Who Is the Enemy?
The Rev. Terry Jones may just have exposed the ultimate futility of America's war in Afghanistan. Consider the portrait of frustrated impotence America presented to the world last week.
Our president and the secretaries of state and defense deplored Pastor Jones' plan to burn 100 Qurans but could do nothing to stop him, other than to plead with him. Jones decided to call it off himself.
What was the message received by a billion Muslims?
"Muslims must understand that our Constitution protects the desecration of your holiest book. America is a place where people have a right to denounce Islam as a religion 'of the Devil' and burn the Quran in public."
Having gotten the message, Afghan mobs chanting, "Death to America," burned the American flag and set off to kill our soldiers.
Can rural Afghans understand the refusal of a U.S. president to stop what they see as a televised sacrilege against their faith? In their country, Jones would have been stoned to death. That is who they are.
What would a U.S. soldier say to an Afghan soldier who asked, "If you Americans believe it is the exercise of a precious right to burn our holy book, the Quran, why should we fight beside you, against fellow Muslims, who would fight to protect the Quran?"
Had Jones' Quran-burning gone forward, the televised pictures would have gone out to the world. The impact would likely have been of the same magnitude as that of the Dutch cartoons of the Prophet that ignited riots across Europe and the Islamic world, and the anti-Islamic scribbles of Salmon Rushdie that earned the novelist a fatwa — a death sentence — from Ayatollah Khomeini.
Now consider the message sent to U.S. troops.
Their commander, Gen. Petraeus, warned that, should the Quran burning proceed, it could endanger their lives and imperil the mission President Obama sent them to fight and die for.
To those troops, President Obama was saying that his read on the First Amendment forbids him from interfering with book-burnings in America that could get them killed in Afghanistan.
How do you fight and win a war like that, with a war president like that? Saturday, the president declared: "Americans are not — and never will be — at war with Islam. It was not a religion that attacked us ... it was al-Qaida." President Bush declared Islam "a religion of peace."
Both statements are understandable, for if we are perceived as at war with Islam, we will lose that war, and Osama bin Laden will have won by having broadened and defined what the war was about.
But, while understandable, are the two presidents' statements wholly credible? For tens of millions of Muslims and growing numbers of Americans are indeed coming to see this as a religious war.
If we are not at war with Islam, why are we fighting the Taliban? They did not attack us. If Islam is a religion of peace, why are Muslims massacring Christians in Nigeria and Sudan? Why did those Afghan mobs also yell, "Death to Christians"? Why are Christian Copts being attacked in Egypt, and Assyrian and Chaldean Christians in Iraq? Did these Christian communities start a holy war against their vastly more numerous Muslim brethren?
What do the terrorists and "state sponsors of terrorism" — Mohamed Atta, bin Laden, al-Qaida, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — have in common, except for Islam?
Is not the one thing that differentiates them from our friends in the Middle East, such as President Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan, that our enemies exhibit a more rigorous Islamic faith?
What motivates the jihadists who conduct suicide attacks on American soldiers and drive car bombs onto U.S. military posts, if not the Quran's promise of paradise if they die a martyr's death?
If some Muslims hate us because we are the new Romans, is that hatred not grounded in the Islamic mandate to drive infidels out of the Dar al-Islam, the House of Islam?
If other Muslims hate us for our corrupt culture, what is the source of that hatred, other than Islam's puritanical teachings? If others hate us, as neoconservatives argue, for our freedoms, what is the taproot of that hatred?
When Obama and Bush hail Islam as a religion of peace, do they know more about Islam than those who are dying for it?
Describing Islam as a religion of peace is like saying Prussians were a people of peace. It is at best a partial truth.
According to a Washington Post poll, two-thirds of Americans do not want the Cordoba House mosque built near ground zero, and half of all Americans harbor negative views about Islam. They don't want the mosque by ground zero because they think Islam had something to do with those 3,000 massacred Americans. Are they entirely wrong?
How do we win a long war when we cannot name the enemy?
Patrick Buchanan is the author of the book "Churchill, Hitler and 'The Unnecessary War." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM


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5 Comments | Post Comment
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Suck back thy froth, Mr. Byuke. Take five. Get some meds. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, life goes on. Speaking of Salman Rushdie, look at him--he made it through--and he wrote hard-hitting stuff that really did challenge those barbarians, not the kind of spittle and pablum you put out.
Comment: #1
Posted by: Masako
Mon Sep 13, 2010 8:17 PM
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Big Stick Diplomacy: Reflections on 9/11
“Both statements are understandable, for if we are perceived as at war with Islam, we will lose that war, and Osama bin Laden will have won by having broadened and defined what the war was about.”
Patrick J. Buchanan
Most Illustrious Excellency,
You are a man far greater than I, so please indulge me while I presume to “inform you,” by answering the question you have posed: “Who is our enemy?”
OBL defined what the war is about, when he sent his minions to burn the World Trade Center and those poor souls trapped within it. That act of supreme cowardice and infamy, sounded Taps of Deguello for the “Defenders of the Alamo.” It was the slit-throat march, played by those who would injure us beyond repair, by taking our country as a trophy of war. They would supplant the ruins of our culture with a religious center of their god. That is a fact, according to current theater of the Ground Zero mosque “debate.”
A superpower may be a Christian nation, but it does not turn the other cheek--while it still has a head. This knowledge we owe to the Crusaders of Christ, who came before us. Our life and death struggle for primacy among nations is the Last Crusade.
Muslims have furthered “the definition” with public stoning, beheadings, honor killings and throwing acid in the faces of their women, to disfigure and blind them. Muslims have exploded bombs in the nations which host them and murdered anyone who dares to criticize them or draw cartoons lampooning their idiocy.
In short, the paradigm in formulating ground rules of engagement, has been intolerance on the part of Islam, as manifested by its inability to exhibit a “let live” attitude toward the people of the world. Islam has created its own karma and that karma now demands that the religious center of the enemy be destroyed, to show him whose god is greater and whose wrath he has awakened.
Mecca must be vaporized, if the world is to know peace and joy to the world. This is just compensation for the attack on America. These enemy combatants amidst our population must also be rounded up and put into detention camps, as a direct threat to the national security of our country.
The “Arab street” has enabled all of this activity, which is a direct threat to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of not only the American people, but the people of the world, who look to America as their beacon of freedom and protector of human rights. That role was never the prerogative of the United Nations, which is a toothless paper tiger of the international bankers.
The Arab world is bankrupt, morally and spiritually and it is time to “pay the Piper.” The “Arab street” has gained the riches of the world, but lost its soul.
The United States of America “may not be at war with Islam,” but Islam is at war with this country and that is the reality which trumps all other considerations. It is a life and death struggle in which quarter is neither given or received. It is a war of heaven between God and his angels and the minions of Satan. The winner of the contest claims the exalted title of just and good, as evidenced by God's favor in granting victory. The moral maxim being: “The quick and the dead.”
Each side believes the other to be Satan. Total war decides the coin toss.
Islam has called us out on the dance floor at High Noon, for the final dance of destruction by Goddess Kali. The weltanschauung of the Moslem mindset demands a final reckoning to show whose god is greater. We did not ask for this struggle, it was forced on Lady Liberty with the symbolic rape and murder at the World Trade Center, by the hands of a culture which subjugates women.
Islam set the ground rules for engagement through the destruction of American shrines of democracy and world cultural heritage sites. The “religion of peace” has decreed that the Crown of Creation--mankind--is targeted for termination, via ritual slaughter, as if the highest expression of God, must be subject to the common fate of a hog slated for market.
Islam has offended God and for this, just punishment awaits.
The Greatest Generation--and a serious nation--understands the implications of what has been divinely written in this twilight struggle for primacy and the right to exist, unmolested and untrammeled by alien considerations, which do NOT apply to the realm of free men.
This office does not take orders; it issues them.
The Islamic world is already as “angry” as it is ever going to be and it is this anger which dictates planetary slavery as the common lot, in subservience to a bloodthirsty god. This anger-run-amuck, is insanity in need of a reality check.
The point is well-taken, regarding the sensitivities of Afghan troops who fight alongside Americans, so one pathetic corn pone preacher seeking the attention circuit, should be informed that his actions do indeed threaten the objectives of the mission to be accomplished. He has enjoyed his fifteen seconds of fame at national expense.
Islam seeks nothing less than total conquest through total destruction of the “Great Satan.” Should the United States of America be concerned about stepping on Islam's toes, or does the national interest trump the so-called “sensitivities” of Islamic nations, which allow the butchery and disfigurement of human beings by their complicity of silence?
These are NOT “allies,” in the truest sense of the word, but Arab nations which comport themselves with two-faced expediency.
The question comes to the fore once again, regarding definition of this struggle. Can a Medieval religion claim the mantle of victory and divine favor if the actions of Islam lead to the total destruction of its religious centers at the hands of the infidel?
What pronouncement then from Baghdad Bob?
The ground rules of this engagement must be considered to be seen as the “terrible, swift sword” response of the preeminent god. Thus far, Islam has remained exempt from retribution as the United States of America played Keystone Cops, by attacking the wrong country in retaliation. This foolhardy move destabilized the entire Middle East, by removing the strong man, Saddam Hussein. The fall-out from this action ensured that Iran would rise to fill the vacuum, as the well spring of Islamic ideology. That ideology has taken America hostage, as our country becomes subjugated under alien interlopers, who make demands for a mosque on soil hallowed by the mass extermination of Americans. Ground Zero is the nation's Treblinka and Auschwitz, rolled into one.
The belief by our intelligence agencies in the usefulness of Islam in containing Red Chinese expansionism, has proven to be a double-edged sword, which has fallen back on its wielder, through the sheer weight of carrying it. The nation also now carries the weight of the “Mahdi” as commander in chief.
The “war president” colludes in the invasion of his own country, by thwarting the will of the American people to secure their borders from the Mexican crime wave of La Reconquista. What message does this send to the Muslim world? Is America indeed paralyzed to the point where Black Panthers get a free pass to intimidate white voters, while citizens engaged in the defense of America are brought before the bar under spurious charges of an alleged "racism?"
America cannot defend Her borders in an age of massive infiltration by al-Qaeda. This is a glaring Achilles Heel, which points the way to confidence, support and comfort for our enemies.
What is to be done? Shall this nation become absorbed in questions regarding book burnings, when our own people have been incinerated by the worst form of fanatical ideology ever witnessed by mankind?
“Just when we thought we were out; they drag us back in…” to a Medieval mindset and torture chamber which decrees that the advancement of mankind in this new millennium, will be subject to the whims of these enforcers of terror.
America must now draw the General George S. Patton Jr. card, from the deck stacked against us. We cannot entreat our enemies to be nice, nor can we appease them; we must exterminate them in a wholesale manner.
This must be the modus operandi in broadening the definition for Osama bin Laden and his ilk.
How does OBL “win,” when he becomes responsible for the ruination raining down on Islam? He becomes Judas Iscariot to Allah.
Let a candid world record that the United States of America is fiscally bankrupt and the religion of Islam is morally bankrupt, in its present form. We hold these truths to be self evident.
The Greatest Generation never hesitates to unleash Armageddon onto those fanatics who force a contest of wills. This is NOT a geopolitical struggle, so much as it is a final showdown between two religions which have been engaged in a long, hard slog of a thousand years duration. That is the broader definition for perusal.
The United States of America must show the world that the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the internment of Japanese in this country-- during World War II-- was fully justified. These realities are the wages of sin for the fanatic who imposes his will on the planet, by attacking the United States of America. The victim of outrage should never assume the mantle of guilt for the original sin perpetrated against him.
Defending one's country, “means never having to say you're sorry.”
America must now multi-task in its realizations.
The nations of the world must understand that there is a terrible price they must pay, when they deem it wise to attack America on any front, whether it be trade, diplomatic, terrorist and so on. All faces of war must be factored in, lest a fuzzy math ensue, which considers “offending the enemy.”
America must broaden and define this struggle by pulverizing the enemy, in order to utilize the rubble of a failed ideology, to build a new foundation for religious harmony in the world.
Islam is a dead rose bush which must be pruned, in order for new growth to sprout forth which will emit fragrant blossoms, pleasing to all.
Allah has decreed the punishment of Islam by the infidel, for its many excesses which displease the Lord.
Saudi Arabia must be held hostage either by paying massive reparations for the destruction of the World Trade Center and Pentagon, in the trillions of dollars or see its beloved Mecca turned to dust.
Surely the Bin Laden Group can pay a hefty ransom, as reparations to our nation and add another five million dollars compensation to every bereaved American family, for each family member lost to the World Trade Center conflagration.
When an enemy operates with impunity, it only emboldens him to do further harm. America has failed to utilize the hostage principle as a bargaining chip.
If a religious center or book of mythology is destroyed to bring truth into the light; is this not far preferable to the incineration of millions of people to fulfill the mandates of a failed religion?
The many defilements committed in the name of Islam, have been America's “sensitivity training program.”
Churches and shrines can be rebuilt with new awareness of the transitory nature of life and how delicate and fragile it truly is. People can never be replaced once they are burned alive, but books can.
If the flag of the United States of America is routinely torched by America's enemies as a symbolic triumph, shouldn't America up the ante in this high stakes poker game, to show our national resolve? Or is the apology tour the new national paradigm for the Supreme Shogun?
Nitwits engage in flag and book burnings. Nations send a stronger message of will for survival, when they exact retribution from their enemies--and “friends”-- for the unacceptable monopoly on the nation's attention span, exerted by Islam.
A serious nation must act in concert with decisiveness, so that its foreign policy produces a symphony which may be heard. It is time for America to end the long, hard slog of the centuries, by defining this struggle of the ages for a fanatical enemy who will just not quit until he is terminated.
“Diplomacy without arms, is like music without instruments.”
Frederick the Great
Yesterday's enemies are today's friends. This nation has now defined the enemy, which is first and foremost ourselves, in our lack of will for national survival at all costs and considerations.
We the People, are our own worst enemy, when we fail to act as extremists in defense of liberty.
Comment: #2
Posted by: Revolutionary Thought Adjuster
Wed Sep 15, 2010 2:57 PM
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Mr. Buchanan,
As a lifelong (and continuing) liberal, there are not many things upon which we would agree, domestically. That said, on foreign policy, which is perhaps the biggest challenge facing our nation today, I have not read a single word you've published and disagreed. If your vision of foreign affairs were national policy, we'd be a more secure nation today.
I wish you continued success.
Comment: #3
Posted by: Phil S
Wed Sep 15, 2010 7:46 PM
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Mr. Buchanan never asked so many wrong questions and gave so many wrong answers.
"What motivates the jihadists who conduct suicide attacks on American soldiers and drive car bombs onto U.S. military posts, if not the Quran's promise of paradise if they die a martyr's death?"
Wrong, Mr. Buchanan:
What motivates them are the bombs and drones of "U.S. military posts" and their Jewish commanders against their countries.
If some Muslims hate us ..., is that hatred not grounded in the Islamic mandate to drive infidels out of the Dar al-Islam, the House of Islam?
Wrong, Mr. Buchanan:
It is grounded in the natural desire of the occupied to drive their invaders out of their countries: Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan and tomorrow Iran.
"If other Muslims hate us for our corrupt culture, what is the source of that hatred, other than Islam's puritanical teachings? "
Wrong, Mr. Buchanan:
They don't hate our corrupt culture, they despise it, which is not the same thing. Concerning Puritanism: People Who Live In Glass Houses Should Not Throw Stones.
"Describing Islam as a religion of peace is like saying Prussians were a people of peace. It is at best a partial truth."
Maybe. And saying Americans are a people of peace is not even a partial truth, it is an outright lie.
"They don't want the mosque by ground zero because they think Islam had something to do with those 3,000 massacred Americans. Are they entirely wrong?"
Yes, completely. They should first ask for an independent investigation before they accuse Islam. The official conspiracy story is too ridiculous to be believed.
"How do we win a long war when we cannot name the enemy?"
Only correct question in the lot.
Our enemy - the one that cannot be named - is the Jewish Lobby, driving us into wars in the past, present and future.
Sylvie
Comment: #4
Posted by: Sylvie
Sun Sep 19, 2010 7:26 PM
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The comments by Sylvie #4 express my views exactly! I couldn't have composed a better response to yet another attempt to mislead, and/or pervert the truth. It is seldom mentioned nor do many tax paying Americans realize that Israel receives (like gift giving) more U.S. tax payer monies than any other country on the planet! It's estimated that the total is about $150 Billion ( yes- that's with a capital B!!). What's the reason for this gift giving? Beats the hell out of me! If anyone can find some answers- well all I'll say is good luck!!
Comment: #5
Posted by: J. Johnson
Mon Sep 20, 2010 10:29 PM
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