Friday, July 27, 2007

Self-deluding fools

There's a good article on the American Thinker by Vasko Kohlmayer about the increasingly self-deluding attitudes of progressive liberals to the threat of Islamic imperialism. In particular he highlights an article written by Matthew Parris in which Parris said.


Something is changing in the public mood, and I think it's this: terrorism is beginning to look a bit stupid. Those pictures of that idiotic and slightly overweight fellow with his clothes burnt off looked pathetic, undignified. It has occurred to even the meanest of intellects that concrete doesn't burn. And it isn't just the technical competence of alleged British terrorists that people are beginning to doubt: it's the whole jihadist idea. What world are they aiming for? Most British Muslims, just like most British everyone-else, think it's all pie in the sky: all rather silly. Yes, silly. Not "evil" as the red tops would have it. [...] We're not talking anything as clever as Evil here: we're talking Weird, we're talking Crackpot, we're talking Sad. The idea of using a Jeep to make a terminal explode was, in the latest lingo, a bit gay.


I commented myself on why it was wrong to take that sort of attitude towards attacks of this nature and that it was rather idiotic to assume, just because the attacks failed to kill people, that they had not achieved an objective, but even I hadn't reckoned with the liberals trying to turn a world wide movement to destroy western civilisation and to impose Islam on those western nations as a "bit gay".


I suppose if Parris had been hacking back in the forties he'd have been telling us in his various reports on Nazism how they were rather "silly" to launch attacks on The Soviet Union and that Nazi plans for eradicating the Jews from Europe were a "bit gay" too. Kohlmayer points out ....


The trivialization and lightheartedness are hardly appropriate, especially since it was only due to sheer luck that the attacks did not translate into mass carnage. Explosives experts have repeatedly confirmed that had the London's terror plot gone as planned hundreds would have been engulfed by the blast and the accompanying fireball.

I wonder if Parris would have still thought it a bit gay if, instead of one jihadi dancing around with his clothes on fire it had been several hundred ordinary people - including children? It's a little harder to claim something is "a bit silly" if that something involves five year olds lit up like guys on bonfire night. Kohlmayer finishes his article by highlighting the danger of listening to delusional fools like Parris.

To make light of the threat posed by these determined fanatics - as some in Britain are now trying to do - is self-delusional at best and suicidal at worst. The mortal danger we face at their hands will not go away if we pretend it does not exist. It is like sticking one's head in the sand hoping that the jackal will not eat you. This, however, is a fatally misguided hope, since this enemy is too determined, too driven and too smart to let such an opportunity pass by.

Quite right. Read it all and check out the links too. Pass it around. The more we expose idiots like Parris, the less people will listen to them. When we finally stop listening to the "useful fools" of the liberal progressives the sooner

5 comments:

William Gruff said...

Another good piece, Stan, but why is killing a five year old worse than killing a fifty five year old? Orwell asked much the same question when Vera Brittan condemned the bombing of Germany for fear that women and children might be hurt in German reprisal raids (she wasn't concerned about the Germans).

No one human life is worth any more than any other, regardless of age.

Stan said...

I don't think I'm qualified to answer whether killing a five year old is worse than killing a fifty five year old - murder is murder however old the victim is - but it just strikes me as more repellant that people would deliberately choose to target areas where they KNOW children will be (the attack in Glasgow occured at the start of school holidays).

Somehow that strikes me as particularly evil and I wondered how on earth Parris could consider such an act as "a bit gay" or "silly".

With regards German civilians in WW2 - I know it sounds callous, but they reaped as they sowed.

William Gruff said...

Re. Matthew Parris: He likes to be seen as 'reasonable'. Reasonable people usually look better in the mirror of media acclaim than the harsh light of the public arena.

Re Germans: I agree; I was commenting on Vera Brittan's self-interested 'pacifism' rather than the morality of area bombing. I have never doubted that the 55,000 Bomber Command aircrew who died in the air war against Germany made a disproportionate contribution to the final victory, and to post war German pacifism.

Having the shit well and truly knocked out of them concentrated their minds on the 'folly' of war.

Stan said...

That's a point I've made a few times on this blog about Iraq.

The "blitzkrieg" style of warfare (i.e. fast armoured thrusts at strategic points to quickly rout and defeat an opposing army) is all very well if you don't intend to hang around once you've finished - but if you're planning on "occupying" a country you'd better make sure they know they've been well and truly crushed. Nazi Germany found that out in WW2 - we still seem to think it'll work.

It won't.

William Gruff said...

'We' don't but the Yanks do, and they are in charge out there, and that's why it's a bloody mess. The anecdotes I've heard suggest that the Br*tish authorities in Iraq are appalled by the way the Americans conduct both themselves and the campaign.