Futility, Retreat, the Kerry campaign, etc. . . .

The London Times reports on the popularity of the Islamic beheading videos among muslim youth in Britain. They collect and exchange these videos through their mobile phones almost as a fetish. The practice is widespread. The muslim downloaders include followers of Abu Hamza al-Masri. Hat tip to the Belmont Club for placing this practice, the Kerry campaign, and the cult of futility into context:

Which goes to prove that the worst job in the world isn't cleaning the floor at the peep-show but scouring the linoleum in the sacred establishment of Abu Hamza al-Masri, blessed be his name. One might criticize the conduct of the war on grounds that it should go faster, or be conducted in a different way, but it takes a special kind of obtuseness to argue the superfluity of defense against those who save the images of death agonies as a fetish. Yet that idea forms the unshakeable core of a Liberal creed which has a 50% chance of becoming American policy for the next four years.

Herbert Lottman, describing the last days of Paris before it fell to Germans in 1940 describes the strange mixture of urgency and lassitude, of obsession with long term schemes counterpointed by an indifference to the immediate in a nation that had just weeks to live. It was the perfect portrait of a country which did not know it was at war. Not really. The French Communists continued to call for "Peace Government" to mollify a Germany wronged by defeat in the First War. Parisian authorities forbade the private purchase of firearms by citizens anxious to protect themselves. Bread was rationed to 30 grams per meal at de luxe restaurants though 100 grams could be obtained at a bistro meal. The French cabinet pinned its hopes on more aircraft from neutral America as if they had any prospect of receiving any future shipments. Nero fiddled. Rome burned. When the Nazi columns finally marched into Paris, there was a widespread feeling of betrayal and a search for a scapegoat.

[emphasis added]

For those who are still not sure that we are at war or what we are fighting, check out John Quincy Adams Knew Jihad.