So Fidel’s amigo and leftist icon Oliver Stone made a 9/11 film. What I want to know is: Where are the distraught women sobbing “too soon”? Where are the cynics and their accusations of exploitation? In an election year! You know, the kind of handwringing United 93 was greeted with only four short months ago.

Stone talked about his new movie at the Bangkok International Film Festival:

However, when asked whether the world in general and America in particular was ready for a drama about the 9/11 attacks, the director was dismissive.

“I would hate that to be the main question about the movie, though I sense that is what’s going to happen,” he told the BBC News website.

“I’m not in the business of knowing whether America is ready. You just hope it will be.”

Charlie Sheen was quoted as saying

Call me insane, but did it sorta look like those buildings came down in a controlled demolition?

He’ll be disappointed if Stone is hyping government “myths”. It’s more likely Stone’s story will amount to: building falls on two buddies, who with luck and perseverance survive. That wouldn’t be a big surprise. Out of fear or disinterest Hollywood has so far felt no pressing need to confront the more complicated issues.

Questions like who brought those buildings down and why. It’s pretty clear to many of us. If others need mass media treatment and consensus then by all means let’s move it along.

UPDATE: For many New Yorkers it is too soon. It must be true. AFP says so.

UPDATE: An essay by Christopher Hitchens written shortly after 9/11, about an encounter with Oliver Stone:

I challenged Stone to reconsider his view of the immolation of the World Trade Center as a “revolt.” He ignored me. Later he added that this rebellion would soon be joined by the anti-globalization forces of the Seattle protesters. When he was asked by a member of the audience to comment on the applause for the September 11 massacres in Arab streets and camps, he responded that the French Revolution, too, had been greeted by popular enthusiasm.

Hmmm, I wonder if Stone’s opinion has changed?

The “scandal” over the depths to which a leftist artist went to advance her agenda is certainly juicy, but should not eclipse this honest insight: the nature of leftist angst is visceral and infantile.

When photographer Jill Greenberg decided to take a lollipop away from a small child, she had a broader purpose in mind.

“The first little boy I shot, Liam, suddenly became hysterically upset,” the Los Angeles-based photographer said. “It reminded me of helplessness and anger I feel about our current political and social situation.”

That’s strange. The left’s short-sighted self-centered behavior reminds me of hysterical children.

As Michelle Malkin would say, boo friggin hoo.

Five years after 9/11 and precious few recognize the simple fact that a worldwide war is in progress. Some snigger at the idea.

The jihadis attack civilization around the world on a daily basis. The bulk of it goes unreported by the mass media. Islam, the common thread running through it all, is rarely mentioned. There is only one dot to connect but for some reason they won’t do it.

Ever since Hizballah and HAMAS goaded Israel into war there has been a noticable change. Sure the same people who laugh about world wars are already back to blaming it all on Bush and the neocons. What’s different is that the mass media has finally found more pundits willing to speak frankly about Islamofacism and the jihadis.

Amid the knee-jerk calls for ceasefire and negotiation something has finally begun to dawn on a few more of the world’s civilized people. Oh, now I see. You can’t please the Islamists. They seem to live for only one purpose, to war on civilization. We cannot negotiate with such socipaths. The only reasonable option to protect ourselves is to disarm, disable, or destroy them before they can launch their craven and demented attacks.

Welcome to the world war.

And it is a world war, notwithstanding the inability of some US Supreme Court justices to recognize that jihadi organizations are engaged in an international conflict:

In deciding as it did, the Court also ignored its own venerable precedent — of over a half-century’s standing — that the Geneva Conventions, even when they do create binding obligations on governments, do not create judicially enforceable rights for individuals. Disputes over their application are, rather, to be worked out diplomatically, among the political representatives of sovereigns. Moreover, the Geneva Conventions were irrelevant to Hamdan’s case. He is a terrorist combatant who fails to meet the conventions’ definition of a prisoner of war; consequently, he is not entitled to the conventions’ POW protections. In order to get around this inconvenient fact, the Court had to invoke (and distort) “Common Article 3” of the conventions, which applies only to civil wars taking place within the territory of a single country, as opposed to international conflicts. The Court argued, absurdly, that because al Qaeda is not a nation, it cannot be in an international conflict: so the global War on Terror is not “international,” despite having been fought in the United States, Somalia, Yemen, Kenya, Tanzania, Afghanistan, and Iraq. As for Article 3’s requirement that the conflicts to which it applies be confined to a single country, the Court’s majority found an easy way to get around it: by ignoring it.

The jihadis are not so blind:

In one of the most admirably straightforward of Islamist declarations, Hussein Massawi, the Hezbollah leader behind the slaughter of U.S. and French forces 20 years ago, put it this way:

“We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.”

This from a fascinating article by Mark Steyn who goes on to describe the deep irony that faces Europe, Egypt, Jordan, and the Saudis, who have for decades deliberately prolonged the misery of their Palestinian proxies and now find these proxies firmly under the sway of Persian Shia.

Ooops.

Syria and Iran not only support Hizballah and HAMAS, they support insurgents in Iraq trying to overthrow its civilized government. How much longer will this phony proxy kabuki go on before the rest of civilization recognizes that we are all already at war? And how long until the mass media reports it?

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt connects the dot, though he doesn’t name it. “Can we agree that all terrorists have some degree of mental illness?” OK. Can we agree that “terrorist” is starting to sound like an absurd euphemism?

Another transmission from das Heimchen (The Cricket).

Here’s an interview that appeared in yesterday’s DIE WELT. The person interviewed struggled for 3 years to get her book, “Londonistan”, published. Unlike Oriana Falacci, she did not have to seek exile in New York – yet. I’ve translated it partially for the mental exercise but thought it might interest you. It is part of my continuing search for signs of budding awareness in Europe.

For reference I believe the original (auf Deutch) is here.

MULTI-CULTURAL DEBATE

For three years British journalist Melanie Phillips has been searching for a publisher for her book dealing with the multi-cultural threat in the UK. Finally, three weeks ago, “Londonistan” came out in print and is already a bestseller in England. WELT online spoke with the author.

In the opinion of Melanie Phillips Great Britain has not yet grasped the threat of Jihad. The British establishment is still looking for excuses for Islamic extremists and underestimates the danger of  Islam. The author has written a conservative plea that warns of  multiculturalism, the undermining of traditional values and anti-Semitism.

This was no subject for the publishers; they rejected the manuscript. Readers evidently think differently. After Ms. Phillips finally did find a small publisher, the book is now number one amongst the political titles on amzon.com.uk and the publisher figures on selling 30,000 copies by September. WELT online spoke with the former writer for the left-liberal “Guardian”, who now writes for the conservative “Daily Mail”.

WELT online: Ms. Phillips, why is the West unable to win the conflict with Terror?

Phillips: What the British establishment doesn’t seem to get is that the conflict has religious roots. It prefers to look for excuses for the terrorists, which leads to where, eventually, the establishment itself takes the blame. I. e.,  Muslims are the victims of  prejudice, xenophobia, poverty and foreign policy. Our society is paralyzed by the doctrine of multiculturalism. If you criticize a minority, you obviously must be prejudiced. Moreover, many Englishmen do not understand religious fanaticism.

WELT online: This is probably true for most Europeans.

Phillips: But especially in England. It has been a strength of Brits over the centuries, and an important protection against tyranny, that they never had much sympathies for the world of ideas. They tended to believe only what they could see. The flipside of this anti-intellectualism is that  Britons can not relate to the idea of religious fanaticism. Suicide for them is a completely incomprehensible act and the reason for it can only be that the perpetrator must have suffered incredibly heinous things to be driven to suicide. Thus the terrorist becomes the victim. Britons are in a state of denial. They will not acknowledge the origin and the extend of the threat.

WELT online: Don’t you overestimate Islamism? There have always been phases of violence. The Red Army Fraction and the Red Brigade promoted radicalization of society in the seventies and found support with professors and young people. Yet they did not achieve the overturn of western society.

Phillips: I see this completely different. The West underestimates Islamism. It is completely absurd not to take seriously what the Islamic brotherhood says and writes. What they preach is what the Terrorists execute.

WELT online: But you don’t mean that Muslims as the danger, per se, do you?

Phillips: By no means. In my book I make it clear that many Muslims do not support violence. And, basically, they are the main victims of this struggle between the West and Islam.

WELT online: And why do you reject multiculturalism?

Phillips: The numbers for the radicalization of Muslims are frightening. Approximately 70% of Muslims in the UK support acts of violence. Only 17% of Muslims believe that the Arabs had anything to do with 9/11. This means that the majority believes in one or the other conspiracy theory that say America and the Jews were behind the destruction of the WTC. About a third of Muslims consider Jews a legitimate targets for aggression. Anyone not seeing  danger here is naïve.

WELT online: Why do we not succeed in making western values like freedom of opinion, equality of women and tolerance attractive to Muslims.?

Phillips: I believe that the last few years have brought a creeping radicalization that most have been slow to become aware of. This radicalization has two roots: Firstly, after the Afghan-Soviet war a number of  Muslims came to Britain that were too radical for the homeland. They established the UK as the main center for Al-Qaida in Europe. Secondly, in the seventies Islamic organizations were taken over by radical groups that were largely financed by Saudi-Arabia. All this radicalized an indeterminate number of young Muslims. They were indoctrinated into the jihadist ideology which holds western values corrupt and un-Islamic. They were prepared for the holy war.

WELT online: What can the West do against this?

Phillips: We have to tell the Muslims: You are welcome here in the UK and you may freely practice your religion. But our tolerance ends when you preach hate. When you do this we will close your institutions and arrest the hate preachers. At the same time we must go back to the awareness of our national Identity. For years we have attacked our fundamental national values, which created a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum. And this vacuum was filled by radical Islam.

Snopes has some bad news for those who say Islamofacism is not a threat.

The penalty for calling for violence against infidels in public? A few hundred quid.

UPDATE: A Word From Dr. Robert Brodsky.

Riiiiiiiiight.

Democrats Pull Ad With Flag-Draped Coffins
ROCK HILL, S.C., Jul. 15, 2006
By SEANNA ADCOX Associated Press Writer

(AP) Democrats pulled an Internet ad that showed flag-draped coffins Friday after Republicans and at least two Democrats demanded it be taken down on grounds the image was insensitive and not fit for a political commercial.

The ad by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called for a “new direction” and displayed a staccato of images, including war scenes, pollution and breached levees as well as a photograph of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay doctored to look like a police mug shot.

Look at those flag-draped coffins. It’s hard to imagine a more positive vision, or a clearer way to say “We support the troops”. Don’t you think?

Here’s another take on the story with more details and a lame attempt at justification.

Democrats defend Web video showing coffins of war dead
By JENNIFER McKEE Missoulian State Bureau

The one-minute video shows a variety of images, including flag-draped military coffins and a machine gun stuck in the sand with a helmet on it, along with images of New Orleans flood victims and gas station signs showing the rising cost of fuel.

So who’s selling fear? What else could be the purpose of such imagery?

Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for the Democratic group, defended the images.

“Republicans have gone to great lengths to obscure the pictures of these brave young men and women who come having paid the ultimate sacrifice,” she said in a statement. “Perhaps if these Republicans had been able to summon up this same level of outrage when President Bush sent our troops off to war without the body armor they needed and the Humvee armor they required, so many wouldn’t have come home in flag-draped coffins or with life-changing injuries.”

Obscure the pictures? No. The military took them and released them. Anyone who wants to can see them. There is no need to “summon up outrage”. It comes quite naturally to anyone who asks: What good comes from publicizing them? Why put them in a political advertisement? What is the message?

If the pacifists care so much about our war dead then why don’t they demonstrate an honest interest in who and what really kills them? Bush? Armor? Do they really believe this? Do they know nothing about our brutal enemy or the intolerant nihilist ideology that drives them? That this enemy kills Americans and anyone else who resists their jihad, and if we didn’t resist they’d kill us anyway?

Apparently not. And in retrospect we should not be surprised by the thoughtless actions of these pacifists. These are after all the same people who show their support, respect, and compassion for the soldiers dying to protect us by acting as if Bush is Nixon, Iraq is Vietnam, Abu Ghraib is Auschwitz, Gitmo is a gulag, Haditha is My Lai, and our wounded soldiers are politcal tools.

So here we have anti-war Democrats exploiting pictures of coffins to spread their message of defeat and retreat. Damn those who have put their lives on the line to win, and damn those who will suffer if we should lose. Message received, loud and clear.