Can we forgive Bush’s SUBMISSION?
Can we forgive Bush’s SUBMISSION?

At this time for forgiveness, we have to ask if there are limits to clemency if too much harm was done…harm for generations to come…and now London, followed by an attack in Jerusalem by Palestinian Arab terrorists against a bus carrying Israeli school children.

One man alone is not to blame for an entire world plunged in Islamic terrorism. 

But as president, George W. Bush made a difference so very much the wrong way. 

Six days after we were attacked, Sept 11, 2001, Bush visited a mosque in what can only be called an act of surrender. 

If not that, his ceremonial gesture, on behalf of the United States, can surely be termed an act of submission.

While the fires in New York and Pennsylvania were still burning, and while first and later responders were still digging for the living and the dead at Ground Zero, Bush said “Islam is peace,” and according to The New York Times, Bush “spoke eloquently against the harassment of Arabs and Muslims living in the United States.”

Further, according to the Times, Bush spoke about “the need to respect Islam.”

What is wrong with that except everything?

First of all, what harassment? Especially back then hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims ran at about six percent, and against Jews 60 percent.

The two books cited for getting it right on submission are Houellebecq’s “Submission” and this writer’s “The Bathsheba Deadline.”
But the Times assures us that Bush spoke “eloquently.” Perhaps too eloquently? Islamic terrorism did not diminish after 9/11. Instead, it grew bolder here and abroad. Nor did it stop in respect to Bush’s “eloquence.” Rather, it got worse. Can we say that Bush’s act of submission emboldened radical Islamists?

Can we say that Bush, in bowing to Islam – and at the worst possible time -- is at least partly responsible for an entire world deluged by Islamic terrorism?

If we can’t say that for sure, we can emphatically say that he sent the wrong message…fatally wrong. 

The two books cited for getting it right on submission are Houellebecq’s “Submission” and this writer’s “The Bathsheba Deadline.” The one views the encroachment of Islam from a European point of view; the other from an American POV. 

In that part of the world they watch and they listen and when they catch us blaming ourselves for their deeds of barbarism, they take it to mean a green light. They recognize our leaders for being the quislings that they are and when they get through laughing, they plan their next assault. 

In Trump we trust it will be different…and indeed Trump’s remarks on 9/11 were spot on relative to our resolve to defeat Islam’s terrorists.

Meantime Israel always takes it from them first, and next comes the rest of the world…and let’s remember the Palestinian Arabs and how they cheered when the Twin Towers went down. 

You’d think that after an action so monstrous as 9/11 all of Islam would be in retreat from shame and embarrassment.

The opposite happened. Islam flexed stronger. Islam swarmed across the continent of Europe, strutting across borders and making demands. 

Likewise, if to a lesser degree, the United States.

Bush’s eloquence was a blunder heard around the world and the worst of it is that he spoke for the Judeo/Christian Western world at large.

We appear to be gluttons for punishment. They kill, and we apologize. We beg forgiveness, as Obama did, as Bush did, as Merkel does.

We even open our borders and ask for more. 

We, not them, are in retreat. 

Compare it to December 7, 1941, and FDR’s reaction to Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt did not visit a Japanese house of worship. 

That same day he signed a declaration of war against Japan.

In those days, that was how we did eloquence.

New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva. Engelhard wrote the international book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal” and the ground-breaking inside-journalism thriller “The Bathsheba Deadline.” His latest is “News Anchor Sweetheart.” He is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com