Germany and Austria have announced that they will for now allow all Syrian migrants that reach their borders to apply for asylum, as opposed to EU rules that require asylum-seekers to apply in the first country they enter. I assume this is because they understand that the actions that they would need to take to stop them would be, let’s say, illiberal.
Hungary is building a fence on its border with Serbia to try to control the flow of migrants from Syria and other war zones. But most of them don’t want to stay in Hungary anyway; they want to go to Germany, the economic powerhouse of the EU.
Can you blame them? Syria and Libya are almost uninhabitable, as are numerous countries in sub-Saharan Africa, a result of misgovernment, tribal and religious wars, and the Islamic death cult.
Some of it is the fault of the West, which chose to reap the benefits of colonialism without accepting the responsibilities, and whose policies consisted of taking resources out of and putting weapons into these ‘countries’ while ignoring their pathological politics. Sometimes, as in the case of Syria, outsiders took sides, nurturing the tribal conflicts.
It seems like the West took the wrong path time and time again. It intervened where it shouldn’t have and did not intervene where it should have. It betrayed the Kurds (again), but didn’t stand up to Iran or even Assad. Sometimes you can see the mistakes being made. The nuclear deal with Iran and the slavering rush to do business with the one of world’s most dangerous and evil regimes is the proverbial slow-motion train wreck.
Whatever the causes, the cancer of the Islamic State that has established itself and is growing, combined with the dawning realization all over the world that it is thinkable (although dangerous) to escape the unlivable places, has given rise to this massive migration that will change the demographic reality in Europe faster than anyone expected.
Yes, some of the refugees are refugees and some are economic migrants. It doesn’t matter. Europe in five years will be unrecognizable in many important respects. This is a historic change, a ‘point of inflection’.
Islamic jihad against the West, which was mostly asleep from about 1830 (when the French conquest of Algiers finally put an end to the terrorism of the Barbary pirates) roared back to life with the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, the revolution in Iran, and of course 9/11 and the rest.
The Western response was sometimes muscular, if not accurately aimed, and sometimes fearful and characterized by Stockholm Syndrome; but it was always inconsistent and ineffectual. With the election of Barack Obama, the most powerful nation in the West adopted a policy somewhere between appeasement and defection, which – unless something changes radically – guarantees an Islamic victory.
The demographic revolution in Europe (still self-destructively obsessed with Jew-hatred) and the tacit acceptance of a nuclear and terror-sponsoring Iranian regime are milestones that future historians, assuming that the discipline of history survives the coming dark age, will mark.
Western governments are still underestimating the danger and overestimating their capability to defeat their technologically inferior but spiritually more determined adversaries. But there is little time left before the demographic changes in Europe make it politically impossible for Europeans to fight back.
The US is a complicated story. Militarily, it is far weaker than it was in 2001, after economic troubles caused budget cuts, and equipment damaged in several long wars was not replaced. Ideologically there is still a strong core of belief in Western superiority and the dangers posed by the Islamic jihad. America is still primarily a nation of Christians, unlike the European countries where Christianity has atrophied.
Nevertheless the universalist, multicultural, post-colonial viewpoint that characterizes the universities (and the Obama Administration) is gaining ground. No reversal of policy can come about in America without a radical change in the regime, and the Republican opposition has proven remarkably ineffectual so far. It is also not clear to me that the foreign policy bureaucracy, much more difficult to change than the party in power, isn’t also corrupted by pro-Islamic ideology. Millions of dollars of aid from Arab countries to universities like Harvard and Georgetown have not gone to waste.
Israel is the front line in the struggle to hold back Iran, something of which the Iranian regime is fully cognizant. That is why they are concentrating their forces, both military and psychological, against her. At some point she may need to confront the IS as well. Israel is quite capable of defending herself, at least in the short term. But the effect of the changes in Europe and the US is to isolate her. It’s uncertain that a tiny country like Israel, surrounded by enemies, will be able to survive in total isolation.
The Western countries and Israel’s self-destructive Left are aware of this, and claim that the cause of the growing isolation is the presence of Jews in Judea and Samaria. But concessions on this front will seriously damage Israel’s self-defense capabilities and not reverse the trend to isolation, which is based on the growing tilt toward the Muslim world in Europe and the US. The day after Israel withdraws from the territories, new demands will be made on behalf of Arab residents of Israel and ‘Palestinian refugees’ living outside of her.
My conclusion is that there is no time to waste – not for Israel and not for those elements in Europe and the US that are capable of understanding the threat that is facing what we call ‘Western civilization’. Iran and its proxies must be defeated militarily before they obtain massive nuclear capability. The IS needs to be crushed so thoroughly that its ideology that ‘Islam is the solution’ can be discredited.
In addition, the West must reverse the ideological weakness that is making it such a soft target for Islamic conquest. It has to become common knowledge that Islam is not ‘just a religion’ whose members worship in a mosque on Fridays, but a religion that includes a political ideology of expansion and jihad. It must be understood that money from abroad that flows into mosques in the US or anti-state NGOs in Israel is a subversive influence, not an exercise of democracy.
Muslims in Western countries must be given to understand that they will have all the civil rights and privileges of non-Muslims in their country, but that they do not extend to political activity intended to establish Islamic supremacy.
Is it too late? That depends on whether the West can reverse course in time. If not, then a new dark age will descend, possibly ushered in by nuclear terrorism.
It is remarkable that the most prestigious media institutions in the West do not see the plain truth of what is written in this piece. The West has lost its way to appeasement, withdrawal, and a false perception of the Islamic world. The removal of the military option by President Obama, his downsizing of the military are laughed at every day by Iran, Russia, and the whole army of Islamists confronting the U.S.
It was somehow expected that the ending of the Obama term would bring a new direction.But even that is not certain with the dysfunctional Republicans.
In any case I thank you for this instructive piece and all the insightful writing that is done here. You should be the New York Times in regard to the Middle East and they should be the trash can.