"But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?" ... from Ballad of a Thin Man by Bob Dylan
Victor Davis Hanson, the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, has some further thoughts on that Pew Research poll regarding Muslim-American attitudes. Hanson is one of the most articulate and clear thinkers writing about the Iraq War and the changes occurring in our society today. Changes many aren't picking up on.
You can visit his website Here. The following are his comments of today found at National Review Online on The Corner blog:
"I think someone should make it clear to the Muslim-American community that despite all the spin following the disturbing Pew Poll, most Americans are appalled at the findings for a variety of unspoken reasons.
"The findings reflect a successful minority, at income and educational levels indistinguishable from the American majority—despite 40% arriving since 1990.
"Yet, one in four young adult Muslims supports the idea of suicide bombing to "defend Islam" and only four in ten think Arabs had anything to do with the 9/11 suicide bombing.
"Despite explanations from academics and religious figures—youth sound off, war is increasingly acceptable to Americans, Black Muslims may be a different subset of the polled, etc—one could interpret this as very bad news: the US just recently welcomed in tens of thousands of Muslims from the failed states of the Middle East, offering them an opportunity for a vastly different life, which apparently they embraced with open arms. And the views of some of that community to the most devastating attack on American shores in its history apparently include that 25% of its youth approve of suicide tactics, and only 40% on the entire community accept that Arabs carried out the mass murder.
"Polls are unreliable. But one cannot praise them on the one hand for showing real signs of Muslim success, and then not be more candid that well over 1 million Muslims here don't believe Arabs were involved in destroying the World Trade Center, and several hundred thousand apparently approve in theory of the generic tactic of suicide bombing.
"Yet for any to confess that reality, or to worry that the 25% number might explain oddities like those arrested in the Fort Dix conspiracy, is usually to be found guilty of "Islamophobia" or some such illiberal prejudice by CAIR.
"Why such disturbing news from such a successful minority? No doubt the globalized hatred flowing on television from the Middle East, and on the Internet from the Islamists.
"But there is also a sense that there are no social or cultural consequences to expressing such radicalism. And why should there be?
"At a time of war, our senators compare our troops to Nazis or claim they are no different from Saddam's. Conspiracy theory about 9/11 is embraced by a large minority in the Democratic party, and dreams of shooting the President are the topics of novels and docu-dramas. That lends a climate or reassurance to go one step further and approve of blowing someone else to "defend" Islam.
"But why worry about 25% of Muslim youth in America when you can go to the moronic "View" and hear Rosie et al defend jihadism through moral equivalence and argue that because someone blows himself up he must de facto have some sort of legitimate reason (akin to Nathan Bedford Forrest's logic that superior Confederate zeal was proof of the inherent righteousness of being left alone to hold slaves.)
"That's why the "View" is so valuable, because it is our window on the moronic affluent American mindset, the perfect result of abject ignorance colliding with unchecked affluence."
- Victor Davis Hanson
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