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05/02/2007
Denenberg: How To Fight The War On Terror When It Comes From Four Fronts
By: Herb Denenberg , The Bulletin
We're in a war against Islamic extremism, whether we like it or not.
Unfortunately, we are met on that battlefield by four forces arrayed against us, three of which are most surprising:
1. First, there are the Islamic/ extremists/fundamentalists/terrorists/fascists or Islamists or whatever you want to call them. They are in the war to kill all of us and destroy Western civilization. They won't go away if we retreat or even surrender. They are dedicated beyond reason and beyond any force we have had to battle in the past. They are willing to kill themselves and use their children as suicide bombers. That tells it all. They will not be turned back by the white flag being waved by Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and the leadership of the Democratic Party.
2. Next there is the mainstream media, which lends aid and comfort to the enemy and attacks our military and our basic values. It cannot be denied that the mainstream media tends toward the anti-American, anti-military, anti-religion, anti-family-values, anti-law-enforcement, anti-conservative, anti-Republican, anti-war-in-Iraq, and showers its bias and dishonest journalism all over its pages. When the New York Times, supposedly the nation's leading newspaper, makes it its business to disclose our nation's security, that tells it all.
3. Then there is the Democratic Party and its leadership symbolized by Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader. He announces we have lost the war. He doesn't announce who has won, but it has to be the terrorists, al-Qaida, Iran, and the rest of those trying to deny the people of Iraq peace and a government of their choice and are out to destroy the U.S. Reid becomes the first senator in U.S. history to wave the white flag, and let our enemies know our order and timetable of battle. He heads a party that for the first time in American history has made its heaviest investment in our losing a war, the war in Iraq, and in surrendering to the terrorists. The Democrats may all be patriots and the like, but the policies they advocate are suicidal. They are infected with the Bush Derangement Syndrome: They so hate Bush that they would rather hand the terrorists a victory than give Bush a political win. Senator Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) put it perfectly: "There is something profoundly wrong when opposition to the war in Iraq seems to inspire greater passion than opposition to Islamist extremism." Now you know why Michael Savage has concluded that liberalism is a mental disorder.
4. Then there is academia, our universities, which have become centers of anti-American venom, and which attempt to indoctrinate rather than educate students. Anyone who doubts this should read David Horowitz's two important books, The Professors (2006) and Indoctrination U (2007). To give you the flavor of the anti-American extremists who now inhabit our universities, consider the words and behavior of Professor Hamid Algar of the University of California, Berkeley, as documented in The Professors: "Professor Algar verbally harassed and spat on members of UC Berkeley's Armenian Student Association, who were commemorating the genocide of Armenians by the Turks. 'It was not a genocide, but I wish it were, you lying pigs. ... You are distorting the truth about history. You stupid Armenians; you deserve to be massacred!' The university administration at Berkeley, whose antennae are usually exquisitely sensitive to any sign of 'insensitivity' among its faculty or students, had no reaction to these remarks from its most prominent professor of Islamic studies." Such is the state of our institutions of higher learning.
In my view, we must approach these forces with the vigor called for in the face of a threat to our safety, one and all, and the survival of our nation. But we have gone back to sleep from a brief period of urgency following 9/11.
A sign of the times is the uproar when Rudy Giuliani was said to have claimed we would have more 9/11s if the Democrats win the White House. He didn't say that, but he should have. He did say if the Democrats win the White House we will be on defense instead of offense. That is a truism, in view of the Democratic Party's call for a timetable of retreat and, in effect, surrender in Iraq. Does that sound like defense or offense to you? It is closer to defense than offense, but sounds to me more like surrender than defense.
Answer To Defeatists: What can we do to confront these four forces to avoid defeat at the hands of the Islamic terrorists and suicide bombers? We better heed the warning of Mark Steyn in his book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It (2006): "A suicide bomber may be a weak weapon, but not against a suicide culture." Steyn notes that due to multiculturalism, we are losing our values, our religions, our patriotism, and are becoming nullities, a hollow shell standing for nothing. He writes, "Multiculturalism was conceived by the Western elites not to celebrate all cultures but to deny their own: it is thus the real suicide bomb." I'd add it is more than multiculturalism. It is moral relativism and moral equivalence so keenly practiced by the mainstream media that can't distinguish between terrorists and their victims, between those that seek to murder women and children and those that try to stop them. The mainstream media has the view that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and is blind to the distinction between good and evil. In other words, the mainstream media is morally blind, and intellectually challenged.
We have to hold on to our culture, our form of government, our nation, which with all its faults is the greatest, the most humanitarian, the most productive and the most powerful in the world. We have to avoid the corrosive effects of the anti-American mainstream media, which blames America first, which criticizes on the front page the slightest misstep of the American military, but ignores the awarding of the nation's highest honor, the Congressional Medal of Honor (a matter documented in an earlier column).
Steyn has it exactly right, when he concludes, "If one has to choose, on balance, Islam's loathing of other cultures seems psychologically less damaging than the Western elites' loathing of their own." All you have to do is to read the mainstream media in the U.S. or Europe or investigate the anti-American venom emanating from our universities and professors, and you will see first hand the "Western elites' loathing of their own [culture]." Consider the ideas of Professor Nicholas De Genova of Columbia University, again as documented by Horowitz in his book, The Professors: De Genova "expressed the wish that American soldiers might be slaughtered en masse in a 'million Mogadishus.'"
Answers?To The Mainstream Media: This column has often documented the gushing bias and dishonest and fraudulent journalism of the mainstream media. The answer is to boycott and shun the newspapers, magazines, television networks, and radio networks that make up the mainstream media. As far as I'm concerned anyone who supports any of these media outlets is aiding and abetting our enemies.
The mainstream media not only help our enemies but also misinform those who rely on it for information. I've long supported the boycott of the Philadelphia Inquirer and National Public Radio, two of the typical examples of the mainstream media with a local presence. I should note that the Inquirer is now under new ownership, which represents a vast improvement from the Knight Ridder organization, which was a leader in biased journalism. However, the Inquirer still has most of its old editors and reporters, and must be judged by what it prints, not the good intentions of a new ownership.
Answers To The Democratic Party: This battle must be fought at the ballot box, but it must also be fought long before that by citizens willing to support and contribute to candidates of their choice. In addition, it takes citizens working to make the case for the defeat of the Democratic party of defeatism and surrender. It takes letters-to-the-editor, calls to talk shows, letters to public official. It takes citizens getting informed, getting organized, and getting tough.
Answers To The University Centers On Anti-Americanism: As suggested above, first inform yourself on the issues. Then stop contributing to institutions of higher learning that support departments and programs that indoctrinate rather than educate, and that are part of the blame-America-first crowd, espousing all things critical of America while ignoring its glorious role in world history and in the world today. In the case of those institutions receiving public funding, it takes pressure on elected officials to take appropriate action on appropriations for such institutions.
We should heed the warning of Steyn about surrendering to Islamic terrorism in small increments, as the United Kingdom and much of Europe have already done: "And sometimes, as in the United Kingdom, they talk about defiance and the old blitz spirit, but they make a thousand trivial concessions day by day. That's how great nations die - not by war or conquest, but bit by bit, until one day you wake up and you don't need to sign a formal instrument of surrender because you did it piecemeal over the last 10 years. ...This enemy is able to hide in the plain sight - a pest in a street full of pests, in an America where half the political establishment wants to upgrade enemies into defendants with their day in court and full legal rights, in a Europe paralyzed by fear of its own immigrant populations, in a Western world where media dignify our killers as 'militant,' 'activists' and 'insurgents.'"
We have too many Senator Reids, the pathetic and wimpy waver of the white flag for the Democratic Party, a leader two-steps lower than even Neville Chamberlain. We don't have enough Winston Churchills and General Sir Charles Napiers. Consider Steyn's description of America Alone: "This book isn't an argument for more war, more bombing, or more killing, but for more will. In a culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of 'suttee' - the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. General Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural: 'You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.""
Herb Denenberg, a former Pennsylvania insurance commissioner and professor at the Wharton School, is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the National?Academy of Arts and Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at [email protected].
05/02/2007
Denenberg: How To Fight The War On Terror When It Comes From Four Fronts
By: Herb Denenberg , The Bulletin
We're in a war against Islamic extremism, whether we like it or not.
Unfortunately, we are met on that battlefield by four forces arrayed against us, three of which are most surprising:
1. First, there are the Islamic/ extremists/fundamentalists/terrorists/fascists or Islamists or whatever you want to call them. They are in the war to kill all of us and destroy Western civilization. They won't go away if we retreat or even surrender. They are dedicated beyond reason and beyond any force we have had to battle in the past. They are willing to kill themselves and use their children as suicide bombers. That tells it all. They will not be turned back by the white flag being waved by Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and the leadership of the Democratic Party.
2. Next there is the mainstream media, which lends aid and comfort to the enemy and attacks our military and our basic values. It cannot be denied that the mainstream media tends toward the anti-American, anti-military, anti-religion, anti-family-values, anti-law-enforcement, anti-conservative, anti-Republican, anti-war-in-Iraq, and showers its bias and dishonest journalism all over its pages. When the New York Times, supposedly the nation's leading newspaper, makes it its business to disclose our nation's security, that tells it all.
3. Then there is the Democratic Party and its leadership symbolized by Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader. He announces we have lost the war. He doesn't announce who has won, but it has to be the terrorists, al-Qaida, Iran, and the rest of those trying to deny the people of Iraq peace and a government of their choice and are out to destroy the U.S. Reid becomes the first senator in U.S. history to wave the white flag, and let our enemies know our order and timetable of battle. He heads a party that for the first time in American history has made its heaviest investment in our losing a war, the war in Iraq, and in surrendering to the terrorists. The Democrats may all be patriots and the like, but the policies they advocate are suicidal. They are infected with the Bush Derangement Syndrome: They so hate Bush that they would rather hand the terrorists a victory than give Bush a political win. Senator Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) put it perfectly: "There is something profoundly wrong when opposition to the war in Iraq seems to inspire greater passion than opposition to Islamist extremism." Now you know why Michael Savage has concluded that liberalism is a mental disorder.
4. Then there is academia, our universities, which have become centers of anti-American venom, and which attempt to indoctrinate rather than educate students. Anyone who doubts this should read David Horowitz's two important books, The Professors (2006) and Indoctrination U (2007). To give you the flavor of the anti-American extremists who now inhabit our universities, consider the words and behavior of Professor Hamid Algar of the University of California, Berkeley, as documented in The Professors: "Professor Algar verbally harassed and spat on members of UC Berkeley's Armenian Student Association, who were commemorating the genocide of Armenians by the Turks. 'It was not a genocide, but I wish it were, you lying pigs. ... You are distorting the truth about history. You stupid Armenians; you deserve to be massacred!' The university administration at Berkeley, whose antennae are usually exquisitely sensitive to any sign of 'insensitivity' among its faculty or students, had no reaction to these remarks from its most prominent professor of Islamic studies." Such is the state of our institutions of higher learning.
In my view, we must approach these forces with the vigor called for in the face of a threat to our safety, one and all, and the survival of our nation. But we have gone back to sleep from a brief period of urgency following 9/11.
A sign of the times is the uproar when Rudy Giuliani was said to have claimed we would have more 9/11s if the Democrats win the White House. He didn't say that, but he should have. He did say if the Democrats win the White House we will be on defense instead of offense. That is a truism, in view of the Democratic Party's call for a timetable of retreat and, in effect, surrender in Iraq. Does that sound like defense or offense to you? It is closer to defense than offense, but sounds to me more like surrender than defense.
Answer To Defeatists: What can we do to confront these four forces to avoid defeat at the hands of the Islamic terrorists and suicide bombers? We better heed the warning of Mark Steyn in his book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It (2006): "A suicide bomber may be a weak weapon, but not against a suicide culture." Steyn notes that due to multiculturalism, we are losing our values, our religions, our patriotism, and are becoming nullities, a hollow shell standing for nothing. He writes, "Multiculturalism was conceived by the Western elites not to celebrate all cultures but to deny their own: it is thus the real suicide bomb." I'd add it is more than multiculturalism. It is moral relativism and moral equivalence so keenly practiced by the mainstream media that can't distinguish between terrorists and their victims, between those that seek to murder women and children and those that try to stop them. The mainstream media has the view that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and is blind to the distinction between good and evil. In other words, the mainstream media is morally blind, and intellectually challenged.
We have to hold on to our culture, our form of government, our nation, which with all its faults is the greatest, the most humanitarian, the most productive and the most powerful in the world. We have to avoid the corrosive effects of the anti-American mainstream media, which blames America first, which criticizes on the front page the slightest misstep of the American military, but ignores the awarding of the nation's highest honor, the Congressional Medal of Honor (a matter documented in an earlier column).
Steyn has it exactly right, when he concludes, "If one has to choose, on balance, Islam's loathing of other cultures seems psychologically less damaging than the Western elites' loathing of their own." All you have to do is to read the mainstream media in the U.S. or Europe or investigate the anti-American venom emanating from our universities and professors, and you will see first hand the "Western elites' loathing of their own [culture]." Consider the ideas of Professor Nicholas De Genova of Columbia University, again as documented by Horowitz in his book, The Professors: De Genova "expressed the wish that American soldiers might be slaughtered en masse in a 'million Mogadishus.'"
Answers?To The Mainstream Media: This column has often documented the gushing bias and dishonest and fraudulent journalism of the mainstream media. The answer is to boycott and shun the newspapers, magazines, television networks, and radio networks that make up the mainstream media. As far as I'm concerned anyone who supports any of these media outlets is aiding and abetting our enemies.
The mainstream media not only help our enemies but also misinform those who rely on it for information. I've long supported the boycott of the Philadelphia Inquirer and National Public Radio, two of the typical examples of the mainstream media with a local presence. I should note that the Inquirer is now under new ownership, which represents a vast improvement from the Knight Ridder organization, which was a leader in biased journalism. However, the Inquirer still has most of its old editors and reporters, and must be judged by what it prints, not the good intentions of a new ownership.
Answers To The Democratic Party: This battle must be fought at the ballot box, but it must also be fought long before that by citizens willing to support and contribute to candidates of their choice. In addition, it takes citizens working to make the case for the defeat of the Democratic party of defeatism and surrender. It takes letters-to-the-editor, calls to talk shows, letters to public official. It takes citizens getting informed, getting organized, and getting tough.
Answers To The University Centers On Anti-Americanism: As suggested above, first inform yourself on the issues. Then stop contributing to institutions of higher learning that support departments and programs that indoctrinate rather than educate, and that are part of the blame-America-first crowd, espousing all things critical of America while ignoring its glorious role in world history and in the world today. In the case of those institutions receiving public funding, it takes pressure on elected officials to take appropriate action on appropriations for such institutions.
We should heed the warning of Steyn about surrendering to Islamic terrorism in small increments, as the United Kingdom and much of Europe have already done: "And sometimes, as in the United Kingdom, they talk about defiance and the old blitz spirit, but they make a thousand trivial concessions day by day. That's how great nations die - not by war or conquest, but bit by bit, until one day you wake up and you don't need to sign a formal instrument of surrender because you did it piecemeal over the last 10 years. ...This enemy is able to hide in the plain sight - a pest in a street full of pests, in an America where half the political establishment wants to upgrade enemies into defendants with their day in court and full legal rights, in a Europe paralyzed by fear of its own immigrant populations, in a Western world where media dignify our killers as 'militant,' 'activists' and 'insurgents.'"
We have too many Senator Reids, the pathetic and wimpy waver of the white flag for the Democratic Party, a leader two-steps lower than even Neville Chamberlain. We don't have enough Winston Churchills and General Sir Charles Napiers. Consider Steyn's description of America Alone: "This book isn't an argument for more war, more bombing, or more killing, but for more will. In a culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of 'suttee' - the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. General Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural: 'You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.""
Herb Denenberg, a former Pennsylvania insurance commissioner and professor at the Wharton School, is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the National?Academy of Arts and Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at [email protected].
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