Welcome to this week's episode of my ongoing audio adaptation of America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, which begins with a useful way of looking at the world:
In the months after the Afghan campaign, France's foreign minister, M Védrine, was deploring American 'simplisme' on a daily basis, and Saddam understood from the get-go that the French veto was his best shot at torpedoing any meaningful UN action on Iraq. Yet the jihadists still blew up a French oil tanker. If you were to pick only one western nation not to blow up the oil tankers of, the French would surely be it.
But they got blown up anyway.
And afterwards a spokesman for the Islamic Army of Aden said, 'We would have preferred to hit a US frigate, but no problem because they are all infidels.'
No problem. They are all infidels.
When people make certain statements and their acts conform to those statements I tend to take them at their word. As Hussein Massawi, former leader of Hezbollah, neatly put it, 'We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.'
"We are fighting to eliminate you": The failure to grasp that core reality has bedevilled western policy for a quarter-century - and ultimately explains why the "war on terror" (granted its misbegotten framing) was lost. So the "developed world" spent twenty years lobbing the planet's most expensive weaponry and sacrificing its most highly trained soldiery up and down the Hindu Kush, the Sunni Triangle and other worthless bits of sod, while the inbred goatherds of the dar al-Islam quietly got on with annexing London, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Vienna, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Toronto, Montreal, Minneapolis, Dearborn, Lewiston-Auburn...
Remind me again: which side are the total arseholes?
At this weekend's Munich Security Conference, Marco Rubio said:
In pursuit of a world without borders, we opened our doors to an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people. We made these mistakes together, and now, together, we owe it to our people to face those facts...
The problem is that, even on the brink of the express chute to oblivion, his colleagues in that room in Munich are still disinclined to face those facts. By way of example, the UK Prime Minister took time out of his hectic schedule of under-tipping his Ukrainian rent-boys to warn Rubio et al that war is coming any day now:
Starmer warns Europe 'must be ready to fight' as Russia threat grows
Question for our many British readers: how many of you Johnnies are eager to get your gun and fight for a land of Muzzies and paedos? Don't all stampede at once to be droned in the Donbass so your twelve-year-old daughter can grow up in a world of those enduring "British values" - like being gang-raped after school with the connivance of the constabulary, the mayor, the Home Secretary and the House of Lords.
I pass. Like the British guns at Singapore, the west has spent this entire war pointing the wrong way.
The rise of Islam means, ultimately, the "elimination" of everything else: ask a Jew from old Tangier, a homosexual from mid-twentieth-century Alexandria, a Carnaby Street dolly bird from 1960s Kabul... Whatever's your bag, there'll be less of it. In the face of such clarity, it is striking to me how pitifully parochial all the "internationalists" turn out to be. Also from today's episode:
Back in February 2002, Robert Fisk, the veteran Middle East correspondent (ie, he's reliably wrong about practically everything), wrote a column headlined 'Please Release My Friend Daniel Pearl'. It followed a familiar line: please release Daniel, then you'll be able to tell your story, get your message out. Taking him hostage is 'an own goal of the worst kind', as it ensures he won't be able to get your message out, the message being - Fisky presumed – 'the suffering of tens of thousands of Afghan refugees', 'the plight of Pakistan's millions of poor', etc.
Somehow the apologists keep missing the point: the story did get out; Pearl's severed head is the message. That's why they filmed the decapitation, released it on video, circulated it through the bazaars and madrassahs and distributed it worldwide via the Internet. It was a huge hit. The message got out very effectively.
And yet we still refuse to get the message - even as decapitation has been exported to the streets of south London and the Île-de-France.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Twenty-Four of America Alone simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
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To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget that special Gift Membership. As soon as you join, you'll get access not only to America Alone but to over six dozen gripping yarns in Tales for Our Time. Please join me next weekend for Part Twenty-Five of America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.
