Andrew McCarthy says something that I've been saying since the beginning--that we aren't at war with "terror."

Terrorism is not an enemy. It is a method. It is the most sinister, brutal, inhumane method of our age. But it is nonetheless just that: a method. You cannot, and you do not, make war on a method. War is made on an identified — and identifiable — enemy.

In the here and now, that enemy is militant Islam — a very particular practice and interpretation of a very particular set of religious, political and social principles.

Now that is a very disturbing, very discomfiting thing to say in 21st-century America. It is very judgmental. It sounds very insensitive. It is the very definition of politically incorrect. Saying it aloud will not get you invited to chat with Oprah. But it is a fact. And it is important both to say it and to understand it.

Link? I did find this from April 2003:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0107946/stories/2003/04/14/theWarThatDareNotSpeakItsName.html

[Koran 8.12 The Accessions] When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.

Good thing it's a Religion of Peace(tm).

Jason - before you use quotes to cast aspersions, I suggest you read the Old Testament (or, as one of my Jewish friends likes to put it - "The *Only* Testament"). You can find some pretty hideous things endorsed there.

Militant Islamism is as representative of Islam as the Inquisition is of Christianity. At one time, the Inquisition had a level of support similar to or greater than that of militant islamism today. Somehow things seem to have worked out OK though.

Andrew, I'm fully aware of the atrocities condoned by the Old Testament. If you can find any Jewish sects that commit atrocities today and use the OT to justify their actions I'll happily cast aspersions their way as well.

The fact is that many Muslims still take their sacrament with deadly seriousness. Given the Nick Berg decapitation, the injunctions that I quoted seemed particularly apposite.

Actually the interesting thing revealed by the savagery of the Berg decapitation, and the domestic reaction to it here, is that what we are at war against is our very own (twenty-first century) set of indians.

Not a good for the Arabs, but the analogy is close. These are the reckless young braves we see killing happily away, imagining they are more savage than we are - blithely unaware of the hurricane they are in the process of unleashing, which unless they halt will blow away everything they have ever known.

Maybe we will, as with the indians, come to revere their 'culture' when it is no longer a threat to our civilians, and all that remains of it is a few dusty theme-park relics.

"Maybe we will, as with the indians, come to revere their 'culture' when it is no longer a threat to our civilians, and all that remains of it is a few dusty theme-park relics."

Interesting parallel. Then Israel is the new Texas?

On a serious note, T.R. Fehrenbach noted that the Federal Government spent thirty or forty years not fighting the Plains Indians - in effect trying to ignore centuries practical advice as regards dealing with the Plains tribes, in favor of touchy feely paternalism - sometimes called the Quaker policy.

He noted that when the end came - from the 1870s onwards - it might have been better for all concerned if the Federal Government had pursued the policy of reservation confinement and 'civilizing' from the beginning. Less trauma and bloodshed for both Whites and Indians.

Will our great-grandkids look back at this time a hundred years hence and write the same for us?

McCarthy is very correct. We are being attacked by an enemy whose arrogant certainty in their beliefs gives them sanction, so they understand, to use the most vile forms of terror against us.

It really isn't important that they profess to follow Islam. There are people in the U.S. who profess to follow Christianity but share that same arrogant certainty of belief that prompts them to kill and maim physicians and clinicians. Both groups pervert the faith they allege demands their actions.

Killing people for political reasons but claiming divine motivation has been a popular con for centuries.

And, remember, even when the claim is sincere, it's still a con.

In regards to "our very own (twenty-first century) set of indians" I must recount a (bad) joke. (I am blatantly ripping this off from several sources - this is copied from this discussion: http://www.dr1.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-28328)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

At a small terminal in the Texas Panhandle, three strangers are awaiting their shuttle flight. One is a Native American passing through from Oklahoma. Another, a local ranch hand on his way to Ft. Worth for a stock show. The third passenger is an Arab student, newly arrived from the Middle East.

To pass the time, they strike up a conversation on recent events, and the discussion drifts to their diverse cultures. Soon the Westerners learn that the Arab is a devout Muslim. The conversation falls into an uneasy lull.

The cowpoke leans back in his chair, crosses his boots on a magazine table, tips his big sweat-stained hat forward over his face while the wind outside blows tumbleweeds and the old windsock flaps.

Finally, the Native American clears his throat and softly, he speaks:
"Once my people were many, now we are few."

The Muslim raises an eyebrow and leans forward,
"Once my people were few," he sneers, "and now we are many. Why do you suppose that is?"
The Texan shifts the toothpick to one side of his mouth and from the darkness beneath his Stetson says, "That's 'cause we ain't played Cowboys and Arabs yet."

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I am a dinosaur and probably very un PC. So far I haven't found much in the the Arab (or Muslim) culture that I would care to call "noble." I know most anything I say will be condemned as either racist or insensitve, but I know the culture of The Nations (those wrongly dubbed "native Americans) and I find it, mostly, admirable. My mother was born and raised in The Nations and I know that culture as well as any Anglo who doesn't live in it. I also know, through my wife's religion (not Islam) the Arab/Muslim culture and the excesses and evils that that culture enshrines.

Comparing Arab Culture to "Indian" culture is innacurate and insulting to the cultures of pre-Columbian America. Except the Aztecs. Them they resemble.

As to the Old Testament and violence, one I've always had problems with was 2 Kings 2:23-24. It deals with 42 "little children" being ripped to shreds by 2 she bears for having made fun of a prophet's baldness. Of course, the original Hebrew doesn't say "little children," excatly. The phrase it uses can be translated to mean older "children," of the sort who form the Crips and Bloods today, so it's all open to interpretation.