America's attempts to appease "Muslim opinion" are depraved and
suicidal.
As Muslim groups express outrage and issue death threats over
cartoons depicting Mohammad, many Western leaders are responding, not
with condemnations of the death threats, but with condemnations of the
cartoons -- and of the newspapers that published them.
This is the latest example of the apologies and hand-wringing that
occur anytime there is any widespread display of Muslim anger. To
listen to most of our foreign-policy commentators, the biggest problem
facing America today is the fact that many Muslims are mad at us.
"Whatever one's views on the [Iraq] war," writes a New York
Times columnist, "thoughtful Americans need to consider ... the
bitter anger that it has provoked among Muslims around the world." In
response to Abu Ghraib, Ted Kennedy lamented, "We have become the most
hated nation in the world, as a result of this disastrous policy in
the prisons." Muslim anger over America's support of Israel, we are
told, is a major cause of anti-American terrorism.
We face, these commentators say, a crisis of "Muslim opinion." We
must, they say, win the "hearts and minds" of angry Muslims by heaping
public affection on Islam, by shutting down Guantanamo, by being more
"evenhanded" between free Israel and the terrorist Palestinian
Authority -- and certainly by avoiding any new military action in the
Muslim world. If we fail to win over "Muslim opinion," we are told, we
will drive even more to become terrorists.
All of this evades one blatant truth: the hatred being heaped on
America is irrational and undeserved. Consider the issue of treatment
of POWs. Many Muslims are up in arms about the treatment of prisoners
of war in Iraq and at Guantanamo -- many of whom were captured on
battlefields, trying to kill Americans. Yet these same Muslims are
silent about the summary convictions and torture -- real torture, with
electric drills and vats of acid -- that are official policy and daily
practice throughout the Middle East.
Or consider "Muslim opinion" over the United States' handling of
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which the United States is
accused of not being "hard enough" on Israel -- a free nation with laws
that protect all citizens, Jew and Arab alike -- for Israel's supposed
mistreatment of Palestinians. Yet "Muslim opinion" reveres the
Palestinian Authority, a brutal dictatorship that deprives
Palestinians of every basic freedom, keeps them in unspeakable
poverty, and routinely tortures and executes peaceful dissenters.
So-called Muslim opinion is not the unanimous and just consensus
that its seekers pretend. It is the irrational and unjust opinion of
the world's worst Muslims : Islamists and their legions of "moderate"
supporters and sympathizers. These people oppose us not because of any
legitimate grievances against America, but because they are steeped in
a fundamentalist interpretation of their religion -- one that views America's freedom, prosperity, and pursuit of worldly pleasures as the height of depravity. They do not seek respect for the rights of the individual (Muslim or non-Muslim), they seek a world in which the rights of all are sacrificed to the dictates of Islam.
The proper response to Islamists and their supporters is to
identify them as our ideological and political enemies -- and dispense
justice accordingly. In the case of our militant enemies, we must kill
or demoralize them -- especially those regimes that support terrorism
and fuel the Islamist movement; as for the rest, we must politically
ignore them and intellectually discredit them, while proudly arguing
for the superiority of Americanism. Such a policy would make us safe,
expose Islamic anti-Americanism as irrational and immoral, and
embolden the better Muslims to support our ideals and emulate our
ways.
President Bush, like most politicians and intellectuals, has taken
the opposite approach to "Muslim opinion": appeasement. Instead of
identifying anti-American Muslims as ideological enemies to be
discredited, he has appealed to their sensibilities and met their
demands -- e.g., sacrificing American soldiers to save Iraqi civilians
and mosques. Instead of seeking to crush the Islamists by defeating
the causes they fight for -- such as Islamic world domination and the
destruction of Israel -- he has appeased those causes, declaring Islam
a "great religion" and rewarding the Palestinian terrorist Jihad with
a promised Palestinian state. Instead of destroying terrorist regimes
that wage war against the West -- including, most notably, Iran -- he has sought their "cooperation" and even cast some as "coalition partners."
Such measures have rewarded our enemy for waging physical and spiritual war against us. "Condemn America," they have learned, "and American leaders will praise your ideals and meet your demands." "Attack America via terrorist proxy," terrorist states and movements have been taught, "and America will neither blame you nor destroy you, but redouble its efforts to buy your love."
Every attempt to appease "Muslim opinion" preserves, promotes, and
emboldens our enemies. Every concession to angry Muslim mobs gives
hope to the Islamist cause. Every day we allow terrorist regimes to
exist gives their minions time to execute the next Sept. 11. America
needs honest leadership with the courage to identify and defeat our
enemies -- "Muslim opinion" be damned. They should begin by declaring
that militant groups and states that threaten anti-Western violence in
response to free speech will be met, not with appeasement, but with
destruction.