There is an ongoing controversy as to what we should call
the kids who join a terrorist organization and fight for the causes that draw
their fancy. In the old days when kids who were animated by the same sort of
fancy joined an ongoing struggle (WW I, the Bolshevik Revolution, the French
Legion, WW II, the Spanish Civil War, the various South American, African or
Asian mini wars) people did not categorize them as being of one bent or
another. They simply viewed them as kids that volunteered to fight for this
cause or that one.
Things have now changed because the kids who join foreign
causes identify themselves as fighting for a specific aim: the defense of
Islam, a religion in which they were born or to which they converted. And so, a
number of pundits in North America and
elsewhere have started to insist that these kids be called terrorists … worse,
that they be identified as Muslim terrorists. Opposed to this notion, are
people who reject the use of this sort of language because they see the entire
subject matter as being more complicated than to call the kids and their
movement a name by which to identify them.
Both sides in the controversy agree that calling the
movement this or that will shape our response to it. Thus, each side is holding
on to its position for a reason that is more than semantics. One side believes
that calling the movement, Islamic terrorism will trigger a calamitous war of
the religions. The other side believes that calling it terror perpetrated by criminals
will cause our law enforcement agencies to fight a non-existent enemy while
neglecting to go after the real enemy which is out there plotting to kill us
all.
So far, the debate has been unfolding mostly in the abstract
because the debaters themselves have not been clearly identified. Important is
the fact that those who seek to define the movement as Islamic terrorism have
maintained their faces hidden behind a vanilla mask. But given that the
ramifications of doing what they ask for are enormous, it is important to know
who they are. This will tell us what their motives boil down to and whether
their argument is a genuine contribution to knowledge or a disguised attempt to
advance a hidden agenda.
Lucky for us, a small break has appeared in that vanilla
mask. It came from a most unexpected place – from the pen of Elliott Abrams who
wrote not on the controversy itself but a subject that is barely related to it.
He wrote: “Overkill in Riyadh ,” an article that
also came under the subtitle: “After sending no one to Paris ,
Obama sends a crowd to Saudi
Arabia .” It was published on January 27,
2015 in National Review Online.
The subject is the death of the Saudi king, an occasion to
which the Obama Administration has sent a delegation that strikes Abrams as
being too large. Having started the article by asking the ironic question: “Did
the king of Saudi Arabia
just die, or was it Winston Churchill?” he went on to express more of his
feelings with this: “Abdullah was a reformer and was widely respected in the
kingdom, but let's not exaggerate. He was not a historic figure.”
Well, let's not even try to unpack these assertions, or seek
to assess the importance that the dead Englishman or the dead Arab will command
in the history books of their respective jurisdictions. Let's instead ask this
question: What would motivate someone like Elliott Abrams to write an article
only to say that a better impression could have been made by means other than
sending a large delegation to the funeral? Actually, Abrams expressed his
sentiments this way: “A small delegation consisting of Obama, Clinton, and Bush
(ok, may be Carter too) would have made a far greater impression.”
What is he talking about? Who does he think needs to be
impressed, and who does he think has been impressed? There is only one way to
answer these questions. It is to think of Elliott Abrams as being the Jew that
wants to have it both ways. He wants America
to maintain a relationship with Saudi Arabia
that is robust enough to serve Israel .
But he does not want a funeral delegation so large as to give the dead Saudi
king an importance equal or greater than that of Winston Churchill. A
conundrum.
But why interfere with what the history books may or may not
say about someone in the future? Honestly, there is no direct answer to this
question, but there is a remark that can be made. It is that only the Jews are
motivated by a hatred of such intensity that they seek to mutilate history
whether it has been made already, or it is in the process of being made.
And it is hate of this intensity which motivates the people
who wish to trigger a war of the religions. Thus, the people behind the vanilla
mask can only be the Jews and their running dogs. They must now come out and
identify themselves as such before they can argue labeling the fighting kids as
Muslim terrorists.