Europe Surrenders

From The Brussels Journal:

A quote from Andrew Higgins in The Wall Street Journal, 17 May 2006

Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been threatened repeatedly with "execution" by Islamist extremists. She lives in an apartment with bulletproof windows, and is driven to work at the Dutch Parliament by armed guards, who vary the route to outfox would-be hit men. [...]

[Snip]

Across Europe, dozens of people are now in hiding or under police protection because of threats from Muslim extremists.

[Snip]

In Germany, several researchers, journalists and members of Parliament receive police protection because of threats by radical Muslims.

[Snip]

Flemming Rose, the culture editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, is also mulling a move to America, at the urging of friends and security contacts.

Hirsi Ali has been evicted from her apartment by court order at the instigation of her neighbors. The court ruled that she must move in order to protect the “human rights” of her neighbors. There have been calls to strip her of her Dutch citizenship and deport her. In response she has announced her plans to move to America and accept a position as a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (Europe's loss is our gain).

All over Europe the population is settling into the position that the danger posed by extremist Islamic terrorism can be managed through appeasement. In this world view those who speak out and challenge the modern savages are the problem.

Silence them and the problem goes away.

Of course the biggest “cage rattler” of the Islamofascists is the United States.

I suspect that we are seeing a kind of continent-wide Stockholm Syndrome in which those held hostage come to sympathize and even identify with the hostage takers. If this scenario plays out in Europe we could see neutrality in regard to the War on Terror turn to a kind of alliance with the terrorists.

This is not as unlikely as one might think. The default position of most Europeans toward the US is already one of resentment and dislike. Their already existent tendency is to view the US as automatically wrong in any dispute with any other nation. Europe has already made this transition in regard to the Israel and the Palestinians.

We live in interesting times indeed.