There's no retreat to the shroud
- From: "Jim Higgins" <gordian238@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2006 08:38:01 -0400
There's no retreat to the shroud
http://www.washtimes.com/national/pruden.htm
Something happened yesterday in London but some of us aren't quite sure what
it was, or even if it was.
Scotland Yard, just like in the movies, raided several rats' nests in
London, Birmingham and High Wycombe to seize 21 men before they could put in
motion their plot to blow up a dozen airliners over the Atlantic. The
arrests, which continued yesterday, were the work of dogged detectives with
the cooperation of authorities in Pakistan.
The cops no doubt enjoyed a run of the good luck that usually
accompanies hard work. Some of us sighed a great sigh of relief, tempered by
the chill brought on by the knowledge that maybe other plotters are still at
large. Some of us, but not all of us.
Politicians on this side of the Atlantic seized on the opportunity to
make a little noise. If you think this was one event that couldn't be spun
as something wicked by George W. Bush, you obviously never heard of Nancy
Pelosi or Harry Reid, giddy over the resurrection of George McGovern in
Connecticut. Not all of us are quick students of reality. Reuters, the
London-based news service so high-minded that it won't even call terrorists
"terrorists" and is perhaps preoccupied with figuring out how much of its
coverage of the fighting in Lebanon has been faked, insists on calling it a
"suspected" plot. Agence France-Presse sullenly calls it an "alleged plot,"
and suggests that the triumph of Scotland Yard is just more American
politics, enabling the Bush White House to tag Democrats as wimps and
wussies eager to raise the white flag. The Council on American-Islamic
Relations said some of the right things denouncing "the suspected alleged
plot," but spokesmen spent most of their Washington press conference
yesterday lecturing the rest of us not to think that just because "the
suspected alleged suspects" are Muslims the murderous plot has anything to
do with Islamic jihad.
It's true that many -- perhaps even most -- of the Muslims in our midst
mean no harm to anyone, and want only to be good Americans with tolerance
and kindness for all, but it's a libel and a slander to suggest that
Americans need to be warned not to engage in a "backlash" against Muslims.
Americans, provoked no end by Islamic radicals, have nevertheless treated
Muslims, as they should, with the respect they treat Methodists.
The London arrests will harvest a lot of one-day headlines and for a few
days we'll hear pious tut-tutting from the usual suspects, and we'll be
further harassed at airports by tightening of security. The security men
collected a lot of perfume and cosmetics yesterday -- some of their wives
may be the best-smelling women in their neighborhoods -- and blue-haired
Lutheran grannies of Minnesota can expect to be pulled out of line again for
questioning, not because the inspectors expect to find terrorists among them
but because they would be accused of "profiling" if they question only
suspicious-looking characters named Mohammed.
Whether modern Islam has anything to teach the world about tolerance and
understanding is something best left to theologians and George W. Bush, but
yesterday the president called the enemy in the war on terror "Islamic
fascists," using neither the usual term "Islamist" nor his usual mantra
paying tribute to the "religion of peace."
The foiling of "mass murder on an unimaginable scale," as a London
police superintendent describes it, may be the last opportunity the West
will have to get serious about the threat before we have to deal with death
and destruction as we have not seen it before. The restrictions on movement
through airports, the electronic surveillance of the flow of money through
American banks, and the heightened police visibility would never have been
tolerated by Americans in more innocent times, but will be necessary for a
season. We don't have to like it -- and vigilance against unreasonable
breaching of civil liberties will be more important than ever -- but
necessity requires that we put up with it.
Most important of all, we must recognize that the madness foiled in
London is part of the worldwide Islamist assault on civilization, and cannot
be separated from the war in Iraq, the threat from Iran and the Hezbollah
provocations of Israel in Lebanon. We can long for happier days, and imagine
that we can retreat behind the ocean barriers that protected us for so long,
but it will be the retreat to a shroud.
--
The brave might not live forever but the timid do not live at all
.
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