Daniel Greenfield article:
Terrorism Doesn't Go Away When You Ignore It

Terrorism Doesn't Go Away When You Ignore It

Posted: 02 May 2010 08:27 PM PDT

Terrorism doesn't go away when you ignore it. Much like a
massive oil spill, it doesn't go away just because you want to play golf
or bask in the attention of a worshipful press at a Correspondents Dinner
that seems to have more celebrities, both Hollywood and Big Media, than
honest hardworking reporters. Terrorism doesn't take a day off or take
holidays off. Not even Muslim holidays. Not even for Ramadan. Terrorism
doesn't go away until you defeat it. It's that simple.

Islamic terrorism is one of those things that isn't supposed to
exist anymore in the realm of human affairs. The zero sum game. The
struggle to which there can only be two outcomes. An unambiguous victory
by one side or the other. No amount of negotiations, outreach programs,
speeches, concessions, scholarships and books will change that. And that
is a shame because for the last century our culture has embraced the idea
that every problem in human affairs can be settled if we all sit down and
talk it out. And that naive idea of violence in human affairs resulting
from a lack of concessions is exactly the kind of thing our enemies would
like us to believe. All the better for them to cut our throats.

The
negotiation fallacy depends on the assumption that every player in the
game would rather talk than fight, would rather settle for 33 percent of
the pie, than 100 percent of the pie. Human history alone testifies to the
fact that such players not only exist, but that they tend to walk away
with the whole pie, which is not surprising as history tends to be written
by those who play to win, rather than by those who play to draw even. An
inconvenient truth for the apostles of soft power who think that empires
of paper tigers are all it takes to usher in a new world
order.

Unfortunately for them, wars so often come down to who wants
victory more. In WW2, Nazi Germany swept the field because its soldiers
wanted it more, while the Allies and even the Russians initially wanted to
split the difference, to keep Fritz at bay, until everyone had a chance to
talk it over, and pick up as much as they could from the new state of
affairs. Only when England and Russia looked into the abyss, did they
actually begin to want it more. Only then did they begin making the
sacrifices, putting forth the desperate effort and endurance that allowed
them to survive long enough to exhaust Germany's warfighting capabilities
and bring the United States into the war.

Today we aren't the ones
who want victory more. Our enemies do. And they make a point of it every
time a suicide bomber walks into a crowd. His death is their way of
communicating to us their ruthlessness and their determination to stay in
the fight until the last infidel is dead or in chains. Suicide bombing is
not strategy, it's propaganda by those who make up for their lack of
strategic and military acumen, with their contempt for the "soft and
decadent enemy" whom they see as wanting nothing more than a comfortable
life surrounded by consumer goods. An assessment of the modern world that
Islamists shared with Khrushchev and Hitler, not to mention your average
progressive critic of American consumerism.

Islamic terrorists
cannot militarily defeat a people who walked on the moon. But they don't
have to. Their strategy does not depend on playing to our strengths, but
to our weaknesses. Their bullseye is painted square on our sense of fair
play, our eagerness to reach out to the Other and see his point of view,
our desire to be at peace, and our willingness to forget the past in order
to embrace the future. They know that while we may have B2 bombers and
nuclear warheads, that we will not do to them, as they would do to us.
That we are not willing to kill them, as they would kill us.

And so
their strategy is very painfully simple. They will keep killing us. Day by
day. Week by week and year by year. We will catch them, break up their
cells, give them fair trials with ACLU lawyers, and they will laugh at us
and curse us. And those cells that we do not catch will succeed. If not
today, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then next week. As long as Muslims
continue to immigrate to America and solicit new converts, they will never
have a shortage of potential terrorists. And they know that. What's more,
they know we aren't about to do anything about it.

They don't have to succeed with every
car or plane bombing. With every shooting rampage or sniper attack. They
just have to succeed now and then. Enough to keep the engine of terror
running, greased with our blood. Enough to convince us that we can't
defeat them, and that we need to sit down at that negotiating table, and
discuss how much more of the pie they're going to get, in exchange for a
temporary truce. And when that expires, they'll want more of the pie of
course. And we'll give it to them. Because appeasement is a learned
behavior. And once you've given up your dignity and your patriotism, and
your refusal to bow to evil-- then there is no depth to which you will not
sink to. If you doubt that, look Eastward to Europe or Southeastward to
Israel. And then tell me it can't happen here.

No, Islamic
terrorism doesn't go away when you ignore it. It plots and schemes. It
runs off at the mouth and eventually it kills again. Because it may be up
against the children of the men who walked on the moon, but it has time
and numbers on its side. And the sentimentality of an enemy who will not
behead them, or shove them into pits and throw a grenade in. Who will look
on in horror if one of his bombs falls on a school, where the occupants of
that same school would have been jumping for joy if one of their bombs had
fallen on a school filled with infidels. Who will try to negotiate. Always
try to see their point of view. Who will ignore the hard truths that the
cold and barren desert teaches the bandit and the trader at night. That
those who prosper must learn to be pitiless in the defense of their own
lives and that of their house.

Islam was born out of that same
school of the desert. Its classroom was the broad sands, hot in the day
and cold at night. Its ledger was the Koran. Its pencil was the scimitar.
And its graduation exam was survival. And while the West has changed,
Islam has not. The fall of the Ottoman Empire and the departure of the
British Empire has reverted the Middle East to the old ways, the tribe and
the family, the fanatical creed and the low crunning with which to advance
it. Mercy is murder. Death is a blessing. And all ideas fall before the
sword.

And so out of that terrible classroom only one idea has
survived. No, not the borrowed algebra of India or the stolen scrolls of
the Greeks. That of the supremacy of power. The power of Allah as embodied
by the victorious armies of Islam. For the triumph of ruthless power is
the only true message of the Koran. The men and women of the West may sit
at negotiating tables, but in the East they still understand that tables
are good mainly for hiding knives under. And that men who wish to sit at a
table with you, are either hiding a knife of their own, or are too soft
and addled to know what is about to happen to them.

Where the West
is full of words, the East is full of deeds. Not great deeds. Not high
deeds. Not even noble or virtuous deeds. Just deeds. And that you see is
the point. It is better to do something, than to do nothing. And in a war
between the fighters and the talkers, the fighters will surely win.
Because the freedom of the pen must be defended by the sword, or it will
surely fall to the sword. The East understands that. Mohammed understood
that. But the West has forgotten it. And it is paying a terrible price for
that already.

The Socialists of the West believe that they are building
themselves a kingdom of heaven on earth through government centralized
social justice. The Muslims believe that they are building a kingdom of
heaven on earth through murder and genocide. And while the Socialists pass
bills, debate in their legislatures, deliver speeches and hand out
concessions-- the Muslims kill. The Socialists have built their Tower of
Babel out of the bureaucracy of government. Islam has built its tower out
of corpses, and daily it adds new corpses to the pile.

These two
towers now overshadow the world. The Tower of Socialism and the Tower of
the Dead. Every time the second tower grows, the first tower trembles. And
unless a third tower rises soon, the Tower of Determination, there will be
only one tower hanging above the world. The Tower of the Dead. The Tower
of Islam.

Terrorism doesn't go away when you ignore it. The people
of the free world do. One by one. Into the dark night.