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Another insane act of mass murder, followed hot on its heels by the usual piffle about disenfranchisement, powerlessness, and other exculpatory historicisms. The “minimisers” were keen to get their camera time, barely waiting for atomised human flesh to be scraped from an airport’s bomb-shattered departures hall before demanding that this latest slaughter be contextualised and their simple “truth” accepted as gospel. There is a mad futility to doing anything about it, they say, other than drawing maudlin pictures, lighting candles, singing “Imagine” and exchanging empty slogans about “standing with Paris”. Sorry, that was the last massacre, this time it was Brussels. It’s getting hard to keep up these days.
Simon Jenkins in the Guardian was amongst the first to occupy the apologists’ lectern, reminding us that “political terror is as old as war,” and that “…what is not stupid is seeking to alleviate, or not aggravate, the rage that gives rise to acts of terror, and then to diminish the potency of the incident itself”. Re-iterating a well-worn theme, he mouthed the purported wisdom that “a response to terror requires patience and restraint.” In other words, do nothing, mouth pieties and hope Allah’s suicide bombers go away. Or at least find someone else to terrorise.
Call me a callous, cynical sort if you will, but isn’t it funny how no one has urged “alleviating, not aggravating” or “patience and restraint” during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse. Cardinal George Pell might have had a darn sight easier time of it if the same logic had been applied. After all, paedophilia is also as “old as war”. In fact, like old-fashioned rape, it’s often an integral aspect of it.
Here’s Jenkins again:
There is no way any community can make itself immune to terror attacks. Since they are random, no protection can defend that community from them. No amount of police work or surveillance, no deployment of armies or navies, let alone of missiles or nuclear weapons, can guard against them. Intelligence and surveillance can go so far, but the bombers and killers will get through any net.
True enough, but also true of paedophiles. Could it be that some people, exemplified by apologists and rationalisers for malignant Islam, are eager to spew excuses for one category of vile specimens but draw the line at another, paedophile priests? For the mealy mouth left, terrorists are never the demonic products of a monstrous Islamic psychosis, yet paedophile clerics are clear manifestations of another religion’s endless evil. That one creed has been a foundation of the West’s rise and civilization might have something to do with that striking dichotomy in leftist perception.
One thing that uniquely defines the “perpetual irritant” of paedophilia, as Waleed Aly once said of terrorism, is that the mind of the individual sexual deviant is not that of a nation-state. The blood curdling yen for mass murder and the overthrow of modernity are not a folie a plusiers restricted to small cells of disgruntled Muslim students and welfare recipients, but a shared madness infecting the entire body politic of some rather large nation states.
As a psychiatrist, I’m often asked if paedophiles (last week) and terrorists (this week) are mad or bad. Psychiatric diagnosis would not put terrorists in the “mad” category: there is a clear and obvious rationale behind such attacks, this being to punish and intimidate societies not yet Islamic. Yet if the word “mad” means anything it must apply to what has happened in Brussels, Paris, Africa and all over the Middle East. The insanity of religious primitivism can no more be influenced by understanding and reasoning with the afflicted individuals than with the nation states that provide their tacit, sometimes open, endorsement. There would have been as much chance of negotiating rationally with the human bombs of Brussels as persuading the fundamentalists of ISIS or Iran that their adherence to favoured and bloodthirsty koranic admonitions, rather than the more pacific ones, is misplaced and misguided.
Not that Islamists are the only ones in the thrall of delusion. Here let us consider President Obama’s cheerful refusal to recognise and confront the implacable madness of Iran’s theocratic state when signing off on last year’s nuclear deal. Lacking the courage to acknowledge the reptilian paranoia of aggressive, expansionist Islam, as embodied in Tehran’s ruling mullahs, Obama cut a deal not with genuine partners in peace but with a figment of his imagination – the chimera that “moderate” leaders actually exist and have been persuaded to set aside their nuclear ambitions. It was delusional nonsense, a triumph of blinkered, wishful thinking, as the Iranians’ recent test-firing of two new missiles emblazoned with the message, written in Hebrew no less, that the rockets’ development represented another step on the path to Israel’s inevitable destruction.
But let us give Obama the benefit of the doubt. Could it be that the Iranians’ genocidal intent, so clearly stated, is simply beyond his limited ken, the notion of messianic armageddon so far removed from his conception of rationality that he rejects it absolutely in others? Could this same perspective also explain the failure of the Catholic church’s then-hierarchy to deal as it should done with the Searsons and Ridsdales? Is it that a bunch of righteous, middle-aged men simply could not fathom the depth of depravity that confronted them? Men who are not paedophiles find it very difficult to imagine that anyone would desire sex with a child. So, faced with a fixation that they cannot imagine, they handballed the offenders into “counselling”, preferring not to dwell on the simple fact that “talking cures” have nothing to offer psychopathic paedophiles. To me, speaking as a mental-health professional, that idea is laughable. Not so then and, conveniently, not to them.
When I read the empty words of people like Jenkins, when I re-visit Waleed’s reaction to the Boston Marathon bombing and note that his first response was to theorise it might have been the work of white right-wingers, not his fellow Muslims, I’m reminded of the remarkable human ability to see the obvious but not allow it to register. Instead, as per jenkins, we offer Islamists our “patience and restraint”, perhaps with a bit or remedial counselling via the UN.
If our chattering elites must squeeze Islamic terrorists through the intellectual grinder of their Westerm self-loathing, let us at least acknowledge that, once the requisite bouts of self-blame are done and dusted, the obligation remains to make sure those who would kill us emerge as finely minced sausage at the other end. The church and other paedophile-infested institutions took refuge in their inability to accept what leaders found unthinkable. If there is a lesson in that compulsive blindness it is that the same approach must no longer be applied to Islam’s butchers.
Murray Walters is a Brisbane psychiatrist
Another quality article, you guys just keep kicking goals.
Its worth watching Trump’s speech defining his support for Israel and his determination to ditch the Iranian ‘deal’ … its a powerful statement like no other, and defines the Islamic problem in the middle East, without once mentioning the word Islam. I don’t think there is any other western leader (apart from Tony Abbot) who is capable of confronting Islam as full on and as undeniably as this … and it definitely needs this level of confrontation.
Murray Walters:
Good one.
I am pleased that I recently subscribed to Quadrant because of quality articles like this.
> “If our chattering elites must squeeze Islamic terrorists through the intellectual grinder of their Western self-loathing”
Yes. I’ve had it with these leftoid “elites” (self-described). They are parasites,and not very smart ones, given they don’t seem to mind the host dying. The meeja (MSM) lead the pack here.
LEFTOID: These people have all this murderous rage towards us because of our Middle East meddling. And Israel as the prime motivator still exists.
QUESTION: Be that as it may, but if even some have all this uncontained murderous rage towards us, why do we let millions of them into the heart of our cities ?
LEFTOID: Because we are tolerant and diverse. If you disagree, you’re an Islamophobe, a homophobe, a misogynist, a sadistic old white man.
Only possible answer: AAARRRGGGHHH !!! The impenetrable, concrete-block, hubristic vanity of this is the proximate cause of the current European slaughters. The only tiny silver lining I can see is that Brexit is now more likely, despite any Cameron posturings.
One of those bombs got very very close to the EU elites,much much closer than they will want to contemplate. Fear is a great motivator.
Cameron is doing more than posturing. He has dragged the British premiership down into the gutter with his deceitful campaign and dirty tricks. Unless the majority for Brexit in the referendum is clear and large (unlikely) he will use every trick he can think of to avoid invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. As one of his aides remarked, the EU runs through Cameron like Brighton through a stick of rock. He will react to a vote for Brexit as the EU elite always have: delay as long as possible, join once more with his EU mates (high-fiving Juncker et al) to dress up some new deceitful unenforceable deal as better for Britain and then insist on a second referendum. His stay as premier is guaranteed until 2020 by which time the new EU treaties will be in place to ensure the completion of economic and monetary union of the 26 EMU states (plus Ukraine, Turkey, Bosnia et al) by 2025 and the founding on them of the Federal State of Europe shortly afterwards, ie., within the next 10-15 years. Cameron wants his legacy to be the total subjugation of UK to this new foreign power with a Muslim population in excess of 80 million. Oh that’s OK. Cameron has already given his approval for a Muslim successor as Prime Minister.
> … and then insist on a second referendum
Yes, that I believe.
The EU thugs have form there.
What a sea breeze on a hot day is QOL with such a flow of perceptive thinking from sharp minds. Like ‘colroe’ I appreciate quadrant but I have subscribed for over 20 years and perhaps only a year or so ago have I stumbled on QOL. It is such a good thing and I don’t remember it being much promoted!
Thanks Murray Walters for your insights.
Murray,
Excellent analysis – except …
“Not that Islamists are the only ones in the thrall of delusion. Here let us consider President Obama’s cheerful refusal to recognise and confront the implacable madness of Iran’s theocratic state when signing off on last year’s nuclear deal.” Obama knows exactly what he is doing. In fact failing to win the war against ISIS is a core objective (while appearing to be trying to win). The USA have supported a whole range of their most implacable enemies (ostensibly to bring down Assad), but in fact to weaken the USA. Note that Alinsky and the Left consider running up unsustainable debt as a key strategy in destroying national sovereignty, so we are fortunate in having Malcolm in the Muddle looking out for us.
Waleed, just naturally, has to always make excuses, knowing he will never be held to account, as he just moves on, never correcting previous errors and false statements. This is the sort of approach that can always pretend to make a silk purse from a pig’s ear.
en passant:
Sorry to have to be the one to remind you of this and risk disrupting your cheery self-delusion, but President Obama, as Chief of the US armed forces, was in on the planning of the raid by US Navy Seals that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan in 2011. He was in on it right from the outset, gave the final ‘go’ order and took the ultimate responsibility for the whole thing.
The death of bin Laden was a serious defeat for Al-Quaeda and Islamism generally. But, as in any military action, there was a definite risk of failure (one of the two helicopters involved did crash, and technically they were invading a ‘friendly’ country without bothering to inform any of its authorities.)
I dare say that if the whole thing had gone seriously pear-shaped, people like Jeremy Corbyn (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/31/jeremy-corbyn-said-osama-bin-laden-should-have-been-tried-not-killed ) would have been airing the contents of their heads on TV screens and front pages all over the world, and perhaps even people like yourself would not have hesitated much before sticking a boot in as well.
So your above assessment of President Obama above is at best ignorant; but on the face of it, merely selectively ignorant.
And, btw, totally gutless.
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden
en passant:
Sorry to have to be the one to remind you of this and risk disrupting your cheery self-delusion, but President Obama, as Chief of the US armed forces, was in on the planning of the raid by US Navy Seals that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan in 2011. He was in on it right from the outset, gave the final ‘go’ order and took the ultimate responsibility for the whole thing.
The death of bin Laden was a serious defeat for Al-Quaeda and Islamism generally. But, as in any military action, there was a definite risk of failure (one of the two helicopters involved did crash, and technically they were invading a ‘friendly’ country without bothering to inform any of its authorities.)
I dare say that if the whole thing had gone seriously pear-shaped, people like Jeremy Corbyn (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/31/jeremy-corbyn-said-osama-bin-laden-should-have-been-tried-not-killed ) would have been airing the contents of their heads on TV screens and front pages all over the world, and perhaps even people like yourself would not have hesitated much before sticking a boot in as well.
So your above assessment of President Obama above is at best ignorant; but on the face of it, merely selectively ignorant.
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden
en passant:
Obama knows exactly what he is doing. In fact failing to win the war against ISIS is a core objective (while appearing to be trying to win).
Sorry to have to be the one to remind you of this and risk disrupting your cheery self-delusion, but President Obama, as Chief of the US armed forces, was in on the planning of the raid by US Navy Seals that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan in 2011. He was in on it right from the outset, gave the final ‘go’ order and took the ultimate responsibility for the whole thing.
The death of bin Laden was a serious defeat for Al-Quaeda and Islamism generally. But, as in any military action, there was a definite risk of failure (one of the two helicopters involved did crash, and technically they were invading a ‘friendly’ country without bothering to inform any of its authorities.)
I dare say that if the whole thing had gone seriously pear-shaped, people like Jeremy Corbyn (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/31/jeremy-corbyn-said-osama-bin-laden-should-have-been-tried-not-killed ) would have been airing the contents of their heads on TV screens and front pages all over the world, and perhaps even people like yourself would not have hesitated much before sticking a boot in as well.
So your above assessment of President Obama above is at best ignorant; but on the face of it, merely selectively ignorant.
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden
en passant:
Sorry that triple-comment of mine got inflicted on you and the other readers (both of them), but it had trouble getting past that form of censorship known around here as ‘moderation’: as most of my comments do.