Terrorism Lessons From 1870
TCS: Tech Central Station: ".....'And because I think that would be a disaster, it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village.

Friedman's point of view seems eminently reasonable and logical. He is calling on moderate Muslims, for the sake of self-preservation, to do something to stop the barbaric theatrical gestures of the terrorists.

Up to this point, however, moderate Muslims have seemed paralyzed. We might wonder why this is the case.

In Fools Crow, there are moderate native Americans. However, they, too, are paralyzed. Their failure to restrain a small group of terrorists is what leads to the massacre. Perhaps James Welch, writing from the native American point of view, can offer some insights into the reasons for this paralysis. Here are some ideas that I took away from the novel.

1. The native Americans felt they were in a no-win situation. They saw fighting the white man as futile. However, they saw peace with the white man as being on terms that would make it impossible for native Americans to pursue their traditional way of life....."
- posted by Sophont @ Friday, July 15, 2005