Who's to Blame? Who Do You Think???

At a dinner for local writers who gathered at the home of the president of Seton Hall University, a noted Catholic institution of higher learning, the conversation turned to terrorism and once again I was treated to the "blame America" version of what is happening in the world. Another element of this proposition was to note that Christianity had a bloody history of its own when compared to Islam and then there was the obligatory reference to Israel and its treatment of Palestinians.

I am still amazed to hear our enemies given a pass just two years since 9-11. I replied that one cannot open a newspaper or turn on the TV news without reading or hearing about some heinous bombing somewhere in the world these days and the perpetrators of these acts are all Muslims. In some cases, they are Muslims killing other Muslims.

What is it about "intellectuals" that permits them to explain away the horror of the worst attack on the US homeland with talk of Middle Eastern Muslims living in poverty and under the boot of despotism as the "reason" for their rage? The reason for their poverty and their enslavement is Islam. Even Muslim intellectuals no longer shy from chiding their co-religionists for failing to admit this. The way Islam is taught throughout the Middle East leaves too many Muslims ignorant of the real world and prone to blame all their problems on Jews, the United States, and anyone who disagrees with the local imam.

Another disturbing development of late is the notion that, while the US invasion of Iraq was a success, everything since has been a failure and that President Bush has led us into a "quagmire." Indeed, the liberal media was shouting quagmire as our military was achieving a stunning victory. How can anyone be so stupid as to think the US and its coalition allies such as Great Britain and Spain could instantly rebuild Iraq after Saddam, his family, and fellow gangsters in the Baath Party had spent more than thirty years looting that nation and leaving its infrastructure to rot? Why are we being told that no plans for the aftermath of the liberation had been made when it is evident that the US has swiftly installed an Iraqi governing council and is engaged in rooting out the deeply entrenched remnants of what Saddam left behind?

And what problems are being encountered? Again, the answer is rooted in Islam because we are told that Saudis extremists and other jihadists are flooding into Iraq to wage a guerrilla war on our forces there. No one in the area wants to see the US succeed. Not Iran, a nation that is our implacable enemy so long as the ayatollahs rule. Not Syria, Saddam's partner in crime where a comparable despotism rules. Not the Saudi Royal family with ample cause to fear the establishment of a democratic government in Iraq. Not al Qaeda or what's left of the Taliban. In short, the only people who benefit from the liberation of Iraq are the ordinary citizens who no longer have to fear ending up in a mass grave or the Kurds who no longer have to fear being gassed to death in the streets of their cities. And, may I add, the rest of the world.

And why would anyone suggest turning Iraq over to the tender mercies of the United Nations? Time and again the UN has stood by idly while those whose lives were entrusted to them were led away to be killed. While useful in providing aid in the aftermath of conflict, the UN is useless in every other manner, particularly peacekeeping. Thinking themselves invulnerable to Islamic terrorism, the UN has had to go back to the drawing board following the recent bombing of their Baghdad headquarters.

Frankly, I am not terribly fond of "intellectuals" and writers are, by trade, part of this colloquium. History repeatedly demonstrates how they put forth economic and other theories that always managed to kill millions of people. Communism comes to mind. I am not terribly fond of "orthodoxy" no matter who practices it. And I will give no quarter to those too blind to see that America and its allies are locked in a battle not of their own making, but one that has been thrust upon them by Islamists and those who support them either openly or by their silence.

Islam is waging a battle against civil liberties, freedom of religion, human rights and other accoutrements of civilization and has taken on the world. Whose fault is it? Let's start with Mohammed, self-proclaimed "final" prophet of Allah. Let's stop making excuses for the barbarity being perpetrated in the name of Islam and get on with the business of destroying its eager martyrs.

Alan Caruba is the author of "Warning Signs", a collection of his commentaries published by Merril Press. His weekly column is posted on www.anxietycenter.com, the website of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba 2003

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