Disoriented

[Geee]

National Review:


‘What went wrong?” That was the title of Bernard Lewis’s landmark book on Islam’s thousand years of global dominance followed by the decline of the caliphate between the 17th century, when Muslim armies were halted at the Gates of Vienna, and the early 20th century, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed. This fall from grace left deep scars — grievances expressed most lethally on Sept. 11, 2001, soon after Professor Lewis’s book was completed.

Ten years later, the question we might be asking is “What has gone wrong with us?” The atrocities of 9/11 were said to be a new Pearl Harbor that would once again “awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

Instead, many, if not most, of our political leaders fight fitfully and without conviction, uncertain about both the nature and the gravity of the threat. One example: Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, Britain’s storied intelligence service, last week called the 9/11 attacks “a crime, not an act of war.” She did not explain why she thought using hijacked planes as missiles to destroy the political, military, and financial centers of the free world was akin to a bank robbery. She did not cite other instances in which common criminals seek no monetary benefit, kill themselves during the commission of their crimes, and call that “martyrdom.” She did not say whether she thought Osama bin Laden, as a criminal suspect, should have been entitled to a presumption of innocence rather than bullets through the chest and head.
She did, however, note what she imagines to be “the causes and roots” of the many acts of terrorism carried out by Muslim militants in the name of Islam, including, as usual, “the plight of Palestinians” and the belief that the West is “exploiting their oil and supporting dictators.” According to the Guardian newspaper, she added that terrorist campaigns could not be solved militarily, so she “hoped there were those — she implied in Western governments — who were considering having ‘talks with al-Qaida.’”

A second example: National Security Adviser Tom Donilon said in a recent speech that he and President Obama know what the Iranians are against but “what are they for?” Have Donilon and Obama read nothing that Iran’s revolutionaries have written? Have they heard nothing that Ayatollah Ali Khameini and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have said? Let me boil it down: They are for restoring to Islam the power and glory it enjoyed a millennium ago. They are for the defeat of the Great Satan and the Little Satan and anyone else who defies Allah’s will as they interpret it.