The West “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.”
Victor Davis Hanson laments the failure of the West to confront Islam.