Friday, July 22, 2005
Insatiable Evil
"The London bombings have occasioned many comparisons with the 1940 Blitz. This is usually cited as evidence of British fortitude -- the attitude exemplified by cockneys in the heavily bombed East End who told Winston Churchill, "We can take it, but give it 'em back."
Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations, who I've cited before, says that evil always wants more. There can be no appeasement of evil, there can be no compromise, there can be no peaceful coexistence.
Boot continues, "The BBC now refuses to refer to the London terrorists as "terrorists." They are to be known by the more neutral term "bombers," lest the public be deceived by "the careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgments." Value judgments about blowing up innocent commuters? How gauche!
"Enlightened opinion ranging from Amnesty International to Dick Durbin joins in this moral relativism by suggesting that the United States has become no better than its enemies through the actions it has taken to prevent terrorism. Just as 1940s pacifists could see no difference between Nazi concentration camps and British wartime curtailments of civil liberties, so today's doppelgangers equate the abuses of renegade guards at Abu Ghraib with the mass murder carried out by Stalin or Pol Pot."
"The implication [by those on the left who say we need to "understand" the terrorists or that we bring their wrath upon ourselves] is that Al Qaeda has reasonable grievances and if only we could satisfy them ... we would have peace. The same thing was said about Hitler, who complained that Germany had been wronged by the Treaty of Versailles.
"The problem was that Hitler's stated demands were a pretext for his maniacal ambitions. He was unappeasable. So is Osama bin Laden, ... who dreams of establishing a Taliban-style caliphate over all the lands once dominated by Muslims, from western China to southern Spain.
[George] Orwell's words, written in October 1941, ring true today: "The notion that you can somehow defeat violence by submitting to it is simply a flight from fact. ... it is only possible to people who have money and guns between themselves and reality." ¶ Friday, July 22, 2005
Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations, who I've cited before, says that evil always wants more. There can be no appeasement of evil, there can be no compromise, there can be no peaceful coexistence.
Boot continues, "The BBC now refuses to refer to the London terrorists as "terrorists." They are to be known by the more neutral term "bombers," lest the public be deceived by "the careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgments." Value judgments about blowing up innocent commuters? How gauche!
"Enlightened opinion ranging from Amnesty International to Dick Durbin joins in this moral relativism by suggesting that the United States has become no better than its enemies through the actions it has taken to prevent terrorism. Just as 1940s pacifists could see no difference between Nazi concentration camps and British wartime curtailments of civil liberties, so today's doppelgangers equate the abuses of renegade guards at Abu Ghraib with the mass murder carried out by Stalin or Pol Pot."
"The implication [by those on the left who say we need to "understand" the terrorists or that we bring their wrath upon ourselves] is that Al Qaeda has reasonable grievances and if only we could satisfy them ... we would have peace. The same thing was said about Hitler, who complained that Germany had been wronged by the Treaty of Versailles.
"The problem was that Hitler's stated demands were a pretext for his maniacal ambitions. He was unappeasable. So is Osama bin Laden, ... who dreams of establishing a Taliban-style caliphate over all the lands once dominated by Muslims, from western China to southern Spain.
[George] Orwell's words, written in October 1941, ring true today: "The notion that you can somehow defeat violence by submitting to it is simply a flight from fact. ... it is only possible to people who have money and guns between themselves and reality." ¶ Friday, July 22, 2005
