Glenn Greenwald: "Will The Real Cowards Please Stand Up?"

As I and numerous other bloggers have noted, there has been a major effort underway by the far right and others to trash the two Fox journalists (I know, Fox and "journalist" does seem like a complete oxymoron but please...) recent released by their reported Palestinian captors, much as these same chickenhawk "heroes" ridiculed the Christian Science Monitor's Jill Carroll and even Daniel Perle, the Wall Street Journal's bureau chief before he was beheaded by his Muslim captors within months after 9-11-01.

Glenn Greenwald continues to tackle the obscene effort by the neocon and other far rightists to denounce these men:

In his new column today, admired warrior Mark Steyn follows in the footsteps of David Warren by mocking (from a safe distance, as always) the willingness of Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig to participate in a conversion ceremony in order to save their own lives. Just as Warren did, Steyn devotes an entire column to arguing that the weak, girlish cowardice displayed by the two Fox journalists in Gaza is what is plaguing "the West," and -- as always -- it is only unrestrained, chest-beating war (fought by others) which can bring us the masculine, warrior power that we need to be saved from Islamic aggression.

Steyn builds his "argument" by glorifying several extremely courageous individuals -- fictional characters in a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -- who were "Anglo-American-French tourists taken hostage by the Mahdists, the jihadi of the day." Steyn says they were "in the same predicament as Centanni and Wiig: The kidnappers are offering them a choice between Islam or death." But unlike the Fox journalist cowards in Gaza, Steyn lauds these fictional individuals as brave men and women of character:

"None of them, except perhaps Miss Adams and Mrs. Belmont, had any deep religious convictions. All of them were children of this world, and some of them disagreed with everything which that symbol [the cross] upon the earth represented."

Yet in the end, even as men with no religious convictions, they cannot bring themselves to submit to Islam, for they understand it to be not just a denial of Christ but in some sense a denial of themselves, too. So they stall and delay and bog down the imam in a lot of technical questions until eventually he wises up and they're condemned to death.

Steyn then contrasts the bravery of the Doyle characters with the conduct of Centanni and Wiig and -- just like Warren did -- claims that in their cowardly, life-saving behavior lies the real lesson of our Epic War of Civilizations with the Islamofacists:

One hundred ten years later, for the Fox journalists and the Western media who reported their release, what's the big deal?

Wear robes, change your name to Khaled, go on camera and drop Allah's name hither and yon: If that's your ticket out, seize it. Everyone'll know it's just a sham.But that's not how the al-Jazeera audience sees it. If you're a Muslim, the video is anything but meaningless. Not even the dumbest jihadist believes these infidels are suddenly true believers. Rather, it confirms the central truth Osama and the mullahs have been peddling -- that the West is weak, that there's nothing -- no core, no bedrock -- nothing it's not willing to trade.

Earlier in the column, Steyn complains of a newspaper story reporting on the assault of a 16-year-old girl by three men in Australia because the article failed to mention that the attackers were "of Middle Eastern/Mediterranean appearance." Steyn then ties that story to the Centanni/Wiig cowardice. Their wilingness to convert in order to save their own lives shows "that these men are easier to force into the car than that 16-year-old girl in Sydney was."

Steyn also points to the new book by "gay Tory Andrew Sullivan" in which, Steyn says, Sullivan is "attempting to reconcile his sexual temperament and his alleged political one." Steyn claims that the "live-for-the-present" philosophy promoted by Sullivan's book is "almost a literal restatement of Faust's bargain with the devil," and is the same weakness of character found in the Fox journalists (and in the war-avoiding appeasers of the West). "In the Muslim world, they watch the Centanni/Wiig video and see men so in love with the present, the now, that they will do or say anything to live in the moment. "

So, to recap: The West is like a 16-year old girl assaulted by aggressive Middle Eastern men - weak, vulnerable, humiliated, and in submission. Gay hedonist Andrew Sullivan, along with the bound and submissive Fox journalists, are the symbols of the weak, decadent West which Steyn so despises -- devoid of any manly values and courage.

Each week, Steyn screeches that we must wage war -- aggressive, unrestrained, manly glorious war against our Enemies -- because the alternative, which he fears so deeply, is to be a 16-year-old submissive girl or a gay Andrew Sullivan -- the men without chests, as Warren put it. You can find this transparent dynamic in most warmongering screeds these days.

The ironies of this disturbed war dance are virtually infinite, the most obvious one being that the Steyn Warriors can never point to any sacrifices they make or risks they incur. But the most striking irony is this. So much of the neoconservative warrior cries are built on an ethos of deep fear, of exactly the desperate desire to be protected and saved which Steyn and company claim is the hallmark of the girlish, soul-less West.

Read the rest here.