I Expect You to Die!
I was channel hopping this evening when I landed on Spike TV, which was showing one of my old favorites—“Goldfinger.” There’s a terrific scene in the film, one of the best known in all the James Bond movies. Sean Connery (Bond, for those of you who are young) is strapped to a table being cut by a laser beam that, unless interrupted, will slice 007 in half from his groin to his head. The ensuing dialogue goes like this:
Bond: I think you made your point. Thank you for the demonstration. Goldfinger: Choose your next witticism carefully, Mr. Bond, it may be your last. Bond: Do you expect me to talk, Goldfinger? Goldfinger: No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!
It struck me that the scene epitomized the West’s inability to conceptualize what it is up against in its war against the jihadists. Too many people keep searching for ways that will allow us to talk—to negotiate—our way out of our situation. But the jihadists, much like Auric Goldfinger, don’t really care if we talk; they expect western civilization to die. They want a global khalifate in which all people, Muslims and non-Muslims, live under Shari’a. And, again like Goldfinger, they are eager to explain to us in clear language their global dreams.
The West needs to listen, and to recognize that the jihadists want to destroy our way of life. Unless we break the shackles that bind us, shackles that are mostly self-imposed, we will be destroyed. But once the West unshackles itself, the jihadists are doomed.
