Indefensible, Moral Idiocy

If TSA’s genital groping weren’t enough to convince you of the insanity of political correctness toward Islam, maybe the near acquittal of confessed terrorist Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani will. Others have recounted in many more details (try here, for example) the precise nature of what he did, how he did it, and how many people were murdered because of what he did, and to explain why the civilian jury trial rules and procedures led to Ghailani’s acquittal on 284 of 285 charges.

But the most important takeaway is very simple: the decision to try this Islamic terrorist as if he were an American citizen facing a criminal prosecution is indefensible. It is of a piece with the indefensible decision not to conduct airport security with common sense profiling of exactly who and what it is that poses the threat. Both indefensible decisions spring from an indefensible judgment about the nature of the Islamic threat facing America.

There is a reason we are over-working the word “indefensible”. Americans are conditioned to bend over backwards to ‘see both sides’ in any dispute; Americans also have a well of good faith and decency that activates an assumption or presumption of the good faith and decency of everyone else. But Americans as a whole have awakened to the nature of the Islamic threat. They know about the shoe bomber; they know about the Christmas Day underwear bomber; they know about the Ft. Hood massacre; they know about the Times Square bomber. They don’t need to know anything more. There simply aren’t two sides to this issue, and to be as clear as possible, there is no good faith or decency in Islamic terrorism. It is evil; it is an enemy of America and of all humanity; and it must be stopped.

It’s time to profile Islamic terrorists as part of a sensible approach to airport and other security; it’s time to end the concept of civilian trials for Islamic terrorists. And Americans know it.

Yet Americans are now witnessing their government’s bland yet willful denial of this truth. Ignorance of the nature of the Islamic threat is not possible. What we’re dealing with is a deliberate refusal to characterize the Islamic threat as an Islamic threat. And the only explanation for the government’s refusal is sheer moral idiocy—the lost, withered or foregone capacity to recognize good and evil, and to know the difference between them.

There is a malignant theology that seems to animate a certain portion of humanity toward despicable acts of hatred and violence toward the rest of humanity. We need to stop pretending that we can detect and destroy this threat by looking for ‘things’ and by groping physical bodies. It is a way of thinking—and we have ways to determine where it has taken hold, who has bought into it, and who is willing to act on it. And that tells us who must be stopped.

We also need to state clearly that acts committed in the name of a malignant theology by people who are literally and figuratively ‘foreign’ to America’s Judeo-Christian ideals are the acts of an enemy of America, and not the acts of a common criminal. That tells us to dispense with civilian trials for Islamic terrorists, immediately.

The pundits and columnists and Pravda editorial boards can try to spin the government’s position into the realm of policy nuance involving high-minded principles of fairness, non-discrimination and a pained but noble struggle to uphold the ‘rule of law’. This is pure nonsense. They have the right to spout off nonsense; America’s Constitution assures it. But we need to rise with enough clarity and gumption to dismiss the notion that because someone spouts something, that ‘something’ is necessarily legitimate and deserving of consideration.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact, and no American government has permission to turn it into one. The Islamic threat to America is not a political philosophy question; it’s not hypothetical or theoretical; and it can’t be wished away by blathering platitudes about the Muslim I know who is a nice guy. The threat is based on a dark and dangerous theology that opposes everything about America--that opposes progress for humanity. The threat is real and now, and it requires adult attention. Barack Obama and Eric Holder are not up to task. Their decisions are indefensible; they reflect a mental condition of moral idiocy that is a menace to civilization. They both need to go.

Paul Gable

November 19, 2010