Lead the Way

Rudyard Kipling famously described what was once the job of a journalist in his poem The Elephant's Child. It reads, in part

I keep six honest serving men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

That stanza encapsulates the supposed ends of a hard news story. Apparently though, the major American newspapers have come to redefine who. The New York Times and The Washington Post have done stories in the past few days detailing a plot uncovered by Canadian police this weekend. In the event you were busy watching American Idol reruns On-Demand, 17 Muslim men were caught red-handed in the act of attempting to secure three tons of ammonium nitrate, or three times as much as Timothy McVeigh used in Oklahoma City. They ranged in age from their late teens to one in his early forties. They were all Canadian citizens, who had been nurtured by the state, all men and all, as described by both the Post and Times, of Southeast Asian descent. Not until the second page of the story, in either paper, did we learn that they all belonged to the same mosque.

Today being the 62nd anniversary of D-Day I could only wonder what the boys of Pointe du Hoc would think of that. On that day 225 US Army Rangers jumped off British landing craft and, braving hails of machine gun fire, ran to the bottom of a nearly sheer, ten story cliff, atop which supposedly sat a battery of naval guns capable of wiping the attackers from both the beaches and the seas. These guns were defended by battle hardened German soldiers intent on kicking the landing force back into the sea. As the German soldiers rained grenade and automatic rifle fire down upon them the Rangers began to climb. When one Ranger fell another would take his place. They climbed, returned fire and, eventually, captured the land at the top of the cliff. Of the 225 Rangers that started the ascent, 90 remained able to fight on in the battle to recapture Europe.

What does one cowardly act nipped in its nascent stages have to do with one of the most heroic missions ever undertaken by soldiers you ask? The answer is simple: the 2nd Ranger Battalion's men climbed because they recognized that there was no choice. They were not ambivalent about the idea that they were fighting consummate evil. It was do or die, and they did both. Sadly, neither writer of this week's Post and Times stories shares that emotion. Both journalists have forgotten, or choose to ignore, that who someone is carries weight. It is the basis of all police work, and once was the basis of journalism too.

The Toronto Star got it right though, in today's edition. In a city that was arguably a target for terror, the major daily newspaper called this what it is: terrorism perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists. The editorial stated, "Clearly, there are simple truths arising from the weekend events, most notably that all 17 of the people arrested are Muslims. Our important efforts at cultural understanding cannot disguise that fact." In a country awash in political correctness our neighbors in The Great White North, at least on the Star's editorial staff, recognize that the only way to defeat evil is to target it. All 17 of those arrested were Muslim, just as all 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Muslim. We can disagree as to whether they were acting in direct contravention of the Qur'an's teaching, or not, but we cannot disagree that they were all Muslim.

Why then did two of the United State's most prestigious newspapers choose to bury this fact? Sadly, it appears they wish to cloak these acts in some sort of aberrant cape. It is here that we are constantly reminded that not all Muslims are bad people. In fact, most are hard working, honest, decent people who just want to raise their kids. I cannot disagree that most Muslims are such, but I can disagree with the notion that these terror attacks are an aberration. They are premeditated, fundamentalist visions for an all Islamic world. Up until I see massive street protests, like the one excoriating newspapers for printing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, from these supposed moderate Muslims, I can only presume that the rank and file Muslim, both here and abroad, believes these acts to be, if not tacitly okay, than at least understandable; something we, and Britain, Spain and Canada, brought on ourselves through our failure to heed the Prophet's words.

The Rangers at Pointe du Hoc were not the only Rangers who acted heroically on the beaches of Normandy. The 5th Ranger Battalion gave the regiment it's motto. While literally thousands of men were pinned down on the beaches of Normandy 62 years ago, General Norman Cota spotted a group of men armed with equipment for blowing holes in the maze of obstacles arranged on the beach. "What unit is this?" he shouted. "5th Rangers, sir!" came the reply. "Well, god-damnit then Rangers, Lead the Way!" Without hesitation these Rangers, like their brothers on the cliffs, jumped up and, under murderous heavy weapons fire began inching up the beach. One wonders what these men would think of the notion that we might hurt some unoffending Muslims feelings if we identified terrorists by their religious affiliation. I can only presume that the sheer lunacy of it would be unfathomable to a group of young men, many unable even to shave, who behaved so majestically under the toughest of conditions. As then, we are at war with an enemy bent on world domination. Unlike then though, our enemy does not wear a uniform to readily identify himself. They hide in crowds of civilians and cowardly attack those least able to defend themselves, while cloaking themselves in the garb of god.

There are no fortifications for brave men to storm, or cliffs for them to climb in the war in which we are currently engaged. We are at war with an enemy who seeks to conceal himself until he strikes, not at soldiers, but at civilians. We will never defeat this evil among us until we learn to accept, and acknowledge, our enemies commonalities, of which the most prominent feature is a shared belief in radical Islamic domination, by any means. If we are going to defeat this enemy, freedom loving people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, here and in Britain and in Canada and, yes, in Iraq and Iran must realize that we are, like those Rangers on the beaches of Normandy so long ago, in this together. Otherwise we are simply sacrificial lambs waiting for the slaughter, and unworthy of the history of those Rangers, and men and women throughout our past, who have spilled their blood so that we could be free.