Straight Talk on Fascism in the 21st Century
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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/2007/06/15/2007-06-15_time_to_stand_up_to_islamic_fanatics_now.html
Michael Goodwin
Time to stand up to Islamic fanatics now
Friday, June 15th 2007
The booms and blasts in the Palestinian territories were the sounds of a baby democracy being murdered. Gone with it is any illusion that radical Muslims are just like us and that all they want is freedom.
Their freedom is the freedom to kill - including other Muslims. The reports of Hamas gunmen summarily executing Fatah rivals mark a low point for Palestinian self-governance and President Bush's democracy agenda.
It also proves that no good deed goes unpunished. Israel withdrew from Lebanon, and Hezbollah crossed the border to attack it. Israel withdrew from Gaza and gets a civil war next door. And we pushed the Palestinians to hold the election that Hamas won.
Only last week, Secretary of State Rice waxed optimistic about the prospects of Mideast peace. Despite the fact that Hamas leaders had refused to recognize Israel's right to exist, Rice professed in a visit to the Daily News to see progress.
"Hamas now looks like a bunch of politicians who also can't make the sewer system work," she said, calling Bush's democracy agenda "both morally right and politically necessary."
It's time we got real about Islamic fanatics. Hamas and its ilk are not interested in making the sewers work or picking up the garbage. They don't want compromises and power sharing and concessions. Those things are the coins of the realm to ordinary people and politicians.
Islamic fanatics are madmen who use terrorism as a means to establish an Islamic theocracy. Anything that stands in their way risks becoming road kill.
That we insist on pretending otherwise is the fundamental weakness in our Mideast policy. Except for Israel, democracy is an alien concept there. We gave the Iraqis their freedom and their first government has used it to steal billions of dollars and sanction sectarian slaughter. The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan and took the country back to the Dark Ages.
They all follow in the bloody footsteps of Ayatollah Khomeini, who started the modern Islamic revolution in Iran by seizing our embassy in 1979 and promptly executing secular Iranians and his Communist political partners. His latest successor is now determined to get a nuclear weapon and use it.
This is not just a problem for us, Israel or law-abiding, decent Muslims. It is the world's problem. As British Prime Minister Tony Blair said, there is an "arc of extremism" that unites Muslim fanatics around the globe. "It doesn't always need structures and command centers or even explicit communication. It knows what it thinks."
We - the civilized people of the world - must decide what we think. While we still have the choice.
Michael Goodwin
Time to stand up to Islamic fanatics now
Friday, June 15th 2007
The booms and blasts in the Palestinian territories were the sounds of a baby democracy being murdered. Gone with it is any illusion that radical Muslims are just like us and that all they want is freedom.
Their freedom is the freedom to kill - including other Muslims. The reports of Hamas gunmen summarily executing Fatah rivals mark a low point for Palestinian self-governance and President Bush's democracy agenda.
It also proves that no good deed goes unpunished. Israel withdrew from Lebanon, and Hezbollah crossed the border to attack it. Israel withdrew from Gaza and gets a civil war next door. And we pushed the Palestinians to hold the election that Hamas won.
Only last week, Secretary of State Rice waxed optimistic about the prospects of Mideast peace. Despite the fact that Hamas leaders had refused to recognize Israel's right to exist, Rice professed in a visit to the Daily News to see progress.
"Hamas now looks like a bunch of politicians who also can't make the sewer system work," she said, calling Bush's democracy agenda "both morally right and politically necessary."
It's time we got real about Islamic fanatics. Hamas and its ilk are not interested in making the sewers work or picking up the garbage. They don't want compromises and power sharing and concessions. Those things are the coins of the realm to ordinary people and politicians.
Islamic fanatics are madmen who use terrorism as a means to establish an Islamic theocracy. Anything that stands in their way risks becoming road kill.
That we insist on pretending otherwise is the fundamental weakness in our Mideast policy. Except for Israel, democracy is an alien concept there. We gave the Iraqis their freedom and their first government has used it to steal billions of dollars and sanction sectarian slaughter. The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan and took the country back to the Dark Ages.
They all follow in the bloody footsteps of Ayatollah Khomeini, who started the modern Islamic revolution in Iran by seizing our embassy in 1979 and promptly executing secular Iranians and his Communist political partners. His latest successor is now determined to get a nuclear weapon and use it.
This is not just a problem for us, Israel or law-abiding, decent Muslims. It is the world's problem. As British Prime Minister Tony Blair said, there is an "arc of extremism" that unites Muslim fanatics around the globe. "It doesn't always need structures and command centers or even explicit communication. It knows what it thinks."
We - the civilized people of the world - must decide what we think. While we still have the choice.
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