Another universalist war-monger?

Writing at The American Thinker, J. Peter Mulhern bracingly argues that Islam as such is our enemy and that defeating this enemy means convincing him that he cannot prevail against us—an act of ‘splainin’ that would, Mulhern less convincingly tells us, require a “long, bloody world war.” He offers a lot of bellicose language, but no specifics on strategy. Most tellingly, the total absence in the article of the words “immigrants” and “immigration” suggests that Mulhern is less the realist he considers himself to be than a kind of super “L-Dotter” who would rather blast the Muslim world to smithereens than even think about returning Muslim immigrants to their ancestral lands, where they would have no ability to bother us, and we would have no need to kill them.

I am not denying that large-scale strikes against Muslim countries may become necessary at some point to defend ourselves from WMDs or other possible threats. But, with the likely exception of Iran, we are not yet at that point. Anyone who advocates a “long, bloody world war” against Islam without even considering the possibility of isolating and containing Islam is either a shallow thinker or a universalist ideologue, or both.

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Carl Simpson writes:

Thanks for your ongoing efforts to expose examples of madcap utopians who suddenly become furious as they realize that Islam is not going to be reformed by the West. The predictable reaction is to “nuke ‘em ‘til they glow in the dark, then shoot ‘em.”

Who is the reasonable and tolerant one here? A “wild-eyed crazed racist xenophobe” like yourself or a tolerant PC-guy who thinks all people and cultures are the same—merely interchangeable parts to be shunted about as needed to feed the great machines of utopian progress? While you are willing to allow Muslims to froth about in their traditional lands where they can have all the sharia they like (just not here in the West, thank you), while the guys like Mr. Mulhern want to blast all 1.3 billion into eternity. What is it about these utopians? Their utopia-god appears to have an insatiable hunger for human life.

Jeff in England writes:

I think Mulhern is right about the need to consider “tough options,” but he needs to get more specific. My view is that if al-Queda or similar organisations act against the West in a significant way, Mecca should be destroyed after a warning to evacuate. The destroy-Mecca option should be put on the table in advance so al-Queda etc knows we mean business.

As you said, Mulhern fails to mention immigration (and with it removal) and this is a glaring ommission. But I will go further. I will say that any Western “plan” to deal with Islam has to include a specific realsitic strategy to morally invigorate its citizens. We are being weakened from within by both invading cultures and the decadence of our own culture. Of course this is not new news but it needs to be reiterated when talking about how to deal with the threat of Islam. Islam’s strengths (strong morality, strong family structure, respect for elders, general decency, submission to a creator etc ) are exactly the strengths we need to develop again if we are to fight it.

Ironic in a way that the very invading culture which threatens us has so many qualities which we need to develop ourselves.

LA replies:

I supported Tom Tancredo’s statement that we should not take off the table the option of destroying Mecca and Medina in retaliation for a nuclear or other devastating WMD attack on us. I agree with Jeff that we ought to go further and state explicitly that we will do so. That is not the same as signing on to an undefined “long and bloody world war,” which sounds like Bush’s undefined and interminable war, only with lots more destruction. Our confrontation with Islam, is, of necessity, interminable, because Islam, as long as it exists, is our mortal adversary. But short of nuclear-type mass destruction we do not have the ability to destroy Islam. Nor do we need to destroy Islam. We only need to contain it in its own lands. This obvious solution remains invisible to modern Western universalists.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 06, 2006 06:56 PM | Send