Here he is, at his bizarre summit on Random Extremism That Absolutely Has Nothing To Do With Islam, lecturing the old geezers in the Middle East, as if they were simply typical uncool parents who couldn’t compete against the exciting lifestyle offered by their children’s peers:
President Barack Obama has warned that Muslim community leaders are in danger of losing the propaganda war with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) and are often too “boring” to prevent their young people from getting radicalised.So it’s all about doing cool stuff, is it, Barry? Being a merchant or pursuing a career in medicine or farming or serving as an officer in the regular Army or designing a water-treatment plant or teaching school or even becoming a non-sanguinary imam– it’s all just so lame compared to chopping off people’s heads or burning them alive in cages. How you gonna keep them down on the farm after they’ve experienced the thrill of pillaging, raping and murdering their way across the Levant? Indeed, how does one…connect with these high-spirited youngsters? And – Gawrsh! Hate to have to point it out – not all of the ISIL militants are simply dusky James Deans, trying to find themselves in the midst of their parents’ sterile, bourgeois world; their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is a not-all-that-youthful 43, and many of the self-appointed Allah-botherers who have incited the rise in violence throughout the Middle East, Africa and Europe are quite literally gray-beards.
“By the way, [to] the older people here - as wise and respected as you may be - your stuff is often boring,” he told a White House summit on combatting the rise of extremism, “compared to what they're doing. You're not connected. And as a consequence, you are not connecting.”
Permit me to think outside of the box for a moment and suggest that the best way to “connect” with these bloodthirsty fanatics is with bombs and bullets. Connect hard enough, and frequently enough, and we might just hasten a return to the “boring” occupations of their elders by these wayward specimens of flaming youth – er, and their graying colleagues.
Indeed, how does one…connect with these high-spirited youngsters?
ReplyDeleteIt seems all they need is jobs, and they won't have time to lop heads.
BTW, I'm unemployed. So...if I don't get a job offer soon...heads will roll.
You're not an extremist; you're just misunderstood.
ReplyDeleteIf we kill enough of the jihadists then fewer people will want to enlist under their banners. You are quite right there, Paco.
ReplyDeleteThere is a grain of intelligence hidden in Obumbler's silly rhetoric. The prospect of jihad and a new caliphate is an attractive one to many Muslims, especially those who are normally attracted to fascistic, totalitarian psychopathy, young men. The new Caliphate would mean they could swaggger around lording over the wretched dhimmis and living off what is stolen from the infidels, either the dhimmis at home or plunder abroad. There is also the prospect of sex slaves, as we see in ISIS already.
We have to offer an altrnative to that, fight an ideological war just as in the Cold War. We should present the alternative of liberty and prosperity in the modern world. That is also an attractive prospect for many Muslims.
In my view, the main point of the Iraq campaign was to provide that example as an ideological blow against the jihadists. Obumbler and too many other people had not the wits to understand it, or if they did were too partisan to accept that goal. By pulling out of Iraq and letting the jihadists carry out their blitzkrieg there Obumbler set back this project by many years. Unless we reconquer Irag and stay there to midwife a reasonably prosperous country with a reasonably consensual government (not necessarily democratic) winning the war against the jihadists will not be possible, no matter how many we kill. Killing them is a necessary but not sufficient condition for winning.
Obumbler fails to understand that we are in a war, not a crime wave analogous to what was going on in New York under the last Democratic mayor. No matter how criminal the actions of our enemies, it's war not big city crime. Other people, not all of them lefties, also fail to understand it. People have seen too many John Wayne movies; they think of war as battles of tanks or against other national armies and Americans against the Nazis or Japanese soldiers. This war is of a different character than the ones we are accustimed to.
Oregon State University and Oregon PBS had a documentary the other day about a debate on the war between two sides. A senior prof I know told me that the main question would be whether of not America is at war. I told him that when somebody makes war on you, you are at war whether you want to be or not. A formal declaration of war (or an authorization to use military force in the case of the jihadists) simply recognizes a condition existing in reality. I got the impression that had never occurred to him before.
Of course, one could refuse to fight a war imposed on you. That's what the US has done with Iran, since the seizure of our embassy in 1979 was a blatant act of war. See how well that has turned out. The jihadists keep announcing that they intend to conquer the world. So did the Nazis, and if they had not been stopped by force they might just have doen so, conquering countries piecemeal. If nobody fights to stop the jihadists, why should they not be able to conquer the world, or at least such of it that doesn't resist?
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke.
You're not an extremist; you're just misunderstood.
ReplyDeleteFinally, someone understands that I'm misunderstood!
OK, I'm good. I'll put down the knife.
HAL9000: I recall another observation about war from James Burnham, which runs more or less like this: It only takes one side to declare a war and define its stakes.
ReplyDeletePresident Troll - trying to draw attention away from the substantial issues, towards the preening of public narcissists.
ReplyDeletegeesh, in the three years I was unemployed it did not even occur to me to start beheading. hmmm
ReplyDelete