THE STORKS ARE LANDING
Johnson, Daniel
3 2 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R M A R C H 2 0 0 7 HE QUESTION THAT ANIMATES THIS ESSAY is one that troubles not only Americans, but the friends of freedom and democracy everywhere....
...It is hard to measure the precise extent of Wahhabi and other extremist influence, but a fairly reliable indicatoristheattitudetowardwomen:Iftheyareexcluded from the mosque, or segregated in a separate prayer room, it is likely to be hard-line...
...By far the most powerfulobstacleremainstheleft,whichstillholdspower in most European countries most of the time, and which usually sabotages any conservative leader who tries to break the consensus...
...I hope that meant he got to see his homeland again...
...Most of the 50 million ormorepeoplewhohavediedinwarssince1945were thevictimsofEurope'sabdicationofitsresponsibility towards its former colonies...
...It is this doctrinal rigidity that causes many European Muslims to believe that America is attacking Islam, even though the truth is just the reverse...
...Colonel Tiger watched this woman attempt the extremely arduous assault course designed for able-bodied recruits...
...where American capitalism is dynamic, European capitalismisstatic;whereAmericansarehopeful,convincedthattheycansolvealltheproblemsoftheworld bytheirownefforts,Europeansarefatalistic,helplessly and hopelessly expecting the worst...
...Another case: An undercover reporter for theChannelFourdocumentary"Dispatches"filmeda radical preacher denouncing Western democracy before the council of a large mosque in Birmingham...
...Europe contemplatesAmericanfeatsofarmswithbarelydisguiseddistaste.ThebombingofBaghdadin2003was intended to induce shock and awe...
...If it is to preserve its place as the heartland of Western civilization, Europe has no choice but to followAmerica'slead.America'shopesandfearsare--or should be--Europe's, too...
...Theflightfromfaithandtheabilitytoenduresuffering...
...These crises are inextricably interT H ES T O R K SA R EL A N D I N G 3 6 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R M A R C H 2 0 0 7 For those European states that possessed colonies, the Cold War coincided with decolonization...
...The moral code under which Western Europehasoperatedsince1945putssafetyfirst,second, and third...
...Europedisencumbereditselfofaburden,buttheconD A N I E LJ O H N S O N M A R C H 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 3 5 TherotsetinduringtheColdWar,which wasthefirsttimeinhistorythatEurope hadnotpickedupthetabforits ownmilitaryexpenditure...
...Instead, a very different dream inspires many young European Muslims: the dream of an Islamic republic underarestoredcaliphate.Combinedwithanaggrieved sense of victimhood and a perverted cult of martyrdom,thisvisionofapurer,universalfaithbecomesan unstable, volatile, and literally explosive fantasy...
...America's martial idealism is rooted in the republic's founding vision of liberty under the law, wastestedalmosttodestructionintheCivilWar,and achievedfullexpressiononlyintheglobalconflictsof the20thcentury.Noothernationhassoliberallysacrificeditsbloodandtreasureforthesakeofliberty;no othernationcouldhavematchedsuchsublimewords with such substantial deeds...
...AND YET ALL AROUND US the generations that defeated the Kaiser and Hitler are quietly slipping away, their astonishing deeds disregarded,theirdecorationstreatedasmerecuriosities...
...By implication, Steyn acknowledges that the transformation of Europe into Eurabia is not inevitable--otherwise, why bother to polemicize against it...
...WHAT IS GNAWING attheheartofEurope,rather, are two impending crises: demographic decline and the creeping Islamicization of the continent...
...the revulsion from war and the virtues of the warrior;theabdicationofresponsibilitythatwasonce the concomitant of imperialism: These are all crucial factors in the transformation of the Old World's relationshipwiththeNew.Europe,thehomelandof Western civilization, has mutated from a self-confident concertofpowers,comfortableinthecompanyoftheir bold and bumptious American ally, into a continent of querulous, carping prima donnas, quick to criticize anything and everything about the United States but unwillingtomakesacrificesforanythingbeyondtheir ownnarrowhorizons...
...CONTROLLING THE CASH SUPPLY may not be sufficient, however...
...The central role of jihad in Islam is not about to change, either...
...The rot set in during the Cold War, which was the first time in history that Europe had notpickedupthetabforitsownmilitaryexpenditure...
...To the refrain "Take up the White Man's burden," the poet warnsofthetrialsthatlieaheadforBritain'sAmerican cousins:"Thesavagewarsofpeace/Fillfullthemouth ofFamine/Andbidthesicknesscease;/Andwhenyour goal is nearest/The end for others sought,/Watch Sloth and heathen Folly/Bring all your hopes to nought...
...The demonization of Israel represents a similar acceptance of Muslim antiSemitism...
...The critics ignored the precision of the attack, which reduced civilian casualties to a minute fraction of those inflicted in comparable raids during the Second World War or even Vietnam...
...When she encountered a wall and was required to jump up to a highledge,hefullyexpectedhertogiveup.Notabitof it: Nonchalantly unstrapping her artificial leg, she threw it up onto the ledge, and then with a supreme effortsucceededinhoppingup.Sheclimbeddownon theotherside,putherpeg-legbackon,andcarriedon...
...With St...
...They are joinedbyagrowingnumberofwritersandacademics for whom the censorship, misogyny, and illiberalism associatedwithIslamarethemainissues.Theirvoices are few but their cry of j'accuse hits home precisely because they cannot be dismissed as "right-wing...
...The British authorities did not dare to arrest him in the mosque, so began protracted negotiations...
...The vast D A N I E LJ O H N S O N M A R C H 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 3 7 Aggressivesecularization,expunging Christianmoralityfromthelawand excludingChristianvoicesfromthe publicsquare,goeshand-in-hand withaninformalacceptanceof Sharia(Islamiclaw...
...Yet the American example could still teach Europe how to assimilate its Muslims withoutconflict.Europe'smulticulturalmodelmustbe replacedbythemeltingpot,whichinculcatesAmerican valueswhilerespectingreligiousdifferences...
...Christendom, though never confined to Europe, was constitutiveofEurope.WhenEuropebegantodeconstruct its Judeo-Christian inheritance, it tore up its roots...
...IT WAS DURING THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR, the first humanitarianinterventionbythenewlyself-confident United States, that Rudyard Kipling addressed one of his most politically incorrect poems to the American people...
...BY DANIEL JOHNSON Hippo, Christians believed that the city of God was both stronger and incomparably more precious than the cities of men, and that pagan invasions were merelyameansofdivinechastisement:"Thus,inthis universal catastrophe, the sufferings of Christians have tended to their moral improvement, because they viewed them with the eyes of faith...
...In both cases, however,theright-of-centergovernmentsthattooka pro-Americanlinewerepunishedbytheirelectorates with eviction from office--notoriously, in the case of Spain, under the impact of the terrorist attack on Madrid...
...The opinions expressed in this series are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation...
...When Iran supplies terrorists in Iraq to kill American or British troops, or when it menaces Israel with the threat of nuclear annihilation, Europe's reflexive response is to send diplomatic missions to discover what the Iranians "really" want...
...Muslims now outnumber practicing Christians in many European cities, and mosques, schools, and other Islamic institutions have acquired powerandinfluencetomatch.Inmanycases,however, they have simultaneously been radicalized...
...The collapse of the Roman Empire in the West was not the end of civilization...
...It was not blind chance that made him spare his enemy, but the instinctive humanity that made Junger untypical of the Nazi-led Wehrmachthewouldnonethelessserveundertwodecades later...
...Wecanseetheresultsofthisradicalizationwherever we look...
...And in the defense of that civilization, Europeans are doomed by history and geography to occupy the front line...
...While it is true that the volume of anti-American rhetoric has recently been turned down in France, largely thanks to the Gaullist presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, and even more so in Germany, thanks to the chancellor, Angela Merkel, the record of these two leading nations of the European Union inspires little confidence that a real changeofheartisintheoffing.Forallintentsandpurposes, Europe has ceased to be a reliable ally of the UnitedStates.Thecontinenthasinsteadrevertedtoa complex patchwork of attitudes and allegiances such asexistedbeforetheColdWar,withtheemergenceof Islam as a major political factor serving to polarize opinion for and--mainly--against America...
...The series is supportedbyagrantfromtheJohnTempletonFoundation...
...There can be no doubt that this process of imperial disenchantment lies at the heart of Europe's selfabsorption.Thelosswasmoralasmuchasterritorial...
...The damage inflicted on the European psyche by this loss of nerve, this failure of moral imagination, is incalculable...
...Kagan's argument in Dangerous Nation neatly dovetails with Of Paradise and Power by demonstrating that American readiness to undertake military intervention for humanitarian purposes was not an aberration, but "reflected Americans' view of themselvesastheadvanceguardofcivilization,leadingthe way against backward and barbaric nations and empires...
...His treatise Of Paradise and Power crystallizedtherivalperspectivesintoaseries of neat contrasts: Kant versus Hobbes, peace versus war,multilateralismversusunilateralism,"soft"versus"hard"power.Morerecently,Kaganhasfilledout this aphoristic outline with Dangerous Nation, a closely argued and erudite narrative history of "America's place in the world" from the origins of the republic to the early 20th century...
...It has become Europe's nightmare...
...Today, less than 20 years after this European epiphany, those hopes have turned to dust...
...As the battle reaches its climax, Chesterton evokes the plight of the godforsaken Christian slaves who rowed the Turkish galleys: "Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,/Thronging of the thousands up that labor under sea/ White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty...
...The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall...
...Yet the old adage "demography is destiny" is at best a half-truth...
...The Islamist storks are heading Europe's way--in fact, theyhavearrived.ThequestionforEuropeansis:Are they men or frogs...
...WHAT IS IT THAT has rendered Europeans so unwilling to rouse themselves in the defense of liberty that Americans so naturally regard as their vocation from God...
...America'shopesandfearsare-orshouldbe--Europe's,too...
...It was a plea from another world...
...Whether or not he was the first to make the connection between demography and Islam, Mark Steyn has led the charge...
...The sameprogramuncoveredsimilarevidenceofWahhabi influence on the oldest and most prestigious mosque in Britain: the London Central Mosque in Regent's Park...
...Bush may wish that he had heeded Kipling'swarning--"NorcalltooloudonFreedom/To cloakyourweariness"--hisfault,iffaultitbe,istohave showntoogreatazealforliberty...
...For more than half a century, the United States has subsidized the "European pillar" of NATO...
...So, though we are undoubtedly living in a period of pacifism or even defeatism, the mood could change abruptly...
...Nor does the collectivism of conflict necessarily mean that mercy is denied to individual enemies...
...Europe doesn't havetobethatway.(Russiaisanotherstory...
...not so in the case of Iraq...
...One of those who fought on the wrong side in T H ES T O R K SA R EL A N D I N G 3 4 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R M A R C H 2 0 0 7 ThecollapseoftheRomanEmpirein theWestwasnottheendofcivilization...
...Daniel Johnson is a London-based contributor to Commentary, the New Criterion, the New York Sun, andotherpublications.Thisessayisthesixthinatenpartseriesbeingpublishedinsuccessiveissuesof The American Spectator under the general title, "The PursuitofLiberty:CantheIdealsThatMadeAmerica Great Provide a Model for the World...
...That America really is alone in possessing both the strength and the will to halt the march of Islamofascism, on the other hand, seems to me indisputable...
...Europe is about to be tested again...
...Itiseasytoforgethowrecentthistransformation is.Therevolutionsof1989promisedtobring"Eastern Europe"--a misnomer for lands that had once been wholly Western--back to life...
...For example, the BritishobviouslyshouldnotletTablighiJamaat,amissionary organization that intelligence experts suspect is a front for terrorism, to build the largest mosque in Europe in the East End of London, next to the site of the 2012 Olympic village...
...In 1933, the year that the Nazis came to power, the Oxford Union, a debating society for the future British political elite, passed a notorious motion: "That this House would under no circumstances fight for its King and country...
...But: "With a plaintive sound, he reached into his pocket, not to pull out a weapon, but a photograph which he held up to me...
...Consider two examples of martial virtue that are almost commonplace in the United States...
...That one man of all often appeared in my dreams...
...The objection was less to the destructiveness of the military technology than to the "gung-ho" enthusiasm of the menandwomenwhofoughtwhatprovedtobeatenacious and incredibly bloodthirsty foe...
...Yet that courage is precisely what seems now to be lacking...
...Yet radicalIslamisasmuchapoliticalideologyas itisareligion,andAmericanshaveneverhesitatedtobanmembersofsubversivepolitical parties, whether Nazi or Communist, from enteringthecountry.Perhapsthebestruleof thumb is to follow the money, which is the root of all evil, including Islamofascism...
...A central tenet of the 21st-century left, too, is anti-Americanism...
...Short of closing down at leasthalf the mosques and subjecting the rest to close scrutiny, there is no simple solution...
...With notable exceptions among the "accession" countries of central and Eastern Europe, the only continental states to offer support to the United States in Iraq were Spain and Italy...
...Hitler apparently took this as evidence that the British would never fight another war with Germany...
...What is commonly called the West still identifies a coherent conception of what a civilization is, or at least ought to be...
...In the view of many, what is neededisanIslamicreformation.Quiteapart fromthefactthattheChristianReformationwasfollowed by a century of wars of religion, the possibility of Islam actually undergoing such a reformation seems remote...
...Bravery is equated with bellicosity, chivalry with chauvinism, heroism with celebrity...
...It is this magnanimity that still separates the West from the Islamic terrorists...
...But thesearerareexceptions...
...Itisadebt,however,thatremainsoutstanding,at least as far as most of continental Europe is concerned...
...The progressive secularization of Europe, driven by what the Jewish scholar Joseph Weiler has called the ideology of "Christophobia," is exposing the civilization of the West to the very dangers against which the Judeo-Christian ethic of spiritual resilience in the face of temporal disaster had for so long protected it...
...But many--probably most--British mosques are now under the control of community "leaders"whoareradicallyopposedtothewaronterror and whose loyalty to the Muslim "ummah" takes precedence over their allegiance to the Crown...
...In Bosnia, Kosovo, and Af-ghanistan, this fact of life was eventually acknowledged, grudgingly and belatedly...
...Later, I thought it was blind chance that I let him go and plunged onward...
...Like Elizabeth I, we do not wish to make windows into men's souls...
...I once had an exchange with the German foreign minister Joschka Fischer at an embassylunchabouthiscountry'sfailuretohelp Iraq to get back on its feet...
...Theseandsimilarsentimentshavebecomeanarticleoffaithformost of the European left, and even for conservatives who wishtocurryfavorwiththeliberalmedia...
...To take a couple of examples: A terrorist suspect who had been subject to a "control order," restricting his movements and requiring him to report to the police every day, absconded and took sanctuary in his local mosque...
...Onthecontrary,thesuccessivewaves ofbarbarianpeoplesevokedanew kindofcivilization,morerobust thantheancientpolis...
...It did so--but among the coalition's European allies no less than its enemies...
...True, we have been here before...
...twined...
...This was the dream offered by the founder of London's Muslim College, Zaki Badawi, whose proudest boast was that he was a member of the Athenaeum, a club traditionally frequented by Anglican bishops...
...Augustine of M A R C H 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 3 3 Europeans ignore their increasing Islamicization and turn against America at their peril...
...The European refusal, not only to assist in the overthrow of a tyrant but to give a fledgling democracy all possible assistance, is a measure of its decline...
...Why, when the rewards of liberty have been so amply demonstrated to the peoples of Europe over the course of the 20th century, have they turned with such vehemence against the nation that rescued, restored, and isnowagainreinforcingthoseliberties...
...Blair Tiger, told me about the case of a female officer who had lost a leg in Iraq...
...That ethos is well summed up byG.K...
...Europe is now in the early stages of a Kulturkampf, a cultural confrontation between unreformed Islam and the modern nation-state...
...Of course, it is not a one-way street: Finsbury Park Mosque, where the Islamofascist preacher Abu Hamza radicalized many young men who later became terrorists, is now under the control of moderates.Oneofthem--aSomalirefugeewhohadseenfirst hand the terrible consequences of Islamist sectarianism in his native country--told me exactly how the extremists had been systematically excluded...
...Memories of Yugoslavia and Chechnya are still fresh...
...Five centuries ago, Martin Luther wrote in his treatise Secular Authority: "Frogs need storks...
...The heroes themselves refer to their exploits rarely, and when they do speak of them it is in a matter-offact way that belies the unimaginable circumstances in which they saved civilization from tearing itself apart...
...Europehasneitherships,normen,normoney-or at least it is not prepared to spend money on war, least of all against Islamist terror...
...Europe has internalized the clash of civilizations...
...Moreover, such doctrinal invigilation would run contrary to the great traditionofreligioustolerationthatgoesbacktoLocke and Spinoza...
...The point is that Europe, to survive,mustconnecttheloveoflibertywiththecourage to defend it...
...is to be compatible with the Anglo-Saxon idea of liberty under man-made law on which the United States is based...
...He recalls an encounter with a wounded British officer in the same battle...
...Today "The White Man's Burden" offends because of its racial overtones, but it is not really about race so much as responsibility...
...When in January, Tony Blair welcomedCondoleezzaRicetoDowningStreet,Peter Hain,aseniormemberofhiscabinet,chosethatdaytodenounce"themostright-wingAmericanadministration, if not ever, then in living memory" and declared that"theneo-conmissionhasfailed...
...If they choose to heed Jacques Chirac rather than Tony Blair, then Europeans will get what they deserve...
...It is too late to do anything about the likes of Gunter Grass and Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky,andEricHobsbawm.Butyoungerintellectuals who do not wish to be re-educated in Mecca shouldbeabletomakecommoncausewithconservatives on the issue of freedom of speech and the press...
...PresidentBushcouldechoKiplingintheinner recesses of his heart--any less privately and he would never be forgiven--but of his European peers only TonyBlairwouldunderstand.Therestknowlittleand care less about bringing freedom and democracy tobenighted nations...
...D A N I E LJ O H N S O N M A R C H 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 3 9 Ifitistopreserveitsplaceastheheartland of Westerncivilization,Europehasno choicebuttofollowAmerica'slead...
...The loss of empire mattered less in itself than as an abandonmentofthepeoplesofAfrica,Asia,LatinAmerica,and Oceania to what often proved a hellish fate...
...Iran, then, will be the supreme test of European resolve...
...The most ignominious chapter in Europe'slonghistoryhasbeendeliberatelyandindelibly imprinted on the collective memory of its peoples-but for what purpose, if not to prevent a repetition of the Nazi genocide...
...Sharia is divine and hence immutable...
...Aggressive secularization, expunging Christian morality from the law and excluding Christian voices from the public square, goes hand-in-hand with an informal acceptance of Sharia (Islamic law...
...This time, however, the trahison des clercs, as Julien Benda called it, is even more blatantly against the interests of the intellectuals as a class than it was in the case of fascism or Communism.Islam,eveninitsmoremoderateform, has no place for the libertarian and libertine values that predominate in what they see as the decadent culture of the West...
...In Britain, Tony Blair is loathed by the left and now finds himself closer to neoconservatives on bothsidesoftheAtlantic;yettheEustonManifestoin 2006broughttogetheragroupofleft-wingintellectuals who support his stand against the jihad...
...FundedlargelybySaudiandotherMiddleEasternoil money, Wahhabi influence is growing fast...
...Holding a pistol to his victim's head, Junger fully intended to shoot him...
...There can be no doubt that this process of imperial disenchantment lies at the heart of Europe's self-absorption...
...It was the pioneer of demography, the Reverend Thomas Malthus, who gained economics its reputation as the "dismal science"-and his prediction that industrialization would produce famine turned out to be wrong...
...It is not easy to imagine such scenes taking place incontinentalEurope.MostEuropeansarenolonger ready to lay down their lives for their fellow countrymen--or indeed for any other cause...
...For those European states that possessed colonies, the Cold War coincided with decolonization...
...What was once the European burden has become primarily an American one...
...Their only comment was: "When can you start...
...THAT, OF COURSE, IS NOT ALL that Europe has to learnfromAmerica.WheretheUnitedStatesis democratic,theEuropeanUnionisbureaucratic...
...majorityofBritishMuslimsarenotMiddleEasternin origin...
...IT IS ILLUMINATING TO COMPARE thereactionsofEuropeans to previous existential threats with the new threat posed by radical Islam...
...Americans and Europeans may inhabit differentcontinents, but they surely do not inhabit different planets...
...There is potential here for a civil war that could tear Europe apart...
...And though Mr...
...America Alone makes the case that Europe faces a future of accelerating depopulation--unless mass immigration by rapidly reproducingMuslimsfillsthevacuum.Hisargumentisthat "Eutopia"--the pacific, welfare-cosseted, multicultural,greenandpleasantlandthattheEUaspiresto be--is on a collision course with "Eurabia"--the new generation of hostile, proselytizing, violent Muslim youths bent on turning their adoptive continentintoakindofGazastripwritlarge.ForSteyn, anewDarkAgesbeckons...
...Humanity in general,and Europe in particular, owes the United States a debt of honor that is unprecedented in history...
...Nor will the invocation of the Enlightenmentasanalternativesourceofinspiration besufficient.LiketheRenaissanceculturefromwhich itemerged,theEnlightenmenttoowasindebtedtothe Judeo-ChristiantraditionsthathadpreservedthecivilizationoftheWestinitsdarkesthours.Iftheexperience of the totalitarian pseudo-religions of the last century should have taught Europeans anything, it is that in the absence of the active defense of the JudeoChristian conception of the moral integrity of the human person, the more utilitarian values of the Enlightenmentalonecannotbereliedupontoprevent adescentintounspeakabledepravity...
...Europe forgot the truth about its own origins: that the salvation of Western civilization was made possible by the powers of endurance of Christianity, which in turn owed everything to the miraculous survival of the Jews...
...Yet the war on terror is viewed with a jaundiced eye from the oppositeshoreoftheAtlantic:FormanyEuropeans,itis America's war, not Europe's, if it is a war at all...
...Kipling evokes "The cry of hosts ye humour/(Ah,slowly...
...The young male fantasists who become Islamist jihadis attempt to live this dream...
...What, though, if the Iranian tyrant simply means what he says--defeat for the UnitedStatesanddestructionforIsrael?IsEuropeto stand idly by while Ahmadinejad carries on where Hitler left off...
...Just as Imperial and Nazi Germany dominated the mainland of Europe but never directly impinged on America, just as the Soviet Union occupied almost half of Europe but in the Western hemisphere never advanced beyond The Storks Are Landing T Cuba, so today the jihad poses a far more immediate threat to Europeans than to Americans...
...In Germany the refrain was: "Haven't the Americans and British learned anything since Dresden...
...Fischer protested too much,andhisevidentirritationbetrayedthebad conscience of a postwar German who knew full wellthathisownpeoplehadnotsolongagobeenrescued from a similarly desperate plight by the Yanks and the Brits...
...The dissolution of the individual in war is a fact that frightens Europeans today...
...Saudi Arabia is not footing thebillpurelyforaltruisticreasons,anymorethanthe restofthehundredsofbillionsofdollarsthatithasdispensedtopromoteWahhabiIslamworldwide...
...In the medieval and early modern eras, Europe was able to resist external threats--primarily from Islam--by drawing on a warrior ethos, a conscious efforttocultivatemartialvirtues,thatlastedwellinto the 20th century...
...Once the policy of appeasement was seen to have failed, however, the British did fight--unlike most of continental Europe...
...Another example: When steel from the wreckage of theWorldTradeCenterwasmelteddownandusedtoconstruct the anti-terrorist assault ship USS New York, everyone involved--from steel workers at the foundry to the naval officers manning the warship-sensed the "spiritual" significance of this unique act of recycling...
...Day by day their obituaries record the lives of the survivors, a lost world of famous victories now fallen silent...
...For the soldier, however, it is precisely that selflessness that banishes fear...
...to be a Muslim means to submit to the will of Allah, not presuming to understand the reason why...
...Though invalided out of the Army, she missed active service, andafteranintervalshereturnedtoWestPoint,eager to prove her fitness for duty...
...Describing the last great German offensive in March 1918, he describes the mood on the eve of battle: "I sensed the weight of the hour, and I think everyone felt the individual in them dissolve, and fear depart...
...This time, however, it is not true that--as a famous Victorian song had it--"We don't want to fight, but, by jingo if we do,/ We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too...
...What is to be done...
...Yet the left is not monolithic, and there are dissenters...
...A former instructor at West Point, Col...
...While these were going on, the terror suspectwasgivenanewpassportandsmuggledoutof the country, probably to an al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan...
...ThebetrayalofintellectualfreedombytheEuropean intelligentsia is nothing new...
...As the Pope correctly argued in his Regensburg address, Allah, unlike the Judeo-Christian God, is not logocentric...
...The point of the poem is that while the crowned heads of Europe ignore the impending Turkish onslaught, the old spirit of chivalry that had animated the Crusades is not yet dead...
...and like the American Founding Fathers, we do not wish to impose religious tests for public office...
...I saw him on it, surrounded by numerous family, all standing on a terrace...
...Thesecondmajorstumblingblockforthosewho are serious about stopping Europe's slide into orientaldespotismisthenewMuslimestablishment.Once marginal, Islam is now the fastest growing religion across Europe...
...The mentality of the warrior, still considered worthy of respect in popular American culture, is regarded in Europe as undisguised fascism...
...both world wars was Ernst Junger, who wrote a classic account of trench warfare--he was wounded 14 times--Storm of Steel...
...theocracy is preferred to democracy...
...On the contrary, the successive waves of barbarian peoples evoked a new kindofcivilization,morerobustthantheancientpolis...
...Why, if the diagnosis is so obvious, is the remedy still so unpalatable...
...The expansionofNATOandtheEUcannotdisguisethefactthat these Cold War institutions have been hollowed out, andnolongerembodyanymeaningfulideas.Toadapt Dean Acheson's famous aphorism about Great Britain:TheEuropeanUnionhasacquiredanempire and lost its role...
...Whereas the United States took on more responsibility for regions with which it had no historical connection, such as Southeast Asia, Europe abandoned its new creations with indecent haste...
...So the question then becomes: How can Europe be mobilized to defend itself...
...But when Badawi died last year aged 84, his dream of a fully integrated British Islam was still unfulfilled...
...ONE WAY OF LOOKING AT THIS is to identify those who are hindering the recognition of reality and then to tackle them...
...Indeed, NATO eventually came to be seen by cynical Europeans as a thinly disguised mechanism for extracting somethingfornothingfromUncleSam.Butnowthat thehabitsandvirtuesofmartialfortitudethatsustain peoplesthroughlongperiodsofconflicthavedecayed in Europe, it is apparent that the Americans had the better of the deal in the long run...
...The best hope for Islam is not reformation but integration.WhilethetheologyofIslamisunlikelyto bereformedanytimesoon,thereisnoreason why Muslims should not adapt to Europe, just as they have been adapting to various other cultures for 14 centuries...
...Just as the left--with manyhonorableexceptions--advocatedappeasement of Communism, so today they are busily accommodatingthemselvestotheIslamists.Insomecases,such asGeorgeGalloway'sgrotesqueRespectPartyinBritain,theallianceisovert.Moreoften,though,itismore of a hard cop, soft cop routine...
...As Pope Benedict has observed, the Koran cannot be reinterpreted because it is supposed to be not merely inspired by Allah, but his uncreated word, dictated to his prophet...
...As an American living in Brussels, he has been uniquely well placed to observe the workings of the European Union from within, while retaining the critical perspective of an outsider...
...If the pusillanimous politicians who strut the corridors of the chancelleries of Europecannotbringthemselvestoactbeforeitistoo late--if, in short, they do not support President Bush when the moment comes to halt the Iranian IslamoNazisintheirtracks,thenEuropeanswillhaveproved themselves unworthy of their ancestors at Thermopylae and Marathon...
...A fundamental difference between Europe's predicament today andthoseofthepastistheabsenceoftheunifyingset of Judeo-Christian beliefs that have hitherto defined the civilization of the West...
...tinent also lost much of its own raison d'etre...
...The most influential analysis of this transatlantic divergence has been that of Robert Kagan...
...The 1990s began with high hopes: the incubus of Communism banished, broken nations and lives healed, with both halves of the continent stimulated by the challenges ahead...
...Why not...
...A religion that emerged inseventh-centuryArabiamustevolveandadaptifit T H ES T O R K SA R EL A N D I N G 3 8 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R M A R C H 2 0 0 7 NoIslamiccountrythatrefusestopermit Christian,Jewish,orothernon-Muslim worshipshouldbeallowedtofloodthe Westwithmoneytofundmosquesthat promoteWahhabiorotherextremist formsofIslam...
...towardthelight:/`Whybroughtye us from bondage,/Our loved Egyptian night?'" Even more prophetic is another passage: "In patience to abide,/Toveilthethreatofterror/Andchecktheshow of pride...
...More than half of British mosques do in fact exclude women, and it is a similar story across Europe...
...Chesterton in his stirring poem Lepanto, which recalls the great clash of civilizations in 1571...
...No Islamic country thatrefusestopermitChristian,Jewish,orothernonMuslim worship should be allowed to flood the West withmoneytofundmosquesthatpromoteWahhabior other extremist forms of Islam...
...Kipling was well aware, too, that taking responsibility for another people invites the harshest ofcriticismathome:"Comesnow,tosearchyourmanhood/Through all the thankless years,/Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,/The judgment of your peers...
...The criterion for toleration should be that identified by Pope Benedict XVI: that of reciprocity...
...In some places, that nightmare is already reality...
...most belong to the Sufi tradition, which is relatively tolerant...
Vol. 40 • March 2007 • No. 2
