insomnomaniac

Jihad: the Fad?

I read this tripe from Haaaahvaaaad lecturer, Jessica Stern yesterday, and my teeth almost fell out of my mouth when my jaw hit the floor.

Just check out this one paragraph:

Jihad has become a millenarian movement with mass appeal, similar, in many ways, to earlier global movements such as the anarchists of the 19th century or even the peace movement of the 1960s and '70s. But today's radical youth are expressing their dissatisfaction with the status quo by making war, not love. They are seduced by Thanatos rather than Eros. Newly-wed pro-jihadi youths spend their wedding nights watching today's ghoulish pornography: the beheadings of foreigners held hostage in Iraq. Children film themselves reenacting these beheadings, seduced by a familiar drama of the good guys killing the bad guys in order to save the world.

"Mass appeal" she says, but she fails to ask the why behind the obvious "why." She explains that kids turn to jihadism because it has "mass appeal," but if that's true, then why aren't teenagers on the fringe here deciding they want to blow themselves up rather than settle for putting blow up their noses?

Ms. Stern forgets the difference that makes ALL the difference: CULTURE

The culture in which jihad could become a "fad" as she so ludicrously describes it, is one in which parents derive a certain kind of ecstasy at the thought of their babies dying for God.

Our culture, by contrast, is one in which a parent (Andrea Yates) who brutally hunts down and murders all five of her own children (also for God) is deemed "insane" and locked up in a nut-house for life.

For those of you in remedial humanism 101, let's review:
There: Mommas who wish their babies to die for God = sane, rational, heroes or "martyrs"
Here: Mommas who wish their babies to die for God = crazy, insane, irrational, monsters

Proof that Ms. Stern doesn't get it comes farther down the page. Let's read what this esteemed professor has to say about how to combat the problem:

To win this war, we need to understand that we are fighting an idea, not a state. Military action minimally visible and carefully planned and implemented may be necessary to win today's battles. But the tools required in the long run to win the war are neither bombs nor torture chambers. They are ideas and stories that counter the terrorist narrative--and draw potential recruits away from the lure of jihad.

[Emphasis mine]

OK, first of all, anyone who uses "narrative" instead of "culture" is obviously a few fries short of a happy meal when it comes to their ability to perceive reality. Just something I've observed. It's a pretentious word used almost exclusively by academic elites who are so busy looking at the veins on each leaf of each tree, they forget they're in the forest, never mind being able to see it. These are the same folks who can't stop using the word "nuanced" either. But I digress...

Uh-huh. "Ideas" are the ammo we need. Yes, I'm sure that will do it! We'll just round up all the jihadis, their clerics, their teachers, their parents and grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings and friends, and we'll subject them to some of your lectures, some of your "ideas" about better more wholesome ways to fight the status quo they loathe so much.

How would that go exactly? How would you suggest, for example, we combat the "idea" that Jews are monkeys and pigs who drink the blood of Muslim babies? What purpose does racism serve and how would you "replace" it with a better "idea"? Is there a better scapegoat, really? Or do you honestly believe you can convince all the living generations of an enormous group of people that the scapegoat they've chosen is the wrong one? Would a better "idea" have been Hitler's undoing? Would it have worked with the Hitler Youth d'ya think?

Shit, even relatively civilized Mel Gibson--a guy who's successfully hidden his hatred for decades and certainly never ordered his life around doing anything about it--had to get a smack-down to realize being a flaming anti-semite was damaging to his "career," never mind to his "soul." Is that what we want from the Jihadis? An apology for their rantings?

See, it's simple kiddos. People like Ms. Stern--people who think jihad is a "fad" that will just go away--not only don't know their history (or they'd know, as Hugh Hewitt does that "Strictly speaking, I'm not sure that you can describe something that's been around for 14 centuries as a fad.")--they don't know the first thing about Arab or Muslim culture. If they did, they'd understand that it makes about as much sense to talk to a radical Muslim about better "ideas" for dealing with their angst and woe as it does to talk to Andrea Yates or any other child-killer-now-deemed-mentally ill.

Or, as my Dad likes to say, "Talking to a jihadi makes about as much sense as talking to a Dingo dog." If you don't already know, Dingo dogs look like dogs, walk like dogs, bark like dogs, but unlike dogs, cannot be easily domesticated and are always a danger to humans, even when the seem "trained." Their goal in life is to kill and eat, and they'll play possum (play dead) to ambush their pray. They are animal terrorists of a sort. And they don't care if what they kill is a baby kangaroo or a baby human. Makes no difference to them. If it serves their purpose (filling their belly in this case) they'll kill it and eat it. So it is with Jihadis. If it suits their purpose of world domination to kill babies, so be it, even if they are their own.

Put another way, ask yourself, why is it that despite being on the receiving end of over 160 rocket attacks in the last 24 hours alone, you don't hear much about Israeli citizens being killed? Sure, the rockets are inaccurate, but that only proves my point. The Israeli missiles are almost perfectly accurate and we know they don't 'target' women and children, if they did, they wouldn't waste time and effort (and risk planes) dropping leaflets imploring them to get out to avoid getting hurt!

So why the discrepancy? Random attacks for which Israelis have maybe a minute or two warning (five at the most) kill very few, surgical strikes in Lebanese villages that were warned days in advance kill dozens (or so we're told).

There's only ONE explanation, and if you stop and think about it (which of course no one in the media ever does, thus missing the REAL story every single cottin' pickin' time), it makes perfect sense. Israelis love their kids. They come from a culture that loves and values life. When they feel lives are threatened, especially those of the youngest and most innocent and vulnerable amongst them, they move heaven and earth (literally) to move them out of harms way. Jihadis, in contrast, not only don't move Muslim children out of the way, they pack them into buildings, send out faulty intelligence or fire missiles attracting bombardment, and then secretly rejoice at the huge PR boost the ensuing carnage provides. Dingo dog behavior. Kill and eat, kill and eat, without fear or remorse.

Now imagine if you will the Sesame Street song "One of these things is not like the other," and you'll have my point. CULTURE is the differentiator, not "ideas." Sure, cultures are made up of ideas, but they are also made up of "beliefs," which are far less rational. Even I'll be the first to tell anyone who asks that Judeo-Christian beliefs are far from rational. "Turn the other cheek?" "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?" You mean even before I know whether they'll reciprocate? Sheesh! Totally irrational. Some would say "Nice idea, in theory. And yet, we live in a culture that has built its entire world around those beliefs, and thus, that "idea." It would be about as easy to change our minds about these things as it would be to convince us that the world was flat. I know this, you know this, probably the most illiterate gangsta in the hood would agree as well, but for some reason, Ms. Stern would not. In her fantasyland, we could just present a different "narrative" to the jihadis (who come from a culture in which the narrative they have was supposedly handed down literally by God himself), and they would change their minds, would accept a better set of "ideas."

Yeah. Right. Her and what army?

And that, folks, is my point. It takes armies, not ideas. As with Dingo dogs, the only thing you can do to change the behavior and motivation of a Jihadi is to KILL HIM. Kill enough of them, fast enough, overwhelmingly enough and convincingly enough, and those who are left--like the Dingo dogs who encounter a bonfire in the midst of your encampment in the outback--will tuck their tails between their legs and run the other way. In the world we live in, that's about the best "idea" we could hope for them to have.

Posted by insomnomaniac at August 2, 2006 3:07 PM | TrackBack