The Common Thread

The following is excerpts from a speech by Don Feder:

Consider the inter-connectedness of the following incidents, all of which took place in the past few months:

In Indonesia, three Christian schoolgirls were beheaded.
In Iraq, a Syrian Orthodox priest was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered.
In Somalia, a nun was shot to death as she left the hospital where she worked, tending the sick and dying.
In Lebanon, just days ago, a cabinet minister was assassinated.
In Britain, authorities uncovered a conspiracy in which native-born Brits plotted to blow up several trans-Atlantic flights, killing as many as 3,000.
In Afghanistan, suicide bombers are at work again.
In Iraq, they never stopped. Additionally, the week before last, a group of worshippers were abducted from a mosque, doused with gasoline and burned to death in what’s described as “sectarian violence.”
In France, a high school philosophy teacher is in hiding after very credible death threats following publication of a September 19th commentary in Le Figaro.
Some 139 people died in riots in Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan, and Afghanistan – following the publication of Danish cartoons.
Europe is experiencing the worst wave of anti-Semitic violence since Kristallnacht. The former director of the U.S. Holocaust Museum reports there an average of 12 assaults a day on Jews in Paris.
In Kosovo, 90 percent of Serbs gave been ethnically cleansed from the province since 1999. The rest live in a state of siege.
In Mumbai, India, a series of blasts killed almost 200.
In Gaza, terrorists recently celebrated the latest “ceasefire” by raining more rockets on southern Israel.
And the leader of more than a billion Catholics received death threats and demands that he convert after giving a speech in which he called for a balance of faith and reason, and quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor.

What do the foregoing have in common?

To quote columnist Mark Steyn, in his excellent book America Alone: The End of The World As We Know It, it begins with an “I” and ends with a “slam.”

I am not saying that all Muslims are terrorists. I am saying that almost all terrorists are Muslims – the mother of all no-brainers – and that Islam is a faith that is, shall we say, terrorism-friendly.

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But we make a fatal mistake if we think of Islam only in terms of suicide bombings, sniper attacks, death threats, forced conversions, female genital mutilation, honor killings, jihad-this and fatwah-that.

Every bit as important is what’s going on in maternity wards from Brussels to Bombay.

Fertility rates in the Muslim world look like this: Niger (7.46 children per woman), Mali (7.42), Somalia (6.76), Afghanistan (6.69), and Yemen (6.58).

You can talk all you want about population control being the happy result of higher standards of living, careers for women, sex education, contraception and access to abortion. In fact, it’s becoming the assisted suicide of the West. What it really comes boils to is this: Confident societies have babies. People with a sense of mission have children. Nations with a sense of destiny and faith in the future fill maternity wards, and nurseries and cradles.

Those that believe in God as a vague, philosophical concept (if He exists at all), don’t. Instead of the future, they put their trust in 401(k) plans, elaborate state welfare systems, and gated retirement communities.

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In retrospect, it’s easy to see that a number of events in the 1930s were steps leading to the Second World War: Hitler’s rise to power, the remilitarization of the Rhineland, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, German and Italian intervention in the Spanish Civil War, the Japanese conquest of Manchuria, and so on. It’s always easier to see the interconnectedness of events and the significance of trends in retrospect – well after the fact. But at least after Pearl Harbor, most Americans understood that they were at war. It’s been five years since this generation’s Pearl Harbor, and most of us still don’t have a clue.

Well, my friends, we truly are all in this together – Jews and Catholics, Lebanese Christians and Hindus, Orthodox Serbs, and Indonesian Christians. Until we begin to understand that, we have no hope of countering the global jihad. When Zionists start caring about the fate of Serbs in Kosovo, when Hindus support Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria (designated the West Bank), when Serbs stand up for Indian Kashmir, then we will begin making progress.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=25888

Unfortunately we just elected a majority in Congress whose heroes are not young soldiers on a battlefield, but rather those who hold up placards and march in front of the White House. This new Congress sees all war as a replaying of Vietnam - where victory comes only when we withdraw. To them, policy is not the making of tough decisions, but rather a scheme used to acquire power - and is determined by polls.

The Democrats have been wildly successful in their use of propaganda to sabotage our efforts in Iraq and hamstring the efforts of any future President who would be so foolish as to attempt to make war against Radical Islam.

But one day we will have to face this growing menace - when they are stronger - and I predict the Democrats will once again be there - to give away our secrets, encourage our enemies, and protect the rights of those who would destroy us.