Out of Commission
By George Neumayr
Published 7/23/2004 12:08:38 AM
<font size=4>
The 9/11 Commission's report blames America's inept defense on a <font color=blue>"failure of imagination."<font color=black> But plenty of people imagined the threat Muslim jihadists posed to America.
Long before 9/11, even Hollywood's imaginative minds had
no problem conceiving of jihadists as airline hijackers.
The problem wasn't so much a failure of imagination as an
ACLU-driven culture that discouraged Americans from acting
on their imagination. <font color=red>
The Commission says the <font color=blue>"terrorists have used our
open society against us."<font color=red> Put more precisely, that
would read, <font color=blue>"terrorists have used our political
correctness against us."<font color=black>
Political correctness only permits the imagination and
intellect to operate within certain approved assumptions.
Under it, a discriminating mind -- that is, a mind which
discriminates between truth and error -- became
a <font color=blue>"discriminatory"<font color=black> mind, and woe to the American who
exercised it. The terrorists were certainly aware of this
see-no-evil culture. Why else would they have set up
operations here without even bothering to change their
names?
What the Commission calls a <font color=blue>"failure of imagination"<font color=black> amounts to blinding liberalism, which is on display in its own report. Notice that the Commission, acting like self-appointed Imams at a special Synod on Islam, define it as a religion of peace, then say the Islamic world needs reform. If Islam is as moderate as the Commission insists, why would the Islamic world need to be moderated? And how does it protect America to define Islam as a religion of peace if Muslim authorities define it as a religion of jihad? Isn't their definition of their own religion a little more authoritative than Lee Hamilton's?
A Commission that fails to understand Islam as Muslims themselves understand it is engaging in nothing more than a fatuous PR exercise.
But again, even as the Commission relies on politically correct religious relativism -- <font color=blue>"With so many divisive adherents, every major religion will spawn violent zealots"<font color=black> -- it implies that militant Islam is so mainstream that we need to send forth secularist missionaries to enlighten Muslim lands. Islam doesn't <font color=blue>"teach terror,"<font color=black> and the Commission says that <font color=blue>"lives guided by religious faith, including literal beliefs in holy scriptures, are common to every religion, and represent no threat to us,"<font color=black> then in the same breath proposes that the <font color=blue>"U.S. government should offer to join with other nations in generously supporting a new International Youth Opportunity Fund"<font color=black> to finance <font color=blue>"primary and secondary schools."<font color=black>
Liberals who would condemn Christian missionary activity in Muslim countries don't mind sending apostles of liberalism to them. <font color=blue>"We must encourage reform, freedom, democracy, and opportunity,"<font color=black> the Commission says, and instructs Muslims <font color=blue>"to reflect upon such basic issues as the concept of jihad, the position of women, and the place of non-Muslim minorities."<font color=black>
There is a great deal of outrage about the videotape
showing a security guard at Dulles airport haplessly
checking one of the terrorists. But what if the guard had
profiled the terrorists? What if he had checked them more
carefully and exhaustively because they were from
countries that preached jihad against America? The very
liberals now outraged at the videotape would have been
outraged at the guard.
In 1999, a security firm at Dulles airport had had its knuckles rapped after it fired five Muslim women for refusing to remove their head scarves while working at security jobs. Argenbright Security ended up settling with them but not before David Bonior and company accused Dulles airport and other major airports of religious discrimination. <font color=blue>"This incident raises a larger issue: that of wide-spread and systematic discrimination against Muslims and Arab-Americans in airports all across the country,"<font color=black> Bonior, then the House Democratic whip, said. <font color=blue>"If firms cannot even treat their Muslim employees fairly, how are we to believe they will treat Muslim passengers -- whom they do not even know -- in a fair and courteous manner?"<font color=black> He said, <font color=blue>"This is not the first airport, and this is not the first incident, that lead me to believe that airport security is being contracted out to companies who do not have a commitment to treat all Americans with fairness and dignity."<font color=black>
Bonior used the incident to press his case against profiling to Jane Garvey, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration. <font color=blue>"I have been grateful for your efforts to listen to the concerns of the Arab and Muslim communities in the United States regarding the issue of passenger profiles in airports and the performance of private security firms in conducting this profiling…It is essential for the FAA to ensure that these private security companies respect and understand the culture and religious beliefs of all Americans."<font color=black>
Perhaps the security guard at Dulles on the videotape had
an impoverished imagination, but whatever imagination he
did have would have been drummed out of him by political
correctness.
<font size=3>
George Neumayr is managing editor of The American Spectator. |
