On March 22, four pedestrians and a police officer were killed at Westminster.
On May 22, 22 peaceful citizens were murdered at Manchester at an Ariana Grande concert.
On June 3rd, a Renault van carrying three attackers rammed citizens on London Bridge followed by the attackers’ emergence to inflict more harm with knives. Seven more died. In addition to the deaths of citizens, there are approximately 200 injured with numerous serious cases among them.
Is this the new acceptable reality in Great Britain and Europe, one dismissed by Mayor Khan as just the goings-on of a big city in 2017? Is this a reality we wish for ourselves?
It is interesting to take a complete mental detour and revisit World War II, studying the calculus from the positions of each major participating nation before the events which decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Post World War II, many academic theories emerged regarding how Japan had already accepted her defeat and that the bombing was not actually necessary to end the war - only time. The American position, the Soviet position, and the Japanese will to fight in the face of futility all make for interesting conversation. In the end, Hiroshima’s bombing killed over 100,000, many with horrific, lingering deaths due to radiation. Was this the tipping point which ended World War II? I’m not so sure, although most Americans would cite Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the clear reason Japan surrendered. Not oft discussed is how Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in Japan remaining whole, as the Soviets had a far different plan. Stalin was prepared to launch an occupation of Hoikkado, Japan’s northernmost home island. Soviet occupation of Hoikkado would have given Stalin far greater regional naval influence forever. It would have changed Japan permanently, and I am a believer the Soviet war declaration was as much or more a catalyst for Japan’s surrender as the latest two cities in a series of over 60 Japanese population centers which had already been destroyed. By the end of World War II, less than a dozen Japanese cities with populations larger than 100,000 remained. Japan was used to cities being picked off the map with hundreds of thousands of casualties, including large swaths of Tokyo, with their Foreign Minister Shidehara Kijuro stating, “the people would gradually get used to being bombed daily. In time their unity and resolve would grow stronger.” Japan had lost city after city over the summer, and had a well prepared force on its borders ready to protect against mainland invasion. Destruction of Japan’s cities was already so severe and so complete, it was not the universal encouragement to end the war many assign to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When Japan requested assistance from Moscow, which had to that point remained on the sidelines, they were met with a combination of a “no, you get no help, our non-aggression pact is now extinct, here’s a declaration of war and we’re invading Manchuria (held by the Japanese)”, combined with Hiroshima from the Americans. After Hiroshima, with the knowledge of pending Soviet doom, Japan’s key leadership took nearly 72 hours to meet regarding conditions of surrender. It is argued by some they didn’t even know about the bombing of Nagasaki while such conditions were being discussed.
The “ohmygod-they-dropped-a-nuclear-bomb-time-to-surrender” narrative is debatable. Concurrently, the “Gee whiz why did Japan commit suicide with Pearl Harbor” thought process of today is also illogical, as the United States of the 1930’s and early 1940’s was not the United States which rapidly emerged. Our mother country had been bombed for months without much of our support, and Japan perceived their war footing in terms of machinery to be generally on par with ours. Japan was imperialist and growing, and they wanted control of southeast Asia. They had numerous political paths to make that happen, and chose the destruction of our naval fleet as a key nail in our international capacity to move freely with any effectiveness. Pearl Harbor was a calculated risk that would have allowed Japan absolute control of the Pacific. Limited intelligence left them with two core beliefs: One, that the U.S. could not readily challenge them with the loss of the naval fleet. Two, Hitler was likely to take Moscow and finish off Great Britain. With Britain out of the mix, the British empire from India throughout the Pacific would suddenly be ripe for foster parents. The United States had become quite protectionist and insulated, and our entry into World War II was forced rather than automatic. We were emerging from an entrenched depression, and Japan had no manner of predicting our actual production capacity or more importantly our national will to mobilize it with focus. Not of small value is the fact Hirohito was considered a deity, and Japan’s leaders were unamused at the concept of their god being hauled before the international tribunals which were already being assembled.
My point? Complicated matters of war and religion do not have clean answers, and cannot be discussed in simple ideological political terms. World War II Japan was a combination of both. There are living human beings who actually believe benefit concerts are a fundamental part of correcting entrenched extremism, and that love indeed conquers all. The “candlelight vigil” as activism is a laughable retort to mass murder and public terror. In discussing the current state of fundamental, radical Islam, one must understand imperialism and the reason for it. For every imperialist stance or large migration, there is an economic purpose.
I have long believed the Islamic incursion into Europe is largely predictable due to the trajectory of the petrol-based economy. In the 1970’s, OPEC wielded so much influence it paralyzed the interior of the United States after we supported Israel. Israel had been attacked by Egypt and Syria, and we sent arms to Israel. Oil had become an effective weapon against the United States from a portion of the globe which just a century prior quietly traded livestock, silver and dates. Petroleum had become that important, and our brotherhood with Israel was enough to rapidly raise the price of the black gold spigots. Islam had become empowered by the energy source powering the world, enabling mass personal transit and fueling (literally) innovation from agriculture to plastics. Hydrocarbons transformed Islam into a potent international force with which to be reckoned, and reckon we have.
Fast forward several decades, and the writing is on the wall for oil. No, we’re not going to run out and we’re not going to stop using it. However, oil is no longer the weapon it once was. More importantly, oil can no longer support the Middle East in the manner to which these nations have become accustomed. Oil doesn’t just provide the social safety net throughout key points of the Middle East, the social safety net prevents certain nations from being overthrown.
My contention is the migration from the Middle East to elsewhere, in younger populations, is due not in small part to the belief the oil economy will not always exist in its current lavish state. Europe’s plan, which is offering accommodations and comprehensive social services to refugees, will prove a maddening absence of wisdom. If extractive economy petrol nations are having trouble meeting their social obligations, why not move to countries in better climates with free housing, health, dental and the dole? While Angela Merkel may look at the macroeconomics of her nation’s demographic future and desire an influx of new citizens, those citizens who would reduce European cultures to rubble may not serve as a positive choice. This is exactly what is happening, all the while millions of Muslims do live in Europe peacefully while contributing to their surroundings. The argument which can be offered for discussion is: Where you find Islamic immigration, you find Islamic radicals. I stated this is offered for discussion, not absolute.
The natural next question is whether that entire immigration group is reliably prudent considering the predictable potential cost to existing citizens which is exacted in torture, mayhem and death. In France, locals carried “Je Suis Charlie” posters amid a period of a few years where hundreds of French citizens have been slaughtered. (I repeat, hundreds, each with a name and a family.) Does wide-scale Islamic immigration carry with it the burden of a predictable percentage of radicals, or those who will become radicalized? Is it a sentence among the receiving population that lives will be lost, and this is to be accepted without counterargument? Can we even open this discussion without immediate charges of racism and bigotry? Can anything be solved without this discussion?
Europe's borders are at the ready with hostels and checkbooks open. It is a new twist on the New Colossus poem which Emma Lazarus wrote to raise money for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. “Give us your tired, your poor,” chimes the poem, recited often by those who feel this bit of prose somehow fashioned a new contractual expectation for the United States to provide for the world without limit. We’re all tired and poor now; for the European version, they’re rattled as well. When you are taught the inelastic primacy of your religion and way of life, and that infidels await in all directions, it becomes predictable that a percentage of migrating Muslims will find their new surroundings highly unattractive in terms of religious integration and assimilation. This has proven very true.
The result, at least in part, is a fringe element which has “radicalized” and sees a natural right to support their God by destroying other existing cultures while instilling fear among the citizenry. Civilized concepts of right and wrong, to the fundamental jihadist, are overturned by a higher power. Whether it is one dead, 10 dead or a thousand dead, the bodies of infidels are each gifts to Allah and imminently justifiable. Islam has the option among its religion of rooting out its own evil sect which is raining hell on the entire planet. Ask Filipinos, for example. That isn't happening. I can't give much praise to the Muslim "Response to Manchester", as it takes little effort to issue a boilerplate condemnation from the local religious leadership and gather in unison with candles. The left wants to preach that this subset of Islam is a separatist group with no connection to its hijacked religion. This is, generously, an incomplete assessment. While hundreds of millions of peaceful Muslims are caught in the fray, which I understand, the entire remainder of humanity (more billions by many) is sentenced to live in the crossfire lest they be labeled as Islamophobic.
Do tens of millions of Muslims practice peacefully? Absolutely. When their sons listen to extremist imams and see how legitimate government support overlaps with terrorism (hello, Iran, howdy, Saudis), that son is suddenly declared separate from the larger religion which raised him and failed to teach him by enough example that he did not become radicalized. (See: Chattanooga, where seemingly ordinary Red Bank High graduate is also alumni of Second Intifada). Like it or not, radicalization is an option for emerging Muslim youth. It is a path laid very clearly by influential religious leaders who have a tremendous skill to acquire the disaffected at key points of development or at vulnerable points as adults. The immutable fact is someone must address this, and the solution must come from within Islam rather than the body politic of ordinary Eurozone citizens who have no option but to live the intense fear of this religion's global failure.
Christians can't solve radical Islam as a theory, and Islam can't solve it with ex post facto posters and candles. It either comes from within, or it is categorically denounced from without when Britain takes the Slovakian view (no mosques). I have Muslim friends I love and respect very much. I have no qualm saying "this is a you problem, and your community must actively work with the unison of a billion people to take back your religion from rampant extremism. If you feel put upon, try being a non-Muslim who just has to wait to become collateral damage because Sadiq Khan says so." An internal force within Islam has to solve the global problem of extremism; that is the rigid bottom line. It will either be an internal holy war among Muslims, or an external holy war against Islam. This is history, and I am only a student of it. Diplomacy only works to its intended edge, at which point brute force becomes a tactical rather than political reality. I do not hate Islam, and there are Muslims I love individually. In a nation with freedom of religion, this is as it should be. A vanload of people with knives and guns on the heels of a nail bomb attack on the cusp of Westminster is a movement, not just a few "nutters" who can be discarded as an oddity. Declared "no go zones" have indicated loudly large populations are not assimilating peacefully. Locals are terrorized by this, literally and figuratively, with challenges to assaults on young females categorized as "racism." This cannot exist in perpetuity. No action is inaction, and I am merely illustrating there will be a limit to the loss of life and freedom Europeans or any individual nation will be willing to accept.
The argument for multiculturalism rises and falls with the fate of Islam. Europeans are instructed to empathize with peaceful practitioners and new refugees while burying their dead family members with increasing regularity. These two contemporary parallels cannot run in unison forever. When they falter and cross, it will be bedlam. Prevention of brinkmanship must come internally from the Islamic faith. There is no other alternative. Those preaching deadly radical views must be continuously identified and actively challenged forcefully from within Islam on an international scale. This is the Manhattan Project for a religion, an existential threat which demands their global focus. In my personal life, I have only felt welcomed by every Muslim I have ever met. I wish my experience was shared by all, and hope someday this will come to pass.
Jason M. Kibby (Walker)