The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 6 of 10)

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Although the thrust of Secretary Babbin's piece is very sound, he falls into his usual trap of applying his brush too broadly.

He writes, "Spain fell when the Madrid train bombings caused its government to be defeated in an election held a day later." That is not the case. What happened was that in the bombings' immediate aftermath the government of Jose Maria Aznar attempted to link them to the Basque separatists ETA; a revolting lie, akin to blaming the Provisional IRA for 7/7 or Puerto Rican separatists for 9/11. It was not the bombings themselves but Aznar's dissimulation concerning their perpetrators' identities that caused his defeat. If Secretary Babbin wishes to toss about blame for the "fall of Spain" he should at least aim it at the right target; the Aznar government's immediate and politically self-interested lies.

The United Kingdom has not given up free speech -- if he really thinks that then he should spend more time surfing the British blogosphere. What we do have are political, media and administrative elites grounded in the thoughts, attitudes and practices of the far left, centrists, Hillary Clintons who speak Standard English in received pronunciation. To think that they are in any way like the rest of us is wrong. Muslims comprise the grand total of 2.2 percent of the British population. About 99 percent of the remaining 97.8 percent know Trevor Brooks for precisely what he is -- our enemy. We know very well that the spread of Islam is not conducive to the maintenance of our secular civil society. We didn't need 52 dead on the streets of London to tell us that. The Blair government's pitiful reaction to that act of war was to say "the rules of the game have changed."

p>What rules? What game? br> -- unsigned /p> p> Jed's got it right especially the part about the enemy's fear and insecurity. We certainly must be more aggressive or we'll wind up being terrorized into impotence like the Brits. However, I think we can use a more specific term than "Islamofascist." We are told these folks have perverted the "religion of peace" so, why not call them Perverted Islamic Terrorist Assassins (PITA)? It is probably too awkward to label them murdering Islamic terrorist clintons, the last being the synonym for totally corrupt pervert, of course. br> -- Dick Lambert br> Eagle Rock, Virginia /p>

Melanie Phillips is a hysteric with a book to sell; and the good lady was herself none too happy when Francis Fukuyama once exercised his right of free speech, saying that "A period of silence from this particular thinker would surely be preferable." After that outburst I don't really regard her as being much of a poster-girl for political pluralism.

Labels like "Islamofascist" fail to capture Islam's essence. Islam is just another totalitarian ideology. All ideologies eventually fail -- that is their fate. Our common problem is that right now no political leader is prepared to step up and be the Ronald Reagan who stands against Islam and says, "No more Muslim immigration!"

topics:
Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Religion, Islam, Abortion, Books, Constitution, Law, NATO, Socialism, Fascism, Immigration, Oil