"About the atrocities in Bombay, I will say only this — something you have heard many, many times: There is no negotiating with or appeasing these people; they must be faced down, until they don’t bother us anymore. They are the same, really, wherever they strike: Bali, London, Madrid, New York . . . They are Islamists, or Islamofascists, and the civilized world must round on them, until they die or quit. This is a war of civilization against barbarism. All the rest is a matter of details."And a little later in the same article...
"Some Indians are pointedly identifying the terrorists as “Pakistani.” And they are, in some sense. But in a more important sense: They are Islamists, or Islamofascists. It doesn’t matter where they’re from — whether Pakistan or India or the Philippines or Egypt or Amsterdam or Marin County. They are Islamist terrorists, and they must be faced down until they bother us no more.Now to my original post...
"Or did I say that already?"
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I offer here three political cartoons from over the weekend. Note what they have in common.
By Steve Breen
By Glenn Foden
By Lisa BensonYES, all three have elephants, but that's not the target at which I'm shooting. YES, two have snakes, but cobras, like elephants, have symbolized India for years. Here's a fourth cartoon. No elephants. No reptiles. But the same thing in common.
By Scott StantisAh, "terrorism." There's the rub.
What a horrible euphemism we've created. You might as well say that we battled blitzkrieg in the 1940's and fought a War on Trenches two-plus decades before that. Terrorism flows like poisoned water from the well of an ideology. It is a symptom of the cancer that ravages our planet. Most of the time it remains unseen and then without warning, it flares into a malignant tumor.
Why do politicians and journalists (and cartoonists) for the most part refuse to insert Islam as the impetus behind these atrocities? Why must they couch it with adjectives like radical, extremist, way-out-there-in-the-nether-regions, wacko, etc, if they identify it at all?
Why? Theo van Gogh. European cartoonists. Salman Rushdie. Critiquing Islam or Muhammad has become akin to suicide on the European continent, and because we refuse to identify the threat, it has become hate speech in America. You risk losing your job, exorbitant fines, or imprisonment for declaring that that against which we fight has been instigated by those practicing purist Islam.
We have been cowed. We don't want to offend. We don't want to lose our heads. And so we ignore the Saudi-funded Islamic schools going in down the street in major metropolises across our land. Even President Bush, a man I respect greatly, buckles and refers to it as a religion of peace.
Wait for the next major explosion. Once again, reporters will be running around like chickens with their heads lopped off trying to determine why anyone would do such a thing. Who could be behind such hideous acts? They might even pry open the door and see the sinister source, but fearing for their very lives, they'll secure the door and once again label the monster "Terror."
And the malignancy will spread--unseen and undisturbed--until the next tumor erupts.
In my neighborhood.
What a horrible euphemism we've created. You might as well say that we battled blitzkrieg in the 1940's and fought a War on Trenches two-plus decades before that. Terrorism flows like poisoned water from the well of an ideology. It is a symptom of the cancer that ravages our planet. Most of the time it remains unseen and then without warning, it flares into a malignant tumor.
Why do politicians and journalists (and cartoonists) for the most part refuse to insert Islam as the impetus behind these atrocities? Why must they couch it with adjectives like radical, extremist, way-out-there-in-the-nether-regions, wacko, etc, if they identify it at all?
Why? Theo van Gogh. European cartoonists. Salman Rushdie. Critiquing Islam or Muhammad has become akin to suicide on the European continent, and because we refuse to identify the threat, it has become hate speech in America. You risk losing your job, exorbitant fines, or imprisonment for declaring that that against which we fight has been instigated by those practicing purist Islam.
We have been cowed. We don't want to offend. We don't want to lose our heads. And so we ignore the Saudi-funded Islamic schools going in down the street in major metropolises across our land. Even President Bush, a man I respect greatly, buckles and refers to it as a religion of peace.
Wait for the next major explosion. Once again, reporters will be running around like chickens with their heads lopped off trying to determine why anyone would do such a thing. Who could be behind such hideous acts? They might even pry open the door and see the sinister source, but fearing for their very lives, they'll secure the door and once again label the monster "Terror."
And the malignancy will spread--unseen and undisturbed--until the next tumor erupts.
In my neighborhood.
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