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Deja vu — Judith Apter Klinghoffer

Judith Apter Klinghoffer

MSM WANTS TO FIGHT PLAGUES, NOT HUMAN EVIL

Jim Gerharty argues that MSM has lost interest in the war on terror. Perhaps, but I believe that MSM reflects the post War World II educated classes' discomfort in confronting human evil. I cannot but wonder if our generation would have had the moral gumption to try to eradicate slavery and Sati. Hence, just wars were waged solely on plagues such as aids, cancer or bird flu.

I did not use the term plague inadvertently. The Plague was the euphemism Albert Camus used for Nazism. That away, his heroes are doctors, administrators and self sacrificing volunteers. They do not have to kill human beings only rats and bacteria. It took years for even for the realist George W. Bush to admit that the US was in a war against human Islamists and not a disease called "terror." MSM still suppresses the Islamist in Islamic terrorism. The fact that Islamists are seen through post Colonial lenses further exacerbates matters as does the fact that the Islamists do not share this inclination. Note the following exchange between a questioner and the web expert found on an Islamist Website:

"If a kaffir (infidel) is about to die on the road, can we help him?"
"If someone had covenant of security with the people he is living with, and the person was not at war with Islam and Muslims, it is allowed to help the person as part of his da'wah (Islamic spiritual awakening) to show his good character. But he must call him to Islam by it, and not do it out of love."

None of this is new but for years the educated elite and its MSM reflection studiously ignored such inconvenient realities. Those realities which could not be ignored were blamed on past Western transgressions. Take for example the forgiving attitudes towards Khomeini's Iran. Neither its government holding American diplomats hostage nor the death threats against a prominent non Western author such as Salman Rushdie or the murder of his translator were enough to upset the paradigm.

Not until 9/11 was the past construct seriously challenged in the US and since then not a day went by without the devotees of the shattered intellectual status quo (like Saddam's ousted Baathists) doing their utmost to reestablish it. That is the reason for the euphoric response to Al Gore's new documentary. For Al Gore is trying to recapture the presidency by shifting attention from the human evil perpetrated by Islamists onto the potential "plague" of Global Warming.

Global warming is the greater danger, Gore argues. Why? Because it threatens the entire human race while Islamism merely threatens civilization as we know it. And civilization as we know it is nothing worth fighting for since the imperfections and transgressions of the members of free societies "prove" that there is moral equivalency between all social arrangements. Every incident such as Abu Ghraib strengthens this case while every item of news about the capture of yet another terrorist cell or Iranian repression undermines it.

What are the devotees of the shattered paradigm and their MSM representative to do? The answer is obvious: Focus on the evidence that supports your case and downplays the evidence that undermines it. Haditha supports it, hence it must be highlighted. The capture of the Canadian terror cell undermines it. Hence, it must be downplayed. If only, there were no alternative paradigms and if only their practitioners had no access to an alternative media . . . .

Posted on Monday, June 5, 2006 at 5:33 PM | Comments (0) | Return

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