ONE OF THE GENERALLY good and thoughtful writers for the Puget-Sound-area group-blog Sound Politics has posted a provocative essay generated by a news photograph that shows a tsunami victim wearing an Osama bin Laden tee-shirt. The writer, P. Scott Cummins, argues that the massive U.S. aid effort is a unique opportunity – "the greatest...since 9/11" – for our country to subvert the Osama influence and thus make friends in the Islamic world. Cummins' essay, a classic example of the sort of wishful thinking with which 19th Century Christian missionaries entered the cannibal kingdoms and then died horribly in giant cooking pots, is available here (scroll down to essay beneath photo).
Despite my disagreement, it is a worthwhile read, if only because it is so typical: it fails to recognize that our very largesse is a huge part of what Islam so despises about us. From the Islamic perspective, not only are we the “Great Satan” – the people whose women are all Britney Spears super-sluts (all whom of should therefore be publicly flogged and most of whom should be stoned to death). We are also the spawn of the devil, a jihadist challenge to all true Islamic males, a challenge direct from Allah who thus allowed the devil to make us the richest nation on the planet. But even after 9/11, we remain so weak and stupid – so ultimately evil – we still believe we can buy off our enemies. Hyperbole? Not at all. This is precisely how Islam views America and in fact all of Westernesse; our massive relief effort will not change this view a bit. It is merely another proof of our breathtaking national ignorance of history that we are in such politically “correct” denial about the ugly truth Islam was been at war with civilization for the past 1400 years. This same ignorance is also why "democratization" will fail in Iraq: Islam can no more be "democratized" than Nazism.
But the aid effort must go on: not for the benefit of Islam, but for the good of our own souls and the truths that will be so revealed. That way – when Islamic terrorists begin preying on U.S. aid workers (as the fate of aid workers in Iraq already indicates is bound to happen) – there will no longer be any doubt about the implacable magnitude of Islamic hatred. And the opportunity will have indeed been unique: We will have learned the same bitter lesson the Roman general Varus learned at the sword of Arminius in the Teutoburg Forest, in the year 9 AD: some cultures not only reject civilization but despise it so much they actively conspire to destroy it.
Posted by Loren at January 6, 2005 11:45 PMI appreciated your thoughtful exposition in my post on Sound Politics. Thank you. I don't entirely disagree with you - in that I spend a few weeks in central and eastern Africa every year - and cannot help but notice that the US Agency for International Development provides (for example) half the funds for Uganda's annual budget.
Osama wants me dead. And he wants you dead too - or converted to Islam. What will it be? In my case there will be no choice - they will get out their long knives out and hack. Why? Because I get into conversation (often) with Muslims I meet - and often as not become friends. And, as often as not, they become Christian. So now you're on to me...
Please feel free to 'have at me' anytime I need to have my head put on straight - or maybe you prefer to follow Islamic practices? You remind me of the fellow Oxford Dons of C.S. Lewis - how their 'loving cynicism' sharpened him and kept him honest.
There are three major slums in Kampala, Uganda - one is as large as Seattle and contains maybe a million people. Even in the astoundingly decrepit places like those - people have knowledge of Europe and America - of us and our lifestyle. Because every little storefront/bar hootch has satellite television. My point?
Herr General von Skeptik: The Barbarians are at the gate. And they want in. So, what are You going to do about it?
I await your orders.