Terrorism: The New Normal

The Killer’s vehicle
credit: npr.org

Truly we are a confused society. We’re confused about our own survival as a civilization. We’re not sure we’re worth defending.

Take the December 2, 2015 attack in San Bernardino, CA for example. The killers were Muslim—a man and wife: military age, a recent trip to Saudi Arabia. They planned the attack. They used long guns, wore military attire and masks, their home is being referred to as “an IED facility,” which was booby trapped. There were many IEDs of different types left there. They wore body armor and cameras, and carried spare magazines. Fourteen dead, many more wounded. As this is written, the FBI is not certain that this was terrorism. They’re not ruling out terrorism; they’re just not sure.

What more is necessary? Must terrorists leave behind a neatly typewritten, government approved form in triplicate reading:

Dear FBI: We are Muslims and this was terrorism. Allahu Akbar!

Would the Obama Administration accept even that? And can a people so confused about reality, so unable to accept indisputable evidence of a civilizational war, possibly survive?

President Obama tells us Islamist terrorists aren’t Muslims. This is quite an accomplishment since he refuses to use those terms. Hillary Clinton and the other two Democrat candidates for President refuse to identify the Muslims that aren’t Muslims that are nonetheless representatives of the “religion of peace” that are peacefully slaughtering people around the globe in the name of a religion that surely isn’t Islam.

Few Americans know anything about Islam. They know little or nothing of its history, and even less of its current practice. Because America has always enjoyed the separation of church and state, most Americans assume that Islam is just another religion, one of many that peacefully coexist.

While it is true that many Muslims, particularly American Muslims, choose to assimilate fully to American political conventions and law, what is poorly understood indeed is that these Muslims are not, in fact, following the very specific, and violent, mandates of their faith. Islam, taken at its word, is fundamentally and irreconcilably incompatible with our constitutional republic, with democracy and with individual liberty and self-determination.

This is so because the nature of Islam is embodied by Sharia—Islamic Law. There is in Islam no separation of church and state, hence no tolerance for other cultures, other religions, other ways of thinking and living. Sharia mandates inequality, and particularly the inequality of women. It reverts the legal code to the medieval era. No Muslim that embraces Sharia can ever be allowed to live in America because such people can never assimilate, and constitute a festering cancer on the body politic and a very real threat to the lives of Americans.

Weapons used by the San Bernardino killers.
credit: npr.org

Am I too bold? Do I misstate the facts? In this matter there are two articles everyone should know. Not only do they explain in greater detail what I’ve asserted so briefly here, they explain why we now face a battle for the very existence of western civilization, for our own survival and the continued propagation of the western tradition of religious expression and tolerance, and appreciation for individual liberty and sovereignty.

They are:

The Roots of Muslim Rage by Bernard Lewis

and:

The Clash of Civilizations? by Samuel P. Huntington

For those not familiar with these issues, and even for those that have taken the time to learn, reading these essential articles will be time well spent, and can only help to encourage our survival.

Read the articles with this thought in mind: the San Bernardino attack represents the first manifestation of a terror tactic that was always inevitable. These terrorists did not intend to die in a single attack. They planned to survive and carry out as many attacks as possible before they were inevitably killed. As confused as we are about our own worth, our police officers are able and willing to kill such people. They will never be present when an attack occurs, and many innocents will die before the police can arrive, but the police will eventually find and kill terrorists.

This is the new model, the new normal. No longer can we count on terrorists planning to die in a single attack. Multiple, fast hit and run attacks are easy to conduct, difficult to intercept, and almost impossible for the police to stop once in progress.  No longer can idiot progressive politicians and activists count on “acceptable” body counts limited by an attack at a single place. No longer can we treat cynical and reflexive attempts to disarm the law-abiding as reasonable and honorable public discourse. No longer can we pretend that the thinking behind “gun free school zones” is just another legitimate intellectual position in a national security debate. Such “zones” mean nothing less than that the people mandating them are more than willing to accept the deaths of some number of someone else’s children so that they can feel morally superior to the dead and their survivors.

The victims in San Bernardino were in a gun free zone. Virtually every attack in America has taken place in a gun free zone. There is nothing morally superior in denying others the most basic, fundamental human right: the right to self-defense. There is nothing morally superior in being the victim of terrorist murderers. A society willing to knowingly make any portion of its population defenseless—particularly its children–in the face of terrorist murderers is a society that cannot survive, that does not deserve to survive.

Welcome to the new normal.