Tuesday, March 28, 2006

This Threat Is Bigger

But, thankfully, weaker. Dennis Prager compares the Islamic threat to the threats of Nazism and Communism. The Soviets could have destroyed us, but had a basic sanity that prevented them from doing so. Islam, however, is insane. It threatens to destroy only itself, assuming it finally pushes us hard enough (presumably through nuclear terrorism) to strike out against it with righteous, devastating, relentless fury. Of course, such a thing would be a worldwide upheaval that would be much bigger than WWII and the Cold War. The Islamic countries would lose all sovereignty, and we would undertake the forceful occupation of their lands (and seizing of their oil) that all the morons, cowards, and suicidal leftists accuse us of already doing (ironically, their sedition and treason against our efforts to fix things in a comparatively easy, and gentle way only adds to the likelihood). If the delusional lefties think America is a bunch of violent, xenophobic, racist, imperialistic, dissent quashing, oil stealing, uninclusive meanies now, well, they ain't seen nothing yet, assuming Islam doesn't find some way to learn to settle down, and stop being a threat to the rest of us. Of course, if we do end up facing acts of nuclear terrorism, the left is finished, for good. At that point, sedition and treason will be taken quite seriously. My hope is that we are successful in preventing all of this, and if we are, it will be with no thanks to the left.

excerpt:

[T]here are two unique aspects to the evil emanating from the Islamic world that render this latest threat to humanity particularly difficult to overcome.

One is the number of people who believe in it. This is a new phenomenon among organized evils. Far fewer people believed in Nazism or in communism than believe in Islam generally or in authoritarian Islam specifically. There are one billion Muslims in the world. If just 10 percent believe in the Islam of Hamas, the Taliban, the Sudanese regime, Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, bin Ladin, Islamic Jihad, the Finley Park Mosque in London or Hizbollah -- and it is inconceivable that only one of 10 Muslims supports any of these groups' ideologies -- that means a true believing enemy of at least 100 million people. Outside of Germany, how many people believed in Nazism? Outside of Japan, who believed in Japanese imperialism and militarism? And outside of universities, the arts world or Hollywood, how many people believed in Soviet-style totalitarianism?

A far larger number of people believe in Islamic authoritarianism than ever believed in Marxism. Virtually no one living in Marxist countries believed in Marxism or communism. Likewise, far fewer people believed in Nazism, an ideology confined largely to one country for less than one generation. This is one enormous difference between the radical Islamic threat to our civilization and the two previous ones.

But there is yet a second difference that is at least as significant and at least as frightening: Nazis and Communists wanted to live and feared death; Islamic authoritarians love death and loathe life.

That is why MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) worked with the Soviet Union. Communist leaders love life -- they loved their money, their power, their dachas, their mistresses, their fine wines -- and were hardly prepared to give all that up for Marx. But Iran's current leaders celebrate dying, and MAD may not work, because from our perspective, they are indeed mad. MAD only works with the sane.

There is much less you can do against people who value dying more than living.

The existence of an unprecedentedly large number of people wishing to destroy decent civilization as we know it -- and who celebrate their own deaths -- poses a threat the likes of which no civilization in history has had to confront.

The evils committed by Nazism and Communism were, of course, greater than those committed by radical Islam. There has been no Muslim Gulag and no Muslim Auschwitz.

But the threat is far more serious.

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