David Brooks, that uber-warrior and steadfast defender of the uniqueness of American goodness and virtue, reflects on Major Nidal Malik Hasan and the Fort Hood shootings:
Hmmm, okay. What Major Hasan did was an atrocity, yes; it reflects a minority within Islam, yes.
But why restrict his focus to Muslims? Why not even the slightest of nods to the Christian warriors of the US military and the White House, who from the moment those planes hit the World Trade Center on 9-11 saw the upcoming confrontation as one between God's Christian America and Satan's world of Islam.
Like President George W. Bush, who so famously in the days right after 9-11explicitly described the upcoming war in Afghanistan as a "crusade" (until his advisers told him to cool it)?
Or like US Army General Jerry Boykin, the deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence in 2003, who said of his encounter with a Muslim warlord in Somalia: "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol" - and who said in 2002, after 9-11, "We in the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom of God have been raised for such a time as this," and declared that radical Islamists hate the US "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian ... and the enemy is a guy named Satan."
Or the US soldiers who operated a tank in Iraq with "New Testament" emblazoned on the barrel of their cannon?
Is Brooks too obtuse - or too much in denial - to bring to mind, and to his writing, such men as these, who surely took pride that, for every "hajji" they "took out," they were striking a blow for "the Lord.?
. . . over the past few decades a malevolent narrative has emerged.That narrative has emerged on the fringes of the Muslim world. It is a narrative that sees human history as a war between Islam on the one side and Christianity and Judaism on the other. This narrative causes its adherents to shrink their circle of concern. They don’t see others as fully human. They come to believe others can be blamelessly murdered and that, in fact, it is admirable to do so.
This narrative is embraced by a small minority. But it has caused incredible amounts of suffering within the Muslim world, in Israel, in the U.S. and elsewhere. With their suicide bombings and terrorist acts, adherents to this narrative have made themselves central to global politics. They are the ones who go into crowded rooms, shout “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” and then start murdering.
Hmmm, okay. What Major Hasan did was an atrocity, yes; it reflects a minority within Islam, yes.
But why restrict his focus to Muslims? Why not even the slightest of nods to the Christian warriors of the US military and the White House, who from the moment those planes hit the World Trade Center on 9-11 saw the upcoming confrontation as one between God's Christian America and Satan's world of Islam.
Like President George W. Bush, who so famously in the days right after 9-11explicitly described the upcoming war in Afghanistan as a "crusade" (until his advisers told him to cool it)?
Or like US Army General Jerry Boykin, the deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence in 2003, who said of his encounter with a Muslim warlord in Somalia: "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol" - and who said in 2002, after 9-11, "We in the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom of God have been raised for such a time as this," and declared that radical Islamists hate the US "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian ... and the enemy is a guy named Satan."
Or the US soldiers who operated a tank in Iraq with "New Testament" emblazoned on the barrel of their cannon?
Is Brooks too obtuse - or too much in denial - to bring to mind, and to his writing, such men as these, who surely took pride that, for every "hajji" they "took out," they were striking a blow for "the Lord.?
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