Back to the Balkans, The Sequel

Balkan Muslim cultures in particular are among those most saturated with Sufism, and are singled out in the Rand report as a potential base for partnership with the democratic powers in the strengthening of moderate Islam...Yet even in the Balkans, all is not peace and poetry. The ominous presence of Wahhabi missionaries, financiers, terror recruiters, and other mischief-makers bespeaks a fresh offensive in that tormented land. From the new Wahhabi seminary in the lovely Bosnian city of Zenica, to the cobblestone streets of Sarajevo's old Ottoman center, to the Muslim-majority villages in southern Serbia, extremist Sunni men in their distinctive, untrimmed beards and short, Arab style breeches (worn in imaginary emulation of Muhammad), accompanied by women in face veils and full body coverings (a bizarre novelty in the contemporary Balkans), are again appearing, funded by reactionary Saudis and Pakistanis. They aim to widen the horizon of global jihad--witness the revived campaign of terrorism in Morocco and Algeria. In the Balkans, their targets are both Sufis and traditional Muslims....The Balkans, The Wahhabis Are Up To No Good In southern Europe, Stephen Schwartz, The Weekly Standard, 5/8/2007

For those uninterested in the tragic incarceration of Paris Hilton, there is no such notion as "the armies of the night", the unknown and ghastly surprise of vast conflicts. Many of them (one supposes this includes few elected Democrats) are aware of what Stephen Schwartz is talking about, that the intrusion into Europe by radical Islam has not ceased. The war goes on and it's getting closer. One supposes that a reason we ignore this kind of story is that we're unwilling to face what it means. Part of what it means is that as long as we subsidize the Wahhabis by buying their oil, we can't expect them to stop buying weapons to explode on our friends and on us.

A little history -- funny thing about the Russian Bolsheviks, they never had much money to buy from us. We couldn't, as Lenin put it, sell our enemy the rope that he could use to hang us. But radical Islam, whose biggest sponsors are Saudi Arabia and Iran, has been buying that rope for decades. We provide them the money, as we do Iran, by buying their oil and by not transforming our energy usage toward domestically produced energy sources in a range from oil to deep gas to nuclear. There are environmental constituencies, wishing to keep that perfect preserve of their imaginations, that have blocked the entire process. For all that has been said about Congress being a whore of the energy companies, fact is that Congress, especially a Democrat majority Congress, has been any environmentalist's tart before acting positively on an issue of wartime national survival.

But Congress, in its perverse ways, does respond to majority concerns. And, sad to say, majority concerns are almost anywhere but on the transformation of our energy economy. Congress is entitled to act on the beliefs of a majority of its membership. This is in the constitution. It is not, alas, much represented in modern politics, which bears more than a passing resemblance to mob rule. In this respect, as in obvious ones, such as the various surrender measures currently being passed around on Capitol Hill, Congress is really the whore of our enemy. The question becomes, to stick to the metaphor, a simple one: how long will we keep buying this monster's tricks? Our country is at stake; it doesn't matter which party represents our country's interests. What matters is that they get represented. Currently, as regards the energy economy, it is fair to say they are not. As long as radical Islam is on the march toward Europe and toward us, the issue of who's paying for their advance (us) is a national, political issue. Congress doesn't think so. This is what you usually get from a whore, the illusion of pleasure followed by the consequences of the act.

Luther