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February 3, 2012
Edmund Sanders : Israeli official says Iran is creating missile that could reach East Coast of US
Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
Reza Kahlili : Ex-CIA spy in Iran's Revolutionary Guard: What Obama doesn't grasp about striking deals with Tehran
Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
February 1, 2012
Brian Bennett: US officials see increasing threat of domestic attack from Iran
Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
January 31, 2012
January 30, 2012
Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim: Misreading Teheran's limits -- deadly and economically devastating as they may be -- is a risk administration, Europe seem willing to take
Suzanne Bohan: Warning: Nap-deprived tots missing more than sleep, study finds
Meg Handley: Banks Revamping Rewards Programs to Woo Customers
January 27, 2012
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Yochonon Donn: In liberal New York City, fervently-Orthodox Jews may soon be getting a district to call their own
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Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
January 26, 2012
Ed Koch: To the New York Times, calling for the murder of Jews by those capable of having their incitement taken seriously isn't news
Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
Richard Simon: House passes two bills endorsing the use of religious symbols at military memorials
Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
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Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
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Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
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January 17, 2012
Frank J. Gaffney Jr.: No-kidding red lines: U.S. response to an Iranian nuke may be bluster, but Israel's won't be
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January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
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January 11, 2012
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Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Karen Kaplan: Study: Nicotine replacement products ineffective when used in real-life situations
January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
Sept. 13, 2004
/ 27 Elul, 5764
Memo to Spielberg: We're facing a ‘War of the Worlds’
By
Diana West
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Spielberg and Chirac pose after after the filmmaker was awarded the Legion d'honneur at the grade of Chevalier |
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The war we wage, the United States and its coalition of friends, is not a war on generic "terrorism," but on Islamic jihad — the spread of Islam by violent means. We wage it not against generic "terrorists," but against Islamic jihadists who dream of death and destruction, not to mention a caliphate, in their religion's name
http://www.jewishworldreview.com |
If there was something tragi-farcical about Steven Spielberg receiving a knighthood from Jacques Chirac for "Schindler's List," there was also something tragi-farcically apt. Here we are, facing not World War III (the Cold War), but World War IV, "the war on terror." We see the gymnasium massacre in the Caucasus, and the bus bloodbath in Beersheba. We hear of the ongoing extermination of black Africans in Sudan, and the murders of 12 Nepalese cooks and cleaners in Iraq, where Iran and Al Qaeda support terrorist cadres in their efforts to suicide-bomb their way over the nascent Iraqi society. The Western mind reels and tries to come to terms with the global bloodletting (of the week).
We are experiencing a civilization-wide failure, even three years after 9/11, to define the terrorism born of Islam's core medieval precepts: violent jihad and dehumanizing dhimmitude. We see the same kind of terrorism in Russia that we see in Israel, Sudan and Iraq. We've seen it in Spain and we've seen in it Bali, and we've certainly seen it in the United States. We see it, but maybe we don't believe it — a failure that could ultimately be our undoing. Too many of us prefer to overlook the evils of World War IV and watch "Chevalier" Spielberg get a kiss on both cheeks from Jacques Chirac for dramatizing the evils of World War II.
"In this difficult time," Chirac told his new Hollywood knight, "it is essential that cinema" blah, blah "recalls the horror of what is unutterable." Unutterable is right. But no "cinema" — not by Spielberg, not by anyone — is recalling anything, utterable or not, about the colossal struggle of our age. There is no cultural echo chamber in which this conflict finds resonance. Indeed, Spielberg's next picture is a remake of H.G. Wells' 1898 Martian-invasion story "The War of the Worlds." This is a far cry from the scores of movies Hollywood made to depict World War II, including "Mrs. Miniver," "The Mortal Storm," and "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo." These days, Hollywood just hates President Bush and sticks a sock on its lens.
This is just one more reason why we haven't come to terms with the battle we've joined. I've written about this failure before. The war we wage, the United States and its coalition of friends, is not a war on generic "terrorism," but on Islamic jihad — the spread of Islam by violent means. We wage it not against generic "terrorists," but against Islamic jihadists who dream of death and destruction, not to mention a caliphate, in their religion's name.
In our religion's name — the postmodern "religion" of tolerance the pluralistic West publicly enforces and enshrines — we torture ourselves over whether jihadists are just a minuscule minority of "extremists." We nudge along a lagging conviction that terrorists who maim and kill in the name of Allah constitute some far-out sect that will some day be denounced, ostracized and neutralized by a robust Muslim mainstream. Meanwhile, when The New York Times' David Brooks identifies the source of global terrorism as a "death cult ... at the fringes of the Islamic world," I suppose we give two cheers for a real mouthful in a newspaper that routinely mumbles over the Muslim identity of jihadists the world over. (In reporting on the Beslan horror, the newspaper changed the surviving terrorist's widely quoted words, "By Allah, I didn't shoot," to "By G-d, I didn't shoot" — as noted by blogger Dawn Patrol). But we must also wonder how fringy the Islamic "death cult" can be given the doctrinal primacy of jihad and dhimmitude in the Muslim world.
Writing in the pan-Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, the general manager of Al-Arabiya News Channel offers a genuinely fringe view. "It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims," Abdel Rahman Al-Rashed writes. "We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise — an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women." Al-Rashed doesn't explain the basis of this "monopoly" — which includes the central precepts of jihad and dhimmitude — and he glosses over Islam's bloody centuries of conquest and subjugation. But he does call for "an end to a history of denial," which is a promising start. "Self-cure starts with self-realization and confession," he writes. "We should then run after our terrorist sons, the sour grapes of a deformed culture."
How to support this mission? By coming to terms with the foe we face. This approach won't win anyone a suit of armor from the French. But it just might help save the world.
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