Islam

“We’re going to rush the hijackers.”

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Two years ago I wrote this:

The only part of the American national security establishment that successfully defended America on 9/11 was the portion of the reserve militia on board Flight 93, acting without orders, without hierarchy, without uniforms or weapons, by spontaneous organization and action.

The lesson I derived:

Bottom-up, inductive, spontaneous self-organization is the essence of America.

After a decade I can say we have wasted a decade failing to learn from that lesson.

We had better do better over the next decade.

“Are you guys ready? Let’s roll.”

A minute by minute narrative of Flight 93, done as tweets today, is here. Scroll from the bottom. Very much worth reading.

My recollection of the day was in a comment here, written on September 11, 2004 — below the fold. It is funny how after ten years I had forgotten some of the details I had remembered three years later. You can say “we will never forget” but your brain fades away, and you forget whether you want to or not.

The weather this morning was exactly like the day ten years ago: Clear, warm, blue skies.

God bless America.

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3,650 Days

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Three thousand, six hundred fifty days, more or less,depending on leap years since the end of the 20th century. Oh, I know, calendar-wise, only a year or two off. But we don’t count strictly by the calendar. Afterwards, we count by events. Myself, I have the feeling that the 19th century didn’t truly end for good and all until 1914. That’s when the 20th century began, in the muddy trenches of WW1. All the previous comfortable understandings and optimistic assumptions of the earlier world were shattered right along with three monarchial dynasties, over the course of four years. When it was over, the world of the time before seemed impossibly far removed, to those who could remember it a number which, as the decades passed, became steadily fewer, until that old world was entirely the stuff of books, paintings and relics, rather than true human recollections. We eventually adjusted and accepted the new reality of things. The old way, and the shattering events in which it passed became a date on a monument, a paragraph in a history text, a book on the shelf.

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Beware the Attrition Mill

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There is a type of machine called an attrition mill. It consists of two steel discs which rotate at high speed in opposite directions, crushing the grain or other substance being milled between them. In earlier posts, I have used the metaphor that our civilization is now caught in a gigantic attrition mill, with one disc being the Islamic terrorist enemy and the other disc being the “progressive” Left within our own societies.

Recently, David Solway wrote an important post on the Leftist-Islamist nexus. Solway’s post is more than a bit over the top, IMO: while it is certainly true that there are signficant parallels between modern “progressivism” on the one hand, and Naziism/Fascism on the other…and even stronger parallels between radical-militant Islam and Fascism…I don’t think it is helpful to use terms like “Fourth Reich.” Still, many of the concerns he raises are valid ones, such as the extent to which prestigious American universities “are actively colluding with Islamic foreign governments” in their aim to criminalize (a non-existent) “Islamophobia,” thus putting them “in direct opposition to the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections.” Definitely read the whole thing.

For a current example of the kind of thing that Solway is talking about, see this post from Pam Geller.

Nevil Shute Norway

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One of my favorite novelists is Nevil Shute. He was an engineer, as was I, plus he writes about people with an ability to show their humanity and their deeper motivations without a lot of explanation. He is the engineer’s novelist, the businessman’s novelist and should be on every list of conservative novelists. I have read all his post-war novels, most of his wartime novels and a selection of his pre-war novels. He died in 1960 and all his books are still in print.

I was a college student when “On the Beach,” possibly his most famous novel, came out. It scared me so badly that I have not been able to enjoy rereading it, as I have his other books. I was a college sophomore and familiar with his other work at the time. I had read his aviation novel, “No Highway,” and was aware that the plot device in that book, of metal fatigue causing a new airplane to crash without explanation, had been prophetic. Shortly after “No Highway” had come out, the British Comet jet airliners had begun to crash and, when finally identified, the cause was metal fatigue.

Shute had written another prophetic novel in the late 1930s, called “Ordeal,” which predicted the effects of the Blitz on London. Both of these books, with their predictions borne out by history, caused me to be very shaken by “On the Beach.” A rather successful movie was later made from this novel, which Shute hated because it had suggested that the two principle characters, played by Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner, had slept together while he believed it important to establish their morality, even when doomed.

I very nearly dropped out of school after that book and spent a year or two getting over the idea that I would soon be fried in a nuclear war. My reaction was based as much on my regard for his novels as for the topic, itself. A quite good movie was made from “No Highway” with James Stewart, Glynnis Johns, and Marlena Dietrich.

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Obama, Israel, and the Palestinians

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Here is a detailed analysis of the evolution of Obama’s views on the Israel-Palestinian issue. For anyone who wishes Israel well but is still supporting Obama, you owe it to yourself to read it carefully. The author clearly demonstrates how the left’s hostility toward Israel is part and parcel of their generalized hostility toward Western societies.

The title that was given to the article…”Pro-Palestinian-in-Chief”…seems questionable, though. Supporting the “Palestinian cause” in the way that Western leftists do is not really pro-Palestinian, at least not pro-those-Palestinians-who-want-to live peaceful and happy lives. Great harm has been done to these people, as well as to Israelis and to the world in general, by the way in which the Palestinian conflict with Israel has been hyped and romanticized. It is specifically the insane focus on anti-Israel beliefs and action which has acted to prevent the economic development of the Palestinian areas and ensure the continue immiseration of its people, and all of this has been greatly aided and abetted by American and European leftists.

See this related article by Fouad Ajami, which contrasts the behavior of the Palestinian leadership with the behavior of pre-statehood Israeli leadership.