Tony Blankley: "Know Thy Enemy"

Writing in the Washington Times, Newt Gingrich's former PR guru analyzes responses to the London bombings:

There were other examples of political correctness gone mad. I saw a senior British law enforcement official on Thursday making the explicit point that the words Islam and terrorist do not belong in the same sentence. Yesterday, the head of the Scotland Yard press briefers finished his factual account of various details with the statement that extremists and criminals did these acts, and no one should 'stigmatize any community with these acts.'

But, of course, no one was, nor should be, stigmatizing 'any community'. On the other hand, while some very large percentage of the two million Muslims living in Britain are law abiding, it is also the case that a hundred percent of the 'extremists and criminals' so far identified by Scotland Yard who attacked London were Islamic -- or more to the point 'Islamist.'

The danger manifestly comes from those Muslims -- either born or converted -- who believe in the armed jihadist policy of terror attacks.

Political correctness started out as an externally applied pressure placed by academic elites on regular people not to say certain things which were judged improper. But it has become a more dangerous phenomenon now. Government, law enforcement, military officials and many regular citizens are beginning to internalize the politically correct mentality. If government officials, the media and increasing elements of the public actually begin to believe that there is no relationship between Islam as currently practiced by some percentage of the Moslem population and the mortal threat of terrorism -- then it will be hard if not impossible to mount an effective defense.

The first lesson of war is to know thy enemy. While we should never put people in that category who don't fit, it is suicidal to refuse to acknowledge the accurate nature of the enemy.