The War For Civilization: How Radical Islam is poised to destroy the Western World - Chapter 1

Chapter One: September Eleventh, Two Thousand and One

“The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror...they were acts of war.” - President Bush, September 12, 2001

Ask anyone what they were doing, or where they were on 9/11, and more than likely they’ll be able to tell you without a moments hesitation. Like the Kennedy assassination or Pearl Harbor, September 11th has defined a generation. Personally, I was in 7th grade. Hornedo Middle School in El Paso Texas to be exact. And, as many well informed people may know, Texas is in a completely different time zone from the Big Apple. In fact, El Paso, which is on the western most tip of Texas, squished between Old and New Mexico, is two hours later than New York City. So as mankind's newest incarnation of evil was murdering three thousand innocent Americans, who had done nothing but go to another day of work, I was on my way to school. My mom had a carpool set up, and so I was sitting in my friend Robert’s car with Robert and my other friend Chris. Both of whom had seen something on the news that morning about a plane accident. At the time I had no idea what they were talking about.

When I arrived at school, I knew that something big had happened, but wasn’t quite sure what it was. In my homeroom class the teacher and students were transfixed, watching the carnage unfold on the television screen. I walked in right as the second tower fell. Still unclear as to what was going on, I asked someone sitting next to me what had happened, and she just said that two planes had crashed into some big buildings in New York City. We all kept watching replays of those horrific explosions, and the devastation which followed. For the entire day, as I walked from class to class, all we did was watch the news. By the end of the day, some were talking about how the accident was no accident, but an act of terror.

When I finally got home I could see that this grotesque display of evil had affected my mother. I kept hearing how she couldn’t believe what had happened, and how it was going to change the world. How my life, and my generation, would not be able to live in the kind of world she lived in. I remember her crying, not able to comprehend who could organize such an act of evil. She was almost hysterical at times, cursing and wailing. The enormity of the destruction, and the innocence lost hit her hard. I would comfort her, nodding, pretending to understand the significance of the attack. But I didn’t. I still remembered the USS Cole bombing, and thought that this was simply the same thing, albeit on a grander scale. I thought that people would be outraged about 9/11 for a few months, and then some trivial matter would grab the American publics attention. Perhaps Bill Clinton would be caught having an affair with a chubby jewish intern again. Though the impact wouldn’t have been as great considering he was no longer president, it would attract some of the media’s spotlight. But in the back of my mind I knew that something was wrong. I had never seen my mom react this way to anything on the news, and the only time I could remember her being so distraught was when her father died.

Later, when I was able to begin understanding September elevenths impact, I will never forget what my mother said to me. She talked about how she had been blessed to live in the era that she did. Although not in so many words, she talked about how the generations before her were forced to deal with the Great Depression, World War Two, World War One, the harshness of the Industrial Revolution, The Civil War...and how she grew up during the Cold War, again, a dangerous time. But how it wasn’t real to her and did not greatly affect her life. She was born in 1959, too early to have to deal with the problems during the Civil Rights era, too early to have to deal with the Cuban missile crisis. By the time she was able to vote and really paid attention to politics, it was the late 70’s, during our time of dente with the Soviet Union. People were not afraid of the evil empire as they were back in the 50’s, where personal bomb shelters were almost common place. The biggest problem my mother had to deal with were the gas lines and a recession (and an incompetent president). And then once she began to involve herself more in politics the 80’s had come, and it was good morning for America again. Ronald Reagan was president, and although not originally a supporter, even she became wooed by his charm, personality, and effective policies. Under Reagan America was on top again, and soon our evil counterpart would fall.

My mother continued living in this ephemeral time period, not knowing the harshness that previous generations had to live with day in and day out. The 90’s came, heralded by the Gulf War. But this war, at least at the time, seemed small and inconsequential. It had been the most successful war we had waged, and right seemed on our side. It was easy to feel like the great protector, helping a small nation defend itself against a genocidal maniac bent on creating a new babylonian empire. The war was over as quickly as it had begun, and though America went through another recession, all seemed well. We were the lone superpower and just showed our benevolence while displaying our military strength in a successful war. Then an unknown (at least to the American public) terrorist group, Al-Qaeda, set off a car bomb in the underground parking garage under the World Trade Center. A shocked American public demanded that those responsible be held accountable. And they were...sort of.

The newly elected President Clinton did not treat this terrorist attack, which hoped to destroy the twin tower’s foundations and send them crashing to the ground, as an “act of war” as President Bush would eight years later. He treated it merely as a criminal case, one to be handled by civilian courts. Many of the culprits were caught, prosecuted, and that was the end of it. My mother and many others felt that the scourge of total war and unquestionable evil had largely been obliterated with the destruction of Nazi Germany and the collapse of the Soviet State. True, there were a few genocidal dictators in Africa and Asia, but they were merely localized affairs, and could not present a threat to us as the Nazis or the Soviet Union had. It was inconceivable to many that a radicalized form of this evil had been fermenting within the second largest religion for centuries, and was just now exploding onto the world stage. Islamofascism contains some of the most powerful ideologies from the great evils of the 20th century. With anti-semitic and racist views from the nazis, the ideal of the communal benefit over individual happiness from the communists, guerrilla and terrorist strategies from the Vietnamese and Afghanis, and their own twisted version of religion from the Koran, these fanatics, these islamofascists, are far more dangerous than anyone could have possibly imagined.

And so my mother and the rest of the nation went on with their lives. There were occasional terrorist attacks that would be reported, many in Israel, Africa, Asia...far away places. But America need not worry about that. In this odd moment in time, Americans did not have to worry about an evil which was poised to destroy them. We were experiencing the internet boom, enthralled with the Lewinski debacle, landing a probe on Mars. Who had time for militant extremists who lived in sandy places, bombing odd and foreign areas like Mumbai and Sri Lanka?

She did not analyze the historical significance of this time period, as my mother was never good with that particular subject. But she is (in my opinion) a great political thinker, and looking back, is now able to see how special her life was. She grew up in a time where she didn’t need to worry about the British or the Native Americans or the Confederates or the Nazis. She barely had to worry about the Russians, because by the time she was able to begin worrying, the Russians were beginning their retreat. America stood powerful, unopposed, at least until 2001. She is, as am I, worried about the coming years. How will the world look in 2050? Already in 2007 many things look bleak. Europe a socialized nanny state with an ever-shrinking population, Russia has been drained of freedom while Putin rules as dictator in all but name, terrorism is on the rise, the US is hated by much of the world, we have lost many of our allies, a new class of Muslim extremists are forming in the European democracies, communist China, who silences protesters by murdering them outside of Tianamen Square, is rising to superpower status, Pakistan and India have nukes and are involved in a mini cold war, Iran is building nuclear weapons, North Korea has nuclear weapons, Africa is being torn apart from disease and famine and hunger and drugs and civil war...

We are living in a difficult time. And it took the shock of 9/11 to wake the American people up. And in some senses we are still slumbering. We thought that after the Soviet Union collapsed there were no more enemies who could threaten our existence, who had the power to destroy us. But that force and antidemocratic sentiment has coalesced in modern Islam. We still treat this conflict as a “War on Terror”, keeping that PC term as to not offend any Muslims. But who are we kidding? I don’t recall any Norwegian or Italian terrorists bombing Madrid, London, Jerusalem, New York, Mumbai, Cairo, Baghdad, or Bali. It is radical Islam that is the culprit. And we just keep treating these as if they are different wars, the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, the War in Afghanistan, the War in Iraq, African civil wars. We do not see these attacks for what they are, fronts for the New Jihad.

The entire world is dealing with the 21st centuries incarnation of evil. Though many islamic terrorists target Israel and the West, almost every culture, every people, every civilization, is dealing with this on one level or another. The English are dealing with it in London and Manchester, the Spanish are dealing with it in Madrid, the French are dealing with it outside of Paris, the Russians are dealing with it in Chechnya and throughout the Caucus region. But the Moroccans are also dealing with it in Casablanca, the Sri Lankans are also dealing with it in Nittambuwa and Peraliya, the Filipinos are also dealing with it in the Sulu Archipelago. In Iraq, in Turkey, in India, in Somalia, in Algeria, in Afghanistan, in Thailand, in Israel, in Lebanon, in Pakistan, in China.

The documentary Obsession does a good job illustrating the amount of violence perpetrated by the Muslim world. As seen in the documentary, if we were to place an X on a world map for every major armed conflict, the X’s would outline the Muslim world. In the Middle East they are fighting Jews and Americans, in Africa they are fighting African Christians, in Kashmer they are fighting the Indians, in western China they are fighting the Chinese, in Chechneya they are fighting the Russians, in the Philippines and Thailand they are fighting the local populations, in the Balkans they are fighting the Catholic and Orthodox Christians. Wherever Muslims border people of other faiths, they enter into conflict. Where else in the world are there such levels of violence? Most of Europe, Russia, China, and Japan are all relatively peaceful. Australia, almost all of North America, non-muslim sections of India, all are peaceful. Central and South America have sporadic violence, but non of it reaches the scale of violence we see in the Muslim world, and most is driven by economic wants, not a brainwashing ideology. Areas of violence in the West include Ireland and the sporadic white supremacist attacks in the US, but these are all minor when compared to what occurs elsewhere. Africa is the only place where we see more violence, and this is because, while the Islamic world is trapped in a feudal mentality, Africa is still locked into their tribal mentality. At this point in time they are unable to unite, splitting into hundreds of warring tribes. But the difference is that it’s an inter-civilizational conflict, Africans fighting Africans. While the Sunni and Shia do battle in the Middle East, most of their violence is pushed outward against their neighbors.

Almost every nation has experienced this type of assault. Over all, the terrorists do not kill many. A couple dozen there, a hundred here. But the power behind these attacks is their psychological effect. The islamic extremists are assaulting the psyche of civilization, forcing us to lose faith in ourselves. They are using death and carnage not as a means to destroy us, but as a means to demoralize. They are attacking our will, and have been met with mixed results. Bin Laden called America a “paper tiger” that would crumple in fear at the smallest provocation, and September 11th was a test of our will to fight. But unlike our European brethren, the United States rose to the challenge and is now combating terrorism worldwide. Still, the islamofascists goal of destroying our will has been successful in some respects.

Many European countries, most notably France, are becoming less inclined to fight terrorism, or even admit that it stems from disfunction's within the Islamic faith, because of increasing Muslim minorities. Hoping to win votes, politicians are appealing to these strategically placed ethnic groups. The European politicians, sworn to protect the people who have elected them, are caving into the terrorist’s demands, hoping to gain a foothold in this rapidly increasing demographic group.

The terrorists are also murdering and threatening those who speak out against radical Islam, even in democratic European nations. In the Netherlands, film maker Theo Van Gogh was brutally murdered for his short documentary Submission. Made with the help of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Submission gave the viewer a glimpse into the suffering women are subjected to within the Islamic faith. Because of his belief that the subjugation of women is an evil which must be addressed, and because of his willingness to express this belief, Van Gogh was assassinated. While riding his bike, in the middle of broad daylight, he was shot eight times. Van Gogh’s throat was sliced open, nearly decapitating him. He was stabbed multiple times and a hate-filled letter was left impaled in his chest. In the letter, the murderer expressed an admiration for Osama bin Laden, threatened Western civilizations survival, and called for Hirsi Ali’s death. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a woman who was born in Somalia and lead a life full of hardships, fled to the Netherlands to escape an arranged marriage. She worked as a translator, went to college, and had risen to become a member of parliament. But because of the numerous death threats which were to follow, she was forced into hiding and began living in the United States. And most recently, Ali was forced to return to the Neatherlands because the American government refused to pay for her security details, something that she is in dire need of after repeated threats against her life.

Many who speak out against Islam, such as Hirsi Ali, such as Salmon Rushdie, such as Oriana Fallaci, are forced into hiding due to death threats. Through fear. That is how Islam conquers. The most notable example of this occurred in Madrid, Spain on March 11th, 2004. A coordinated bombing in the Madrid train system left 191 people dead and 2,050 wounded. The terrorists attacked Spain three days before the Spanish general election, hoping to influence the voters. The party in power had been a supporter of President Bush, and had committed troops to Iraq, and, although it would be a close election, polls taken prior to the bombings suggested that the incumbent party would win. But due to the terrorist attack, the Spanish party voted against the incumbents by a comfortable margin. They felt that if Spain wasn’t involved in the Iraqi war, then there would be no reason for the terrorists to attack them. The Spanish people caved into the terrorists demands, and after the election the Spanish government ordered a full withdrawal from Iraq.

What the Spanish people, and what many people fail to take into account, is that it doesn't matter whether you’re fighting the terrorists or not. All a country does by appeasing them is postpone the inevitable, by which time it will already be too late. The islamofascists will attack us whether we are in Iraq or not. As long as we continue to live with our Western values, freed from Sharia law and the binding chains of the radicalized Muslim faith, the fundamentalists will not rest.

While some do take a world view, seeing these assaults on freedom as globalized terrorism, many believe that it is simply equivalent to piracy in the sixteenth century. That it is numerous individuals who are acting independently from one another, and these individuals must be contained and eventually wiped out. But unlike pirates, terrorists aren’t driven by economic wants. Forget the ill-begotten notion of poverty as the source of terror. Those living in India and sub-saharan africa and southeast asia and latin america are all drenched in poverty, but I did not see Niral Dandipani or Juan Rodriguez crashing into the World Trade Centers. In fact, the world’s most famous terrorist, Osama bin Laden, is a multimillionaire. What drives these ignorant, murderous animals (yes, I feel that these thugs deserve to be addressed in such a harsh manner) is a religious need. Many terrorists act independently, but they all carry one guidebook from which they derive their hateful message. And that is the Koran.