-Caveat Lector- @ http://www.rockfordinstitute.org/News/NewsTF092201.htm }}}>Begin September 22, 2001 THE AMERICAN JIHAD by Thomas Fleming These are dark days for America. The darkness is so thick and so deep that it blinds our reason and clouds our soul. In our fear we applaud the President’s maudlin and adolescent speech as a masterpiece of presidential rhetoric, and in our frustration we are willing to strike out at any imagined enemy. The President, quite naturally, has to balance our alliance with Israel against the geopolitical reality of hundreds of millions of Muslims who control much of the oil resources on which his family’s fortunes are based. But this balancing act should not require him to repeat the lie that Islam is a religion of peace. That is an insult to Muslims. Islam is a religion of war, especially of war against Christians, and if Americans do not tumble to that fact, there is no possible way of defending ourselves. Over and over, American journalists of every stripe are saying this struggle has nothing to do with religion. Ann Coulter is an exception. To punish the terrorists, she says, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity,” adding, “We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians.” Like the President, Miss Coulter cannot distinguish between Christianity and the religion of Islam, which not only sanctions but blesses terrorism. The leftist media watchdogs at FAIR, in reporting on statements made by this bloodthirsty little lady and macho men like Rich Lowry and Bill O’Reilly (who wants to “blast them” all, “doesn’t make any difference” who gets in the way), observe that for many media pundits bent on retaliation it does “not matter who bears the brunt of an American attack.” Some people, at least, have not lost their humanity. In our lust for blood, perhaps we might pause a moment and reflect. What is the difference between the terrorists and us? They obviously think our policy in the Middle East in wrong, and our government (supported by a majority of the American people) think it is right. Is that the only difference? Obviously not. Because they are Muslims, they think it is right to kill innocent people in order to bring the war home to the enemy. We, those of us who call ourselves Christians, know that it is never right to do evil that good may come of it. The carpet bombing of Dresden was, on Christian terms, evil, and it was an evil unmitigated even by success. The intent was to alienate the Germans from their government, but the result was to convince many Germans that the allies were savages who would kill all of them if they won the war. Even Germans who hated the Nazis rallied to the defense of the fatherland. In Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq, there are many people who hate their governments’ policies, but they are to be slaughtered, along with the people who pay and train terrorists. None of those countries has anything resembling democratic institutions. We, however, have free elections, which make us theoretically responsible for the decisions made by our legislators and presidents. From the Coulter perspective, it is far easier to justify the attack on the World Trade Center than a war against Afghan civilians. If there really is no difference between the God who sent his son that we might have life and the Allah that justified robbery, rape, and murder, so long as the victims were infidels who stood in the way of the Prophet’s mission, then the Coulters and O’Reillys are right: Let us kill them all, take no prisoners, wade in the blood of women and children all the way to Baghdad. Hey, we’re USA, the greatest, the world’s only superpower. Of course we can’t risk the lives of our brave fighting men and fighting girls, and if the dirty little savages fight back, then we should consider the nuclear option--a few clean little tactical bombs inserted surgically into the heart of Kabul and Baghdad ought to teach them a lesson. In time of war, we all lose our sense temporarily, and we are all tempted to defend the atrocities committed by our side. But such excuses are usually offered after the fact. What Ann Coulter, O’Reilly, young Rich Lowry, and old Bill Buckley are doing is to provide the moral justification for terrorism and murder in advance, before a single shot has been fired or a single civilian killed. They already, by intention, have innocent blood on their hands. Whether we like to admit it or not, we are caught up in a religious war. To be fair, the Muslims did not start it. We did--or rather our government did, though Miss Coulter would not allow such a distinction. But the genii is out of the bottle, and no Minister of the Interior (the proper name for the President’s new agency to suppress our civil liberties) and no trillions of dollars spent on the military can stick the genii back in and cork the bottle. We could expel all the Jews from the Middle East and wipe out all evidence of their settlements; we could condemn to wander the earth forever, homeless and friendless, like the wandering Jew of legend, and they still would not call off the Jihad. If the politicians had even half a brain among them all, they would begin an orderly process of deporting non-citizens who come from countries that applaud Islamic terrorism, but we should neither encourage nor tolerate hooligan acts against Muslims, Hindus, and Christians from the Middle East. That much of the President’s statements is worthy of respect. At the same time, we Christians must preserve our respect for human life, even the life of those who hate us. If there is to be a war, so be it, but a war between soldiers. If the United States follows the advice of the conservative pundits and deliberately makes war on Afghan and Iraqi civilians, we forfeit any claim to be considered part of Christendom and we proclaim ourselves the enemy of all civilization. Copyright 2001, www.ChroniclesMagazine.org 928 N. Main St., Rockford, IL 61103 BACK TO CHRONICLES EXTRA! 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