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The terrorists won.
MikeDamone
Member Posts: 37,781
MikeDamone
Member Posts: 37,781
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https://www.steynonline.com/9730/the-language-of-losing
That last point may seem obvious. But, if it is, it's a truth all but entirely unacknowledged by anyone who matters in the western world. I subsequently expanded on it, in a piece we called "The Language of Losing" and which appears to have been succeeded by "The Actions of Losers" - such as inviting the Taliban to Camp David. Hey, why not for the ceremonies in Lower Manhattan? On yet another wretched anniversary I mourn not only the dead of that grim day, but our loss of purpose. All that has changed two years on is that for "sixteenth anniversary" we substitute "eighteenth" - and on and on into the future:
In any war, you have to be able to prioritize: You can't win everything, so where would you rather win? Raqqa or Rotterdam? Kandahar or Cannes? Yet, whenever some guy goes Allahu Akbar on the streets of a western city, the telly pundits generally fall into one of two groups: The left say it's no big deal, and the right say this is why we need more boots on the ground in Syria or Afghanistan. Yesterday President Trump said he was committed to ensuring that terrorists "never again have a safe haven to launch attacks against our country".
By that he means "safe havens" in Afghanistan. But the reason the west's enemies are able to pile up a continuous corpse count in Paris, Nice, Berlin, Brussels, London, Manchester, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Orlando, San Bernadino, Ottawa, Sydney, Barcelona, [Your Town Here] is because they have "safe havens" in France, Germany, Britain, Scandinavia, North America, etc. Which "safe havens" are likely to prove more consequential for the developed world in the years ahead?
Who's winning what turf? After 16 years of western military occupation, the Taliban control more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since the first US troops went in. On the other hand, after 16 years of accelerating Islamic immigration, Europe has more no-go zones, more sharia courts, more refugees, more covered women, more Muslim-dominated schoolhouses, more radical mosques, more female genital mutilation, more grooming and gang rape, more Muslim Brotherhood front groups, more Muslim mayors and legislators, more Muslim-funded Middle East Studies programs at universities ...and fewer churches, fewer Jews in Toulouse, fewer gays in Amsterdam, fewer unaccompanied women out after dark in German and Swedish cities, fewer historical representations of Mohammed in Continental museums, art galleries and scholarly books, fewer mixed bathing sessions at municipal swimming pools, fewer lessons on the Crusades and the Holocaust in European schools ...and less and less free speech in some of the oldest democracies on earth.
In Afghanistan, we're fighting for something not worth winning, and we're losing. In Europe, Islam is fighting for something very much worth winning, and they're advancing. And, according to all the official strategists in Washington and elsewhere, these two things are nothing to do with each other.
To be fair, a lot of the ever increasing restraints on free expression are self-imposed: newspapers decide that it would be "insensitive" to publish certain cartoons, publishers politely decline novels on certain themes, and in Minnesota (where I'll be in a couple of weeks) white progressives agonize that remembering 9/11 is "Islamophobic". Which is weird - because a space alien visiting the United States for Monday's ceremonies would have been stunned to discover that Islam had anything to do with 9/11. As I mentioned yesterday, the President forbore to mention Islam at all: Instead, we were attacked by "horrible, horrible enemies" and "enemies like we've never seen before". Well, we've seen a lot of them since, and they appear to have certain things in common - things that this President was once not shy about mentioning. Yet, insofar as Islam got a look in from officialdom, it was a passing reference in the speech of Defense Secretary "Mad Dog" Mattis:
Maniacs disguised in false religious garb thought by hurting us they could scare us that day.
Well, whoever they are, these "maniacs" can evidently scare grizzled hard men called "Mad Dog" into concluding that, when it comes to mentioning the I-word, discretion is the better part of valor. "False religious garb" means we're back to the standard Euro-squish line that all this Allahu Akbar I'm-ready-for-my-virgins stuff is a "perversion" of the real Islam, which is a peaceful faith practiced by millions of people for whom self-detonation is an unwelcome distraction from traditional activities such as clitoridectomies, honor killings and throwing sodomites off tall buildings. Stop me if you've heard this before, but these "maniacs" are hijacking this "religious garb" in order to peddle a "false" vision of Islam. Foaming-canine-wise, Mad Dog sounds about as mad as, say, Theresa May. I take it that, even in today's politically correct military, you can't earn the epithet "Mad Dog" simply by handing out diversity awards to the Transgender Outreach Liaison Officer of the Month, and General Mattis served honorably and impressively in Afghanistan and Iraq. But, when it comes to strategic clarity, that may be the problem.