First and foremost, a tribute to a brave teacher who laid down his life for his students:
Among the 32 people killed by a lone gunman at Virginia Tech Monday is 77-year-old engineering professor Liviu Librescu, a citizen of Israel. According to eyewitness accounts, Librescu ran to the door of his classroom and blocked it with his body – preventing the gunman from entering but getting shot to death himself as a result.
Professor Librescu survived the Holocaust and life in communist Romania, from which he was freed in 1978 following an appeal in his behalf by Prime Minister Menachem Begin. He and his wife had lived in the U.S. since 1986. May his memory be for a blessing.
Non-tributes are easier to hand out: to the reflexively anti-American European press, to prize idiotarian Rosie O’Donnell and, above all, to Senator Barack Obama, who, with no hint of levity, equated the murders at Virginia Tech with Don Imus and outsourcing – all three just instances of “violence”.
The most predictably knee-jerk reactions came from gun control advocates, to whom this tragedy was another argument in favor of their panacea. My own thoughts turned to gun control, too. I’ve long been a very, very lukewarm Second Amendment supporter, for whom firearms have never been a key issue. The Blacksburg murders could change my mind, though not in the direction the Brady Campaign would like.
The Virginia Tech campus was (supposed to be) a gun-free zone. Students and faculty, including those with concealed-carry licenses, were forbidden to bring firearms onto the grounds; students who did so faced not the fine that the criminal law would have imposed, but expulsion. Hence, the killer faced an unarmed rabble. A striking contrast was an incident five years ago at another Virginia institution, Appalachian School of Law, which has no restrictions on the possession of licensed firearms. A demented student shot six people, killing three, but then –
Students ended the rampage by confronting and then tackling the gunman, officials said.
“We saw the shooter, stopped at my vehicle and got out my handgun and started to approach [him],” Tracy Bridges, who helped subdue the shooter with other students, said Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show. “At that time, [he] threw up his hands and threw his weapon down.”
That course of action wasn’t open to law abiding students at Virginia Tech. If it had been, Professor Librescu’s sacrifice might have been unnecessary.
I begin to think that the Right to Keep and Bear Arms may be more than just an abstract principle to be upheld out of fealty to the original understanding of the Constitution.
So far as anyone can tell, the murderer was a disturbed young man with personal grievances, not an Islamofascist terrorist. Nonetheless, his acts are a dreadful warning. The deranged we have with us always. Because they have no rational objectives, there is little that we can do to prevent their random onslaughts without bundling ourselves in a stifling cocoon of precautions. On the other hand, the world has more than enough mufsidun who would thrill with delight at the prospect of emulating Cho Seung-Hui. We read of their handiwork in the papers every day – in Iraq, in Israel, in Indonesia, in Thailand and Algeria and the Philippines.
Yet, since the terrible day of 9/11, there has been virtually no terrorist activity on American soil. The credit doesn’t lie with draconian safeguards. The tightening of security over the past five years has been far from dramatic, and huge gaps are visible to the naked eye. Nor is it very likely that we have been blessed with blind luck. The most plausible explanations for half a decade of relative peace and quiet are –
Memories of the strong American reaction to 9/11 and its immediate aftermath – the devastating campaign against the Taliban regime – still influence the less irrational elements of the Islamofascist leadership. They can reasonably fear that another direct strike against the U.S. would merely reignite anti-terrorist fervor, whereas the current calm promotes domestic dissension and distaste for the War on Terror. Waiting for the “peace party” to take over must appear to be a sound strategy.
While their extent and success can’t be evaluated by outsiders, internal anti-terrorist measures, probably including some that would give apoplexy to the New York Times editorial board, have doubtless disrupted many enemy projects.
American military action is steadily stripping away the high command from al-Qa’eda and kindred groups while forcing the surviving leaders to keep their heads down. New and harried kingpins can’t engage in the meticulous planning and preparation that marked al-Qa’eda’s earlier attacks. Their efforts are accordingly less effective and more readily detected.
- The Iraqi campaign has absorbed a major share of enemy resources. Al-Qa’eda has identified that country as the “central front” in its war against the giaours, a misfortune for Iraqis but a great simplification for America. There are few military boons greater than an enemy’s insistence on attacking along the line of most resistance.
All portents are, alas, against the continuance of this favorable conjunction. When the Democrats take power in January 2009 (assuming no great reversal of political fortunes over the next year and a half), fear of America will diminish, allegedly “illegal” anti-terrorist tactics will be halted, and our armed forces will switch to a primarily defensive posture. The Islamofascists will then face a happy choice between overthrowing the weak non-fascist governments of the dar al-Islām or launching new attacks against the homeland of the Great Satan.
Either way, the Caliphate will be a step nearer to restoration. A Middle-East-first strategy will leave us a few years or decades of delusive peace. The alternative will offer little recourse but the hope that, when and as they are needed, heroes like Liviu Librescu will again appear.
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