Post-Jihad Gesture Theater - Michelle Malkin
While homicidal, suicidal and genocidal jihadists are busy plotting the next soft-target terror attacks on the West, docile Westerners are busy shedding cartoon tears and doodling broken hearts on social media.
European artists rushed to fill Twitter and Instagram with images of Belgian comic book character Tintin weeping after vengeful Muslim terrorists left the Brussels airport and subway system buried in rubble and dead bodies.
Residents of the besieged city meekly protested the Quran-inspired violence by leaving pastel-colored chalk messages pleading for "peace no war." [T]ens of thousands of people spread the "JeSuisBruxelles" message with their thoughts, prayers and memes.
And, of course, there will be flags lowered and monuments lit up all over the world this week in the national colors of Belgium to show "solidarity" with victims of The Perpetrators Whose Religion Shall Not Be Named.
To borrow a useful phrase coined by British journalist James Bartholomew last year, we have reached the oversaturation point of post-terrorism "virtue signaling:" Hashtags, avatars and animated GIFs ad nauseam. These are the easy advertisements and maudlin displays of one's resolute opposition to an unidentified something that must be stopped somehow by unspoken means.
Virtue signals are "camouflage," Bartholomew explained. They are sincere-seeming shows of collective unity that disguise the millennial-age indulgence of publicly patting one's own back for supposed moral courage. "No one actually has to do anything," he opined. Virtue now "comes from mere words or even from silently held beliefs."
Pre-Twitter, outraged Americans all donned "Never forget" magnets and ribbons on our cars and lapels after 9/11. I was one of them. But after 15 years of hapless homeland security theater and bipartisan pandering to terror-coddling "Islamophobia" shriekers, I'm so, so sick of noble gesture paraphernalia.
I'm sick of Silicon Valley moguls who pretend to champion free speech while muzzling the speech of those who use the Internet to criticize the very open door immigration policies that fertilized European and American soil for jihadists. I'm sick of all the same old emasculated politicians who declare that "justice will be served," "this must end" and "we stand against terror," while refusing to take even the smallest baby steps to...drain the jihad swamps inside our own borders.
We've had enough piles of memorial flowers. We've heard enough hollow lip service paid to resolve. Where is the world's active resistance to the sharia-imposing soldiers of Allah?
We need Tintin to wipe his nose, man up and
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| The famous Belgian comic character Tintin, depicted reacting to the terror attacks. |
When German invaders attempted what they thought would be an easy romp through the tiny neutral country in 1914 on their way to Paris, resistance fighters who were outnumbered 14 to 1 took a brave stand in defense of their sovereignty.
Bracing for an onslaught, King Albert addressed his people:
"One single vision fills all minds: that of our independence endangered. One single duty imposes itself upon our wills: the duty of stubborn resistance. In these solemn circumstances two virtues are indispensable: a calm but unshaken courage, and the close union of all Belgians. ... It is the moment for action. ... [A] country which is defending itself conquers the respect of all; such a country does not perish!"
How far the West has fallen. Farewell, steeled wills. You've been replaced by an army of sad-faced emojis.
[Jewish World Review]
The dark path to Brussels - David Ignatius
The value of catastrophic events is that they can help people face up to problems that are otherwise impossible to address. Maybe this will be the case with Tuesday's horrific attacks in Brussels.
Europe is facing a security threat that's unprecedented in its modern history, at a time when its common currency, border security and intelligence-sharing are all under severe stress. If Europe were a stock, a pragmatic investor would sell it, despite the sunk cost and sentimental attachment. Without radical restructuring, it's an enterprise that's headed for failure.
The European Union needs to reinvent its security system.
The jihadist wave rolling back toward Europe is dizzying: U.S. intelligence agencies estimate that more than 38,000 foreign fighters have traveled to Iraq and Syria since 2012. At least 5,000 of them came from Europe, including 1,700 from France, 760 from Britain, 760 from Germany and 470 from Belgium, according to official data collected by the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm. Relative to its population, Belgium spawned the largest number of these fighters.
Belgian authorities couldn't find Salah Abdeslam, the logistical planner of the November Paris attacks, for more than 120 days -- until they finally nabbed him last Friday a few blocks from where he grew up in the Arab enclave of Molenbeek. He was hiding in plain sight. But Belgium's failure was cooked into the system: The jihadists move stealthily, and the Belgians didn't collect or share enough of the intelligence that was there. The authorities had allowed Molenbeek to become a safe haven -- more dangerous to Belgium than even the jihadists' sanctuaries in Syria, Iraq and Libya.
Americans, who are less exposed to the threat, may smugly imagine they can wall themselves off. But the Islamic State's rampage is more an American failure than a European one. The United States formed a global coalition to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the Islamic State back in September 2014. This strategy hasn't worked; the Islamic State's domain has shrunk in Iraq and Syria but expanded elsewhere.
The failure of the U.S.-led coalition to contain the jihadists has left a fragile Europe exposed to terrorism and social upheaval. President Obama hopes that history will affirm his prudent policy, but this view is surely harder to maintain after the Paris and Brussels attacks.
[Jewish World Review]
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Young Muslims in the West: A Ticking Time Bomb? - Raheem Kassam
Pew Research from 2007 found that 26 percent of young Muslims in America believed suicide bombings are justified, with 35 percent in Britain, 42 percent in France, 22 percent in Germany, and 29 percent in Spain feeling the same way.
[Middle East Forum]
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UPDATES:
The day after the Brussels terror attack, landmarks in the UK were lit up in the colors of the Belgian flag. But after 67 years of terror, the UK still has not found the blue and white lights it would need to project the flag of Israel onto any public place.
When Israel is attacked, the steps of the Israeli embassies in London and other European capitals are not littered with flowers, teddy bears or candles, or scrawled notes of sympathy.
The writer is associate director of the Henry Jackson Society in London.
(Gatestone Institute)
Enough Teddy Bears: Time to Take Civilization Back
-Raheem Kassam
And if like dead bodies Facebook profile pictures lost heat, it would be accurate to say that the Tricolores that adorned the social media profiles of many had hardly become cold before we were all changing the colours of the bands on the flags. From blue to black. From white to yellow. The blood red remains.
Because nowadays, teddy bears are the new resolve. They symbolise everything we have become in response to our way of life being threatened, and our people being slaughtered on our streets: inanimate, squishy, and full of crap.
Our security services and our police, hamstrung by political correctness, are just as interested in rounding up Twitter "hate speech" offenders than criminal, rapist, or terrorist migrants. Our borders are as porous as our brains. We refuse to realise that there are now literally millions of people amongst us who hate us. Who hate our way of life, and who will, one day, dominate our public life.
But of course, such statements are dismissed as fear-mongering, alarmist, or "out of touch with reality." As if the data doesn't exist, or the demographics aren't shifting quickly enough to notice.
As if vast parts of our towns and cities haven't become ghettos, or no-go zones, or hubs of child grooming activity, or terrorism.
As if mosques, schools, prisons, and universities aren't used as recruiting grounds for radicals.
As if the blood of our countrymen hasn't even been spilled at all.
Instead, we will now think deeply about how we can "reach out" to these populations. How we can "co-exist" and "be tolerant" of one another. As if toleration – which is actually the permittance of what is not actually approved or desired – is a healthy aspiration for a society.
[Middle East Forum]
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Enough Teddy Bears: Time to Take Civilization Back
-Raheem Kassam
And if like dead bodies Facebook profile pictures lost heat, it would be accurate to say that the Tricolores that adorned the social media profiles of many had hardly become cold before we were all changing the colours of the bands on the flags. From blue to black. From white to yellow. The blood red remains.
Because nowadays, teddy bears are the new resolve. They symbolise everything we have become in response to our way of life being threatened, and our people being slaughtered on our streets: inanimate, squishy, and full of crap.
Our security services and our police, hamstrung by political correctness, are just as interested in rounding up Twitter "hate speech" offenders than criminal, rapist, or terrorist migrants. Our borders are as porous as our brains. We refuse to realise that there are now literally millions of people amongst us who hate us. Who hate our way of life, and who will, one day, dominate our public life.
But of course, such statements are dismissed as fear-mongering, alarmist, or "out of touch with reality." As if the data doesn't exist, or the demographics aren't shifting quickly enough to notice.
As if vast parts of our towns and cities haven't become ghettos, or no-go zones, or hubs of child grooming activity, or terrorism.
As if mosques, schools, prisons, and universities aren't used as recruiting grounds for radicals.
As if the blood of our countrymen hasn't even been spilled at all.
Instead, we will now think deeply about how we can "reach out" to these populations. How we can "co-exist" and "be tolerant" of one another. As if toleration – which is actually the permittance of what is not actually approved or desired – is a healthy aspiration for a society.
[Middle East Forum]
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