Monday, December 5, 2016

Weakness in the Face of Terrorism

An Ohio State University student named Mackenzie was well placed to observe her campus’s response to the terrorist act committed by Abdul Razak Ali Artan.

She was also well placed to compare the reaction to terrorism with student and faculty reaction to the election of Donald Trump.

Last week she called in to Sean Hannity’s radio program to explain what she saw. Her testimony is nothing less than breathtaking. The report comes from PJ Media via Maggie’s Farm.

First, the campus reacted to Trump’s election with an outpouring of hysteria. Sad to say, no other word describes it as well. You would have thought that the world had come to an end and that the Nazis had just taken over America. One also notes that they don’t make professors like they used to. The dumbing down of American university faculties continues apace.

In Mackenzie’s words:

After the election, my professors went crazy. I remember calling my mom and saying, 'You would think Hitler just got elected and massacred half the country.' It was ridiculous. Trump was called a Nazi, a rapist, a white supremacist, one of my professors actually said we should be terrified because Mike Pence believes women don't have the right to exist, or deserve to exist is actually what she said.

Under the aegis of their professors college students are not being taught to exercise their rational faculties. They are being taught to indulge in irrational and histrionic displays.

Mackenzie continued:

People were crying, my classes were canceled, massive protests on campus ... emails from professors about staying strong and how we are all going to lose our rights but it's going to be O.K. And it was crazy — I just couldn't believe it.

When the terrorist attack occurred on the same campus, some classes were canceled for safety reasons. Some students held a candlelight vigil. And yet, the lesson that was imparted to students was: we must all become more sympathetic and compassionate toward Islam.

Mackenzie explained:

I've heard things about how we need to understand Islam, the vibrant Somali community we have here, how we need to embrace them even though this is the third attack by a Somali in the last year here in Columbus, and all this stuff about, you know, Muslim sensitivity.

That's all they care about. They are more scared of the right and Trump than they are of this terrorist attack that just happened on our campus. It's sickening to me because I feel like they are gambling with my life in order to reach this multiculturalism lie that they worship in all of my classes — and it's crazy.

What does this tell us?

For one, it tells us that terrorism works. Terrorists want to produce a specific effect. They want to intimidate the population while gaining respect for their cause. The Obama administration has done just what the terrorists want: it has refused to call Islamist terrorism by its name—lest people feel less respect for Islam—and it has gone on the attack against Islamophobia.

The more people respond to Islamic terrorism by showing respect for Islam, the more terrorism we will see. The more Americans submit to Islam the more the terrorists believe that their strategy is working.

In another context it’s called appeasement. Obviously, it is cowardly. It has designated its enemies as those who would fight terrorism with force of arms. Obviously, George W. Bush is high on the list.

Those who want to appease terrorists insist that the fault for 9/11 lies with the Bush administration. And yet, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attack saw things differently.

Writing in the Washington Post, Marc Thiessen—a former Bush administration official—recounted the results of the enhanced interrogation of KSM. The interrogator, James Mitchell, has just written a book about it, so Thiessen is reporting the results from the book.

In Thiessen’s words:

But perhaps the most riveting part of the book is what KSM told Mitchell about what inspired al-Qaeda to attack the United States — and the U.S. response he expected. Today, some on both the left and the right argue that al-Qaeda wanted to draw us into a quagmire in Afghanistan — and now the Islamic State wants to do the same in Iraq and Syria. KSM said this is dead wrong. Far from trying to draw us in, KSM said that al-Qaeda expected the United States to respond to 9/11 as we had the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut — when, KSM told Mitchell, the United States “turned tail and ran.” He also said he thought we would treat 9/11 as a law enforcement matter, just as we had the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the USS Cole in Yemen — arresting some operatives and firing a few missiles into empty tents, but otherwise leaving him free to plan the next attack.

For the pusillanimous left any military response is necessarily wrong. The left is, as the saying goes, “too proud to fight.”

But note that the first evidence of American weakness was shown by… none other than Ronald Reagan. When the Marine barracks were bombed in Beirut in1983, killing nearly 300 marines, the Reagan administration did not respond vigorously. It did not hunt down the killers. It “turned tail and ran.”

Denizens of the American right like to pin this all on liberal Democrats, but the first American president to show of weakness in the face of terror was Ronald Reagan.

The next was Bill Clinton. Having seen the way a weak and decadent Clinton responded to terrorism, KSM planned his next attack, confident that a helpless America would not respond.

He was in for a surprise. Thiessen reports KSM’s words:

“Then he looked at me [Mitchell] and said, ‘How was I supposed to know that cowboy George Bush would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down?’” Mitchell writes. “KSM explained that if the United States had treated 9/11 like a law enforcement matter, he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks.” He was not able to do so because al-Qaeda was stunned “by the ferocity and swiftness of George W. Bush’s response.”

The next time you ask yourself about what deters terrorism, you might consider KSM’s thoughts. Those who treat terrorism like a law enforcement matter invite terrorism. Apparently, the cowboy Bush’s response had a deterrent effect, even more than if he had called for an attack on Islamophobia.

KSM’s purpose is to convert America to Islam, to see Shariah Law as the law of the American land. He cannot defeat America by force of arms but he can help America to defeat itself. America—and other European nations—invite terrorism by showing weakness and submission in the face of terrorism:

But KSM said something else that was prophetic. In the end, he told Mitchell, “We will win because Americans don’t realize ... we do not need to defeat you militarily; we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by quitting.”

KSM explained that large-scale attacks such as 9/11 were “nice, but not necessary” and that a series of “low-tech attacks could bring down America the same way ‘enough disease-infected fleas can fell an elephant.’ KSM said jihadi-minded brothers would immigrate into the United States and wrap themselves in Americas rights and laws until they were strong enough to rise up and attack us. “He said the brothers would relentlessly continue their attacks and the American people would eventually become so tired, so frightened, and so weary of war that they would just want it to end.”

“Eventually,” KSM said, “America will expose her neck for us to slaughter.”

Already American universities and the Democratic Party have succumbed. It remains to be seen whether the rest of the nation follows.

One notes that Mackenzie could not divulge her last name. So much for free expression and the first amendment.


13 comments:

Angry Voice of Motherfucking Nigger Rage said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Trigger Warning said...

Denial of reality is interesting, and Mackenzie nails it. The denial is just another version of Obama's statement that we can absorb another major attack. Of course, he wasn't referring to his family, protected as they are by a phalanx of grim men and women with powerful weapons. He was referring to regular American citizens, who will be the ones weeping at funerals. And the Proglodytes will tell you that you're more likely to be struck by lightning than killed in a terror attack so why worry and stop being silly, but they always warn about golfing in a thunderstorm and require a copper ground rod on every home in America. Just in case...

But that's not the most interesting part. The most interesting part is the repeated efforts to create terror where none exists by committing fraudulent hate crimes against themselves:

http://takimag.com/article/my_10_favorite_hate_crime_hoaxes_gavin_mcinnes/print#axzz4RyeyioJO

Such behavior passes from the realm of dangerously stupid to the world of criminally insane.

David Foster said...

"And the Proglodytes will tell you that you're more likely to be struck by lightning than killed in a terror attack"

This argument is often made, even by people who are intelligent enough to know better, and represents very bad statistical reasoning:

http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/53551.html

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

"People were crying, my classes were canceled, massive protests on campus..."

I remain vexed as to what all these people are protesting? Proper protests are a sort of threat, designed to capture the attention of authorities to achieve some end the authorities can achieve. In this instance, it sounds like the authorities are aligned with the protesters. So what on earth are the protesting?

It seems these college campus protests are lugubrious outpourings of emotion for the sake of catharsis, not to achieve some kind of tangible change. It's like a festival -- an emotional group experience, not a political or social act. It's like going to a gestalt carnival. It's designed to achieve nothing. Protesting the results of a justly-held and fair election seem like crying over spilled milk.

Milk and cookies, anyone?

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

Trigger Warning @December 5, 2016 at 7:28 AM:

"And the Proglodytes will tell you that you're more likely to be struck by lightning than killed in a terror attack so why worry and stop being silly..."

Two things here...

First, to echo David Foster, it's remarkable how many people haven't a clue on what the purpose of terrorism is. Lightning is an act of God... it is a random and arbitrary natural event. People are upset when a loved one is killed by lightning, to be sure, but there's no higher authority to blame. Even if he's running around with a golf club in his hand, it's still random, and the loss of life is sad.

The "why worry and stop being silly" part is what unnerves me. And yes, I see it every day. We have so many silly government mandates, laws and dictums about the most minute and frivolous concerns, yet precious few of our Lefty friends every complain about that. That's for our own good! Supposedly.

Second, terrorism is carefully calculated to maximize its effect. It's political violence, designed to yield social outcomes that are politically favorable to the terrorists. Such as shariah law imposed at the Federal level. Submit, or die. That's not lightning, because it is not random. It is intentional. It is carefully planned. Al Qaeda didn't take out the tallest building in Knoxville, Tennessee... they took out the tallest building in Manhattan, at a time of day to maximize visibility on the world stage, but also to maximize psychological impact and loss of life. That's not lightning, that's human evil in motion.

And a POTUS who publicly muses about America's ability "to absorb another major attack" is true in fact, but it is a wildly reckless statement on a public stage. It invites enemies to test us, and it provides no security whatsoever for a nation's citizens. If a terrorist group hits a mall at Christmastime, we may be able to sustain the attack, but people will forever change their shopping plans and behavior. We'll be told of the devastating economic consequences when people cease to shop, but the damage is much more psychological and cultural. We're doing what the terrorists want us to do: live in fear. Talking about our ability "to absorb another major attack" is something for an Assistant Undersecretary of CIA to make in a government hearing, not for POTUS to say in public. Stupidity on parade! And TW is right: it's someone else's family. Like everything in the Obama political world, it's just more collateral damage. Forward!

These are the same Proglodytes who told us Trump's election was impossible, and now we're told this Trump's electoral success was the result of a white supremacist conspiracy throughout the Rust Belt. Uh-huh. That's right... it's okay for Democrats to intentionally sacrifice the white working class vote in favor of creating a coalition of minority groups, but all white people are racists. So the Dems strategic blunders and lousy candidate are what make the victor's voters racists. No responsibility. Got it. After all, it's what I've come to expect.

People who intentionally scare people for political gain are not random, natural events. They're ideological lunatics. The only way to stop them is to take it to them. To kill them. Certainly there may be carnage in the intervening time, but it's for a distinct purpose. We are making calculated sacrifices to achieve our goal to defeat our enemies. And we must defeat them. When we speak of some theoretical universe of stalemate with people who mean to kill us, a hopelessness sets in with the citizenry. They're just waiting for the next attack, and then the next and the next, because they know there will be no proportional response. That emboldens our enemies, and cows our citizens. There is no valor in turning the other cheek to irrational, ideological murderers. Period. Take it to 'em. Kill them all.

Trigger Warning said...

DFoster: You're right. And that's a nice post, by the way. Agree 100 percent.

But let me go beyond a bit. All probabilities in the real world are conditional; ie, given a defined set of circumstances, the P of an event is X. For example, the P of rolling a 6 is 1/6, given a fair die.

The probability of being struck by lightning varies by many conditions; is there an active thunderstorm present, what occupies the surrounding terrain, what is your relative altitude, are you flying a kite, etc?

The probability of being killed by Muslim terrorists is higher in Kabul or Jerusalem than it is in Panther Lick WV (which is a real place, BTW). Why? There are no Muslims in Panther Lick. And I don't expect there will be in the foreseeable future. :-)

So, I can say without doubt that the probability of being killed by a disgruntled Somalian Islamoloon would be lower if we didn't buy plane tickets for Somalian Muslims and import them into the US. Even with imported Somalian Muslims, the probability of being killed or maimed by same is near-zero if one lives over 100 miles from the nearest one.

Now one way to ameliorate the risk would be to try and detect murderous lunacy. Just like smoke detectors, required by law, detect smoke. But it against the law to attempt to do so. Because that would be "discrimination", which just happens to be a survival mechanism hardwired into our brains that allows us to discriminate between food and predators, potable and poison, safe and dangerous. The notion that "discrimination" should be outlawed is an arrogant, futile, and sometimes fatal conceit that seeks to deny the very mechanism responsible for survival from amoebae to humanity, even going as far as causing the collapse of the global economy by failing to distinguish between good and bad credit risk and acting accordingly.

And let us never forget... For a dozen or so people at OSU, the probability of being run over and hospitalized by an Islamic terrorist is 1.0.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

No prayer rooms, no peace.

Sam L. said...

IAC wrote, "Milk and cookies, anyone?" I'm thinking ExLax-Chip Cookies would be useful.
PURGE those bad feelings! (Oh, my bad self!)

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

Talking about purging makes you a part of the demonic Alt-Right, Sam. You must be another Trump white supremacist. Tsk-tsk.

You do realize that only mainstream media sources can save our democracy? And Ares Olympus!

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

Abdul Razak Ali Artan has demonstrated he need for automobile and "large knife" control. Wusthof and Henckels buyers beware! Time to start hoarding "large knives" and automobiles, lest Obama come for them! And let's be honest, taking away "large knives" is discriminatory against Muslims (scimitars) and Mex'ns (machetes). We must atone for our microaggressions against these exotic minority peoples! No controls at all! Everyone should buy a machete to celebrate Latino jungle culture. Only then can we claim to unracism.

Trigger Warning said...

You guys are too hard on Ares. Ze is a victim of arrested development caused by a traumatic experience on the "It's A Small World" ride in Disneyland. I can almost hear the song when I read zis comments.♫

Try a little tenderness, dudes.

Trigger Warning said...

"Laughable rationalizations" sez the guy shouting from the window of the Bates Motel Tittering Ward.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

You shouldn't have done that, Mother...