This incredible column appears in a CANADIAN newspaper today.....
Maybe folks are finally beginning to "get it" with these bastards.
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Calgary/Ezra_Levant/2005/07/11/1125929.html
Terrifyingly simple
West did nothing to deserve this attack
By Ezra Levant -- Calgary Sun
The intellectuals of the left tell us that we need to understand Muslim terrorists if we are going to stop them.
That's true. But the left's idea of understanding is an exercise in hiding from the truth, not seeking it.
We ought not to be so ethnocentric, we're told. We should try to look at things from their point of view. We should ask: Have we done something to provoke them? Have we offended or humiliated them? What did we do to cause this attack?
Why did they think we deserved this -- and what can we do to change our own behaviour so we won't deserve it next time?
Can we meet them halfway? We have heard this refrain a thousand times -- including from Jean Chretien. He told the CBC after 9/11, "you cannot exercise your powers to the point of humiliation for the others."
"We're looked upon as being arrogant, self-satisfied, greedy and with no limits," said Chretien, looking thoughtful, imagining he was getting to the root of it.
At the time, Bill Graham said: "I think the prime minister's comments were right on."
Today Graham serves as Paul Martin's foreign minister.
Many leftist pseudo-intellectuals talk that way. The post-modern liberal mind cannot make sense of terrorism -- why would anyone want to kill women and children? What would drive someone to do such things?
Surely, our political system can provide a safe outlet for their grievances. Don't we have departments of multiculturalism? Don't we give foreign aid? Don't we have racial affirmative action?
So: If they're still mad enough at us to bomb us, what did we do wrong?
But that is not getting into the terrorists' mind. That is not emerging from ethnocentrism -- that is burrowing deeper into it, hiding from the reality of things. The post-modern, post-Christian mind does not have the vocabulary to deal with Islamic terrorism.
We do not use the word "evil" anymore, even with apolitical criminals, whose crimes are called sicknesses now, or syndromes, caused by -- what is it this week? society? parents? TV? -- and who need our understanding and accommodation, not our rejection or punishment. All the more so for avowedly political murders like those in London.
Leftists who call for more understanding or dialogue or compromise, are not understanding the Muslim "other." They are projecting themselves onto the terrorists, imagining what it would take to cool themselves off if they were ever that mad about something.
Have a seminar; bring in some professional mediators; do some role playing -- bond.
Such a response does not understand the terrorists. To understand them is simple, if terrifying: Read their writing and listen to their speeches.
They want the world to be ruled by sharia law, where the only constitution is the Qu'ran. They want a theocracy, like Afghanistan was and Iran is, where infidels are killed, or kept in a state of submission, called dhimmitude.
Read Osama bin Laden's speeches, not those of his lawyers and psychologists in the media. Like Hitler's Mein Kampf, bin Laden is plain about his intentions.
There was no half way, no compromise, no win-win possible with Hitler. The Jews didn't do any one thing in particular to him -- he hated their very existence.
The West didn't do any one thing to bin Laden that caused his hate -- other than to live freely and outside his authority.
Sixty-five years ago, Britain understood Hitler was evil, and responded with Spitfires, not psychologists.
Here's hoping Britain today has the same clarity of thought.