This piece was written at the invitation of the Dutch newspaper De
Volkskrant, in which it appeared on September 2, 2006.
9/11, Five Years Later: A View from Europe
Recently I watched Casablanca for perhaps the 20th time. Its characters
include people from the U.S., Norway, Britain, Germany, France, the
Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria whose harrowing experiences in
Nazi-occupied Europe have taught them a precious lesson: the value of freedom.
Many seek passage to America, a beacon of liberty in a darkening world. In one
stirring scene, Nazi officers at Ricks café begin singing Die Wacht am Rhein,
and the other customers respond with La Marseillaise.
Something like that sense of international unity in the cause of freedom is
rather what I expected of the West after 9/11. But it didnt happen. Why?
Largely because of a failure to comprehend the nature of the enemy: Islamist
terrorism continues to be characterized by many as a desperate response to
poverty, oppression, and/or Western foreign policies, rather than what it is: a
jihad by people who seek to conquer the West as Muhammed did North Africa,
subduing infidels and imposing sharia. Only recently did George W. Bush
finally confess that we were fighting Islamic fascists only to revert, in
the face of criticism, to the empty term war on terror.
Some understand the enemy, yet underestimate its capabilities. Ones comfort
can be ones downfall: just as it seemed inconceivable that the Twin Towers
could be brought down so easily, so our Western civilization can feel
indestructible, and the idea of having to defend it can feel like well,
something out of an old movie. There are few more telling symbols of many
young Europeans sense of absolute security, their utter unconsciousness of any
clear and present threat to their freedom, and the alienness to them of any
concept of moral responsibility than the Che t-shirts and Palestinian scarves
by which they play at identifying with the perceived glamour of violent
revolution against their own civilization.
On 9/11 (as now), I was a New Yorker living in Oslo. Yet that day I realized
Id never left home for this was, I knew, an attack not only on my hometown
but on the free world. Clearly, we were at war not only with terrorists, but
with their philosophical allies in the West. I already knew a bit about the
latter: in 1999, living in Amsterdams Oud West, I looked around me and
realized Id failed to notice a key piece of the European puzzle namely, the
rise of Muslim communities that werent transitional phenomena (like the
now-vanished Polish neighborhood in Manhattan where my father grew up) but the
beginnings of a fast-growing, self-segregating European Islamic society that
was becoming ever more confident and assertive in its rejection of Western
values. The celebrations in the streets of Ede and elsewhere on 9/11 affirmed
my sense of the grim possibilities these enclaves represented.
In the wake of 9/11, European leaders felt obliged to join America in
invading Afghanistan. But the initial show of solidarity by politicians and
intellectuals (we are all Americans) quickly gave way to declarations that
the U.S. by supporting Israel, buttressing Arab dictators, fostering
globalism, etc. had asked for 9/11. But not Europe. Europe was the Muslims
friend. Muslims knew this. Hence Europe was safe. This soon became Western
European orthodoxy. Only days after 9/11, Norwegian author Gert Nygårdshaug
sneered at the idea that there might soon be an attack on Oslo or Rome or
Copenhagen. He was far from alone in his mockery.
Then came Madrid, London, Bali, Beslan, Mumbai. Van Gogh was butchered;
Muslims rioted in France; their coreligionists in Denmark rampaged over
newspaper cartoons of Muhammed. The Western European elite played down, even
denied, any connection among these events. Yet year by year the truth has
become increasingly clear: though the U.S. was the target on 9/11, the front
line of the war with Islamism is Europe.
It is a war, moreover, in which the enemys most powerful weapon is not bombs
but demography. Muslim immigration levels remain high; so do reproduction
rates. Yes, only a tiny percentage of European Muslims are terrorists; but
many more who get their news from satellite channels such as Al-Jazeera and
who feed one anothers animosity toward the West in mosques, in community
centers, and on Internet message boards find European culture intolerably
decadent and share the jihadist goal of a European caliphate governed according
to Koranic precepts. Recent polls show that at least 40% of Muslims in the
U.K. would like to see Britain under sharia law, and that at least one in four
approved of the 7/7 attacks. European-establishment rhetoric to the contrary,
poverty and ignorance arent the explanation: the most intense anti-Western
sympathies are nursed not by illiterate immigrants from rural Arab villages but
by their well-educated, European-born children who live
well and drive BMWs.
In all of Europe, only the Danes have taken remotely serious actions to halt
the advance of what the scholar Bat Yeor has called Eurabia. The results:
immigration to Denmark is down, integration improved. Yet even in Denmark,
death threats against cartoonists have made the free word less free.
Elsewhere, too, sharia is on the march. Belgian law now forbids
Islamophobia; similar legislation was passed by Britains House of Commons
last year, but nixed by the Lords. In Norway, you can now be imprisoned for
insulting someones religion (and the burden of proof is on the accused). A
grim foretaste of Europes future was provided last February in Oslo, where, at
a state-sponsored press conference, editor Velbjørn Selbekk who, after
reprinting the Muhammed cartoons, had defied death threats for weeks did a
sudden about-face, apologizing abjectly to the largest assemblage of imams in
Norways history. The Norwegian government hailed this capitulation, calling
it a reconciliation; later an official delegation visited Qatar to beg
Muslim leader Yusuf al-Qaradawis forgiveness, too.
What of America? No question, Bushs arrogance, incompetence,
inarticulateness, deafness to criticism, and tolerance of torture have (in
Andrew Sullivans words) managed to muddy the moral high ground against the
evil of Islamism thereby polarizing Americans and helping alienate Europeans
at a time when unity is crucial. (The U.S. militarys dismissal of desperately
needed Arabic-language experts for being gay testifies to the endurance of an
absurd bias that I thought, on 9/11, would fade in the face of a real and
deadly foe.) In the U.S., as in Europe, politicians and journalists who should
know better continue to repeat the ludicrous mantra that Islam means peace,
jihad means inner struggle, and extremists are hijacking Islam.
Yet for all Americas missteps, the European elites charge that the U.S. is
the worlds #1 menace has been obscene and self-destructive as has that same
elites tireless whitewashing of the real menace. On 9/11, I would never have
imagined that five years later, a man who refuses to condemn the stoning of
female adulterers would be respected as the leading voice of moderate
European Islam; that European governments would still be funding within their
borders mosques and Muslim schools that teach contempt for democracy, Jews,
gays, and sexual equality; that Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen would argue for
accepting the oppression of Muslim women in the West; and that Britain would
still be sheltering radical clerics, Queen Elizabeth knighting the likes of
Iqbal Sacranie (who calls homosexuality unacceptable), and London mayor Ken
Livingstone praising as progressive the above-mentioned al-Qaradawi (who has
defended suicide bombers and the execution of gays). The
delusion endures: in August, the AP reported that Germans were stunned by
news of a planned train bombing in their country because they thought their
opposition to the Iraq war would insulate them from terrorism; and Britains
Communities Secretary, following the arrest of English lads whod planned
to blow up London-to-U.S. flights, promised to consider a proposal by Muslim
leaders to pacify would-be domestic bombers by introducing sharia law in
immigrant areas.
I would never have believed on 9/11 that in 2006, most Europeans would still
be surprised to learn to pluck two examples at random that over seven in
ten immigrant women in Sweden (according to an EU study) are affected by
honor-related violence and that Jewish children (according to a French
government report) can no longer get an education in France because of abuse
by Muslim classmates. Some law-enforcement authorities have already thrown in
the towel: in 2004, Swedish police admitted they have no control over the
situation in Malmö, a city plagued by Muslim rapes and robberies; this August,
after a Muslim gang shootout in Oslo, police said they were reluctant to crack
down on the gangs out of fear for their own safety.
On 9/11, the free world was powerfully reminded of its freedom. In Europe,
alas, that days spirit has been steamrollered by an establishment that
apparently having already accepted the inevitability of Europes Islamization
routinely turn the truth on its head, representing aggressors as victims and
self-defense as inflammatory. That upside-down picture needs to be set aright,
and the spirit of 9/11 resurrected. For the bottom line is simple: if we dont
cherish our liberties with the fervor that the jihadists treasure their faith,
well lose.
DE VOLKSKRANT, 2 SEPTEMBER 2006
Libertarian Republicans
Fiscally Conservative, Socially Tolerant & Pro-Defense!
Dondero is a US Navy Veteran, former Libertarian Party National Committeeman,
fmr. Senior Aide to US Congressman Ron Paul R-TX, and Founder of the Republican
Liberty Caucus. www.mainstreamlibertarian.com
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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