Enough Already

Every once in a while I hear or read something that makes me realize it isn't only a small handful of us who realize how serious all this is. Bad as this past year has been, the consciousness level of radical Islam is going up. Today, for example, Townhall.com columnist Ben Shapiro seriously throws down on radical Islam in fitting response to the Mumbai massacres.

Enough of Radical Islam

Ben Shapiro
Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Enough with the pseudonyms. Western civilization isn’t at war with terrorism any more than it is at war with grenades. Western civilization is at war with militant Islam, which dominates Muslim communities all over the world. Militant Islam isn’t a tiny minority of otherwise goodhearted Muslims. Its a dominant strain of evil that runs rampant in a population of well over 1 billion.

Enough with the psychoanalysis. They don’t hate us because of Israel. They don’t hate us because of Kashmir. They don’t hate us because we have troops in Saudi Arabia or because we deposed Saddam Hussein. They don’t hate us because of Britney Spears. They hate us because we are infidels, and because we don’t plan on surrendering or providing them material aid in their war of aggressive expansion.

Enough with the niceties. We don’t lose our souls when we treat our enemies as enemies. We don’t undermine our principles when we post more police officers in vulnerable areas, or when we send Marines to kill bad guys, or when we torture terrorists for information. And we don’t redeem ourselves when we close Guantanamo Bay or try terrorists in civilian courts or censor anti-Islam comics. When it comes to war, extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Enough with the words. Talking with Iran without wielding the threat of force, either economic or military, won’t help. Appealing to the United Nations, run by thugs and dictators ranging from Putin to Chavez to Ahmadinejad, is an exercise in pathetic futility. Evil countries don’t suddenly decide to abandon their evil goals -- they are forced to do so by pressure and circumstance.

Enough with the faux allies. We don’t gain anything by pretending that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are true allies. They aren’t. At best, they are playing both sides of the table. We ought to be drilling now in order to break OPEC. Building windmills isn’t going to cut it. We should also be backing India to the hilt in its current conflict with Pakistan -- unless Pakistan can destroy its terrorist element, India should be given full leeway to do what it needs to do. Russia and China, meanwhile, are facilitating anti-Western terrorism. Treating them as friends in this global war is simply begging for a backstabbing.

Enough with the myths. Not everyone on earth is crying out for freedom. There are plenty of people who are happy in their misery, believing that their suffering is part and parcel of a correct religious system. Those people direct their anger outward, targeting unbelievers. We cannot simply knock off dictators and expect indoctrinated populations to rise to the liberal democratic challenge. The election of Hamas in the Gaza Strip is more a rule than an exception in the Islamic world.

Enough with the lies. Stop telling us that Islam is a religion of peace. If it is, prove it through action. Stop telling us that President-elect Barack Obama will fix our broken relationship with the Muslim world. They hate Obama just as much as they hated President George W. Bush, although they think Obama is more of a patsy than Bush was. Stop telling us that we shouldn’t worry about the Islamic infiltration of our economy. If the Saudis own a large chunk of our banking institutions and control the oil market, they can certainly leverage their influence in dangerous ways.

Enough. After the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the plane downed in Pennsylvania, the endless suicide bombings, shootings and rocket attacks in Israel, the Bali bombings, the synagogue bombing in Tunisia, the LAX shootings, the Kenyan hotel bombing, the Casablanca attacks, the Turkey synagogue attacks, the Madrid bombings, the London bombings, and the repeated attacks in India culminating in the Mumbai massacres -- among literally thousands of others -- its about time that the West got the point: we're in a war. Our enemies are determined. They will not quit just because we offer them Big Macs, Christina Aguilera CDs, or even the freedom to vote. They will not quit just because we ensure that they have Korans in their Guantanamo cells, or because we offer to ban The Satanic Verses (as India did). They will only quit when they are dead. It is our job to make them so, and to eliminate every obstacle to their destruction.

So enough. No more empty talk. No more idle promises. No more happy ignorance, half measures, or appeasement-minded platitudes. The time for hard-nosed, uncompromising action hasn’t merely come -- its been overdue by seven years. The voice of our brothers' blood cries out from the ground.

Obama: 'Change We Can Believe In Starts with Church'

From the New York Times:

Obama Quits His Church

By Jeff Zeleny

WASHINGTON – Senator Barack Obama is ending his membership at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, a congregation he has belonged to for about two decades and one that had become a lightning rod in his Democratic presidential bid.

Really, now, what else could Senator Obama do? He joined this church, I believe, because he wanted to punch his south Chicago ticket as proof he was a down black politician.

If only the steps he'd learned to dance along with Chicago's radical politico-clerico machine were the same he'd need to take to be a serious national figure, a unifier, and a credible presidential candidate. But, to paraphrase one of Barack's three spiritual advisors, Fr. Pfleger, Obama is telling himself:

"I’m BLACK. And this is mine. And I jus’ gotta get up. And step into the plate. And then out of nowhere came, ‘Hey, I’m Father Pfleger!’ And he said: ‘Oh, damn!’ WHERE DID YOU COME FROM!?!?!"

Fr. Pfleger came from the same place Reverend Wright came from, and Louis Farrakhan, and Bill Ayers, and the rest. They came straight from the grab-basket of Obama's political past, each one of them lovingly selected for what they could do to help a slick, handsome, trans-racial Harvard grad get on the fast track to Destiny, with a starting place in south side Chicago.

But what works in city politics for trading off votes, graft, youth centers, and getting easy laughs from "community organized" congregations somehow doesn't translate to the weightier matters that the leader of the free world has to face. Obama is the living embodiment of the slogan about not needing enemies when you have friends like these. Could he have possibly selected a group better calculated to convince the nation he never met a loudmouthed, obstreperous, idiot he didn't like? (If I hear one more of these jokers say that Jeremiah Wright is one of the most brilliant biblical scholars in the world I'm going to vomit on my keyboard).

Obama's problem today is that he's going through a cycle that most of go through as young people, anywhere between young adulthood and middle age, when we come to a new view of things, and shed some of the foolish associations of the past, and the foolish ideas of our youth. We laugh at ourselves a bit: "I used to think that?! I said that?!" It's all part of growing up.

At least, in Obama's case, he's shedding the foolish associations, with the gentle prompting of the conservative press. And he's doing so at record speed. It's a healthy thing, by and large. Maybe he'll start shedding the foolish ideas soon, too. Everything in good time.

You just don't want somebody still going through that in the Oval Office.

'The Best Person for the Job'

We've already had our primary in Michigan, but this Tuesday's primaries are critical for the nation's future.

The following excellent article by Walid Phares summarizes the stakes in the presidential race as it affects our war with global jihadism. Though I was never going to vote for a Democrat, I do number myself among those who believe that John McCain is in reality an "anti-conservative," and I would only consider voting for him to forestall the horrors of a Clinton or Obama presidency.

The Best Person for the Job
Walid Phares, PhD

When it comes to US Presidential elections, the post 9/11 era has changed the rules of engagement for national security experts and for those who can read the Jihadists’ minds. While the counterterrorism community should let the voters chose their chief executive first, then later offer expert advice to the President, unfortunately, the world has changed.

Indeed, since the 9/11 and the engagement of the nation in the war with Jihadism, the selection of the US President can fundamentally affect the very survival of the American people. Whoever occupies the White House in 2009, for the next 4 to 8 years will have to make decisions that will have cataclysmic consequences on the physical security and the freedoms of 300 million citizens in this country, and eventually on the free world as a whole.

The leader of the most powerful democracy in the world has to be able to know who the enemy is so that all resources are put into action against it. Without this, the next US President could cause a major disaster to happen to this nation. American voters cannot afford to install a man or a woman who can’t identify and define the enemy. If you can’t see an enemy, you simply cannot defeat it.

The 2004 Presidential elections took place in quasi-popular ignorance. The sitting -- and fighting -- President was reelected by the basic instincts of Americans, but not by enlightened citizens. An overwhelming majority of voters was not fully informed as to the real stakes. The country was told that the war in Iraq was wrong, and about half of the country believed it. They were also told there was no war on terror, but worse, they were never told who the enemy was or what it really wanted.

Phares goes on to provide a fair account of the views on the war on terror of both leading candidates, from either party. He finally comes down for Mitt Romney, based on Romney's most accurate identification of our enemy as Global Jihadism.

Please read the entire article here. Let us know what you think.