Appeasement's Just Another Word for Apathy

Dr. SC&A has spoken; the diagnosis is spot-on:

[T]the terrorists their supporters and apologists (TS&A) want it both ways- the want the liberty and license to take aim at western democracies and their populations, while at the same time, they want a free pass while supporting despotic regimes and terror groups that advocate hatred and the justification for killing civilians. . .

It is incumbent upon us - the west - not to legitimize what is no more than unadulterated hatred. The Muslim community has every right to point at the Holocaust and say, 'You did that, not us.' Instead, they choose to identify with the evil doers and their evil.

That many Islamic communities have allowed themselves to be radicalized and to become hotbeds of hatred is their fault. Just because there is a stick put in front of you does not mean you have to go out and beat someone. That is a choice you make, on your own.

In a subsequent post, talking about the Madrid and London bombings, SC&A says:

[If the Spanish] pulled out as a result of the train bombings, they leave themselves open to blackmail- again. If the pullout was in reality because of terror, the terrorists will have found an effective weapon from they can extract the demand du jour- and the Spanish will relegated to dancing to the tune the terrorists are playing.

In his hollow remarks about the London train bombings, George Galloway said essentially the same thing- that we, individual citizens that participate in free elections and the free exchange of thoughts and ideas, have brought these tragedies upon ourselves.

Mr Galloway is in effect telling us that we must direct our votes in a way that addresses the issues in the way the terrorists want us to. They can and will dictate the terms. . .

It becomes imperative, therefore, that free governments respond in unison to the threat of terror.

Victor Davis Hanson agrees:

We, with the exceptions of some English-speaking allies and eastern Europeans, are in fact absolutely alone in our larger struggle for Western civilization and have been all along well before Iraq, which was merely the latest excuse for ongoing European appeasement.

The Madrid bombing need not be the sole motive for suddenly ejecting an incumbent well ahead in the polls,¹ but it plainly was partially responsible. Why: in Europe, appeasement's bred in the bone. Though the Brits mostly are made of stronger stuff, Europe appeased the Barbary Pirates for 150 years--until President Jefferson and the United States Marines took the battle to "the Shores of Tripoli." Indeed, according to Kipling -- poet laureate of the British Empire -- back-down and bribery has been SOP for a millennium.

It's worse today, because the rationale behind capitulation has expanded, says Hanson:

Western self-loathing and guilt is essential: A fascist agenda of the jihadist — religious persecution, gender apartheid, racism, militarist autocracy, and xenophobia — all that must be embedded deeply within the postmodern landscape of the oppressed. A non-Christian and non-Western “other” can mask his venom only through victim status, grafting his cause to the same exploited groups that seek from Western society benefaction and compensation.

We -- the West -- didn't "do" anything to start the fire or to justify deliberate slaughter of the unarmed--nothing could.

Still, in England, I "expect[] that every man will do his duty," and will "engage the enemy more closely," as does the Anchoress:

[S]ince the London bombing, I have had a sense, a hunch, a gut-feeling, that something would spring from this carnage - that the terrible loss of innocent life, THIS time, might be the catalyst, finally, for movement away from the stagnation of the past few years, away from the polarization that has one side primed for battle - any battle - and the other side wringing it’s hands and suggesting appeasement.

But it's no certainty, as Hanson explains:

[T]he terrorists and their supporters understand that in a strange way the West is not only split, but also increasingly illiberal as well. It has lost confidence in its old commitment to rationalism, free speech and empiricism, and now embraces the deductive near-religious doctrines of moral equivalence and utopian pacifism. Al Qaeda's supporters will say that Thursday's victims were killed because of Afghanistan or Iraq. Westerners will duly repeat the dull refrain that "Bush lied, thousands died" in their guilt-ridden search for something we did to cause this.

And so, rather than focus our attention on the madrassas and the mosques that preach hatred, we will strive to learn more about Islamic culture, as if our own insensitivity were the true culprit. Our grandfathers could despise Bushido — Japan's warrior cult — without worrying whether they were being unfair to Buddhists; we of less conviction and even less courage, cannot do likewise.

In short, we now know what to expect from the London bombings and the others to follow. There will be no effort to punish the states that subsidize al Qaeda. Critics will cling to the myth that the British got what they had coming. The primary obsession of many Westerners will be to extend sensitivity to Islam, not the victims of those who kill in its name. And all will be consoled that just a few dozen were harvested this time.

What a strange way to fight a war.

Which is the point: you can't fight -- or win -- a war if you deny its existence. Between MSM propagandists and those already "moved on" from the slaughter of innocents, the left's looking like Hogan's Heroes Sergeant Schultz.² But, however well intentioned, "I see nothing" is no qualification to steer a car--or a country.
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¹ Despite claims to the contrary, confusion about the bombs' source can't explain everything: Two days after the Madrid explosions and prior to the election, the Spanish government intelligence service announced a 99 percent certainty Al Qaeda was the culprit.

² Ironically, appeasment advocates seemingly obeyed the Bible's literal words (Matthew 5:29).