Sept. 21, 2006
Being Nice Will Get Us Killed
NRO: Enough With The Olive Branches To The Islamofascists
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Play CBS Video Video Pope Seeks Religious Dialogue Pope Benedict XVI attempted to soothe relations with the Muslim world. Speaking under tight security, he said he hopes his remarks will lead to a dialogue among religions. Charlie D'Agata reports.
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Video Notebook: Muslims React Only On The Web: Katie Couric discusses the fallout from the Pope's remarks on Islam.
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Video Muslim Anger At Pope The Rev. Jonathan Morris, vice-rector of the Legionnaires of Christ Seminary in Rome, CBS News Middle East analyst Reza Aslan and Julie Chen discuss the Muslim reaction to Pope Benedict's remarks.
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Many Muslims are still condemning the pope's remarks. (CBS)
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Photo Essay Pope Sparks Outcry Protests fueled by anger over comments by Pope Benedict XVI construed as anti-Islam.
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Interactive The Fundamentals Of Islam Learn about the Muslim religion and find out where the largest Muslim populations live in the U.S. and around the world.
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Special Report War On Terror Complete coverage of the military's battle against terrorism.
From the Vatican to the Pentagon, goodwill gestures offered to the Muslim world too often blow up in the West's collective face. The nicer we are to them, the harsher they are to us.
The olive branch Pope Benedict XVI extended to Muslims is obscured by the smoke that has billowed since his address at Bavaria's Regensburg University. The pope cited a conversation between "an educated Persian" and the 14th-century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologus. They discussed, the pope said Sept. 7, "the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both." He then quoted Paleologus who said: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
The pope described this comment's "startling brusqueness" and later recommended a "genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today." He added: "we invite our partners" into such discourse.
The pope's call for Christian and Islamic interchange ignited days of Muslim rage. Demonstrators in London waved placards that read "Islam will conquer Rome" and "Jesus is the slave of Allah."
"You infidels and despots," the Mujahedeen Shura Council warned in an online communiqué, "we will continue our jihad and never stop until God avails us to chop your necks."
Muslim hotheads torched seven churches in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Likely infuriated by the pope's speech, two gunmen in Mogadishu, Somalia, fatally shot Sister Leonella Sgorbati, 65, four times in her back. They also killed a bodyguard at the children's hospital where the Catholic nun worked.
Oh, well. So much for dialogue.
Great Britain has shown great sensitivity toward Muslims, some 1.6 million of whom live there in peace; some even serve in Parliament. After a Muslim employee complained, municipal workers in Dudley were told to remove pig-related items from their desks, including one worker's tissue box decorated with Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. As Mark Steyn explained last spring, local councilor Mahbubur Rahman endorsed the ban on objects festooned with pigs, which Muslims consider unclean. "It is a good thing," Rahman said. "It is a tolerance and acceptance of their beliefs and understanding."
The British National Health Service recently unveiled a veil it calls "the Inter-faith Gown." This is, essentially, an institutional-green burqa with which devout Muslim women can cover themselves from head to toe in public hospitals.
So far, such political correctness has failed to cool the ire of radical Muslims. British police on Sept. 2 arrested 14 men
U.S. officials offered an olive branch of sorts to 190 top Taliban fighters last July. An unmanned Predator drone spotted them in Afghanistan, lined up virtually in formation. Given this golden opportunity to liquidate nearly 10 score of America's most bloodthirsty enemies, U.S. military commanders balked. The Taliban members were at a funeral, and Pentagon rules of engagement prevent attacks in cemeteries. So the Taliban forces casually dispersed. Military officials told NBC News they had "no regrets" about their decision. (It would behoove the New York Times to learn that the patriots at NBC first persuaded the Pentagon to declassify a Predator photo of the Taliban fighters before it broadcast that war-zone image.)
The Taliban subsequently has hammered Coalition forces in some of that conflict's most intense combat yet. They also showed no American-style mercy at the funeral last Sept. 11 of Paktia Provincial Gov. Abdul Hakim Taniwal. A suicide bomber used that occasion in Khost to kill six mourners and injure 25 others. The previous day, a Taliban suicide bomber had killed Taniwal, his nephew, and his bodyguard.
Amid such mounting carnage, GOP Sens. Susan Collins, Lindsay Graham, John McCain and John Warner have joined Democrats to limit President Bush's plan to keep interrogating terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay within Geneva Convention restrictions the Supreme Court imposed last June.
These gelatinous Republicans must believe America tortures Gitmo detainees — never mind the taxpayer-funded, culturally correct meals, library books, and the extensive worship, recreation, dental care, and medicine these Islamofascists enjoy. Tough questioning, such as "waterboarding" or simulated drowning, makes terrorists talk. That's how U.S. interrogators encouraged Khalid Sheik Mohammed to detail how he masterminded al Qaeda's Sept. 11 attacks. He then ratted out Hambali, the man behind the October 2002 Bali bombing that killed 202, and "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla. Both are now safely in custody.
Al Qaeda honcho Abu Zubaida stayed quiet until interrogators stuck him in a cold room and blasted the corrosive music of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Zubaida cried uncle and began to talk. He helped America find terrorists Ramzi bin-al-Shibh in Pakistan, Amar-al-Faruq in Indonesia, Rahim al-Nashiri in Kuwait, and Muhammad al Darbi in Yemen.
These interrogations help America connect the dots. Stopping them, as McCain and company would do, disconnects the dots. This likely will blow more Americans to smithereens.
If McCain and his pals worry about torture, they should ponder the daily agony of the loved ones of the people who were killed on Sept. 11 and never even recovered from ground zero. Assuring that Islamic fanatics never again vaporize Americans is why we must squeeze captured terrorists until they sing.
Throwing olive branches at Islamofascists is beyond futile. This is the war on terror, not the Summer Olympics on terror. If America won't fight this like a war — and win — we might as well cut our losses, hand out the Qurans, and start the mass conversions.
Deroy Murdock is a New York-based columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a senior fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.
By Deroy Murdock
Reprinted with permission from National Review Online.
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- So now it's being suggested that "only" us Republicans need and or use oil [Petro]. I drive to work 6 days, sometimes 7, days a week, how come I don't see any Democrats showing their disdain for oil by pedeling their bikes or skateing along our roads?
It just never ends!!!! - Reply to this comment
- Those who favor torture as a means to an end should expect that our on warriors to face torture as well. War has few rules, but if we condone torture we can expect our warriors to be tortures as well when captured. Is that what you really wish to see happen?
We can hardly hold our enemies to rules protecting our men and women from cruel treatment if we choose to throw the rules out the window. - Reply to this comment
- If we can now call Muslims "IslamoFascists" can we call Republicans "PetroFascist"?
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- And excuse me for my wicked spelling of psychological. Auto-spell is now OFF.
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- I have heard a lot of back and forth on whether or not torture provides accurate information. Some information that was provided to me by an associate in Afghanistan helped me understand. Torture by means of physical violence such as nail pulling, electrocution or severe beatings provides in the vast majority of cases garbage for information. This is because those doing the torturing have intent to kill to extract information and the victim in feeling extreme pain will do or say anything for it to stop if not to spare their life. So Human Rights Watch is correct in this regard. However, phycological torture in the form of loud noise, sleep depravation and yes, water-boarding has been shown to be extremely effective as a tool for extracting information. The victim knows that the interrogator is not going to kill him and that by providing verifiable information they will be left alone. Phycological torture is used by many of the foreign intelligence services in the US and western Europe because of its effectiveness. For those that believe any phycological torture is too humiliating, I suggest you work in your local police department in homicide for a couple of years to get a grip on what the real world is like for some people who deliberately choose a job to protect you and me from really sick people.
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- I think one of our biggest problems is we don't like the way the Middle East fights. It is gory and bloody. It has been that way for centuries and is not likely to stop for centuries more. As a more cultured society we are just not adapted to that way of thinking. We just politely fight with guns to blow peoples brains out. Well get used to it. So yes some kind of communication had better start somewhere. Yes there has to be a regulated time of pullout and let their free for all be worked out amongst themselves and pray for the best. We may not like the leader then either but at least maybe the line of communication will be better. In the meantime we keep up with the terrorists who attack our allies and ourselves and stick to our position to stop terrorism. The moderate muslims have got to have a chance to have at a peaceful life for a change. I'm Orthodox Catholic and there is room for all of us.
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- The problem in the USA since WWII is that we're trying to fight politely. In WWII, we just bombed the *** out of the enemy until they surrendered unconditionally. Why don't we do that any more?
We know where some of the terrorist training camps are. Wipe them off the face of the earth. Stop worrying about collateral damage. If you want to get those people's attention, the only way we have not tried is with unilateral force. Has anyone heard from Libya lately? Don't waste the Army and the Marines. Use the Air Force. - Reply to this comment
- When you think of the problem of Islamic terrorism in the long term, the position that the author takes in this piece is untenable. Though beating the information out of terror suspects may feel good, and may occasionally result in some intelligence, it really only serves to satisfy our desire for revenge. The repercussions of such methods, however, are far worse than any short-term intelligence benefit that may result.
The war on terrorism is ultimately a moral war, and when the US and its allies act respectfully and responsibly, we win. When we perform blatently immoral acts (and who can call torture moral?), we lose.
I realize and accept the author's point that acting morally will not deter extremist. What the author does not understand is that the "olive branch" he refers to is not really for the extremist, its for the millions of moderate Muslims who need to know that we are sain, rational people and that our war on terror is not aimed at them - it is aimed at the immoral individuals who want to attack us. Olive branches do not stop the terrorist of today - they help prevent ordinary Muslims from becoming the terrorist of tomorrow.
The author takes the basic position "if its OK for the terrorist to act this way, why isn't it OK for us to act this way?" I will defer to what my mother (and I'm sure everyone's mother) always said - if someone jumped off a cliff, should you? - Reply to this comment
- to clarkalex at 02:37 PM : Sep 22, 2006
What does that mean? Who are you addressing? - Reply to this comment
- Oh, so we stoop to their level in order to stop them?
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Ex-NBA ref Tim Donaghy 
