Our Mosque

For the past two weeks, I’ve tried to point out instances of biased MSM coverage when it comes to the war on islamofascism. Mark Steyn of the Chicago Sun-Times comments:

As John Podhoretz wondered in the New York Post the other day: "What if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests?"

That's a good question. If you watch the grisly U.S. network coverage of any global sporting event, you've no doubt who your team's meant to be: If there are plucky Belgian hurdlers or Fijian shotputters in the Olympics, you never hear a word of them on ABC and NBC; it's all heartwarming soft-focus profiles of athletes from Indiana and Nebraska. The American media have no problem being ferociously jingoistic when it comes to the two-man luge. Yet, when it's a war, there is no "our" team, not on American TV. Like snotty French ice-dancing judges, the media watch the U.S. skate across the rink and then hand out a succession of snippy 4.3s -- for lack of Miranda rights in Fallujah, insufficient menu options at Gitmo.

Our enemies understand "why we fight" and where the fight is. They know that in the greater scheme of things the mosques of Jakarta and Amsterdam and Toronto and Dearborn are more important territory than the Sunni Triangle. The U.S. military is the best-equipped and best-trained in the world. But it's not enough, it never has been and it never will be.

In the USA, our “mosque,” for better or worse, is the main stream media. All pervasive, all knowing. It’s the church attended by virtually every American every day. And that’s the problem.

Our mosque all too often preaches a mild form of self-loathing, telling us that we do little right and an awful lot wrong. It shakes our confidence, and in the most bizarre twist of all, presents a pseudo-romantic image of our enemies. It suggests that we worship at the alter of moral equivalence, but subtly suggests that the acts of our enemies are more "equal" than ours. It suggests that if we kill the barbarians at the gate, we have some moral failing, and if there is collateral damage, that failing become a horrific moral lapse. It demands a “proportional” response when we are attacked, but would damn us if we truly acted proportionally by wantonly killing innocents (as Islamofascists do every day). It seems to worry more about the casualties visited upon the enemy and its supporters than it does about the casualties visited upon us and our allies. It is, in its own way, corrupt, biased, and as self-serving.

Day in and day out, our mosque preaches, and far too many of us listen and believe. As Steyn correctly asserts, each battle and the war will be won in the mosque, and at the moment, I fear our “mosque” may lead us to ruin.