Friday, October 07, 2005
Morning Has Broken
President Bush On The War
Click on the video link.
UPDATE
NRO Contributing Editor James S. Robbins' Knowing Thine Enemy reviews the President's speech and its main purpose: to define the ideas behind the war against Islamofascism.
We second-guess the radical program at our peril; it would not be the first time that evil hid in plain sight. Hannah Arendt wrote that the Nazis were as frank as they were mendacious; they stated their objectives clearly years before taking power, and anyone who was surprised by the Holocaust had not been paying attention. Likewise Khmer Rouge military leader Khieu Samphan's 1959 doctoral thesis identified the urban bourgeoisie as a parasite class that had to be removed to the countryside. When Pol Pot took power 16 years later, the thesis formed the blueprint for the killing fields. There is no reason to believe that the radical Islamists once in power anywhere would not seek to erect their utopia as expeditiously and comprehensively as possible.
The war of ideas is conducted properly on offense, and the president sought to take on the Islamists on their own turf. He quoted the Koran, that "Whoever kills a person [unjustly]... it is as though he has killed all mankind. And whoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved all mankind" (5:32). He cited the declaration if an Imam in the UAE that whoever perpetrated the London bombings "is not a Muslim, nor a religious person." And there are many other arguments, decrees, fatwas, and Koranic interpretations that cast doubt on the legitimacy of their struggle. The enemy has consistently used U.S. media reports and our own statements to charge hypocrisy when our actions do not live up to our ideals. It is incumbent on us to engage the radicals in the same way, to harness the energies of their opponents in the region, to show how they read holy documents out of context to justify their outrages, how they take cover behind convoluted phrases to try to defend the indefensible. It is also worth emphasizing, as the president did, that the terrorists are essentially cowards, hiding behind masks, killing the innocent and the unarmed, and when captured pleading for their rights, the very rights they seek to deny every free citizen in the world.
Read it all.
Click on the video link.
UPDATE
NRO Contributing Editor James S. Robbins' Knowing Thine Enemy reviews the President's speech and its main purpose: to define the ideas behind the war against Islamofascism.
We second-guess the radical program at our peril; it would not be the first time that evil hid in plain sight. Hannah Arendt wrote that the Nazis were as frank as they were mendacious; they stated their objectives clearly years before taking power, and anyone who was surprised by the Holocaust had not been paying attention. Likewise Khmer Rouge military leader Khieu Samphan's 1959 doctoral thesis identified the urban bourgeoisie as a parasite class that had to be removed to the countryside. When Pol Pot took power 16 years later, the thesis formed the blueprint for the killing fields. There is no reason to believe that the radical Islamists once in power anywhere would not seek to erect their utopia as expeditiously and comprehensively as possible.
The war of ideas is conducted properly on offense, and the president sought to take on the Islamists on their own turf. He quoted the Koran, that "Whoever kills a person [unjustly]... it is as though he has killed all mankind. And whoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved all mankind" (5:32). He cited the declaration if an Imam in the UAE that whoever perpetrated the London bombings "is not a Muslim, nor a religious person." And there are many other arguments, decrees, fatwas, and Koranic interpretations that cast doubt on the legitimacy of their struggle. The enemy has consistently used U.S. media reports and our own statements to charge hypocrisy when our actions do not live up to our ideals. It is incumbent on us to engage the radicals in the same way, to harness the energies of their opponents in the region, to show how they read holy documents out of context to justify their outrages, how they take cover behind convoluted phrases to try to defend the indefensible. It is also worth emphasizing, as the president did, that the terrorists are essentially cowards, hiding behind masks, killing the innocent and the unarmed, and when captured pleading for their rights, the very rights they seek to deny every free citizen in the world.
Read it all.
