Where’s the Peaceful Majority? A Response for Tomi Lahren

by Mohammed M. Shaker

“Men are fighting… because they are convinced that the extermination of adversaries is the only means of promoting their own well-being.”

– Ludwig von Mises  

Tomi Lahren is back again with her empty drivel. She starts off her “final thoughts” as she usually does: with a loaded question that serves nothing in answering the actual issues. She asks, “If the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful and the radicals only make up a small percentage, then why are the radicals, the terrorists, the jihadis able to take over entire swaths of the Middle East?” The question almost made me spit out my coffee, because the answer is already in her question. Radical and violent terrorists that are able to use violence to take control of large geographical areas with their weapons, bombs, and armored vehicles? She might as well think about writing the next version of The Art of War.

Little known to Lahren is that the second Gulf War in 2003 toppled the regional power house of Saddam Hussein. Hussein otherwise helped keep Islamic terrorism in check (as virtually none existed in Iraq during his power). He also kept Iran under control. The United States led the coalition that created the vacuum in the Gulf. Not only that, but the US helped with the proxy war in Syria by arming ISIS, and many rebels that became radical had a slightly different idea than simply removing Bashar Al-Assad from power.

The case raised by her on Islam being peaceful, whether it comes from Muslims, liberals or conservatives, is a futile one. An idea, a religion, cannot be peaceful; it cannot assume a state of being. People are violent. People are peaceful. Although I myself do not argue against calling radical Islam what it is, an important question to ask is why some Muslims in the Middle East become terrorists. Perhaps it relates to tragedies like the killing of 100+ civilians with American bombs, jets, and servicemen when those people were mistaken for ISIS. Any child or young teen that lost a family member to the American occupations during the Iraqi or Afghani invasions is now a young adult, possibly training sights on one of our troops or setting up bombs to kill the invaders. There is no way to not see this except for sticking your head in the sand.

Whether she wants to agree with it or not, the extended family and friends of these people have a pretty good excuse to want to attack America and hate anything that has to do with America. The defense that “this is war” or “collateral damage” may work in America, where we have not seen major war inside our borders in over 151 years. Try telling that to the kid who won’t be seeing his parents anymore, or the father who lost his son senselessly over a “mistake” which could have been best avoided by not intervening in the first place.

Lahren has a knack for comparing apples to oranges. She asks about the 1.6 billion Muslims, the manpower, when it comes to fighting the Muslim terrorists. It’s best to first focus on the region in which ISIS generally operates. In the Middle East, about 240-350 million people live in about 17-22 different countries depending on which countries you decide to add in. Country by country, some of the Middle Easterners live in Islamic theocracies or monarchies like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the rest of the Gulf. The rest live in secular dictatorships like Syria, Egypt, and Iraq.

The foolish comparison of these very different countries and the rights they have to Americans that already have the right to own firearms and speak their minds without being disappeared by a tyrannical government is laughable at best. And this is truer when analyzing which countries and regimes the United States supports both privately and publicly with different packages of economic benefits and military weapons. That is not including sanctions and tariffs of countries like Iran in support of their adversaries Saudi Arabia and the GCC.

The ONLY way to deal with radical Islam is to start taking conscious steps towards reducing our military foot print and failed interventionism in the Middle East. We need to stop making more terrorists by accidentally killing civilians then having to deal with the resulting blowback. And we need to help stop the firepower these Islamic terrorists have by not funding, training, and arming them.

See Tomi Lahren’s original video below: