Islam

This morning High Command informed me that I'd better leave the radio off, because everything was 9/11 everywhere. I rolled my eyes and picked out a Keiko Matsui CD. It sounds good. Before I settled down, she told me, "There was this private in World War 2, Saipan who died. He single-handedly got a bunch of Japanese to surrender to him. Made them think he had them surrounded. They called him the Pied Piper."

I shrugged and said, "The Japanese weren't known for that kind of thing." Making my way to my computer I thought back to a story from World War 1. Sargeant York. Took out a German machine gun nest and single handedly took a bunch of Germans prisoner.

It made me think that the most glorious victories do not come when you blast your enemy into teeny little bits, but when you induce him to surrender. It's common to think the other guy is 10 foot tall and bullet-proof. But when you get down to it, he's just as fearful of the outcome as you are.

The tenor of most of the 9/11 retrospectives I've seen from the right goes like this. We're at the outset of another World War and the forces of Mordor have us all divided. Even the Brits are about the take a powder. Pakistan just gave Bin Laden sanctuary. And every Democrat in this country wants to cut and run, they only disagree in the extent of the cowardice they want to manifest in doing so. Woe is us, and we're so screwed.

So, let's look at it from the other guy's perspective. Iran is acting nuts because the gubmint there is standing on a banana peel. Western values of pluralism and open inquiry make US the leaders and makes THEM technological vampires. These guys cause trouble because they have money. Our money from the sale of oil. There's only so much oil in the ground and this kind of geopolitical instability only serves to increase its price. But eventually, that oil is going to run out. And when that happens, they're on their own. Conversely, the US, Europe, Asia and Israel all know howto create wealth. The world will return to a situation where nutcase Imams will have to get jobs driving taxis and muttering to themselves.

Political Correctness, Western Gullibility, is the Jihadists' best weapon. But it's probably not going to survive a mushroom cloud over a major city. Mercy is a Christian virtue unknown the the Greeks who formulated Western thought. We live in a post-Christian civilization. It is only a matter of summoning the will and you can transform even Swedes into Nazis.

After 9/11, I first experienced a sensation I now recognize as wrath. Such wrath can summon the will to transform large portions of Syria, Iran, and Waziristan into radioactive glass parking lots. Sure, tangos can retire to hide in the hills to plot. But we make those hills poisonously radioactive, dirty bombs can be used in more places than just Manhatten. And we can shoot every villager who triggers a geiger counter when he comes to town.

Islam means surrender. We need a Sergeant York to fox the savages into surrendering.