Reacting to Terrorism

Reacting to Terrorism

Three articles about terrorism: the way we should react to Fallujah, the failures of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), and the price to non-terrorist Muslims.

David Limbaugh: Iraqi violence should strengthen U.S. resolve

Once again, they'll be off base. The issue isn't simply whether there was a direct connection between Saddam and Osama. The more relevant question is whether military action against Iraq furthered our cause in the War on Terror.

Even if we don't have taped transcripts evidencing collusion between Saddam and Osama, we know beyond doubt that Iraq was a terrorist-sponsoring state and a safe-haven for Islamo-fascists.

Indeed, the terrorists' desperate and persistent efforts to thwart Iraq's transition to democratic self-rule vindicate the Bush Administration's conclusion that Iraq was and remains a pivotal target in the war. The violence fomented by Iraqi Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr, and his brazen overtures to Hezbollah and Hamas, support President Bush's broader view that there is worldwide solidarity among international terrorists.

Joel Mowbray : Tolerating Terrorism

CAIR’s spokesman was given the opportunity to condemn Hamas and Islamic Jihad by the Washington Post in November 2001. His response was telling: “It’s not our job to go around denouncing.” Asked a similar question about Hamas and Hezbollah by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in February 2002, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper called such inquiries a “game” and explained, “We’re not in the business of condemning.”

But when Israel is to blame, CAIR seems to be very much “in the business of condemning.”

After Israel recently killed the founder of Hamas—a man responsible for the deaths of 52 mostly young Palestinian suicide bombers and 377 mostly civilian Israelis—CAIR saw fit to “condemn” the Jewish state without a moment’s pause. In its press release, CAIR said it “condemned the assassination of a wheelchair-bound Palestinian Muslim religious leader, calling it an act of ‘state terrorism.’”

CAIR couldn’t bring itself to call the founder of one of the bloodiest terrorist organizations on earth even a “militant,” let alone a “terrorist.” To them, a man with the blood of over 400 people on his hands was a handicapped “religious leader.” Seems awfully instructive about the kind of Islam they must follow if they label terrorist masterminds “religious leaders.”

Dennis Prager: Why no Christian suicide bombers? and other thoughts on Islamic terror

So, to better understand the subject, I offer three conclusions I drew about terror during my week of broadcasting from Israel last month.

First, Islamic terror is caused by Muslims, not, as Islamic and leftist apologists would have it, by the non-Muslims against whom it is directed. In our morally confused world, Spain, Israel and America are blamed for having their men, women and children blown up: What did these countries do to arouse such enmity among otherwise tolerant Arabs and Muslims?

Palestinian terror provides the answer. About 25 percent of Palestinians are Christian, yet if there are any Palestinian Christian suicide bombers, I am unaware of them. Now why is that? Don't Muslim and leftist apologists incessantly tell us that the reason for Palestinian terror is "Israeli occupation and oppression"? Why, then, are there no Palestinian Christian terrorists? Are Christian Palestinians less occupied? . . .

Second, despite the Spanish cave-in to terror, in the long run, terror doesn't work. By any rational calculation, to take the Palestinian example, it has become the most self-destructive policy Palestinians could pursue. Palestinian terror has convinced almost all Israelis outside of academia that the moral gulf between them and the Palestinians is so wide that there is presently no hope for peace. . . .

Third, there is a terrible long-term price that Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians in particular are paying for the minority that engages in terror and for the majority that says nothing about it or supports it. . . .

Just as the German nation, fairly or not, has had to grapple with the moral legacy of Nazism, and the name of Christianity still suffers (unfairly) because of medieval persecutions of non-Christians, so, too, Islam, Arabs and Palestinians will have to struggle for generations to shed their identification with murdering innocents.

While it is Americans, Israelis and other targets of terror who most suffer individually from Palestinian and other Muslim terror, those with the most to lose are Palestinians, Arabs and Islam.