Ghost of a flea: Let us pledge to fight them back

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December 03, 2008

Let us pledge to fight them back

In apparent contradiction to an earlier statement by their External Affairs Minister, "highly placed sources" in the Indian government now reportedly claim a military response to Pakistan has not been ruled out. India's military leaders are said to be "exerting strong pressure" on the country's nancified political leadership to strike Lashkar-e-Toiba's jihadi headquarters near Lahore.

The heavily guarded LET complex near Lahore, known as the Markaz-e-Taiba (Holy Centre), includes mosques and madrassas with more than 3000 students. Theoretically it is the headquarters of the Jamaat-ul-Dawah Muslim welfare organisation that is closely identified with LET.

Saeed, the LET founder and spiritual leader, lives in the complex.

Reports yesterday said that if India attacked the complex -- possibly to kill Saeed -- an attempt would be made to justify the action by pointing to the way in which the US was launching pre-emptive strikes inside Pakistani territory using unmanned drones to kill al-Qa'ida and Taliban targets.

Or they could refuse to "justify" the action on the grounds that common sense need only be justified to the impenetrably dense and the morally deficient. Whatever the editorial line at The Australian, India does not require the American example - or need American permission - to justify its self-defence. What it needs is the spiritual fortitude to face facts, do what needs to be done and endure what must be endured in an imperfect world.

From militants to activities to practitioners: I beg to differ with Tom Gross. This is not "terrorism", it is jihad. Otherwise, we are in perfect agreement. Please RTWT.

... why are so many prominent Western media reluctant to call the perpetrators terrorists? Why did Jon Snow, one of Britain's most respected TV journalists, use the word "practitioners" when referring to the Mumbai terrorists? Was he perhaps confusing them with doctors?

Why did Britain's highly regarded Channel 4 News state that the "militants" showed a "wanton disregard for race or creed" when exactly the opposite was true: Targets and victims were very carefully selected. Why did the "experts" invited to discuss the Mumbai attacks in one show on the state-funded Radio France Internationale, the voice of France around the world, harp on about Baruch Goldstein (who carried out the Hebron shootings in 1994), virtually the sole case of a Jewish terrorist in living memory?

Unfortunately in recent years we have become used to leftist media burying their heads in the sand about the threat that Islamic fundamentalism poses, in much the same way as they once refused to report accurately on communist atrocities. But now even conservative media may be doing it too.

What is the motivation of journalists in trying to mangle language -- such as going out of their way to refer to terrorists as "militants," as one Mumbai story on yesterday's Times of London Web site seemed to do? Do they somehow wish to express sympathy for these murderers, or perhaps make their crimes seem almost acceptable? How are we going to effectively confront terrorists when we can't even identify them as such?

We can't. And that is the left's aim.

A useful reminder of the leftstream rape of language. From 2005, Tom Gross on the BBC's brief discovery of terrorism.

On July 7, 2005, Britain suffered its first suicide bomb attacks. 52 people were killed on London’s transport system, and all of a sudden, terms that British media use when reporting suicide attacks on Israeli civilians were nowhere to be seen. “Guerrilla,” “militant,” “activist” and “fighter” were replaced with the words “terrorism” and “terrorist.”

But not for long. The following day the BBC subtly and retroactively started to alter the text of stories on its website in order to remove the word “terrorist” to describe those behind the London bombings. Stalin himself could hardly have done a better rewrite job.

Meanwhile, the world’s leading news agency, the Associated Press, disseminated a 9/11-style “Israel-knew-in-advance” libel about the London bombs, spawning various anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on extremist websites.

Enough is enough: India's citizen journalists should sound familiar to so many of us in the rest of the dextrosphere: "Let us pledge to fight them back."

A certain number of appalling and unquestionable conclusions: Bernard-Henri Levy suggest we give Pakistan the attention it deserves.

The Lashkar-e-Taiba is, ultimately, one of the constitutive elements of what is conventionally called al Qaeda. For too long we've told ourselves that al Qaeda no longer exists except as a brand; that it is only a pure signifier, "franchised" by local organizations independent of one another. Yet there indeed exists in our world what Osama bin Laden called the "International Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders," which is like a constellation of atoms aggregated around a central nucleus. These atoms find themselves, for the most part, clustered in this new zone of tempests that forms the whole of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Three days after the massacre, in a moment of anger and frustration that rings true, Pakistan's President Zardari said: "Even if these activists are linked to the Lashkar-e-Taiba, who do you think we are fighting?" The problem, unfortunately, is beyond him. Like his predecessor, President Zardari lacks the means to break the back of criminal elements within the ISI and Pakistani military. To an even greater extent, he lacks the backing of those who associate it with the darker side of his own administration. And therein lies the challenge -- perhaps the most frightening of our era. After the bleeding of Mumbai, it is time the entire international community -- not just those in the region -- took notice.

Explanetics: David Aaronovitch gives the lie to the apologists for jihad.

So, why kill the rabbi?

RTWT.

This should not pass unremarked: Brazil decides this is a good time to sell Pakistan one hundred MAR-1 medium-range air-to-surface anti-radar missiles. Defense Minister Nelson Jobim:

"Brazil negotiates with Pakistan, not with Pakistani terrorists," he said. "To cancel this deal would be to attribute terrorist activities to the Pakistani government."

Such would be to correctly attribute terrorist activities to the Pakistani government. We might not be able to convince the Americans to stop arming Pakistan (and Saudi and Egypt, etc. etc.) but we should be able to warn off Brazil from this sort of grotesquerie.

Brazilian Embassy in Washington, DC
3006 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC
20008-3634
Phone: (202) 238-2805
Fax: (202) 238-2827
Website: www.brasilemb.org

Brazillian Embassy in Ottawa
450 Wilbrod Street
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
K1N 6M8
Phone: (613) 237-1090 & (613) 755-5160
Fax.: (613) 237-6144
mailbox@brasembottawa.org

Posted by Ghost of a flea at December 3, 2008 08:34 AM

Comments

It's because of what even rad-leftist Michael Walzer noted in "Can There be a Decent Left", jihad can't fit into mushy liberal ideology, so liberals have to dance around it, or try to shoehorn it into tired old Marxist doggeral

Posted by: jdpercifield at December 3, 2008 11:33 AM

Ghost of a flea

December 03, 2008

Let us pledge to fight them back

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