September 2002
by Barry Stagg
In a way, I felt that the topic was ironic in that an awful lot of the North American reaction to September 11 has been anything but ferocious. Too many of our hand-wringing intelligentsia are trying to find ways to apologize to Muslims, if not to the terrorists themselves, for the audacity of the Western world in being prosperous, democratic and free and inclined to defend itself against attacks by fundamentalist terrorists. Military denunciation of enemies of our countries is perceived by these gormless chatterers as acts of religious bigotry.
Things are not likely to be much different on the first anniversary of September 11. On September 11, 2002, Canadians can depend upon our limp Department of Foreign Affairs to come down exquisitely and agonizingly on the diplomatic fence, taking care to offend no one and to commit to nothing other than a general state of sadness and dismay over the 'unfortunate incident' in New York City.
This, of course, is an unctuous display of what I call over- civilization. Protected hacks who make a living in government and in the corporate do-gooder sector are falling all over themselves to show that we are not offended by, let alone ferocious toward, these murderous barbarians: 'Root causes','They had it coming','American Imperialism', 'Jihad v McWorld', etc. and ad nauseam.
I fear that the Canadian government is far from alone in its petty and equivocal response to the Islamic assault on the Western world. There are many tut-tutting social leaders in this country who would like the rest of us to be deeply offended at the determination of the Americans to wreak havoc upon its terrorists foes. It is an exhibition of misplaced and perverse sentimentality that finds our arbiters of social fashion trying to find common coin and common cause with murderous men from tyrannical theocracies who have murder in their hearts and a vicious determination to do away with any and all who fail to follow their primitive and savage rules of conduct.
Simply put, our pacifist leaders and their fashion brigade of fellow travellers hide behind Fortress America and poke sticks at Warrior America when the attention of that magnificent country is diverted to more significant and hostile foes.
We ordinary citizens of Canada and the United States are not going to let our countries become public domain, international enclaves for stateless migrants exempted from citizenship and its demands of loyalty. There will be no convenient commercial sanctuary for them where our smug statist regulator classes can manage their guests' mute, uncommitted ascendancy to demographic dominance.
Our self-righteous regulators practice profitable self-delusion by believing that their super-civility gives them exclusive insight into the benign and repressed motives of the non-Western folks who danced in the street in celebration of the mass murders of September 11, 2001.
On September 11, I am with the warrior classes of North America who would have us go to Iraq and dethrone the despot Saddam Hussein. Those who cringe at the United States invoking the rules of war to protect our civilization can simply step over the barricades and prostrate themselves in front of their perceived friends from the Middle East.