Blood

It wasn't difficult to predict, as I did a few days ago, that after the immediate shock of still another Islamic terror attack (in Brussels), Western politicians would say what they always say, and do ... nothing meaningful. Peggy Noonan comments:

The usual glib talk of politicians—calls for unity, vows that we will not give in to fear—will produce in the future what they’ve produced in the past: nothing. “The thoughts and the prayers of the American people are with the people of Belgium,” said the president, vigorously refusing to dodge clichés. “We must unite and be together, regardless of nationality, race or faith, in fighting against the scourge of terrorism.” It is not an “existential threat,” he noted, as he does. But if you were at San Bernardino or Fort Hood, the Paris concert hall or the Brussels subway, it would feel pretty existential to you.

There are many books, magazine long-reads and online symposia on the subject of violent Islam. I have written of my admiration for “What ISIS Really Wants” by Graeme Wood, published a year ago in the Atlantic. ISIS supporters have tried hard to make their project knowable and understood, Mr. Wood reported: “We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change . . . and that it considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world.” ISIS is essentially “medieval” in its religious nature, and “committed to purifying the world by killing vast numbers of people.” They intend to eliminate the infidel and raise up the caliphate—one like the Ottoman empire, which peaked in the 16th century and then began its decline.

A typical example of a Western elite commentary is the tweet I have noted in my last two posts. Here we have Hillary Clinton tweeting: "Let’s be clear: Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism."

I find it absolutely fascinating the Donald Trump's (I'm no fan of Trump, but that's completely irrelevant in this context) comments on immigration ("Build a wall") or Islam ("stop Muslim immigration until we better understand the threat") are characterized as "extreme" or "crazy" or "racist" or "bigoted" by elites in both parties and in the media, while Hillary Clinton's preposterous statement that "Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism" is considered well-meaning and mainstream. It may be true that a majority of Muslims are "peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism," but Clinton didn't qualify her tweet that way. Using the same rules that are applied to Trump, we must consider her tweet verbatim ... and literally ... Her. Tweet. Is. Delusional.

Do we want a president who refuses to even acknowledge the nexus between Islam and terror? Do we want a president who is more interested (as are most Western leaders) in virtue signaling vis-à-vis Islam? Do we want another four or eight years of Barack Obama's brand of leadership on this issue?

The problem is a disconnect between the worldview of elites, like Clinton, and common citizens within most western countries. Again from Noonan:

We must absorb that central fact [that we are at war with radical islam and that it will be a long war], as Ronald Reagan once did with a different threat. Asked by his new national security adviser to state his exact strategic goals vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, Reagan: “We win, they lose.”

That’s where we are now. The “they” is radical Islamic jihadism.

Normal people have seen that a long time, but the leaders of the West—its political class, media powers and opinion shapers—have had a hard time coming to terms. I continue to believe part of the reason is that religion isn’t very important to many of them, so they have trouble taking it seriously as a motivation of others. An ardent Catholic, evangelical Christian or devout Jew would be able to take the religious aspect seriously when discussing ISIS. An essentially agnostic U.S. or European political class is less able. Thus they cast about—if only we give young Islamist men jobs programs or social integration schemes, we can stop this trouble. But jihadists don’t want to be integrated. They want trouble.

Our own president still won’t call radical Islam what it is, thinking apparently that if we name them clearly they’ll only hate us more, and Americans on the ground, being racist ignoramuses, will be incited by candor to attack their peaceful Muslim neighbors.

Because Western leaders are reactive, because they will not to adequately name the threat we all face, because they refuse to confront Islam with the menace that it has spawned and demand that Islam act now in proactive, measurable ways to fight that menace, very bad things will happen. Today, the body count is horrific, but still small. But in the near-term future, we may have a Islamic terror event in which the body count might exceed the one we absorbed on 9/11. When that happens (there is no 'if," given the current feckless leadership of the West), every elite who supports the current reactive strategy will have blood on his or her hands.

UPDATE
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Roger Simon has come to the same conclusion about the roll of PC in the West's response to Islamic terror as I have. He writes:

Are progressives going to murder our children with their political correctness?

Brutal as that sounds, that's a serious question we must all be asking ourselves after the terror attacks in Brussels. Everyone knows such events could easily happen here (where our population dwarfs Belgium's and therefore opens us to a far greater catastrophe numerically) and yet our progressive and liberal friends -- even and especially the moral narcissists running for the Democratic presidential nomination -- refuse to name radical Islam as the perpetrator of the attacks.

Let alone Islam itself, the true culprit...

We live in a culture where someone threw a punch at a Donald Trump rally -- not remotely the mayhem at your average British soccer match -- and our media goes into a dither. Then they warn us about Islamophobia -- a junk term, if there ever was one -- in the wake of mass murder in the name of Allah.

Something wrong? Of course. Something is very wrong. Western civilization is on a suicide run and we all get to watch.

Well, I suggest we stop watching and do something about it.

"Doing something about it" is what Western leaders avoid. Again, Simon and I are of like minds:

The time has come for a worldwide crusade to reform Islam completely. That means shaming the Islamic world until they rewrite their books and change their fascistic doctrine to be in concert with modernity. And if they refuse, they must be completely ostracized, their societies shut to the West, our economic system and technology made unavailable to them. (And, yes, that means no more halal dining at Harvard.)

Does that sound racist? Well, fine. I assure it is nowhere near as racist as anything you would find in the Koran. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of seeing innocent people murdered in Allah's name.

Are you?