Bing West Quotes
Islam is a radical religion whose adherents are not susceptible to having their hearts and minds won over.
Bing West, Assistant Secretary of Defense (Republican), Military Analyst, Writer and Ex-Marine, Quoted in Colin H. Kahl, “Coin of the Realm”, Foreign Policy, November/December 2007
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This quotation illustrates the dissentions that exist between the various Islamic terrorist organizations. The Secretary General of Hezbollah herein castigates the rival and more religiously fundamentalist Al Qaeda for killing innocent Muslims. Not only do neither mind killing innocent people who are not Muslims, but Hezbollah indiscriminately fires rockets into Israeli populated areas and has killed innocent Muslims, Christians and Jews. Further, Hezbollah will force Muslim citizens of Lebanon to store arms and allow rocked firing from their properties and institutions like schools, mosques, and hospitals, knowing perfectly well that they minute they do this, under the Geneva conventions, those homes or institutions become a legal target for retaliatory attacks, artillery, air strikes or ground forces and that innocent Muslim civilians would be killed. The levels of terrorist subtlety is difficult for Westerners to comprehend.
See {586916} for a passage from the Koran supporting his point.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey recently described the Iranian leadership as “rational actors.” Lewis, the Western World’s greatest Islamic Historian, was advising regarding the Iranian effort to enrich uranium. The Iranians if they enriched enough could develop a nuclear weapon. Historically, nuclear powers have always been deterred by using them as the retaliation would wipe out most of their country and people. This Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) Lewis felt might not inhibit the Iranian leadership who have glorified suicide bombers and have sent tens of thousands of young people to their deaths (and immediately to Paradise) leading Iranian troops through Iraqi minefields in the Iran Iraq War. The national security question was should Iran be allowed to get a nuclear weapon?
“Martyrdom” is the euphemism that fundamentalist Muslims use to denote being killed while “fighting for Islam” or on a suicide mission for same. Many believe that such people ascend directly to Paradise where they are given a bevy of virgins and other “perks.” Ironically, this was the last interview that he gave before he himself was “martyred”—he was killed by coalition troops. This mental perspective is one of the reasons that fighting fundamentalist Islamic terrorists is so difficult. They perceive victory whichever way the battle or even the war comes out.
The column was written in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist murder of hundreds of school children and adults in Russia. The newspaper was the largest Arab newspaper in the world.
One remarkable aspect of this quote is that most Western nations have the exact same perception he claims the Islamic word does of what the West is doing. While the Western nations think the defense is necessary and desirable, the Muslim nations fundamentally believe that Christianity and Judaism should and will be supplanted by Islam. To the Islamic fundamentalist religion is a zero sum game. Every person in the world who is not a Muslim is an attack on Islam in that God wants all to follow Islam and wants the faithful to make it so.
In almost every election in those Islamic counties that have elections, the fundamentalist political parties almost always lose by large margins.
Francis J. "Bing" West is an American author, Marine combat veteran and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Reagan Administration.
