The difference between refusing to accept terrorism and refusing to feel bad about terrorism is the difference between refusing to be terrorized and refusing to pay attention to terrorism.
There is no need for Obama to play Therapist-in-Chief. It’s not his job, even if he is better at it than he is at his real job. His job isn’t to praise the attitudes of the people his administration put in danger by refusing to give Tamerlan the boot even after warnings had come in that he was involved with Islamic terrorism. It’s to refuse to accept the presence of terrorists in this country.
Obama obviously won’t do that job. But neither did Bush. Unlike empty paeans to courage by politicians with none of their own, that topic is not even on the table. The terrorists will keep on coming and after each new act of terror, the politicians who keep the door wide open for them will praise the indomitable spirit of whichever city got targeted this time around.
Americans don’t need to be told that they have courage. It’s a nice topic for a speech, but an even better topic for a speech is, “How I Spent My Summer Vacation Deporting Amateur Jihadists Who Claim Life Under Infidel Rule is Torture.” One is an empty compliment. The other is a practical task.
A refusal to be terrorized should not be the task of the civilian population. It only becomes the task of the civilian population when the government is unwilling or unable to keep them safe. And then come the speeches that say, but don’t say, “The bad news is you’re going to be blown up, but the good news is you’re going to be a good soldier about it.”
Muslim terrorism doesn’t just happen. It’s not random. It’s not inevitable. It’s a known entity and it has a vector. When bird flu breaks out, flights from affected countries are suspended, but when Islamism breaks out in a country, then the planes keep flying and the refugees get resettled and the infection spreads.
America will refuse to be terrorized when it refuses to admit terrorists or potential terrorists into the country and when it begins aggressively deporting terrorist sympathizers from its cities. Americans will refuse to be terrorized when they demand a government that closes the door to terrorists, instead of praising everyone for their courage once the acts of terror happen.
Terrorism is a function of immigration. Terrorists do not come to this country on parachutes or sneak in by boat. For the most part they arrive here legally. They come through a door that our government opened and keeps open as widely as it can because its allied institutions profit from the traffic. It is more important for the government to keep colleges in the Middle East student business and to keep Democrats in the new minorities business than it is to refuse to allow this country to be terrorized.
We refused to be terrorized after September 11. We went shopping. We got back in the stock market. We fought two wars whose prime purposes was to get two Muslim countries to be able to vote for their leaders. And here we are again facing the same thing all over again. Except this time we get to trade Iraq for Syria and Boston for New York.
While we refuse to be terrorized, those who insist on terrorizing us continue swarming into this country. A hundred Muslim nations have sent their progeny to live their tortured lives here, until they grow tired of infidel rule and decide to do what they do back home. Kill. And then we once again can refuse to be terrorized at an interfaith service in which the clergy of the murderers stand side by side with the clergy of the murdered.
The day may come when we finally refuse to be terrorized. They will not do it by going back to do their part for the next shopping season, the next interfaith service and the next healing speech. They will refuse to be terrorized by closing the door on terrorism for good.
Originally published at Sultan Knish.