Covering the War

In an invited column at the LA Times, Hugh Hewitt makes a halfway decent case for newspapers covering the misnamed "War on Terror" more like the real war it is.

Defenders of The Times might point out that in the last four years more than 10,000 stories in this paper have used the words "terror" or "terrorism." But my complaint is not about quantity. My complaint is that The Times has chosen to cover the global war on terrorism mainly through stories it treats as distinct, even though they are interconnected in profound ways with immediate consequences for every American [emphasis added]. Readers need to be told in more detail and more repeatedly how the Islamist bombs that killed almost 200 civilians in Madrid are related to Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi's Al Qaeda-linked thugs, who continue to butcher pro-democracy Iraqis, for example. They need to be told over and over that members of this network, however loosely linked, continue to see the U.S. as their most tempting target. (via RealClearPolitics)

This is all well and good. So What does Hewitt recommend?

• Do more to identify and inform the readers on the organization, leadership and capabilities of the Islamist terrorist network, paying more attention to experts who support the war in Iraq and believe, along with President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and many others, that the battles there will ultimately slow the spread of terrorism elsewhere.

• Start a daily — a daily — feature on the Global War on Terrorism and call it that. Explain the money trail and detail the leadership and do so with the repetition that assures that readers are not overwhelmed with one giant aircraft carrier of a piece. Give them the digestible segments that make for understanding. Where does the support come from and who manages the accounts? Are there names behind the cash that funds the madrasas that churn out the jihadists? What has been done to stop the funding? Beneath Osama Bin Laden, his top deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, and the Jordanian Zarqawi, who are the generals, the colonels and the rising young officers of the movement? Tell us and tell us again as reporters turn up new information. And alert readers to the many widely visited and cited blogs that have emerged as sources of analysis of this war's intricacies — among them the Belmont Club (belmontclub.blogspot.com), the Command Post (www.command-post.org), and the Fourth Rail (www.billroggio.com).

These recommendations are also both good, but they are alone not enough. They fail to address the failings of our media to cover the ideological aspect of this war. Even though much of the press sympathized with the Communists during the Cold War, at least the general public could get an idea from their coverage that something united the grandstanding of Russia and China, and the revolutions that kept popping up all over the third world. That something was, of course, the international Communist movement.

Aside from the commonplace of knowing one's enemy, such considerations would have affected Hewitt's very column! Hewitt says, "Another attack on the United States is inevitable." What of the New Jersey murders of the Armanious family, which are looking all but certain to be motivated by religion? Wouldn't these constitute at the very least a raid by Islamofascist barbarians?

This war, which I prefer to call "World War IV" after Norman Podhoretz's fashion, is unique among the great conflicts of our nation since the turn of the twentieth century in that it is being fought partly on our own soil. We realize this only if we consider the role of ideology in this conflict. Paying none, or too little attention, to this allows us to fail to make the connection that such so-called "hate crimes" are really acts of war. As a result, we fail to realize that certain "domestic crimes" are really skirmishes. And we fail to react to them as military problems. Indeed, the very political correctness that causes us to ignore the integral role of Islam in animating our foes is also in danger of causing us to fall into the trap of using the wrong methods to fight them: hate crime legislation!

Yesterday, I blogged on an obscene editorial by the executive director of the local branch of CAIR. She used the term "Islamophobic" when discussing our nation's concerns with terrorism. But what does that term mean? It means "fear of Islam." Although this term is used pejoratively like "homophobia," the fact is that there is nothing moral about fear: it's simply an emotion, one that is experienced when one's life or values are being threatened. So what is really being done when we are being condemned for "Islamophobia" is we are being tried and found wanting for our evaluation of Islam as a threat. This can either be a valid moral judgment or it can be an unjust charge. It all depends on whether Islam really poses a threat to us nonbelievers.

So does it? Come to your own conclusions after considering how plausible it is that the Coptic Christian family were murdered by Moslems practicing taqiyya (or religious deception -- what a "great" religion!). From the Counterterrorism Blog:

Yesterday, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch introduced an intriguing -- and potentially important -- new possibility: The murders may be the work of fake converts from Islam to Christianity [emphasis added]. A close friend of Hossam Armanious relayed the following to Spencer: "The Armanious family had inspired several Muslims to convert to Christianity — or thought they had. These converts were actually practicing taqiyya, or religious deception, pretending to be friends of these Christians in order to strengthen themselves against them, as in Qur'an 3:28: 'Let believers not make friends with infidels in preference to the faithful -- he that does this has nothing to hope for from Allah -- except in self-defense.' It was these 'converts' who knocked on the door of the Armanious home. Of course, the family, not suspecting the deception, was happy to see the 'converted' men and willingly let them in to their home. That's why there was no sign of forced entry. Then the 'converted' Muslims did their grisly work."

Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch quotes Hugh Fitzgerald on just how upright this sort of thing is, judged by the "light" of Islam:

To many Muslims, the Christians of the Middle East are supposed to carry their dhimmitude with them, and these Copts violated their pact. They owed everything [to] the celebrated kindness of Islam [emphasis added], which allowed them to live as long as they strictly adhered to the rules of dhimmitude. This they failed to do. They may have been butchered, but it was strictly according to the rules [emphais added]. They violated their agreement, and lost the right to live. Whoever killed them acted, it would seem, in defense of Islam [!] and against these Copts who had forgotten their place. Que voulez-vous, monsieur? Don’t worry. It was all strictly halal [permitted in Islamic law].

To top it all off, Malkin quotes another Jihad Watch post to the effect that Moslems are bragging about the attacks!

The good planting has started to yield thank Allah and soon, Allah willing, an intense Islamic revolution all across America that holds the right and bring down the falsehood that they’ve created.

So it was strictly halal for a family to be decapitated because they didn't stay in their place as bootlickers to their Moslem masters, and some Moslems are openly celebrating the fact! The first step to fighting off an enemy is to recognize that he poses a threat. I don't think I need to make an argument that Islamofascism is a threat. The press needs to start reporting it as such. If we suffer from anything with regard to "Islamophobia," it appears to me to be from having too little of it.

Via the Charlotte Capitalist, I learned of a post by Harry Roolaart to the effect that Martin Luther King Day had become a nightmare due to its expropriation multiculturalists. He says,

The multi-culturalists use this day to push their belief that all cultures - no matter how despicable, including those who to this day practice slavery - are equal.

But Dr. King's speech was not a multi-culturalist sermon. The speech did not say that cultures are equal but rather offered Americans the vision of a better culture. Observe the hypocrisy of the multi-culturalists turning out for the celebrations of his birthday. Where Dr. King fought to make our culture more valuable [emphasis added] and while he inspired others to do the same, this pretentious group applauds him while viciously proclaiming that, in fact, any aspiration to improve one's culture necessarily comes at the expense of those of different cultures.

Indeed. King showed great courage in judging the culture of the time and finding it wanting, and it is precisely this virtue the multiculturalists are fighting against today, and in his name. We have to stand up for our lives by fighting for the right to pass judgement on the culture of Islam. (And Islamists certainly have no bones about doing the same with respect to ours.) Roolaart has it right: this is a nightmare. Sadly, waking up from it will be like discovering we are in a burning house. But wake up we must, if we are to see the true nature of what is threatening us and so take action to survive.

-- CAV