by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Post<\/em><\/p>\n Thursday’s attack in London is the latest blow struck in the war that began on Sept. 11. Its origins are easy to fathom: A minority of Muslim extremists, their numbers in the few millions, resents deeply the erosion of life in the Middle East and other Muslim areas. A globalized communications system reminds them daily how far behind a Pakistan is from India, how much better a South Korea or China is doing than Egypt, or how more humane life is in an Infidel North America or Europe than in Syria or Algeria.<\/p>\n Autocratic regimes, statist economies, gender apartheid, corruption, the absence of a free press \u2014 all that and more retard economic growth from the Gulf to Morocco. In response, theocratic regimes like the Taliban and the Iranian mullocracy blame the West for their own self-inflicted misery and inadequacies. But more often, clever dictators such as a Baathist Saddam, the Saudi Royal family, an Egyptian kleptocracy, or the Pakistani military regime allow Islamicists some rein, if not covert support, to deflect blame from their own failures onto the United States and the “Jews.”<\/p>\n A shamed Islamic street \u2014 ill-housed, ill-fed, and ill-informed \u2014 is nourished on the mythology that a purer creed and a return to the 8th<\/sup>\u00a0century alone can reclaim past glories of the caliphate, and stop the decadent intrusion of Western consumerism and popular culture.<\/p>\n So when terrorists strike in London \u2014 or Bali, New York or Madrid \u2014 they operate on a variety of assumptions. Middle Eastern governments may publicly deplore their methods, but privately sigh relief that al-Qaeda agents are still not yet after their own heads. Islamicist ganglia go deep into the central nervous system of the Pakistani intelligence service, not to mention the House of Saud.<\/p>\n Likewise, the Muslim public in the Middle East may decry terror, but privately often gets satisfaction when Westerners too are humbled. Their schadenfreude is cultivated by the old anti-Semitism \u2014 they can always say the Jews or Israel caused 9\/11 or the London bombing \u2014 as well as by a deep shame over their own attraction toward Western affluence and consumerism. So we see the eerie spectacle after a 9\/11 or 7\/7 of imams assuring us that “Islam does not condone such things,” even as bin Laden T-shirts and copies of\u00a0Mein Kampf<\/i>\u00a0sell like hot-cakes on the Arab Street.<\/p>\n A third critical assumption is the deniability of culpability: only al Qaeda or its Mcfranchises in Europe are ever deemed responsible for something like Madrid or London. Apparently, such groups never visit the Pakistani border areas, never take a dime from Saudi princes, never travel through Syria on their way to this or that terrorist camp. And thus no terror-abetting nation ever faces any real accounting. That the attacks are periodic rather than daily, and that most of the world’s oil reserves are in the Middle East make it easier for Westerners to live with the bloodshed rather than issue real ultimatums.<\/p>\n Fourth, and most important, the terrorists and their supporters understand that in a strange way the West is not only split, but also increasingly illiberal as well. It has lost confidence in its old commitment to rationalism, free speech and empiricism, and now embraces the deductive near-religious doctrines of moral equivalence and utopian pacifism. Al Qaeda’s supporters will say that Thursday’s victims were killed because of Afghanistan or Iraq. Westerners will duly repeat the dull refrain that “Bush lied, thousands died” in their guilt-ridden search for something we did to cause this.<\/p>\n And so, rather than focus our attention on the madrassas and the mosques that preach hatred, we will strive to learn more about Islamic culture, as if our own insensitivity were the true culprit. Our grandfathers could despise Bushido \u2014 Japan’s warrior cult \u2014 without worrying whether they were being unfair to Buddhists; we of less conviction and even less courage, cannot do likewise.<\/p>\n In short, we now know what to expect from the London bombings and the others to follow. There will be no effort to punish the states that subsidize al Qaeda. Critics will cling to the myth that the British got what they had coming. The primary obsession of many Westerners will be to extend sensitivity to Islam, not the victims of those who kill in its name. And all will be consoled that just a few dozen were harvested this time.<\/p>\n What a strange way to fight a war.<\/p>\n \u00a92005 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson National Post Thursday’s attack in London is the latest blow struck in the war that began on Sept. 11. Its origins are easy to fathom: A minority of Muslim extremists, their numbers in the few millions, resents deeply the erosion of life in the Middle East and other Muslim areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[787],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-17Y","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5387,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/straight-talk\/","url_meta":{"origin":4338,"position":0},"title":"Straight Talk","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 26, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Podhoretz corrects the record on Islamic terrorism by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers A review of\u00a0World War IV.\u00a0The Long Struggle against Islamofascism\u00a0by Norman Podhoretz (Doubleday 2007, 240 pp.) World War IV\u00a0is an indispensable book for these times. The war in Iraq has occasioned some of the most shameful partisan behavior\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2454,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/time-for-a-foreign-policy-paradigm-shift\/","url_meta":{"origin":4338,"position":1},"title":"Time for a Foreign Policy Paradigm Shift","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 12, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The greatest danger in foreign policy is a reliance on worn out paradigms and unexamined assumptions. This received wisdom acts as a mental filter that ignores new developments and lets through only that information which fits the preordained narrative. For nearly forty years American\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3441,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/mosques-flourish-while-churches-perish\/","url_meta":{"origin":4338,"position":2},"title":"Mosques Flourish While Churches Perish","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Western tolerance had no mirror in the Islamic world. by Raymond Ibrahim PJ Media As Muslims prepare to erect a mega-mosque near the site of the 9\/11 atrocities, it is well to reflect that the sort of tolerance, or indifference, that allows them to do so, is far from reciprocated\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/religion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3416,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/foreign-policy-as-wishful-thinking\/","url_meta":{"origin":4338,"position":3},"title":"Foreign Policy as Wishful Thinking","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society The current military intervention in Libya by the West has been marketed with the claim that its purpose, as French President Sarkozy put it, is \u201cto protect the civilian population from the murderous madness of a regime that has forfeited all claim\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5468,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/murder-in-gaza-why-israel-and-not-fatah-is-demonized\/","url_meta":{"origin":4338,"position":4},"title":"Murder in Gaza: Why Israel and not Fatah is Demonized","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 14, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers In Gaza the fighting between Fatah and Hamas has escalated to the point of all-out civil war, replete with dead women and children, kneecapping, and handcuffed prisoners thrown from roofs. Meanwhile in Lebanon, the Lebanese army continues to shell a Palestinian refugee camp, with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1683,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/democracy-at-risk\/","url_meta":{"origin":4338,"position":5},"title":"Democracy at Risk","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 26, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim American Thinker A review of\u00a0The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy\u00a0by Dr. Walid Phares (Macmillen, 2007, pp. 288) first appeared inThe America Thinker\u00a0under the book's title. After the strikes of 9\/11, a plethora of books dealing with the threat of radical Islam appeared in the West. In\u00a0The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4338"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4339,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4338\/revisions\/4339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}