successful in defending ourselves wewill cease to exist as a people and a nation.
Something happenedthat prevents us from accepting the unpleasant truth of the world inwhich we live. Americans are experimenters and innovators; we searchfor “better ways.” We have created new ways of openness and tolerance,new ways of viewing others and their ideologies so that they feelwelcome in our society. We did not understand the high cost of thesenew “ways” until 9/11; the hard lesson is unfortunately slow topenetrate.
Our“better way” of radical “niceness” and extreme, anti-judgment toleranceand an acceptance of the ridiculous disproven concept that if only weare nice then those who wish to destroy us will be nice in return; theworld and humanity have never functioned in this Utopian manner.
Allan Bloom, the insightful author of Closing of the American Mindin his 1989 response to Fukuyama wrote that since the Soviet Union andCommunism had been defeated Liberalism was victorious, but the victory“may be decisively unsatisfactory.” The meaning and purpose that ournational opposition to the evils of Communism provided to us are nowgone, a new ideology of emptiness, deconstruction and invertedmorality/amorality (post-modernism) has taken root. Bloom’s predictionsfor the future do not mirror De Tocqueville’s.
I would suggest that fascism has a future, if not the future. (Allan Bloom, Response to Fukuyama, “The National Interest”, Summer, 1989)
Thetiming of this catastrophic jihad war against us is not coincidental;our enemies see weakness in our confusion and anti-intellectualsilliness. We no longer have the anti-Communist idea that unified thecountry for decades rather we now have an advancing deconstruction ofAmericanism itself.
Ourdesire (in some circles) to be accepted by the entire world translatesinto a failed world view of our collective guilt and averageness whichcannot but elicit grave concern from our friends and derision and rejoicing from our adversaries.
Theideas of “right/wrong” and “good/evil” must be re-embraced as the worldof reality is far removed from our fantasies of philosophicalconundrums, mental gymnastics, and meaningless academic debates. We arenow in an existential struggle founded upon the diametrically opposedconcepts of freedom and civilization that we have always considered thecore of our culture versus the anti-individual, brutal totalitarianismof Islam and its savage “legal code” of Sharia law. It would appearthat we in the West have forgotten the complexities of civilizationalconflict, with some in positions of importance denying even that such aconflict exists.
Thereis bliss across the world at our American failures to acknowledge thetruth and tears of frustration here at home at our continuing failureto speak the truth and to fight the enemy and his totalitarianideology. We fought a devastating civil war over a century ago to endslavery; let us not overturn the results of that struggle by denyingthat slavery is our future if we do not once again unite in theconcepts that have given us the finest country, the light unto theworld, so far seen on this planet.