Fifteen years after the scum of the Earth brought their degraded malevolence to American soil, my perspective from last year’s post essentially holds the same. I am far less concerned about the brutal barbarians at the gates than I am about those within the gates who’ve labored to render us weak and defenseless, and continue to do so without end in sight. The wake-up call I thought such an attack would be turned out to be too inconvenient for some among us, whose ambition to chisel away at and dismantle this culture of ours was too dear to be put aside. Come what may, The Narrative must go on! Islamic Jihadist violence and Progressive Multiculturalism are BFFs in a mutual suicide pact — except that only the latter truly means to go down in self-loathing flames of submission, relieved at last of the burden of its perpetual shame, while for the former the true goal is domination through however much homicide, torture, and taqiyya proves necessary.
The majority of Europe is committing cultural suicide, to be sure, and our beloved U.S.A. isn’t far behind. Multiculturalism is an understandable response to the horrors that ravaged the Continent through the first half of the twentieth century, but the cowardice in judgment it’s produced now seems poised to be Europe’s undoing. Maybe I’m old, and maybe my French vocabulary is lacking, but I seem to remember a time before “Frenchman shouts ‘Allahu Akbar’ as he stabs woman to death” was a routine headline.
Our worry now should not be ISIS, for all its sick brutality, but whether we have the will to stand up and declare ISIS and its Jihadist fellow travelers an enemy to be utterly and unconditionally destroyed because we genuinely and deeply care about who we are and what our Civilization stands for. It is not their predictable pipeline of recruits from fanatical branches of the Islamic world that should alarm us, so much as their success at recruiting useful idiots from our own populations. What exactly does that tell us about the state we’re in?
I’m done with a lot, at this point. Done expecting a miracle turnaround from a culture addicted to managed decline. Done having any confidence in our deeply compromised leadership and institutions. Done seeing things I can’t bear come to pass, done with a cowardly press, and, lately, done with the news cycle entirely. Those of us who see the writing on the wall and are weary of it are essentially on our own, in a future governed by absurdities and nonsense.
Maybe, in the end, disillusioned self-reliance is a good place to be. But this is not the future that should have been.
I’m off to watch this memorial slideshow, which captured the weight and reality of that day as well as anything. For those who prefer to read: 9/11: Never Forget, Never Give In is highly recommended.
My Previous Years’ 9/11 Posts
2015: 9/11, Fourteen Years On ~ Fourteen Years Later: 9/11 Links
2014: 9/11, Thirteen Years On
2013: 9/11, Twelve Years On
2012: 9/11, Eleven Years On
2011: A Plea, Ten Years After: Please, Open Your Eyes ~ Ten Years Later: 9/11 Links
2010: 9/11: Two Songs
2009: Tomorrow is 9/11 ~ My Experience of September 11, 2001 ~ 9/11 Quotes
2008: 9/11, Seven Years On ~ 9/11, Seven Years On, Part 2 ~ 102 Minutes that Changed America
2007: 9/11, Six Years On
2006: Soon, Time Again to Reflect ~ 9/11 Observances ~ 9/11 Observances, Part 2
2005: I Remember
2004: Remembering and Rebuilding (republished here September 12th, 2014)
I took to Twitter in the aftermath of November 13th’s horrific, barbaric Jihadist attacks on Paris and her people, rather than posting here. To my resigned dismay, I am at a loss to see what more can be said at this point, or what will change the state of deep denial about such things that we seem to be stuck in. It’s excruciating watching this horror recur so predictably, and I wonder, as I have for so very long now, what it will take for the West to wake up, stop making excuses for Jihadist atrocities, and really and truly stand up for its values.
The Charlie Hebdo massacre, less than a year ago, should have been more than enough to make that happen — as, to be honest, should any of the innumerable prior acts of Jihad against the West. Much of the world briefly united, declaring “Je suis Charlie!” in a sincere but symbolic defiance and resolve that evaporated after a time, ultimately returning us to our slumber. This time around, it was “Cette fois, c’est la guerre.” But that sentiment, too, has already faded, and it’s unclear to me that it will have any lasting consequence for our actions. Before the day was over, the usual suspects in the press were dutifully reinforcing The Narrative, wringing their hands about mythical anti-Muslim backlash that fits their perpetually low opinion of their countrymen, rebranding a deliberate, premeditated atrocity as a “tragedy”, and generally doing the enemy’s propaganda job for them. We’re back to rearranging the deck chairs. We’ve learned (or have we?) that “Holding hands for a feel-good photo opp. gets us nowhere in the fight against terrorism.” “In a month most of Europe will be back to giving cultural sensitivity training and talk of ‘war’ will be forgotten.” Lather, rinse, repeat.
As has been rightly said before: It’s not a wake-up call, if we go back to sleep. Mark Steyn’s reflection on the Paris attacks was among the most apt: The Barbarians are Inside, and There Are No Gates. James Delingpole’s assessment was likewise on target.
Whether or not we are interested in war with Jihadis, they have made quite clear, time and time again, that they are profoundly interested in war with us. Dreamy-eyed insistence on “peace” in the face of acts of war (which the iconic Eifel-Tower-recast-as-peace-sign graphic that circulated in the wake of the attacks seems to ask for) is an act of pure, blind surrender. Honestly, “It must be incredibly frustrating as an Islamic terrorist not to have your views and motives taken seriously by the societies you terrorize, even after you have explicitly and repeatedly stated them. … It’s like a bad Monty Python sketch” — one that would be funny, if the consequences weren’t so grave. It no doubt comes as quite a devastating surprise to ISIS that they are “not Islamic”.
“We in the West have reached such a low in self-esteem that we do the job of defeating ourselves even better than the enemy,” noted Allen West. Make no mistake, that low in self-esteem is by design — the result of dedicated work by many, over a long period of time. It’s been wrought by people who sincerely believe that we are worse than our enemies.
I’ve pleaded for an end to this willful blindness, as have others with far greater eloquence, dedication, and courage. By now, we’ve been shown more than enough to be able to see that shunned and vilified critics of the Islamic world like Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Tarek Fatah, Brigitte Gabriel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and others have been right to sound the alarm. “Tolerance” is all well and good in theory, but “When tolerance becomes a one-way street, it leads to cultural suicide.” You can’t tolerate people whose chief ambition in life is to kill you.
Below was the scene in the Bataclan Theater, where people were gunned down and tortured by having their stomachs slit open, where survivors pleaded for the lives of their loved ones and waited helplessly as tens of minutes went by, wondering whether they and theirs would be next to be systematically murdered by Jihadis who stood there, methodically reloading without any apparent fear of being stopped. It grieves me to have to post something like this. There is a temptation to look away. We mustn’t. This is the face and work of an enemy that will not relent until we decisively confront and unconditionally subdue its murderous, bloodthirsty army. This is utterly barbaric. There is no excuse for it. We must at long last find the moral courage to commit to decisive actions that match our ephemeral and easily uttered words of defiance, or those words will have had no meaning.
Fourteen years later, I have nothing fundamentally new to add.
The horror of that day has long since been eclipsed in my mind by the consequent exposure of our own weakness, and our determined unwillingness to squarely confront the enemy that brought such horror to us, in the years since. Our appetite for self-deception and willfully naïve thinking far exceeds anything I’d have imagined. Our foundational institutions, from academia to journalism to entertainment and the arts to government and even our military, have been extensively compromised beyond likely repair by determined ideological termites whose goal of an ever-weaker America is now at hand. The realities of the day did not shake their belief systems, as I had once supposed an attack on our nation would. Nor has the steady litany of attacks in the years since — from London, to Madrid, to Beslan, to Bali, to Mumbai, to Kenya, to Paris, to Moscow, to the Fort Hood shooter, to the Beltway Snipers … the list goes on and on. Nor has the rise of ISIS, with all its attendant barbarity plainly on display for the whole world to see. ISIS operates with free reign because we — The United States in particular, and the West in general — lack the resolve and moral conviction to do anything substantial to stop them. We are now led by people deluded enough to believe that weakness is somehow strength, and that our implacable and barbaric enemies can be persuaded by olive branches and “Coexist” bumper-sticker platitudes. These are people who led us to abandon all gains in Iraq, with our intentions and timetable so clearly advertised that we might as well have hung out a “This territory up for grabs” sign. ISIS is expanding its reach virtually unchecked, and is successfully recruiting from Western populations, for God’s sake — because unlike us, they actually believe in themselves and what they are doing.
Soon, Iran — whose political and spiritual leaders have been unambiguous about their intentions toward Israel, the United States, and the West — will have nukes. They’ll have them because, gullible fools that we’ve become, we’ve effectively surrendered on that front too.
I’ve pleaded. I’ve striven to educate. As have many others, with much greater dedication and skill. At this point, those who can be awakened have been. Those who do not wish to see, won’t.
I’m weary of seeing things I don’t want to see, that few others are willing to see and acknowledge. I have no patience to stand by and watch a slow cultural suicide, nor do I especially want to spend years studying the mechanics of self-inflicted civilizational decline when there are far higher aspirations for this civilization of ours to reach. I have zero respect or patience for PC scolds and their demonstrably flawed multicultural platitudes, whose net effect ends up somewhere between naïve ignorance and willful sabotage. We, who have managed to welcome and happily “Coexist” with people of just about every other belief system in the world, have encountered an enemy that has been pretty clear about its lack of interest in “Coexist”-ing with us, and with our cultural foundations now compromised due to the willful actions of some among us, we are under-equipped to confront that reality and deal with it. We’re in grave danger of losing everything that matters, not because a handful of Jihadist scumbags attacked us on 9/11/2001, but because far too many among us are willing and eager to choose cultural surrender as an alternative to fighting and decisively defeating those rotten bastards.
It seems maybe, remotely possible that in the final, twilight years of this once great Civilization of ours, the lunatics who labored to institute such weakness might, as they finally start to notice things crumbling around them, look back and wonder whether they’d perhaps made a mistake or two — long, long after it’s far too late to do anything to turn the tide. I’m not holding my breath.
We’re a culture in serious need of a reboot, and I’ve turned my efforts to finding a way for that to happen — for some remnant of our indomitable spirit to have a chance to thrive again unhindered. Because in the end, mere physical survival and avoiding playing a part in the fulfillment of a Jihadi death wish for another day isn’t what it’s about. It’s the long-term survival of the essence of who we are that matters. And how that goes … is entirely up to us.
My Previous Years’ 9/11 Posts
2014: 9/11, Thirteen Years On
2013: 9/11, Twelve Years On
2012: 9/11, Eleven Years On
2011: A Plea, Ten Years After: Please, Open Your Eyes ~ Ten Years Later: 9/11 Links
2010: 9/11: Two Songs
2009: Tomorrow is 9/11 ~ My Experience of September 11, 2001 ~ 9/11 Quotes
2008: 9/11, Seven Years On ~ 9/11, Seven Years On, Part 2 ~ 102 Minutes that Changed America
2007: 9/11, Six Years On
2006: Soon, Time Again to Reflect ~ 9/11 Observances ~ 9/11 Observances, Part 2
2005: I Remember
2004: Remembering and Rebuilding (republished here September 12th, 2014)
On Tuesday, my Twitter feed was abuzz with people applauding Egypt’s president al-Sisi for calling on the Islamic world to take a good long look at itself and clean house. On Wednesday, a brutal attack by Jihadist scumbags who murdered twelve at the Paris offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo proved that they didn’t get the memo. Today: hostage standoffs where police cornered the bastards and sent them to their virgins, and it looks as if at least four hostages were killed in the process. Sadly, as terrible as such events are, they are also no longer surprising. It’s what we’ve learned to expect.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s WSJ editorial, “How to Answer the Paris Terror Attack”, struck me as spot-on and is not to be missed:
After the horrific massacre Wednesday at the French weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, perhaps the West will finally put away its legion of useless tropes trying to deny the relationship between violence and radical Islam.
This was not an attack by a mentally deranged, lone-wolf gunman. This was not an “un-Islamic” attack by a bunch of thugs—the perpetrators could be heard shouting that they were avenging the Prophet Muhammad. Nor was it spontaneous. It was planned to inflict maximum damage, during a staff meeting, with automatic weapons and a getaway plan. It was designed to sow terror, and in that it has worked.
The West is duly terrified. But it should not be surprised.
If there is a lesson to be drawn from such a grisly episode, it is that what webelieve about Islam truly doesn’t matter. This type of violence, jihad, is what they, the Islamists, believe.
and this:
Those responsible for the slaughter in Paris, just like the man who killed the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004, are seeking to impose terror. And every time we give in to their vision of justified religious violence, we are giving them exactly what they want.
…
How we respond to this attack is of great consequence. If we take the position that we are dealing with a handful of murderous thugs with no connection to what they so vocally claim, then we are not answering them. We have to acknowledge that today’s Islamists are driven by a political ideology, an ideology embedded in the foundational texts of Islam. We can no longer pretend that it is possible to divorce actions from the ideals that inspire them.
This would be a departure for the West, which too often has responded to jihadist violence with appeasement. We appease the Muslim heads of government who lobby us to censor our press, our universities, our history books, our school curricula. They appeal and we oblige. We appease leaders of Muslim organizations in our societies. They ask us not to link acts of violence to the religion of Islam because they tell us that theirs is a religion of peace, and we oblige.
What do we get in return? Kalashnikovs in the heart of Paris. The more we oblige, the more we self-censor, the more we appease, the bolder the enemy gets.
There can only be one answer to this hideous act of jihad against the staff of Charlie Hebdo. It is the obligation of the Western media and Western leaders, religious and lay, to protect the most basic rights of freedom of expression, whether in satire on any other form. The West must not appease, it must not be silenced. We must send a united message to the terrorists: Your violence cannot destroy our soul.
Claire Berlinski, who happened upon the scene of the shooting, wrote an impassioned response:
The assailants are as yet at liberty. I hope they’ll be dead by the time you read this. But if not: You want me too? Come get me. Because nothing short of killing me — and many more of my kind — will ever shut us up.
And if you don’t believe that now, you’ll believe it very soon. Because there are more of us willing to die for that freedom than those of you eager to take it from us. And soon you will find out that those of us willing to die for that freedom are also much better at killing than you.
So come and get me. Je suis Charlie.
On the other hand, there’s this: Ostracized by Cowardly West, Charlie Hebdo Faced the Islamists Alone. The point, I fear, is tragically valid: For all the genuinely well-intentioned chorus of “Je suis Charlie“ today, no one seemed to be saying it when it would have mattered most: before the staff of Charlie Hebdo were murdered.
My cousin wrote gloomily from Marseille:
Our democracy is also slipping away as you have seen. The crazy Islamists are here and everywhere very numerous. They were accomodated, nourished, and now they kill us.
Soon Arabs will be more numerous than native French and there will be a risk of civil war, or of a government of the extreme right that’s no better.
In this moment there is a severe malaise in France, one senses the coming catastrophe but does not dare to believe in it.
JustOneMinute: We’re all forked.
Antonio Martinez, on the widely-seen video of the Jihadists shooting a police officer who lay prone on the sidewalk outside the Charlie Hebdo offices:
Imagine if the free citizen of France who shot this video from the balcony had an AR-15 instead of an iPhone.
I’m at a loss for what else to add at the moment. For my part, I’d hoped we’d have the chance to do far worse than kill the scumbag perpetrators. I’d like us to have had the chance to hurt their delicate feelings some more — to make them feel bad about, and give some further thought to, the primitive, backward worldview they champion.
I feel fresh out of patience. I’ve begged and pleaded about this stuff before. If we haven’t seen enough by now to wake us up from our slumber of self-deception and force us to confront the reality of the enemy we’re up against, I don’t dare to imagine what more it will take…
It’s hard to know what to add this year. Nothing feels all that surprising anymore — and yet, this year, the insanity in need of remark seems to be layered on as thick as ever.
Twelve years after a band of homicidal Jihadi scumbags flew aircraft full of people into buildings full of people, we’re on the verge of supporting al-Qaeda-linked “rebels” in Syria. (Yes, they really are that bad. No, really. Seriously. I’m not kidding.) We still don’t have answers or accountability regarding four Americans who, after repeatedly pleading with the State Department for increased security in preceding months and having their requests denied, were left to die in Benghazi a year ago today, when special forces who could have reached them were ordered to “stand down”. We were told the Benghazi attacks were a spontaneous uprising triggered by a YouTube video critical of Islam, only to learn that the attackers were well armed and had clearly planned and coordinated the attack — a fact that was known at the time, but not disclosed. Meanwhile, a “Million Muslim March” — whose purpose presumably includes asking Americans to exercise ever-greater cultural sensitivity — has been scheduled on the most culturally insensitive date I can imagine. If there’s any hope in all that’s happening on this twelfth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it’s in the “2 Million Bikers to D.C.” ride that’s also happening today, and the fact that its attendance appears to outnumber the former event by something in the neighborhood of 880,000 to 21. Gotta love these guys (and gals). Bless their rugged, patriotic hearts.
In the chronicles of local ineptitude: a 9/11 memorial ceremony at New Jersey’s “Empty Sky” memorial (which I posted pictures of last year) was unceremoniously cancelled without the families who were to attend being notified. *sigh*
That’s all I’ve got for this year, for now at least. I may add more later. Most of what matters to me, I’ve already written about in previous years:
My Previous Years’ 9/11 Posts
2012: 9/11, Eleven Years On
2011: A Plea, Ten Years After: Please, Open Your Eyes ~ Ten Years Later: 9/11 Links
2010: 9/11: Two Songs
2009: Tomorrow is 9/11 ~ My Experience of September 11, 2001 ~ 9/11 Quotes
2008: 9/11, Seven Years On ~ 9/11, Seven Years On, Part 2 ~ 102 Minutes that Changed America
2007: 9/11, Six Years On
2006: Soon, Time Again to Reflect ~ 9/11 Observances ~ 9/11 Observances, Part 2
2005: I Remember
2004: Remembering and Rebuilding (republished here September 12th, 2014)
At Prager’s site (via @inhuggermugger)
After 9/11, the normal and decent question that normal and decent people — people who fully and happily recognize the existence of vast numbers of normal and decent Muslims in the world — would have posed is this: What has happened in the Arab world and parts of the Muslim world?
But as this, the most obvious question that 9/11 prompted, has not been allowed to be asked, what lessons can possibly be learned?
The answer is, of course, none.
