Common Sense Evaluation

How terrorism works

On one level, terrorism works by simply causing us so much pain, suffering and dread of future terror that we eventually weaken and give in to the terrorists’ demands. But the ultimate goal of terrorism is to capture our hearts and minds – to convert us.

What? How can terrorizing us transform our attitudes in favor of the terrorists’ viewpoint? Wouldn’t we recoil in horror and, if anything, move farther away from sympathy toward the perpetrators? Not necessarily.

Remember, militant Muslims “convert” individuals to Islam by threat of death. Why shouldn’t they try the same tactic on entire societies?

Stop and consider what happens when we’re intimidated and frightened by terrorism, or even the threat of it. Wonder of wonders, some of us start to sympathize with our enemy.

There’s a funny thing about appeasement. It’s hard to give in to evil without first agreeing with that evil, at least a little. We have to allow our minds to be bent, our previous values and perceptions altered, even slightly; we somehow have to see the terrorists as not quite totally evil. “Yes, they may be angry and even murderous, but after all, don’t they have legitimate grievances against us? Maybe we brought on this attack by our past actions. Maybe we’re at fault. Maybe their cause is just. Maybe we’re the real terrorists.“

Does that sound like an exaggeration? Do you remember Cindy Sheehan, so lionized by America’s “mainstream press” as the courageous public face of the antiwar movement? She referred to Islamic terrorists flocking to Iraq to kill American soldiers as “freedom fighters.” Meanwhile she calls the president of the United States a “lying bastard,” a “jerk,” an “evil maniac,” a “gangster,” a “war criminal,” a “murderous thug” and – of course – a “terrorist.”

To become an appeaser, you have to sympathize with the enemy, either overtly like Sheehan, or secretly. How else can you look at yourself in the mirror and justify giving in to evil?

The question is, how do we come to side with those who are intent on destroying us?

Excerpt from David Kupelian November 21, 2005

President Bush finally fought back against the lies that the treasonous “American Left” has been spewing.

Here is one part of his speech that has always been obvious to anyone with a clear mind.

Some have also argued that extremism has been strengthened by the actions in Iraq — claiming that our presence in that country has somehow caused or triggered the rage of radicals. I would remind them that we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001. The hatred of the radicals existed before Iraq was an issue, and it will exist after Iraq is no longer an excuse. The government of Russia did not support Operation Iraqi Freedom — and, yet, the militants killed more than 150 Russian schoolchildren in Beslan.

Over the years these extremists have used a litany of excuses for violence: the Israeli presence on the West Bank, the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, the defeat of the Taliban, or the Crusades of a thousand years ago. In fact, we’re not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We’re facing a radical ideology with inalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world. No act of ours invited the rage of killers — and no concession, bribe, or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder. On the contrary, they target nations whose behavior they believe they can change through violence. Against such an enemy, there is only one effective response: We will never back down, we will never give in, we will never accept anything less than complete victory.

The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century. Yet in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century. Like the ideology of communism, Islamic radicalism is elitist, led by a self-appointed vanguard that presumes to speak for the Muslim masses. Bin Laden says his own role is to tell Muslims, “what is good for them and what is not.” And what this man who grew up in wealth and privilege considers good for poor Muslims is that they become killers and suicide bombers. He assures them that this road — that this is the road to paradise — though he never offers to go along for the ride.