9/11 9 years on

Nine years after 19 Islamists destroyed the World Trade Center and 3,000 people within them, Americans are still coming to terms with the attack, the attackers, and the reasons for the attack—and with America’s own responses to that attack, both foreign and domestic.

The foreign response has immediate, bellicose, and misdirected. The domestic response is ineffectual, confused, and (even when it is positive) moves with glacial slowness.  Nine years after the World Trade Center was destroyed, its replacement is finally—finally!—emerging from the rubble. The New York Times has a great four-part presentation hosted by reporter David W. Dunlap showing the rather sombre rebuilding.  “When are they going to start rebuilding at Ground Zero? They have!”  Thank goodness. [Thanks to reader Russell W. for the link.] Watch progress (and the lights)at the Ground Zero web cam. [Hat tip Rational Jenn]

And what about the psychological responses to a war long declared but still unacknowledged? To policy both confused and myopic? On this note, on this now sanctified day of remembrance in a war declared in the name of  Islam (but still undeclared and largely unrecognised by western leaders), this thoughtful reflection by “a liberal Democrat,” writer Pamela Sutton, is worth reading, and contemplating.

There was nothing religious about the Twin towers, but it was sacred ground to me. I have never been able to return to New York City. The pain is still too fresh; too deep. Have nine years gone by? I’ve hardly noticed…

America, likewise, is stuck in a frozen prism of confused loyalties. We’re trying to move forward and backwards simultaneously. Our country is treading through congealed slush in the ice floes of polarized vision. America has no unified sense of itself, and our actions bear this out. America is trying to win a war in Afghanistan while building mosques in New York City. Presidents proclaim “Islam is peaceful,” while driving unmanned explosive drones into Pakistani mountain villages. America is obsessed with arresting and deporting illegal aliens, while simultaneously trying to embrace Islam with open arms -- no questions asked. It’s politically correct to ask if western governmental models can work in the Middle East, but it’s a hate crime to ask if Islam can ever be compatible with western democracy. Last week in Europe I stepped back from America and took a long, hard look. What I observed was confusion…

Today I received my copy of Time magazine. The cover reads: “Is America Islamophobic?” Before flipping to the article, I have a better question: “Are Muslims Islamophobic?” The unspoken answer would be “Yes.” As American troops packed up and left Iraq on Aug. 25, at least 53 Iraqi civilians were killed and 270 wounded in coordinated suicide bombings targeting Iraqi security forces throughout their country. According to Saleh Khamis, a 38-year-old teacher in Buhriz, Iraq, these attacks are “just the beginning of the storm…

Is America “Islamaphobic?” If not, we’re doomed…

Instead of burning a Koran to commemorate 9/11, as pastor Terry Jones from Gainesville is advocating, I suggest that Americans read a Koran, along with a few basic history books. As repulsive and hateful as “Pastor” Jones of the “Dove World Outreach Center” may be, the difference between him and Islamic extremists is that he is not promoting “behead an Imam day.” Spend 9/11 in a library. America needs to understand Islam in all of its complex-refracting-Medieval-nihilistic facets before we decide it’s politically correct to embrace a religion that, for as long I can remember, has wreaked terror, death, and misogyny throughout the Middle East, North and South Africa, Central Asia, Indonesia, Israel, America, and Europe.
    On 9/11 America was blindsided by Islamic extremism; and America is still deeply confused. America is as confused as airline passengers whose plane has just been hijacked. Except the plane hasn’t just been hijacked; it’s been turned into a suicide bomb. And unless we make informed decisions about Islam, our moment of epiphany will be our last.

Lest we forget.

I Ran [updated]

Q: What’s more important in world politics than the mis-named Ground Zero Mosque?

A: The fact that the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism has just gone nuclear—in rhetoric as well as reality.

Q: And how was this allowed to happen?

A: Thirty years of bipartisan appeasement:

 Consider the rise of Islamic Totalitarianism. In 1979, a new Iranian regime founded on Islamic [] principles held fifty-two Americans hostage for four hundred and forty-four days, while America helplessly begged for their return and Iranian leaders had a world stage to proclaim their superiority to the nation they call the ‘Great Satan.’ … [W]ith America on her knees, the burgeoning anti-American movement achieved a crucial victory.
    [Did this] warrant a military response? Did it rise to the level of a direct attack sufficient to place us at the point of ‘last resort’ with Iran and other nations that sponsor Islamic terrorism? Not according to Jimmy Carter. What about after two hundred and forty-three marines were killed in Lebanon in 1983? Not according to Ronald Reagan. Or after Khomeini’s fatwa offered terrorists a bounty to destroy writer Salman Rushdie and his American publisher for expressing an ‘un-Islamic’ viewpoint in 1989? Not according to George Bush, Sr. Or after the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993? Not according to Bill Clinton. The pattern is telling.

It is a pattern that has allowed Iran’s Mullahs to pursue the Islamist Holy Grail combining nuclear enrichment with the sponsorship of world terrorism—from Lebanon to Gaza to Iraq to Afghanistan—while allowing themselves to think the pursuit will attract no response.

Since future decisions are so often made on the basis of past actions, it underscores again how a forceful response at the right time can quell a conflict before it starts; whereas the lack of one so frequently leads to dangerous escalation, and much more force being necessary much later.

[Cartoon and article by Bosch Fawstin]

UPDATE: Demonstrating they’ve learned nothing at all from history, today’s US Administration plays the “Don’t worry, be happy” card:

U.S. "reassures" Israel that Iran is "at least 12 months" from nuclear bomb despite starting reactor today…  There, there. You're not going to get obliterated today; it's just later on where things could get a little dicey…  Just try not to think of the idea that the "dying" Lockerbie bomber could, theoretically, outlive your country as you know it.

Article Published at Big Peace: "Ground Zero Mosque, Rotten Foundations"

Guest Post by Jeff Perren.

My article discussing the plan to build the so-called Ground Zero Mosque in Manhattan has been published at Big Peace.

Your feedback is invited - pro, con, or otherwise.

Thanks, Jeff

Controversy over proposed ‘Ground Zero’ Mosque [update 3]

In his latest podcast, Leonard Peikoff comes out swinging against allowing the “give America the finger” Mosque to be built just three blocks or so from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, where more than 3000 people were killed in the name of Islam less than ten years ago.  But he’s not just objecting to its construction, he’s calling for government action to destroy it altogether. Asked “isn’t it private property and therefore protected by individual rights?” Peikoff says no, emphatically not, and further …

In regard to this issue, I would say, any way possible, permission should be refused; and, if they go ahead and build it, the government should bomb it out of existence. Evacuating it first, with no compensation to any of the property owners involved in this monstrosity.”

Trouble is (well, there’s several causes for trouble, really), his argument applies to every mosque built in every street in every city in the west. Which is no better than what Roosevelt did when he locked up every Japanese-American he could find right after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  As Ari Armstrong said last week:

If there is real evidence that the builders of the mosque actively plan to forcibly overthrow the United States government or harm its citizens, then they should be prosecuted and imprisoned by the government. I have seen no such evidence.”

Yes, Islam is at war with the west.  And yes, those who’ve committed acts of war should be treated as casualties, not as defendants.  But as far as those building the mosque are concerned, any guilt must first be proven, not just assumed.

If not,  seems to me that objecting to this mosque is simply a proxy for objecting to what’s not being done to hunt down and kill those responsible for terrorism and for supporting terrorists —in other words, objecting to the foolish war that is being waged against a tactic instead of against the real enemy, a failing war that has left the real enemies to haunt failed states like Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan and hostile states like Iran in the same way that a vampire haunts darkness. Or in Diana Hsieh’s succinct words:

Totalitarian Islam is a major threat, but that threat needs to be fought by the military -- by destroying the states that sponsor terrorism -- not by violating private property rights in order to prevent a mosque from being built.”

On this then, Trey Given’s carefully considered words speak for mine:

Dr. Peikoff says in his comment that if I disagree, then I don’t understand Objectivism.  I’m fine with that. I do not subscribe to Objectivism so that I might call myself an Objectivist.  I call myself an Objectivist because I agree with all that I know and understand about Objectivism.  Part of that understanding is that I make up my own mind about these things.  Dr. Peikoff can think whatever he likes about things, but his thoughts are not mine.  I will not accept an argument from authority.
    “All I can say is that I will re-listen to the podcast and re-consider what he says and see if I agree.  At present, I do not.”

Me either.

RELATED POSTS:

• Leonard Peikoff on the NYC Mosque – Diana Hsieh, NOODLE FOOD
• Steve Simpson: Rule of Law in the Case of the NYC Mosque – Steve Simpson, NOODLE FOOD
• Dr. Peikoff on the Ground Zero Mega-Mosque: Bomb It Out of Existence! – THE VINCENTON POST
• War Powers Without War – Robert Tracinski, Dec 2001

UPDATE 1: Amit Ghate at the Thrutch blog posts this telling excerpt from Steve Simpson’s piece, making the case against ad hoc government action against the proposed mosque:

It doesn't help that the cause may be moral. Morality is necessary to objective law, but it is far from sufficient. Objective law also requires, well, that we actually have objective laws and processes on the books and that we use them. It is not enough--it is never, ever enough--to say that it would be morally appropriate to proceed against someone if we only had the laws to do it, but since we lack the laws or the political will, our ends justify whatever means we decide to use under the circumstances.”

UPDATE 2: Ari Armstrong asks five excellent (im)pertinent questions about the proposed mosque, and makes this equally excellent final point:

 

Final thought: I can think of little that would make more of a mockery of the United States than to fight Islamist terrorism with zoning laws. ‘You better stop killing us, or we'll zone your asses!’ We cannot fight a war with zoning laws, and the attempt is both futile and embarrassing.”

Read his whole post here asking What About the Forty Other Islamic Centers?.

UPDATE 3: Just to clarify, what Dr Peikoff says of the govt allowing the construction of the mosque:

 

If you can even conceive of that as justified because of ‘property rights, then I say you haven't a clue what property rights or individualism or Objectivism is saying, because what permitting that amounts to is ‘roll over, kick me, kill me, I have nothing to say.’"