Anti-Americanism: the new Chic
Some notes from the front:
If there were ever a better reason to totally discredit anything and everything associated with UCal-Berkeley, this would be it. Sorry folks, if you're so damn offended by a red, white, and blue ribbon, maybe you should just crawl into a cave (by yourself or with your al Qaeda pals) and cower until the end of time. Maybe they could say that the ribbons represent the French. I'm sure our neo-Marxist, whacko friends in the student government at UC-B would be perfectly fine with that idea.
In Venice, an anti-American movie reflecting on 9-11 has been drawing acclaim from those chic enough to attend. Egyptian director Youssef Chahine's segment takes the cake for sheer audacity, however. I'd sure as hell like to know how dropping the atomic bombs in Japan, saving millions of Japanese and American lives by bringing a swift end to WWII, constitues "meddling" in world affairs. As for the Middle East, well, you just can't win with some people. Try to help out or support anyone, you're accused of being one-sided, meddling, etc. Try to back away, well, you get lambasted for not being a full-fledged world citizen.
Somewhat encouraging news from average Europeans, once you get past the headline. My assumption is that the constant drumbeat of elites chanting "USA was to blame" and the general Continental attitude of moral relativism led to the high numbers partially blaming the US for 9-11.
More disturbing is this article on current Muslim attitudes towards the US. We see Muslims refusing to assign blame to Osama, castigating the US for its "arrogance" that "assumes the right to make decisions for others," and in, perhaps the most enlightening portion of the artice, we see a child claim happiness in the wake of terror. When will they get it? America does not make decisions for others -- it makes decisions for itself, often in the face of what others tell it to do. Isolationism and protection from foreign threats is the American trend throughout history, not "meddling." It is exactly our Islamist enemies who desire to tell others what to do. See Taliban Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia for details. As for the happy kids, that could be one of two things -- the general tendency for young boys to be jackasses for the sake of it, or pure hatred of America and the West, likely fed by the same teachers and parents who shush any mention of it to the press. I'll bet heavily on the latter.
Make no mistake, this is a war of cultures, no matter what anyone says. We may not like it, but there is a large segment of the human population that despises everything that Western Culture and liberal democracy stands for. They will kill, maim, terrorize, and do whatever they can to disrupt and topple every element of that which they hate. These people are mostly fundamentalist Muslims from the Middle East, and they and their sympathizers form a large percentage of the population of the Middle East.
Fine, fine, they don't represent "the true Islam." Whatever. I don't care. Nor do I really care why they hate us. They are barbarians. We are civilized. We may not have always engaged in the best courses of action throughout time, but we've tried. We care about people. We despair and fret over small numbers of civilian casualties in our battles against terror. They encourage the deliberate targeting of civilians, then cry foul when one of their civilians dies. We offer hope, freedom, and economic prosperity. They offer war. We have no choice but to oblige them.
Whew. Long update there. Please feel free to comment; I'd love to know what you're thinking (ALD, this means you.)
# posted by Eric @ 6:40 PM
