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MagicMtnDan
09-07-2004, 10:01 AM
OPINION - Cult of Death
Unable to cope with the fanaticism at the fringes of the Muslim world, we point our blame elsewhere. By DAVID BROOKS, New York Times 9/7/04
We've been forced to witness the massacre of innocents. In New York, Madrid, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Baghdad and Bali, we have seen thousands of people destroyed while going about the daily activities of life.
We've been forced to endure the massacre of children. Whether it's teenagers outside an Israeli disco or students in Beslan, Russia, we've seen kids singled out as special targets.
We should by now have become used to the death cult that is thriving at the fringes of the Muslim world. This is the cult of people who are proud to declare, "You love life, but we love death." This is the cult that sent waves of defenseless children to be mowed down on the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war, that trains kindergartners to become bombs, that fetishizes death, that sends people off joyfully to commit mass murder.
This cult attaches itself to a political cause but parasitically strangles it. The death cult has strangled the dream of a Palestinian state. The suicide bombers have not brought peace to Palestine; they've brought reprisals. The car bombers are not pushing the U.S. out of Iraq; they're forcing us to stay longer. The death cult is now strangling the Chechen cause, and will bring not independence but blood.
But that's the idea. Because the death cult is not really about the cause it purports to serve. It's about the sheer pleasure of killing and dying.
It's about massacring people while in a state of spiritual loftiness. It's about experiencing the total freedom of barbarism - freedom even from human nature, which says, Love children, and Love life. It's about the joy of sadism and suicide.
We should be used to this pathological mass movement by now. We should be able to talk about such things. Yet when you look at the Western reaction to the Beslan massacres, you see people quick to divert their attention away from the core horror of this act, as if to say: We don't want to stare into this abyss. We don't want to acknowledge those parts of human nature that were on display in Beslan. Something here, if thought about too deeply, undermines the categories we use to live our lives, undermines our faith in the essential goodness of human beings.
Three years after Sept. 11, too many people have become experts at averting their eyes. If you look at the editorials and public pronouncements made in response to Beslan, you see that they glide over the perpetrators of this act and search for more conventional, more easily comprehensible targets for their rage.
The Boston Globe editorial, which was typical of the American journalistic response, made two quick references to the barbarity of the terrorists, but then quickly veered off with long passages condemning Putin and various Russian policy errors.
The Dutch foreign minister, Bernard Bot, speaking on behalf of the European Union, declared: "All countries in the world need to work together to prevent tragedies like this. But we also would like to know from the Russian authorities how this tragedy could have happened."
It wasn't a tragedy. It was a carefully planned mass murder operation. And it wasn't Russian authorities who stuffed basketball nets with explosives and shot children in the back as they tried to run away.
Whatever horrors the Russians have perpetrated upon the Chechens, whatever their ineptitude in responding to the attack, the essential nature of this act was in the act itself. It was the fact that a team of human beings could go into a school, live with hundreds of children for a few days, look them in the eyes and hear their cries, and then blow them up.
Dissertations will be written about the euphemisms the media used to describe these murderers. They were called "separatists" and "hostage-takers." Three years after Sept. 11, many are still apparently unable to talk about this evil. They still try to rationalize terror. What drives the terrorists to do this? What are they trying to achieve?
They're still victims of the delusion that Paul Berman diagnosed after Sept. 11: "It was the belief that, in the modern world, even the enemies of reason cannot be the enemies of reason. Even the unreasonable must be, in some fashion, reasonable."
This death cult has no reason and is beyond negotiation. This is what makes it so frightening. This is what causes so many to engage in a sort of mental diversion. They don't want to confront this horror. So they rush off in search of more comprehensible things to hate.

Dave C
09-07-2004, 10:42 AM
its about time. where they hell have they been all this time?
very savage'esque

BUSTI
09-07-2004, 11:39 AM
Magicdan,
that piece tells like it is! The cultural void between the Muslim world and the rest of the civilized world is so great and the fact that Muslims honest believe that it is just a few fanatics that have hijacked their relgion only furthers their miserable excuse that fundamentally Islam is sound and its just a few bad murderous terrorists that are ruining it for the other good Muslims in this world.
BULLSHIT! Ok lets say there are is 1 terrorist for every 1000 decent Muslims.......there are 2 billion Muslims in the world. That means there are 2 MILLION FING TERRORISTS IN THE WORLD POTENTIALLY! Does that number scare you? Do you disagree with the math? Ok lets divide the numbers by ten then their are 200,000 terrorists.
What I believe is that Islam is a gutter religion of anti-humanism that has been hijacked by some decent people and they are desperatly trying to convince us it is the other way around. If they were right and I was wrong all the decent people of the Muslim world would be so repulsed by the fanatics behavior that they would rise up turn over every rock and quickly hang every terrorists they could find from the nearist light pole and end this cult of death and terror!
But see the vast majority of Muslims in this world honestly are taught hate and death from a very early age. I ahve yet to meet a Muslim any where that loves Israel. Now tell me why would a man in Pakistan, a man that has never even seen a Jew let alone know a Jew hate jews and or Israel? Why because they are taught hate from birth. Even in America if you know any Muslims how many have any thing nice to say about Jews? I probably know 50 Muslims and quite well I might ad and they all hate Jews! they are biggoted assholes! And I have come to this conclusion after attending a religious college for 4 years and I majored in religious philosopy and did post college work for 30 years studing communuism.
WAKE UP AMERICA FACE THE EVIL ENEMY! IT'S CALLED ISLAM AND PARTICULARLY THE BRAND TAUGHT BY ARAB ISLAMIC STATES. But now with the slaughter of the Russian children it is really just Muslims.
Every great President has usualy just one great idea. For Ronaldus Magnus it was the evil empire of communism. For George Washington it was the creation of the union. For Lincoln it was the preservation of the union. And for George W. Bush it is the war on terror. The sooner this President starts calling the Arab Muslim states for the fing murderous scum they are and declare war on them the sooner his one great idea will be accepted by the people.

Jeanyus
09-07-2004, 11:57 AM
The Koran (Muslim Bible) calls for it's followers "to lay in wait for their chance to destroy infadels" when the Twin Towers crumble to the ground, killing thousands of Americans, and the people of all Muslim countrys are dancing in the streets burning American flags, it tells me that they hate us.
If 200,000 terrorists hate us, that is a real big problem, look what 19 of them did on 9-11.
I think the number is much higher than 200,000.
I think it is a huge mistake for The US not to send it's military to the middle east.

eliminatedsprinter
09-07-2004, 11:58 AM
[QUOTE=BUSTI
What I believe is that Islam is a gutter religion of anti-humanism that has been hijacked by some decent people and they are desperatly trying to convince us it is the other way around. If they were right and I was wrong all the decent people of the Muslim world would be so repulsed by the fanatics behavior that they would rise up turn over every rock and quickly hang every terrorists they could find from the nearist light pole and end this cult of death and terror!
[/QUOTE]
I have seen nothing to make me disagree with this. I have known some tolerant muslims, but they are the exception, not the rule. Plus, wherever islam has spread through the world and gained a majority or even a plurality it has spread instability, violence, and halted progress. Virtually all of the great discoveries, that have come from the "islamic world", were made in pre-islamic times.

OGShocker
09-07-2004, 12:26 PM
Why are we (the USA) the only ones not willing to call this a religious war? Why are we so PC? If anyone can give me good reasons for these, please post them here.
In this war, we need to fight our enemies as they fight us.

eliminatedsprinter
09-07-2004, 04:35 PM
Why are we (the USA) the only ones not willing to call this a religious war? Why are we so PC? If anyone can give me good reasons for these, please post them here.
In this war, we need to fight our enemies as they fight us.
It's not just us. Most world leaders are just as PC about how they discribe this. I'm thinking it's time for the powerful nations to target their missles on Mecca and Medina etc and let the "islamic world" know, that if we are hit hard again, then they will lose those things they most care about.

Jeanyus
09-07-2004, 04:40 PM
I don't think it's all about being PC if the US declares war on Islam, we would now have an enemy that is 2 billion strong. That is about 6 1/2 times the population of the US.

eliminatedsprinter
09-07-2004, 04:51 PM
I don't think it's all about being PC if the US declares war on Islam, we would now have an enemy that is 2 billion strong. That is about 6 1/2 times the population of the US.
This is true, and it is what we are facing at the present. We haven't declared war, but they are already our enemy and they make no effort to hide it. Fortunatly many of these people are from Indonesia (less anti west) and parts of Africa where they are too dirt poor to be much of a current threat. But give them time.....They have an expression in the "Islamic world" when they speak of Jiihad (sp?) "first comes saturday, then comes sunday". These attacks will only increase, if they are not responded to with swift, terrible, and powerfull force.

OGShocker
09-07-2004, 06:15 PM
I don't think it's all about being PC if the US declares war on Islam, we would now have an enemy that is 2 billion strong. That is about 6 1/2 times the population of the US.
That's cuz' we aint got around to playin cowboys and muslims yet. ;)

steelcomp
09-07-2004, 07:00 PM
Lets roll!

napabob
09-09-2004, 03:30 PM
KAMIKAZES AND ISLAMIC MARTYRS
TO DIE RATHER THAN SEEK PEACE
By: Alan Caruba
In World War II, among the most feared of the enemy were the Japanese kamikaze pilots who attacked the US naval forces, flinging themselves and their planes at aircraft carriers and other ships. They embraced their own death as an instrument of war.
If you have seen the film, "Patton", you may recall the wonderful opening speech in which he tells his troops, "Your job is not to die for your country, but to make the other poor bastard die for his." This is a quintessential American point of view. We celebrate heroics, but we want our heroes to return home alive. There is no death wish in the American spirit, but no lack of will to inflict this punishment on our enemies.
Contrast that with the way the Palestinians continue to wage a relentless war on the Israelis. Their heroes are the men who have killed, not soldiers, but teenagers outside a dance hall or mothers and their children at a pizza restaurant. They kill the old, the young, and often they do it by killing themselves in the process.
Now they have a new hero or to be more precise, a heroine. She is Wafa Idris and she has been catapulted to rock star status throughout the Middle East for having killed herself in the process of becoming the first female terrorist bomber.
Here's what the Egyptian Islamist weekly, Al-Sha'ab, had to say about her: "It's a woman! A woman, oh men of the (Islamic) nation; a woman, oh youth of the nation; a woman, oh women of the nation; a woman, o those who call for the liberation of the nation's women; a woman, oh soldiers of the nation; a woman, oh rules, princes, and leaders of this nation; it is a woman, a woman, a woman.
"It is a woman who teaches you today a lesson in heroism, who teaches you the meaning of Jihad, and the way to die a martyr's death."
In Jordan, the daily newspaper, Al-Dustour, a columnist wrote, "There is no need to bring examples of the status of the Arab and Muslim woman. The Arab woman has taken her place and her dignity. It is the woman's rights activists in the West who robbed women of their right to be human, and viewed them as bodies without souls. ¦Wafa did not carry makeup in her suitcase, but enough explosives to fill the enemies with horror." Which is preferable? Makeup or dynamite? In the West, we do not urge women to kill themselves to demonstrate how liberated they are.
It well may be that the most frightening aspect of Western culture for Islam is its view that woman deserve equality before the law and throughout our society. We have seen what the most rigid forms of Islam does to women, shrouding them from view in public, requiring that they have a male relative as a companion if they go outside the doors of their homes, forbidding them schooling, forbidding them from working for a living, and the list goes on and on.
Suffice it to say, Wafa Idris did her bit to rewrite the rules of martyrdom, to put women on an "equal" status with those men who kill themselves in order to wage war on non-combatants, other women, their children, the old, the teenagers.
I invite you to recall history. Not until the United States was forced to drop, not one, but two atomic bombs on Japan, did the ancient warrior mentality of its leaders yield to the demand for unconditional surrender. Now, we live in fear that Islamic warriors, careless of their own lives and contemptuous of infidels, may gain possession of comparable weapons. We cannot wait for such events to overtake us. We need no justification for action.
And you wonder why the President speaks in stark terms of good and evil? Let others pontificate on the geopolitical aspects of conflict in the Middle East. Let others speculate about conspiracies. I will keep focused on the desperate struggle an earlier generation of young Americans waged against kamikaze pilots and the utter desperation and nihilistic desire of Palestinians and militant Muslims to die rather than seek peace.

steelcomp
09-09-2004, 06:01 PM
I wish the US would just take the handcuffs off Israel. Major problem solved.

steelcomp
09-09-2004, 08:09 PM
Bob, I aggree with everything you wrote, except that I believe that to include the Japanese in this list of terror driven death mongers, is an insult to them...remember, at least the Japanese were (are) an honorable people, basically peaceful. Their Kamikaze tactics came from sheer desperation since at that time, we were severely depleting their resources...mainly fuel, and they had only enough fuel to make one way trips with their airplanes. They did not revel in the idea of suicide. They did not celebrate in the sacrafice of their own life...they were willing to do what they must to win the war, and did it honorably. It was most dishonorable for one to return from a mission, and some did. If you're a historian, there's a great book called "I was a Kamikaze Pilot" by Ryuji Nagatsuka. Prety interesting insight into their minds. I don't think there could ever be anythign written by a jihadist that I'd be remotely interested in reading. They must all die. Let God sort 'em out.

eliminatedsprinter
09-10-2004, 07:52 AM
I wish the US would just take the handcuffs off Israel. Major problem solved.
This is a move that is over due.

napabob
09-10-2004, 09:21 AM
Bob, I aggree with everything you wrote
The article was written by Alan Caruba (link below to other articles)
http://www.michnews.com/artman/publish/cat_index_6.shtml