Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Are We All Israelis Now?
Mark Steyn makes an interesting case, in his article "The Israelification of Europe":
The British and many Continental police forces have long experience of terrorism, and are good – within the political constraints they operate under – at dealing with it. [...] Now, as then, prestige targets will be secured against terrorism, and that will leave soft targets – in a word, you, your morning bus ride, that little restaurant you like. And, as in Israel, Europeans will get used to the idea that every so often, entirely at random, there will be days when your husband or daughter or best friend sets off for work and doesn't come home.More:
It was the late Ayatollah Khomeini who popularized the idea that the United States is the Great Satan – a shrewd shorthand in that it acknowledges not merely that the hyperpower is evil, but that he is a great seducer too. And when one contrasts the vast number of British, European and Canadian jihadists who've turned up in the thick of it in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Iraq, Israel, Bosnia, Chechnya and beyond with the relatively insignificant number of American Muslims so embroiled, one begins to appreciate that the Great Satan is indeed a relatively effective seducer – at least to the extent that America seems to be doing a better job at assimilating Muslims than Europe or Canada.A good point, and one we don't hear enough of. Sure, I wish American Muslims would denounce terror, unambiguously and more often... but American Muslims, by and large, have not gone to war against the West the way Westernized Muslims elsewhere have. Perhaps America is doing something right after all...
He ends with some unforgettable rhetoric about antisemitism (along with the observation that, regardless of what you think about it, antisemitism has historically been an ideology for losers). Check it out.
