Eight Years and Many Still Don't Get it

Kyle-Anne Shiver
Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:00:00 -0700
Opinion

Historical moments, frozen and encapsulated in each individual's memory, sometimes define whole generations. These moments spark familiar "where-were-you-when ?" conversation starters that mysteriously have the power to weld otherwise quite disparate people into a cohesive voice.

My own generation had three of them before we even reached adulthood: JFK, MLK and RFK. That trio of assassinations taught me and so many others the unforgettable lessons about the fragility of life and how easily the illusion of worldly security can be shattered in a single instant.

But nothing — absolutely nothing — had ever prepared me for the Richter-scale-10 shift in my worldview that occurred in the months following Sept. 11, 2001. While true heroes of vast variety were still shifting through rubble at Ground Zero, attempting to free those who remained trapped and trying to identify bodies for terrified loved ones, I went to my library and checked out a copy of the Quran and two nonapologetic biographies of Mohammed.

When people yell, "Allah is great," as they murder thousands of civilians, it would seem essential to any civilization, under such attack, to know why these enemies fervently believe that eternal paradise and 72 forever-nubile virgins will be their certain reward. No concept could possibly be more foreign to the modern Western mindset.

Reward for such obvious evil flies in the face of our Judeo/Christian morality. The now-constantly repeated mantra, "Islam is a religion of peace," rings hollow amid the worldwide actions of al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood and all the other Islamist terror armies.

During the presidential campaign, when Charlie Gibson asked Sarah Palin (rather condescendingly, I thought) whether she believed we were fighting a holy war, he had the whole situation inside out. It really doesn't matter one whit whether we Americans think of it as a holy war. What matters is that the Islamists do indeed believe — fervently unto death — that they are fighting a holy war.

Do our liberal media elites and even President Obama believe that merely because we've decided to stop calling it a war, it is no longer a war? That the Islamists have decided to stop fighting simply because we have signaled our intention to retreat? Our media elites and our new president need to read the Quran and stop taking the word of the Council on American-Islamic Relations or CAIR.

Or they could merely take a careful look at history's timeline after the emergence of Mohammed in the seventh century. If they do, they'll see that Islam, the political ideology that masquerades as a religion, has been a marauding beastly force, which has waged war and risen and fallen in power over the entire 14 centuries of its existence. They might take note of the destructive nature of the beast, which only seems to patiently await its momentous opportunities for resurgence.

They might, at last, see the clearly defensive nature of the Crusades that sought to stop the same Islamic terror in the 11th century. They might understand Thomas Jefferson's plight with the Muslim Barbary Pirates of his own century. And they might be compelled to acknowledge the waiting, patient nature of Islam, as after the Ottomans were stopped and then dissipated by choosing the wrong side in World War I. Jihad may have seemed dormant, and even more dormant still as the Arab Muslims again picked the wrong side in World War II. But as soon as feckless Jimmy Carter ignored the true nature of Islamic fundamentalism in his rush to rid Iran of her shah, worldwide Jihad resumed as though it had merely been out to lunch for a while.

At the very least, folks should now understand the real problem at the heart of Israel's quest for peaceful coexistence with the Muslims. The problem is embedded in the very nature of Islam.

Muslims see peace differently than we do. When we stop all objections to the worldwide caliphate under their tyrannical control, then there will be peace.

Yes, it took me about a year after those planes hit at Ground Zero to get a grip on the different landscape beneath our American feet. But the scariest thing today, eight years removed, is that our national defense is in the hands of folks who don't seem to have even one iota of understanding of how or why it happened. What's even worse is that they seem not to care.

So, while most Americans remember and commemorate our dead and all of those who have fought and died since to keep the Islamic-terrorist beast at bay, our president and those who elected him will go their merry way and chant, "Islam is a religion of peace."

How disturbingly dimwitted.