The American Spectator

An Islamic terrorist shoots up an American military base. Another tries to blow up a plane over Detroit. Still another attempts to bomb tourists in Times Square. But John Brennan, Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, remains confident that “jihad” is a harmless concept of Oprah-like uplift.

In remarks made in May, Brennan declared that “jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children.”

Who knew that John Brennan was an authoritative Islamic theologian? Has he shared his superior understanding of Islam with the imams who issue death edicts and call for violent jihad? They probably wouldn’t regard his definition of jihad as exactly pontifical. But then again, they are probably happy that the Obama administration has finally found a religion it considers “holy” — not Christianity, which it regards as a malign force in public life, but Islam, which it considers intrinsically peaceful.  

This is what Israel doesn’t understand. Islam, as a religion of peace, produces only peace activists, though it has to be admitted that those peace activists on the Gaza flotilla wielded their knives with considerable confidence and skill. These Gandhis with iron rods didn’t exactly look like amateurs.

The video footage of the peace brutality confirms that the latest Islamic exercise in self-improvement did involve stabbing Israeli soldiers. But then, that certainly falls well within the range of Bill Ayers’ definition of peace activism. These guys were certainly no more dangerous than the Black Panthers. The peace activists even began their journey with a sweet song about “Khaybar,” according to journalist Melanie Phillips.

Khaybar is a reference to Islam’s peace activism in the 7th century when it slaughtered Jews in an oasis town near Medina. “Khaybar, Khaybar o Jews, the army of Muhammad will return,” goes the Arabic chant today.

Israel also doesn’t understand that the army of Muhammad, or, pace Brennan, peace activists of Muhammad, win the moment a nation takes defending itself against them seriously. Better to let the peace activists bash your head in with an iron rod than lose your “values” by, say, stopping them. Or as John Brennan put it in the above-mentioned speech: “remaining faithful to our values requires something else — that we never surrender the diversity and tolerance and openness to different cultures and faiths that define us as Americans.”

Given the choice between effective self-defense and diversity, our proud nation chooses diversity! But somehow, according to Brennan, Islamic terrorists are trying to bait us into reversing this equation. Why they would want that to happen, when they are benefiting from this mindless liberalism, Brennan doesn’t bother to make clear:

Even more than the attacks al-Qaida and its violent affiliates unleash or the blood they spill, they seek to strike at the very essence of who we are as Americans by replacing our hard-won confidence with fear and replacing our tolerance with suspicion; by turning our great diversity from a source of strength into a source of division; by causing us to undermine the laws and values that have been a source of our strength and our influence throughout the world; by turning a nation whose global leadership has meant greater security and prosperity for people in every corner of the globe into a nation that retreats from the world stage and abandons allies and partners.

That is what al-Qaida and its allies want — to achieve their goals by turning us into something we are not.  But that is something they can never achieve, because only the people of America can change who we are as a nation.  Al-Qaida can sew explosives into their clothes or park an SUV with explosives on a busy street.  But it is our choice to react with panic or resolve.  They can seek to recruit people already living among us, but it is our choice to subject entire communities to suspicion, or to support those communities in reaching the disaffected before they turn to violence. Terrorists may try to bring death to our cities, but it is our choice to either uphold the rule of law or chip away at it.  They may strike our communities, but it is our choice to either respond wisely and effectively or lash out in ways that inflame entire regions and stoke the fires of the violent extremism. 

Those wily Islamic terrorists are trying to manipulate us into defending ourselves! And this administration for one isn’t going to fall into their trap. But poor, benighted little Israel did. Its commandos made the mistake of not letting the peace activists kill them.