Paris Is Beirut

We must discuss Paris.

While explanations and conjecture abound about how the attackers made their way to Paris, how they got their Khalashnikovs, why they attacked the specific locations they did - tbe stuff that takes up hours of "contributors'" time on cable news networks - it's all pretty much bullshit.

Call them ISIS, DAESH, ISIL, Ansar al Sharia, AQAP - their specific appellation or point of origin is irrelevant. As Osama bin Laden has said, "We are the children of an Islamic Nation." And, my friends, that's all you need to know about that.

Are there issues that stretch back to the death of the Prophet that separate the Shi'a from the Sunn'i? Most certainly. But those differences - at least for our current purposes - are of secondary concern. We need only look to the recent suicide bombings in southern Beirut, a state within the state of Lebanon (which, if truth be told, can hardly be described as functioning as a "state" the way our Western minds define it), the capital of the Hizballah nation, where ISIS attacks Shi'a mosques after Friday prayers in retribution for Hizballah's support of Assad, Iran and Russia.

But as Shi'a and Sunn'i blow one another up, which I hardly find disturbing, the fact remains that both are children of the Islamic Nation. Mindful that exceptions to the norm exist in any reasonable situation, there is a broad, murderous current that is present in Islam and it is fanned by governments that have seats in the United Nations. It is supported by the forces of progressivism and multiculturalism that prevail in Europe today, that ignore the dangers of failure to assimilate, that wink at the establishment of "no go" zones in the most ancient capitals of the Old World.

These same forces have, while ignoring the rot of their own internal culture, happily looked outward to isolate and make a pariah of Israel. Apartheid, they charge. Intolerant. Inflexible. Heavens - right wing (micro-aggressive code for fascist)! Do they use these words to describe the murderous regime in Sudan which, darlings of the Left, practiced genocide in Darfur? Why.....no. They're Muslims. Is there any proportional condemnation of Abu Mazen, nom de guerre of Mahmoud Abbas, of the Palestinian Authority (pray, what "authority" does it possibly possess?) who praises the murder of civilians headed to a wedding reception and whose "Red Crescent" fails to render aid? Why.....no. They're oppressed Muslims.

And, please, in what alternative universe is it chic or acceptable or normative to possess a nom de guerre? Particularly for a "head of state"? Nom de guerre's were once the province of Revolutionary Communists, romantic in Cuba then reviled in Cambodia, now assumed by barbarous terrorists, perhaps seeking that same temporal anonymity. There is nothing normal about this whatever. Or when a sovereign nation repeatedly calls for the destruction of another sovereign nation. All of this - all of this - has been rendered "normal" by forces unwilling to confront the unpleasant reality thrown into our faces by no less a character of revulsion than Osama bin Laden.

I do not want to see more war. Children and mothers will die. Sons and fathers who love life will be forced into battle against those who choose - who want - to die in a fantastical devotion to a theology which promises virgins to martyrs and whose adherents hand out sweets in the aftermath of murderous rampages. Islam will never find moderation until it is modified by forces from within. Are there any signs from any segment of the Muslim world that these forces are gathering?

The gesture of cloaking your profile pic on Facebook in a French flag makes me laugh. Post your Eiffel Tower peace sign visage if that makes you feel better. Get your other flags and your other monument images ready. This will go on for some time until the curtain is drawn and the evil is named.