9/11 continued

We managed to tear ourselves away from the TV set as the WTC towers burned and headed to the small clinic in Spring Grove to check in with the family doctor before heading to Gunderson Clinic in La Crosse. When we arrived there, the latest news was that the Pentagon had just been hit by another plane and several others had been hijacked. The Capitol was being evacuated and so was the White House. I turned to my dad and said, "It's war." He agreed and the fear in the rest of the waiting room was tangible. At that point, I felt complete calm as I usually do during times of crisis. Dad and I discussed the idea that we were experiencing the feelings people had when the attack on Pearl Harbor happened.

At Gunderson, it was more of the same, except a flight was reported down in the woods of Pennsylvania. After the tests, we headed home instead of shopping. We got home in time to see the towers collapse, adding new horror to the day. The shock of that happening could be heard in the voices of the reporters and anchors as they realized there wouldn't be anymore rescues. That's when I began to get angry, Bin Laden had finally succeeded, a man we could have killed many times before when the Clinton administration was playing games.

But there was something bugging me already and I discussed it with my parents. It was that I was sure the American public would forget this day due to the complete softness of the Western mind. They'd go back to life as usual once the MTV sized attention span wandered and the political left sued for peace. Even then, it was apparent how contemptibly weak we are as a culture and how the enemy is fully aware of and is using it. We have freedom but not the will to protect it once faced with a long, drawn out war.

Today, we are faced with the Democratic Party doing just what I'd feared, wanting to pull back on everything and talking. Talking hasn't worked with militant Muslims, it has been an abject failure unless backed up by force. Culturally speaking, force is what is admired and respected in Islam, it is an integral part of spreading the religion and can't be separated from it. The war in Iraq was a noble attempt to introduce the virus of western freedoms and culture, but it was done on the cheap. Why? Fear of public opinion and the Democratic Party taking advantage of discontent.

So what does that mean in the overall scheme of things? It means we will not be firm in resolve until we are hit again. Inevitably, we will get hit again because they will not stop attacking until we convert to Islam, or they are utterly broken. To utterly break them will require killing millions at a minimum, or having western ideals corrupt them. Disengagement will only encourage them that they are winning.

Heck of a Way to Start a Labor Day

The world is a tiny bit darker today, as I just read that Steve Irwin was killed by a giant stingray while filming off the Great Barrier Reef. World famous as "The Crocodile Hunter", he was always a lot of fun to watch when pursuing dangerous wild animals. While some cringed at his enthusiastic boyishness, it was clear that he really loved animals. After so many close calls, it is a shock that he died while filming a tame segment for a children's show. I suspect he never even saw the buried stingray and the hit from its barb was an astronomically high rarity. My sympathies and prayers are with his family.

Whither Moderate Islam?

For years, we've been hearing from the media about all the moderate Muslims who only want peace, but are made to look bad by the extremists. As I've delved more into Islam in an effort to understand the current world situation, it became apparent that the more devout the Muslim, the more true to the Koran and the Hadiths, the more likely to be intolerant and violent toward non-Muslims that Muslim will be. So reading this article at The Washinton Post, I felt sorrow because of the fact that American Muslims are not assimilating, but are actually separating themselves from the rest of America. The oft reviled "melting pot" is what made the USA such a strong and vibrant free society, with a marketplace of ideas and beliefs bouncing off of each other in creative fermentation. We can see in Africa and the Middle East how tribalism keeps violence alive in a perpetual cycle with no end in sight. Over in Europe, we have unassimilated Muslims poised to be the majority around the middle of the century, if not earlier. Forced conversion and conquest are integral parts of the religion since its founding, with dreams of the worldwide caliphate still strong. Lately the terrorist threats being stopped have been from "home grown" Muslims in the USA, UK, and Germany, not from Saudi Arabia or Egypt like the hijackers of 9/11. So reading about the Muslims here becoming more like the Muslims in Europe is alarming to say the least.

Most people don't want to face it, but we are in an epic clash of cultures that most likely won't be resolved peacefully unless Islam itself changes radically. Given that change is forbidden by Islam (there are those who bend the rules, but the reality is everything is supposed to be set in stone), I don't see it happening anytime soon. We are seeing the Muslim world grow more fundamentalist thanks to the petrodollars of Saudi Arabia funding madrassas around the globe. Malaysia and Indonesia are getting more intolerant of other religions with the classic blame the Jews meme being repeated over and over. In Thailand, Muslims are killing schoolgirls walking to school and leaving their heads at the roadside, all in the name of Allah.

As time goes on, we either successfully weaken Islamic fundamentalism with democratic ideals or we face what is really coming. It is something that nobody wants to think about, something that most are doing their best to avoid talking about. And what is it? War on a scale that has never before been seen in the modern era. Something that makes WWI and WW2 look like Sunday picnics. It will be a war of survival for the West and it will have to be won. Otherwise, we will be seeing our women in burkas and praying toward Mecca five times a day. Not pleasant thoughts at all, but something that has been brewing since the 6th century. Me, I'd like to avoid it, which is why I support our efforts in Iraq and wish we could stop Iran developing nuclear weapons.

If the clash does develop the way I think it will, it won't be the end of the world. It will be catastrophic, but the West has been through that kind of thing before with rampaging hordes of Ghengis Khan and the earlier attempts by Islam to conquer Europe. Even earlier, the Persians (we call them Iranians these days) were turned back by the combined city states of Greece. That war was notable for the famous last stand of a badly outnumbered contingent of 300 Spartans and several thousand supporting troops from other areas against at least 100,000 Persians. They did what had to be done to save all of Greece and I hope that we will be brave enough to do the same for Western culture and Judeo-Christian values when the time comes. Great sacrifice will be required and I fear that we have become terribly weak.

If you want to understand what happened with the Spartans, I have to plug a brilliant novel about the battle of Thermoplyae, Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield.

It's a pity Hollywood will never adapt it, mainly because of the carnage involved and a non-Hollywood ending, but it is a great depiction of honor and duty, two things not taught enough these days. Instead we get The 300 adapted from Frank Miller's graphic novel, complete with gratuitous sex and surreal orc like villains. Ah, well.

A Dangerous Season

Here it is, August 22, 2006. So far, the Iranians haven't blown anything up other than Kurdish villages during their "wargames". That doesn't mean Israel or the West is off the hook, though. From now until September 11th, the potential for terrorist activities and further war in Lebanon will increase. Iran is the key to this and they are doing nothing BUT saber rattling. Here's a link to excerpts from MEMRI that translate the latest from Iranian leaders in their own country's media. What's amusing is they claim that Article 11 of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty allows countries to secretly build weapons if they fear they are threatened. Powerline shows that to be a lie by quoting Article 11, which would be hilarious if it wasn't such a serious situation. The "multi-faceted" offer Iran gave the UN today won't do a thing to stop their progress in building the bomb, not when Ahmadinejad is making statements like this:

If you want to have good relations with the Iranian people in the future, you should acknowledge the right and the might of the Iranian people, and you should bow and surrender to the might of the Iranian people. If you do not accept this, the Iranian people will force you to bow and surrender.

At least Jerusalem wasn't nuked today and there wasn't a test detonation in the hinterlands of Iran. But it is clear they plan to make the world do what they want.

Update: Iran did attack another country's property. It wasn't the Israelis, but the Romanians! This is interesting if strange, it looks like Iran is starting to flex their military muscles with an aim at controlling the oil in the Persian Gulf.

Why We Fight in Iraq

After being exposed to a great deal of anger driven rants about the war in Iraq over the past few days, it was nice to run into a post at Captain's Quarters that contains this little nugget:

"Free societies cannot possibly apply the kinds of security procedures that would make mass transit completely safe, not if they want to remain free societies. We can adopt better technology and hopefully screen airline passengers more effectively, but in truth that approach alone always puts us behind the terrorist curve. They only have to be successful once; we have to be successful every single time, and still protect the civil liberties of the travelers in our nations. The only way to effectively fight terrorism is to fight it somewhere else."

This is why we must take the fight elsewhere, in my opinion, we can't fight here and win without sacrificing our personal freedoms in a dangerous way. Once gone, freedoms are hard to get back. Stop taking the fight to the Islamic terrorists in the Middle East and you will soon see the fight back on our shores. My greatest fear after 9/11 wasn't another attack, it was that the American public would suffer from a short attention span and forget that day as the years went by. This is a generational war, something not seen in modern warfare. Even WWI and WWII were short wars compared to some in the past, so this is new territory for this age. It will be long, agonizing, and will result in one of three outcomes: Islam dominates all of humanity, the fundamentalists are crushed, or democracy and Western ways spread virally through the autocratic Islamic states. Right now we are attempting a noble experiment in trying to bring about the last option. The other two will be horrific and there is a good chance of that happening as isolationism is impossible today, mainly because of modern technology shrinking the planet. I don't know about you, but I'd rather try to bring freedom to those oppressed and misguided people in the Middle East than nuke them.

The rest of Ed Morrisey's post is well worth reading.

August 22 and Iran

First, please go here

I think Lewis does a good job of summarizing why August 22, 2006 may be a major day in world history. The current leadership in Iran either belong to or are influenced by a minor Shia sect that believes that through promoting chaos, the coming of the Mahdi (the 12th Prophet or Hidden Imam) will be provoked. Why do they consider that a good thing? Well, when the Mahdi emerges from his well he is said to inhabit (by that sect), Jesus will be his assistant who will lead him to the center of Tehran. From there, a final reckoning will begin and Islam will take over the world, with the unbelievers converted or slain. This is the Shia Muslim equivalent of Armageddon.

Being a devout Latter-day Saint, it always baffles me when I see truly religious people thinking they can manipulate God into doing things. While prayer is a form of direct communications, it is a supplication without a guarantee of success. It is truly humble and a plea for help. This belief that He can be coerced or forced into doing something is incredibly arrogant and misguided.

There has been messianic overtones to Ahmadinejad's statements since he first became mayor of Tehran and at times he acts as if he is a prophet himself. This is blasphemy in Islam and why the mullahs there haven't cracked down upon him is a mystery. They have supreme power in Iran, yet I almost get the impression they are afraid of him. Or more ominously, they actually believe in him. Either way, it is clear they have an unstable, dictatorial peacock in charge -- one who may have the A-bomb in his possession soon.

Why Is Iran Destroying Satellite Dishes?

It seems the news out of Iran is ever alarming, now they are destroying privately owned satellite dishes. The official reason is to prevent Western culture from corrupting the people, but the dishes have been around for years. The timing looks suspicious, what with the recent increase in censorship of the news available in Iran on nuclear issues.

What You Don't See on Broadcast TV

I just read the full transcript of Mike Wallace's unedited interview with President Ahmadinejad which aired on C-SPAN. It appears much was cut out for the 60 Minutes segment. Thank you Vital Perspective for posting this for everyone to read, as it shows just how arrogant and combative Iran's "elected" leader is. Not to mention how openly vain he is, which reminds me all too much of a certain European leader who rose to power in the 1930's. This is a must read for anyone concerned with the state of world affairs right now, as Iran is most likely to become the next nuclear power and controls Hezbollah in Lebanon.

What is really chilling is the verification that the letter he sent President Bush was a classic call to Islam. This is what a true Muslim is supposed to do before attacking an infidel country, so theologically speaking, Ahmadinejad is now permitted to strike first without guilt. Having already called for the destruction of Israel, it is clear that we are next on the list. A letter much like that one was sent to Germany as well, which I found strange - they aren't a direct threat in any way or form. Unless he thinks the Nazis are still in power and really thought they would come over to his side. In that case, he may be crazy as well as fanatic.

Sadly, I don't see anything to indicate anyone will hit Iran before they get the bomb, Western culture is simply too weak to do what is necessary despite how apparent the danger is. We simply have become too civilized.