Folks, We Are Being Nice About This!

Excellent American Digest piece, which points out that the US is bending over backwards to avoid giving the jihadis the war to the finish they're really asking for. Perhaps not the war they deserve, but the war they will almost certainly get, should they manage a nuclear-sized terrorist attack.

excerpts:

IT IS CLEAR that what will happen to Islam across the world should terrorist attacks continue and increase will be the arrival at the tipping point where the West decides, in a way that no internal political opposition can curtail, to expel Islam and Muslims from the infected nations and the world itself by any means necessary. A common catch phrase of Marxism is that "The capitalist will sell you the rope to hang him." I dread the coming catch phrase, "The Muslim will supply the West with the excuse to eradicate him," but that is clearly lurking in one of our possible future.

The first 9/11 brought out the Marines, the Army, the heavy armor, the B-52s and the Stealth fighters with their "smart bombs," and the effort at a new precise war in which the greatest care has been taken to minimize the killing of innocent civilians. Not always successful, but compared to the Blitz, the firebombing of Hamburg, and the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this caring and careful warfare that is about as kind as we can make it. The most terrible aspect of the trend of war in the 20th century was to kill as much of the civilian population of the enemy as possible. The methods were skillfully refined over decades until World War II accounted for around 50 million dead. The current approach to war in Afghanistan and Iraq is one which can reasonably be called a patty-cake war; one that has been successful, if in nothing else, in minimizing civilian suffering.

I would submit that this approach to war against Islam is clearly one driven by the current policies of the West that aims to, essentially, talk Islam out of its current obsessions and madness. It is the very small stick wielded alongside our soft and enticing words of "democracy," "freedom," and "prosperity." In a way, the West's manner of war with Islam at present is essentially a kind of tough love: "Please learn to control your acting out. Please learn play well with others, or we're going to have to get serious."

Put somewhat baldly, the argument within the West on what to do with Islam is now between those who believe it should not be spanked at all but have its self-esteem boosted, and those who think that a small spanking now followed by the hot fudge sundae of freedom will result in acceptable behavior. Either could be right, but if both are wrong the next level of discipline is typically expulsion. And by "expulsion" I do not mean that Islam will simply be sent to its room.

A second series of attacks on America at the level of 9/11 or greater will not bring out more B-52s. They are already out. A second series will bring out the one arm of America's war machine that has rarely been asked about, written about, or even mentioned in passing since September, 2001; the ballistic missile submarines.

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ANYTHING YOU THINK CAN'T HAPPEN can happen. Especially those things you think cannot possibly happen. Under the right circumstances, human beings are capable of anything. We hold within ourselves an eternal capacity for evil that has no bottom. Should Europe feel the threat of Islam within its borders too keenly it is not difficult to envision it returning to the up close and personal techniques of genocide it perfected in the last century. Europe is very, very good at police states, purges, death camps, massacres and Gulags. Although it may look to be weak and appeasing, Europe's final solution skill set is never stored very far away.

Should the United States come to feel threatened in a similar way, its preferred technique (also perfected in the last century) is remote genocide. To employ it would plunge this nation into a decades-long tunnel of political and spiritual agony, and change our destiny and character forever. But I have no doubt that, if we feel for any reason threatened enough, we will indeed come to the day when the unthinkable becomes doable.

This is why I still deeply believe that the current effort in Iraq and the Middle East to counter and expunge Islamic terrorism and turn Islam from the road it is on towards one of reformation and assimilation is the best path that can be taken at this time. Indeed, for all the ineptitude of the current administration, for all the expense in treasure and lives, this shoot-the-moon, Hail Mary of a foreign policy in Iraq is not just a policy to make America safer at home. It is the only thing that stands between Islam and its own destruction.

Sometime shortly after 9/11 in an online forum I frequented then, an exasperated idealist proclaimed that "After all, you can't kill a billion Muslims." Like so many others he spoke from somewhere outside History. History, especially the world's most recent history, shows us all that, "Yes, if you really want to, you can."

And that is the most terrible and terrorizing thought of the 21st century.

Update: Some of the comments to the American Digest piece:

We don't have to toy with genocide. Due to the lack of their education worldwide, many Muslims are extremely superstitious. If the Kaba at Mecca were destroyed, the superiority of their god Allah would be shown to be false. It would bring down two of the five pillars of Islam, as bowing 5 times a day and taking a pilgrimage to a hole in the ground instead of a black rock would be useless and extremely humiliating.

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Most of us (certainly including Gerard) are well familiar with the three conjectures of our invaluable friend Wretchard at Belmont Club, but for those who are not, I urge a close reading of his seminal essay on this precise subject. Just google 'belmont three conjectures' and you'll find it.

Personally, I think that the Islamofascists are basically "calling Allah out" to reach down in a supernatural way and instantly reverse the present humiliating position of the Islamic world in relation to the the rest of humanity. True absolute faith is a very powerful and dangerous thing. Their only hope is that when our fish let loose with their deadly delivery to Mecca, Allah will simply not allow it to explode, thus demonstrating his pleasure with their commitment of faith in Jihad, and his omnipotence over mankind.

Understand - we REALLY do not think like these people do. See it as brinksmanship with a firm grip on the Koran, facing Mecca. The answer will be delivered with the presence of the mushroom cloud. They know not what they do - truly.

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This reminds me of a comment a read a while back (can't find the reference, sorry).

Paraphrased it's "The way to solve this is for them to act like us for a generation, or for us to act like them for a day".