Tuesday, December 03, 2002

Image

Many around the Islamic world are apparently upset with our effort to improve our image with them. They say it is a waste. They say our policy is to blame. They would help themselves more by worrying about their image over here. They honestly complain about our policy? Given all we have done to help Islamic countries and people? They complain when we refuse to sign off on a war between Christianity and Islam when the Islamofascists fervently claim to want one? I’d say we have done an awful damn lot to help them and they better worry about their policies. Oppress women? We don’t like it. Slaughter non-Moslems when you don’t like what they say or write? We’re against that. Kill us in our office buildings? We really don’t like that. Cheer in the streets when we are killed? That gets us mad. Issue fatwahs at the same rate we issue patents? We despise that.

Our policies are offensive, indeed.

It’s amazing. If we do something or nothing, we are to blame. After all, if nothing has happened, just make up the evil that we did. Or twist what good thing we did into evil. Or just dismiss the help we’ve provided by saying it was done in “our interest” alone. Whether we feed them or rescue them, we’ve done wrong. And when they do something horrible to us? Well, we provoked it. We are to blame again. It is a very easy philosophy to grasp. Whatever happens or does not happen is the fault of America.

I’m tempted to say the State Department should fund a massive “Bite me” ad campaign.

But that’s just the anger and frustration talking. Winning requires fighting smart and we should not write off the Islamic world because some try to kill us and many wallow in a blameapalooza to excuse their backwardness. Waging a battle for the hearts and minds of the many Moslems who are not filled with hate is a fine thing to do. Just remember, however, that we owe the killers nothing but the business end of a thermobaric bomb. The Moslem world, while tolerating killers in their midst, should pray five times a day that we don’t conclude we really are in a war between civilizations the way those killers claim.