It has oft been said that those who fail to remember history are destined to repeat it.  Or something like that.  So, I’ve been thinking of that bromide recently in the context of appeasement and the treatment of terrorism as a crime rather than an act of war.  Part of what triggered these thoughts was reading comments from Obama’s national security advisor John Brennan regarding the terrorist threat having nothing to do with Islam.  At best, this amounts to pandering, at worst it is willful ignorance.  Given that Brennan supports giving enemy combatants access to US criminal courts and Constitutional rights, I’m inclined to believe it is ignorance.

I challenge anyone to cite even one instance in the history of mankind where appeasement has paid any dividend or did more than prolong the inevitable conflict that must ultimately be resolved between two competing and irreconcilable ideologies.  And we all saw where the Clinton administration’s treatment of terrorism as a crime led us.  So, why are repeating these mistakes now?

I was reading about the first Barbary War and found this factoid fascinating:

In March 1785, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to negotiate with Tripoli’s envoy to London, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman (or Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja). Upon inquiring “concerning the ground of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury”, the ambassador replied:

It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every muslim who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy’s ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.

Sounds pretty damn familiar, doesn’t it?   The point is, our enemies don’t want to kill us because of any wrong we have done them.  It is not about Israel and the Palestinians.  This war has be going on since the 13th century, pretty much like a volcano–sometimes hot and active, sometimes more or less dormant.

Since we’ve been destined to live during an active period, we must once again be prepared to defend Western values like liberty and equality.  Is there anyone who sincerely believes those values are compatible with Islam?

How can you run when you know?