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438 of 484 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Home Run, August 23, 2005
Tony Blankley's The West's Last Chance is a wake-up call for the West to recognize the dangers it faces from radical Islam. It draws heavily upon history and current events to illuminate this threat, makes its case convincingly, and concludes with a recommended course of action.
The author begins by exposing our disorganized and weak response which he attributes to a flaw of human nature: we tend to forget the past and focus on the present. The Islamic threat we face today is not just Osama and a few thousand followers; in the 15th century Islam overwhelmed Bulgaria, Serbia, Constantinople, Persia, Greece, and struck at the heart of Europe until King John Sobieski stopped them at the gates of Vienna in 1683.
He points out that the Protestant Reformation only became possible with the invention of the printing press, and that Islamic radicals are utilizing the internet to further their cause in a similar way. Now aspiring terrorists can train in virtual camps and learn terrorism without having to set foot in a physical training camp. I myself have read the Al-Qaeda terror training manual which is available through a quick internet search.
Blankley draws an intriguing parallel between our situation today, and that of the America Indians and the first European settlers centuries ago. The situation was similar; in both cases they were not formally at war and even cooperated with each other at times. The Indians, he points out, could have easily held on to their heritage if they had recognized the threat of Europeans to their lifestyle, because while there were only hundreds of Europeans at first, there were thousands of Indians with superior knowledge of the land. The Indians, however, didn't have a historical reference point on which to judge the situation and failed to act decisively. We, however, have plenty of historical reference points to judge the threats posed by radical Islam.
Another interesting parallel is shown: Evangelical Christians in the past didn't involve themselves in politics much for fear it might negatively taint their spirituality, but during the 1970's events arose (notably Roe v. Wade) that goaded them into becoming a strong political force. The same, he shows, is happening in Islam today.
The author points out that in 1920's and 1930's Germans were feeling humiliated and confused, susceptible to outside influences. The Nazis, although a tiny percent of the population, were aggressive, well-organized, and targeted German youth. Islam in Europe, he says, is in a similar situation. Radical Islamicists find a Muslim population humiliated by the dominance of foreign cultures, and young Muslims are increasingly disdainful of their parents' political passivity.
Blankley is careful to note that history is just a guide to possibilities, not a blueprint of the future.
Blankly points out many contemporary warning signs, one for example is a 2004 poll by the Guardian, a liberal British newspaper, in which 13% of Muslims polled publicly admitted to supporting more terrorist attacks on America. If 13% would admit this in public, how many more would admit this in private?
Blankley has a chapter on the actions America took during WWII - enlisting directors like John Ford and Frank Capra to make patriotic morale-boosting movies, censoring the broadcast of economic plans or criticism of physical equipment or troop morale, travel restrictions, etc, and in doing so shows how the Patriot Act is a fraction of what American once did to fight the enemy. He says that Americans during WWII were a little less concerned about rights, and more concerned about what the damage the enemy could inflict.
Concluding the book is a list of intelligent actions that should be undertaken. If the author is correct, and we do not heed his warnings, there could be a time some years into the future we look back and think, why didn't we take action when we still could?
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306 of 341 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Long overdue, August 30, 2005
Tony Blankley's "The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilization?" is a superb and long-overdue book. His portrayal of the challenge we face is both chilling and correct - "the mortal threat we face comes not merely from Osama bin Laden and a few thousand terrorists. Rather, we are confronted with the Islamic world - a fifth of mankind - in turmoil, and insurgent as it has not been in at least five hundred years, if not fifteen hundred years." The true threat spectrum encompasses not only radical Islamists, but a variety of fundamentalist Islamist groups, hell-bent on fulfilling what they passionately believe to be their most important religious obligation - establishment of a global caliphate, governed by Sharia law.
Blankley details how only very few media pundits, government officials or elite members in the West are willing to acknowledge the profound nature of this challenge. The problem is particularly acute in Europe, where several generations' worth of social and cultural policies of denigrating nationalism and Christianity - all driven by a mistaken belief that it was these forces that caused World Wars I and II - have "slowly morphed into a surprisingly deep self-loathing of Western culture that has denied the instinct for cultural and national self-defense." The situation in the United States is not nearly as grave, although there is a concerted effort by the proponents of multi-culturalism and civil liberties absolutists to oppose all government policies that can be used to tackle the Islamist threat. In any case, if the Islamization of Western Europe, described by Blankley and a few other prescient scholars, succeeds, the U.S. would be facing the gravest geo-political threat in its history.
The book does, however, end on a position note, with the author arguing that with the appropriate U.S. leadership, both Europe and the United States can win this clash of civilizations.
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55 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Insights!, December 28, 2005
Islam represents about 1/5 of the world's population, and during the Crusades got as far as Vienna (1682) in its attempt at world rule. In 1928 an aggressive form of Islam was born, and has been growing. Scholars have concluded that the Protestant Reformation would not have succeeded without Gutenberg's development of printing that allowed much greater dissemination of the Bible. Today's analogy is the Internet - Blakely sees it as making militant Islam's growth possible, and notes that militant Islam sites have grown from 12 to about 2,000 in only a few years. (Blankley also points out a parallel growth in the U.S. of Protestant evangelists since the Roe vs. Wade decision.)
Blankley believes Europe is in particular danger of being taken over by Muslim extremists. Islam already has about 20 adherents there - not all support violence, but extremists are focusing on recruiting the youth, following the Nazi's example prior to WWII. Europe initially welcomed the immigrants as a means of doing the "jobs they didn't want" - now the general population believes things have gotten out of hand and want it stopped. About 60% of European Muslims want to be governed by 'shia' - Muslim law - a radical departure from Christianity and existing laws within Europe; almost as alarming is the finding that an increasing proportion do not want to be assimilated into European society.
The U.S., while not having as great a population of Muslims nor problems with them (yet?), is not immune to future problems. Blankley sees major recruiting sources within U.S. prisons (blacks, drug users), and problems with our Mexican border.
Recommendations: Blankley suggests that the U.S. broaden its "War on Terror" to a "War on Islamist jihadists." Bush may have been reticent to do so initially for fear of alienating too many Muslims - however, by this point Blankley believes Bush couldn't do much worse than he already has. Ethnic profiling, securing our borders, and adopting national ID cards are other suggestions. Boosting Europe (prevent Eurabia from developing) is also a priority - Blankley would do this by encouraging religious prosletization by Americans (about 10% regularly attend church in Europe, vs. 50% in the U.S.
We all would benefit from reading Blankley's book. It is a serious matter and well thought out.
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