Mark Steyn engagingly covers all the bases in this column on the seeming inability of authorities to draw the obvious conclusions about the LAX terrorism. He also makes this point:
let's take the Feds at their word when they insist there's "no connection" between the LAX killer and any terrorist organizations. In its way, that's even more disturbing. Mr. Hadayet doesn't fit the poverty-breeds-desperation-breeds-resentment routine: He lived in a prosperous L.A. suburb and ran his own business. America had been good to him, at least when compared with the economic basket-case he emigrated from. On July 4th, he had plenty of reasons to get out the bunting and firecrackers. Instead, he went Jew-killing.Osama and al-Qaeda are a small problem, which since September 11th has been managed about as well as can be expected. But the broader culture of "intolerance" in certain unassimilated communities is a potentially much bigger problem. You win wars not just by bombing but by argument, too: Churchill understood this; he characterized the enemy as evil, because they were and because it was important for the British people to understand this if they were to muster the will to see the war through. In Vietnam, the U.S. lost the rhetorical ground to Jane Fonda and co., and wound up losing the war, too. It's critical that the same thing does not happen here. The organizations that purport to represent Muslims in North America and Europe have their own excuses for turning a blind eye to the torrent of hate from respectable sources within the Muslim world -- mosques, media, government. There's no reason why the FBI and other U.S. agencies should sign on to their fictions.
al Qaeda was part of the problem, not the whole thing. The whole problem is Islamic Fundamentalism as a political movement, because it denies the idea that it can live-and-let-live with us as non-Islamic nations. As long as it remains an active political movement with actual political power, it will keep popping up and keep attacking us in one way or another. The names may change, but the real enemy will remain. al Qaeda was like a mushroom, pushed up above the surface from a large fungal mass in the soil. Crush just the mushroom, and the fungus remains, unharmed.Posted by Dr. Frank at July 10, 2002 10:39 AM | TrackBack