Will the West survive?

[The_Professor]

I have found an article I find to be both enlightening and accurate. Do you?
Will the West survive?

By Walter Williams

The Muslim world is at war with Western civilization. We have the military might to thwart them. The question is: Do we have the intelligence to recognize the attack and the will to defend ourselves from annihilation? Their intent is clear, but let's refresh our memories with a bit of history.

At the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, several athletes were massacred. In 1979, the U.S. embassy in Tehran was taken over and 52 hostages held for more than a year. In 1983, U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut were blown up, killing 241 U.S. soldiers. In 1988, Pan Am flight 103 was bombed, killing 270 people. In 1993, there was the first bombing of the World Trade Center, and in 2001, it was reduced to rubble, killing more than 3,000 Americans. In 1998, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed, resulting in more than 200 dead and 4,000 injured. Who are the people responsible for these and other wanton murders of innocents, including the recent barbaric beheading of two innocent men? They were all Muslims.

You say, "Williams, you can't make an indictment of a whole people and their religion!" I'm not, and let me clearly state: By no means are all Muslims murderers. But on the other hand, I've never heard broad Muslim condemnation of their fellow Muslims' murderous acts committed in the name of their god. If anything, there has been jubilation and dancing in the streets in the wake of Muslim attacks on Westerners. Contrast their response to the widespread Western condemnation of the, mild by comparison, behavior of a few coalition forces in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

Muslim atrocities, and the collective Muslim response to those atrocities, might be better understood knowing their belief system as spelled out by a few, among many, passages from the Quran: "Fight those who do not believe in Allah" (Surat At-Taubah 9:29). "I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers, Smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger tips of them" (Quran 8:12). "The unbelievers among the People of the Book and the pagans shall burn forever in the fire of Hell. They are the vilest of all creatures" (Quran 98:1-8). "Fight against those who believe not in Allah, and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (Islam), until they are subdued" (Surat At-Taubah 9:29).

Phil Lucas, editor of the Panama City, Fla., News Herald, in his April 4, 2004, editorial "Up Against Fanaticism," asks, "Can anybody name three ongoing world conflicts in which Muslims are not involved?" Lucas says, "They can't get along with their neighbors on much of the planet: France, Chechnya, Bosnia, Indonesia, Spain, Morocco, India, Tunisia, Somalia, etc., etc., etc."

My colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell observes, "Those in the Islamic world have for centuries been taught to regard themselves as far superior to the 'infidels' of the West, while everything they see with their own eyes now tells them otherwise." He adds, "Nowhere have whole peoples seen their situation reversed more visibly or more painfully than the peoples of the Islamic world." Sowell adds that few people, once at the top of civilization, accept their reversals of fortune gracefully. Moreover, they don't blame themselves for their plight. For the Muslim world, it's the West who's to blame.

History never repeats itself exactly, but we might benefit from the knowledge of factors leading to the decline of past great civilizations. Rome was one of those advanced civilizations. Rome was so caught up in "bread and circuses" and moral decline that it couldn't manage to defend itself from invading barbaric hordes who ultimately plunged Europe into the Dark Ages. The sooner we recognize the West is in a war for survival, the more likely we'll be able to escape the fate that befell the Roman Empire.

[Plane]

Does the west get to choose the battlefeild?

[The_Professor]

I believe the battlefiedl is where you are standing, among others, Plane.

[larry]

By Walter Williams

The Muslim world is at war with Western civilization. We have the military might to thwart them. The question is: Do we have the intelligence to recognize the attack and the will to defend ourselves from annihilation? Their intent is clear, but let's refresh our memories with a bit of history.

At the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, several athletes were massacred. In 1979, the U.S. embassy in Tehran was taken over and 52 hostages held for more than a year. In 1983, U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut were blown up, killing 241 U.S. soldiers. In 1988, Pan Am flight 103 was bombed, killing 270 people. In 1993, there was the first bombing of the World Trade Center, and in 2001, it was reduced to rubble, killing more than 3,000 Americans. In 1998, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed, resulting in more than 200 dead and 4,000 injured. Who are the people responsible for these and other wanton murders of innocents, including the recent barbaric beheading of two innocent men? They were all Muslims.

My Reply:

This time line of events is accurate. However, it makes no mention of the reasons for the attacks. Muslims around the World believe the U.S. conspired with Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran (a secular socialist) to nationalize Iran's oil fields and plaqce them under total control of Pahlavi. In 1978, Pahlavi, imposed martial law to put an end to anti-government protest. Iran's oil industry was shut deown by striking workers. Pahlavi, government was a puppet government of U.S. interest.

Saddam Hussien, (a secular socialist) was also supported by the U.S. and the presecution of Muslim sects by Saddam Hussiens's government was funded by the U.S. and aided with U.S. special ops, spys and intelligence.

It is now 2006. The Pahlavi' government was deposed and Pahlavi is dead. Saddam Hussien's government was deposed and Saddam is on tral. There are many questions that need to be ask. Is the U.S. seeking justice or a cover up of its terrorist activities towards the Muslims around the World.? What is the end game of Israel and the U.S.? If it is to convert Muslims by military occupation. I say, that agenda will only lead to the total destruction of Israel and the coalition of the willing will fail its objective. The U.S. will survive and the secular socialist regimes will continue to be aided by the capitalist of the New World Order, Leadership. Globalism is being imposed upon the World by the Military Industrial Complex. 

 

[sirs]

Yes

[Michael Tee]

Sorry, Professor, there is nothing new in this article, it's just standard Daniel Pipes/Bernard Lewis bullshit, SZE (Standard Zionist Edition.)

Parts of it are just pure hate-mongering.  I'm really sorry to see this stuff being circulated.  The reasoning is sophomoric at best, and Hitlerian at its worst.  I refer specifically to the following passage:

<<Phil Lucas, editor of the Panama City, Fla., News Herald, in his April 4, 2004, editorial "Up Against Fanaticism," asks, "Can anybody name three ongoing world conflicts in which Muslims are not involved?" Lucas says, "They can't get along with their neighbors on much of the planet: France, Chechnya, Bosnia, Indonesia, Spain, Morocco, India, Tunisia, Somalia, etc., etc., etc." >>

Hitler used exactly the same line of reasoning with regard to the Jews:  they were hated and persecuted in Spain, they were expelled from Spain, they were expelled from England, they were attacked by mobs in Russia, in Poland, in Hungary, in Romania - - well, shit, must be something wrong with THEM.

It's bad enough that people who are the victims of hatred and prejudice should be persecuted in many places but to use their victimization itself as more proof of their moral turpitude is really sick.

I will point it out once more (at the risk of boring Ami) - - the "Muslim World" does not have armies at war in America and Europe; rather it is the Americans and Europeans whose armies are at war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and (if we can believe some reports) Iran at this moment.  The "Muslim World" did not have bases in America, although America had or has bases in Saudi Arabia and one or more of the Gulf States.  The "Muslim World" does not engineer regime change in America, it is America that engineers or engineered regime change in Iran and Iraq, to name the two examples we know about.

There is no war of civilizations.  It's pure BS.

[Plane]

Hitler used exactly the same line of reasoning with regard to the Jews:  they were hated and persecuted in Spain, they were expelled from Spain, they were expelled from England, they were attacked by mobs in Russia, in Poland, in Hungary, in Romania - - well, shit, must be something wrong with THEM.
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The Jews were 99% falsely accused  , what purportion of what Islam can be accused of is not true?

So do you see a Hitler style solution being proposed?

[Michael Tee]

<<The Jews were 99% falsely accused  , what purportion of what Islam can be accused of is not true?>>

Since you ask, 100%.  The West is making war on Islam, not the other way round.  They have always, since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, illicitly interfered with and stage-managed the local governments, replacing them virtually at will, and are now supporting the European Jews' colonization of the West Bank, and a 39-year-old military occupation of over three million people living without rights and without any basic human dignity under Israeli guns and boots.    When they choose to lash back at their tormentors, you characterize it as "making war on the West."  Fucking bullshit.  Let the West get off their backs first, and then if they no longer have any legitimate grievances to rectify, then you can complain that they are "making war" on you.

<<So do you see a Hitler style solution being proposed?>>

I see a living hell being imposed right now on the people of the West Bank, Iraq and Afghanistan.  A living hell that lacks only the gas chambers and the genocidal intent to exterminate an entire population.  I see torture chambers.  I see arbitrary arrests and indefinite detention without any of the safeguards normally extended even to enemy combatants.  Hitler was unique in the history of the planet.  The current American/Zionist onslaught on the Middle East lacks only the fully- industrialized, factory-type approach to mass murder, otherwise it would already BE a "Hitler style solution."

[Plane]

The current American/Zionist onslaught on the Middle East lacks only the fully- industrialized, factory-type approach to mass murder, otherwise it would already BE a "Hitler style solution."


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We have that in stock , we are not useing it because there would not be enough public approval.

At this point.

Your point about Western oppression of the East would have been more valid an hundred years ago or even fifty , but the era of Colonialism is definately over and has been since the Eisenhour decision to force France and England to give over the Suez.

Most of the Middle East is thriveing on a steady diet of Dollars , we we foolish to pay for the oil we have been needing when we could have colonised these backwards countrys with little effort a half century ago?

[Michael Tee]

<<Your point about Western oppression of the East would have been more valid an hundred years ago or even fifty , but the era of Colonialism is definately over and has been since the Eisenhour decision to force France and England to give over the Suez.>>

That's not true at all.  The US intervenes massively in Middle East domestic affairs, propping up corrupt dictatorships and supporting Israel, enabling it to continue the occupation of the West Bank and continue its slow-motion ethnic cleansing.

<<Most of the Middle East is thriveing on a steady diet of Dollars , we we foolish to pay for the oil we have been needing when we could have colonised these backwards countrys with little effort a half century ago?>>

The British and French got out of the business because it took a lot more than a "little effort."  The steady diet of dollars splits up into some for the "multinational" oil companies owned by Bush and his pals, some for the corrupt dictatorships maintained with U.S. support by force over their own people, and some for the mainly U.S. contractors who service the oil companies and the corrupt dictatorships.  They'd "thrive" a whole lot more if they took back the wells and sold the oil on their terms, for what they wanted (which is not necessarily dollars, probably it's euros) and kept all the profits for themselves or- - if they needed foreign technical expertise - - opened the opportunity to the world and let the world's experts bid freely for the job.

[Plane]

- - opened the opportunity to the world and let the world's experts bid freely for the job.

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It is otherwise?

[sirs]

The West is making war on Islam, not the other way round

Bzzzzzz, wrong answer.  The correct answer would be radical islamic militants, which comprise only a small % of "Islam".  And they did make war on the West

[Universe Prince]

I have found an article I find to be both enlightening and accurate. Do you?

No, not really.

Will the West survive?

It might if the people in the West don't turn it into a fascist police state first.

The Muslim world is at war with Western civilization. We have the military might to thwart them. The question is: Do we have the intelligence to recognize the attack and the will to defend ourselves from annihilation?

[...]

The sooner we recognize the West is in a war for survival, the more likely we'll be able to escape the fate that befell the Roman Empire.

My major problem with Walter Williams' analysis is that he, like many others, is trying to paint our current situation as a (cue the dramatic yet patriotic musical flourish) war for survival. In a war for survival, there are two basic options, either you learn to peaceably co-exist, or you completely destroy that which you are warring against. Any attempt to promote the notion of peaceable co-existence in this current "war for survival" is called "capitulation to the terrorists". Which leaves annihilating all of them.

"So?" says you. "What's wrong with annihilating the terrorists?" says you. I'll tell you. Annihilating just the folks that are terrorists now won't be enough. More folks will become terrorists, because they too see themselves in a war for their survival. I'm not saying we would have to kill all Muslims. I am saying there would be truly horrible amount of people dead, tens of millions if not hundreds of millions. It would be a slaughter on a scale that would out do Hitler and Stalin and any other murderous dictator you can name.

"But they want to kill us," says you, "so shouldn't we be defending ourselves?" Let's make one thing very clear, in a war, any war but particularly a war for survival, the only way to win through annihilation is not to defend oneself from attack, but to attack before the other can do harm to you. Not only that, it means doing whatever is necessary to kill the enemy as completely as possible, to prevent any chance that the enemy might later recover and again be a threat. So anyone who believes this to be a war for survival, anyone who really wants to kill all the terrorists should seriously consider if America should do that kind of killing. This isn't a case where a couple of nukes is going to compell the enemy to capitulate and the threat dissapears forever. This is a case of all out annihilation, killing off every last man, woman and child who sides with, sympathizes with and/or in anyway gives aid to the terrorists. Is that really the path America needs to take?

"But if we don't stop them from killing us," says you. Let me stop you right there. Before we start getting into this whole "if we don't stop them, they're going to kill us all" bit, there is something that must be made extremely clear. If we start all out annihilation of our enemy in this so-called war for survival, we are the ones who are going to be doing the killing. Killing people. Hunting people down and killing them. Bombing homes and killing people. Killing people however we can. If we do this, we will be doing the same thing we claim they're wrong for wanting to do to us. Oh yeah, we have justifications out the wazoo, but we would still be engaging in the slaughter of millions of people. We would become both the fulfillment of what they already claim we are and what we claim them to be.

"So are you saying we should give into them?" asks you. No, says I. I'm not saying that at all. I don't believe we are in a war for our survival. We are not in any kind of war at all, except the ones we make for ourselves. Absolutely we should be going after the terrorists who have and are trying to attack us. Absolutely we should hunt down those who are responsible for crimes against us. But we are not in a war for survival with the Islamic terrorists any more than we are in a war for survival with the mafia or folks like Timothy McVeigh. Did we start hunting down and killing radical, anti-government racists after the Oklahoma City bombing? No. We went after the people responsible for the bombing. Does anyone argue that we capitulated to the radical, anti-government whatevers because we haven't made "war" on them or had more incidents like the ones at Ruby Ridge and Waco? No. In fact we've mostly forgotten about them.

"Yeah, but," says you. I'm not finished yet. The question that someone made the headline for Walter Williams' column is "Will the West survive?" The biggest threat to the survival of the West is not the terrorists but ourselves. Everytime we surrender our rights to give government more power over society, we lose just that much more liberty. The more we insist government protect us from everything, the more we erode the very thing that made Western civilization the world dominating success that it is. And I find it ironic that the people who keep trying to make the "war on terror" into a war of survival are the ones who seem most willing to make that erosion happen. The more that we demand government make the rules for our lives, the more we become like the society that the Islamic extremists want, which is to say, the closer we get to a society wherein everyone's life is defined by a strict set of laws and the only liberty anyone has is the liberty to follow the letter of the law. If the goal is to see Western civilization survive, then we need a little less "war on terror" and a lot more protection of individual liberty. Otherwise, the West may indeed not survive. In which case we will have strangled it with our own hands.

Okay, I'm done for now. What were you going to say?

[sirs]

Well, here's what I have to say.  Perhaps Prince, if we didn't have any historical precedent to go by, your commentary on Mr. Williams might have substantially more merit, as it relates to your claims of "trying to paint our current situation as a (cue the dramatic yet patriotic musical flourish) war for survival"

Mr. Williams, like many others, which would include Bush I would imagine, sees the threat of militant Islam for what it could become.  It's like catching Hitler and the Nazi party back in the 20's.  Now, I'm sure that if folks like Mr. Williams started opining how dangerous the Nazi party could be, he would have been denounced with comments along the line of "There he goes again, trying to paint our current situation as a (cue the dramatic yet patriotic musical flourish) war for survival". In actuality it's recognizing the threat for what it could and likely will be if left unchecked.  Not so much for what it is right now, right this minute.  IMHO, a "war for our survival" would mean Iran already had nukes, AlQeada had already taken charge of the entire Middle East, and Israel was on the verge of ceasing to exist.

And the interesting thing is, to the best of my recollection, you were making these same arguements as to what the real agenda of what Militant Islam was all about, power and expanding it to cover as much of the Middle East and beyond, as they could.  I vividly recall you making that accurate case to the likes of Brass & co.  Has the war in Iraq changed your assessment on their agenda?  Am I simply rememebering it wrong?

[Universe Prince]

Mr. Williams, like many others, which would include Bush I would imagine, sees the threat of militant Islam for what it could become.

So they're all trying to get us to latch onto their fear of a possibility that is by no means inevitable? Not an improvement. But I don't believe that is what Walter Williams is trying to say. He did not say, for example, "Will we have the intelligence to recognize the attack and the will to defend ourselves from annihilation?" He said, "Do we have..." And he did not say, "The sooner we recognize the West will be in a war for survival," but rather, "The sooner we recognize the West is in a war for survival". So I think Mr. Williams is not talking about what may happen, but about the threat, as he sees it, right now.

It's like catching Hitler and the Nazi party back in the 20's.

Is it? Suppose one could travel back in time and accomplish raising awareness of the Nazis. What then? Hindsight is said to be 20/20. It's easy to say, oh, if only we'd recognized the Nazis for what they were before the got into power, but even if they had recognized them for racist, evil bastards, no one in the 1920s would have any grounds for extrapolating onto the Nazi Party crimes that none of them had committed yet. Similarly, trying to use the Nazi model as a means of pinning future crimes onto Islamic fundamentalists is something we have no grounds to do. We are not God, so we don't get to claim we know what they're going to do and so punish them for something they supposedly will do. I'm all for punishing terrorists responsible for crimes they have committed. This "what they could become" bit, however, strikes me as a load of propaganda proping up a desire for American hegemony. Thus does it lead Mr. Williams to compare America to the Roman Empire.

Now, I'm sure that if folks like Mr. Williams started opining how dangerous the Nazi party could be, he would have been denounced with comments along the line of "There he goes again, trying to paint our current situation as a (cue the dramatic yet patriotic musical flourish) war for survival". In actuality it's recognizing the threat for what it could and likely will be if left unchecked.  Not so much for what it is right now, right this minute.  IMHO, a "war for our survival" would mean Iran already had nukes, AlQeada had already taken charge of the entire Middle East, and Israel was on the verge of ceasing to exist.

I have no problem with someone trying to point out the agenda of Islamic terrorists is to create a fundamentalist Muslim state/world free from Western influence and to convert or kill as many people as that takes. I'll say it myself (like I just did). However, moving from there to a "war for survival" is an error. And as I pointed out before, Mr. Williams is talking about a "war for survival" not in the future tense but in the present tense.

And the interesting thing is, to the best of my recollection, you were making these same arguements as to what the real agenda of what Militant Islam was all about, power and expanding it to cover as much of the Middle East and beyond, as they could.  I vividly recall you making that accurate case to the likes of Brass & co.  Has the war in Iraq changed your assessment on their agenda?  Am I simply rememebering it wrong?

No and no. For a time after September 11, 2001, I was deliberately equating Usama bin Laden with Adolf Hitler. The threat of the terrorists loomed large before me as it did for most of the country. I was already questioning that stance by 2003 when the case for war with Iraq was being built. Even so, I was still on the fence about war with Iraq at the time. The more I examine the situation, trying to place events in context and consider them rationally rather than emotionally, the more convinced I become that we have we overblown the threat of terrorism—and it is a threat, make no mistake—into something bigger than it really is because it feeds, on an emotional level, a romantic notion of America taking a stand against injustice and tyranny, and the popular notion that without us fighting for influence in the world, the world would be overrun by despots and genocidal fanatics. The thing that makes me the most cynical about this is that the supposed struggle against totalitarianism is resulting in the U.S. government itself becoming more authoritarian, demanding more power in its pursuit of terrorists et al.

And then, sadly, along come folks like Michael Savage and even Walter Williams who insist that America is under threat of cultural and physical annihilation. Michael Savage is a mean-spirited crackpot who gets mean-spirited morons calling into his show and congratulating him for being the lone voice of sanity. So I can pretty much dismiss him. Walter Williams, on the other hand, respresents a more mainstream, if not necessarily widely accepted, position on the matter. But Walter Williams makes his case in clear language. The "West is in a war for survival" he says. And if we don't recognize this, he implies, America will fall like the Roman Empire to barbaric hordes, leaving the world to fall into a new Dark Ages. You can't get much more romantic about our situation than that. And if you believe the world needs an American hegemony run by the U.S. government, then his case is very appealing. But I don't believe that. And I don't believe the Islamic fundamentalists are even close to being the Nazis of the 1920s, unless we make them that way. What I do believe is that to take a stand against totalitarianism in a situation like the one we are in, the answer to totalitarianism is not war but liberty.

To paraphrase the old 1960s cliché, we need to make trade not war. The only American hegemony worth pursuing is one of free trade. And before someone tells me that we can't trade with them or they won't trade with us, or whatever along those lines, yes we can, but that isn't something we need to worry about. If no American business ever did trade with a Middle East business, it would not matter. Ludwig von Mises said, "The idea that political freedom can be preserved in the absence of economic freedom, and vice versa, is an illusion. Political freedom is the corollary of economic freedom." And he said, "When men have gained freedom in purely economic relationships they begin to desire it elsewhere." And I think he was right on both counts. Let the Middle East not trade with us. If economic freedom world wide were to grow, as those in the Middle East did business with someone, their desire for political freedom would also increase. The point here being not that money will make things better, but that there is no sort of oxymoronic situation where people can be subdued into freedom. Freedom comes by liberation, emancipation, the empowerment of the individual. And if we really want to fight tyranny and totalitarianism, if we really want to influence the world and save ourselves from annihilation, then we need more freedom, not more war.