THE PIADINIAS HAVE FALLEN FROM THEIR EYES

One clear effect that the war over “Le Vignette” has resulted in is the Italians have opened their eyes to the extent of the threat of militant Islam. Reading the Italian press over the past few weeks has been an interesting experience. For starters, in Corriere there was a long interview with Ahmadinejad, the new Iranian leader. Like Peter Sellers with the uncontrollable arm ready to Sieg Heil, Ahmadinejad couldn’t control his anti-Semitic tongue. His answer to policy questions and his response to almost everything was that it was a “complotto sionista. ” The parallels to Hitler were as clear as a vodka neat. The sionistas were behind everything in the world that was evil, no event on earth could not be seen as having been manipulated by Jews. Here we have the world’s first madrassa mind ruling a key country. No reader of Corriere could have put that newspaper down without chills running through their spine.

The Europeans in their nuclear negotiations with the Iranians have been played with as fools, in the exact same way that the Americans were with the North Koreans. The Iranians never had any intention of renouncing their nuclear-bomb-making intentions. The entire European diplomacy was a dumb show to stall for even more covert time. This realization has deeply shaken the Europeans as the “let’s be reasonable” approach that they wanted to show the Americans could yield results, didn’t. They went to Tehran and found a true and deeply committed madman with the ideology of a Shia mullah sitting atop billions of barrels of oil and gas and tens of thousands of centrifuges. Depressing for sure, and scary as hell, especially if you live nearby. While Bush’s policies have been fatally flawed, his identification system appears intact; the “axis of evil” is just that, countries with leaders committed to fanatical ideology and repression modernity. From Oslo to Athens, Europeans know a fanatic with a bomb is not a good thing. When there is a coordinated NATO attack on the Iranians’ facilities there will be acquiescence and acceptance in the European press and mind.

Then there were the cartoons. So much has been said that a collective exhaustion has set in, but the fallout, again in Italy, appears profound. Panorama, the Italian version of Time, ran an entire section on the global Islamic terror threat. There was no subtlety, no ambiguity: the series was titled “The Cartoons: A Pretext of the Terror Network.” The look-the-other-way, try-and-understand mind-set of the culturally sophisticated Italians was breached like a high tide in January at St.Mark’s. The Muslim world’s orgy of death and destruction, its threats and fatwas have finally been revealed to the Italians for what they always were…a religious war going back millennia against the West.

The Panorama series focused on the role of the imams as preachers of intolerance and hate. It highlighted those that are in Europe and those that are in Pakistan. The article tied them together, as generals in a war, with photos and quotes. It let its readers know that “islam in fiamme” was a war aimed at them, and the cartoons were a pretext for an initial skirmish. Once again Ahmadinejad came in for some withering criticism, and he was tied to the goal of a “Grande Califfato.” The Italian’s don’t need reminding that a Muslim reclamation of that Caliphate means saying ciao to Sicily and a third of southern Italy. Sadly, there was also a killing of a priest, a guardian of an old church in Turkey, by a Muslim youth who claimed he was offended by the cartoons. This was deeply shocking to the Italians and brought home the personal human tragedy that Islamic fundamentalism causes. It remains to be seen if this will be a huge setback for Turkish EU admittance, but it certainly gave warning to the Italians that religious hate does not go along with a modern economy.

The imams have shown their hand. From Morocco to Mumbai, the coordinated attacks on the West have finally roused even the Italians to awareness. They have finally understood: it’s not about Palestine, it’s about Palermo. The fallout is potentially huge. While George Bush will probably never regain any credibility in the European mind, his leadership of the Western democracies against radical war-ready Islam will be better understood. On a security and intelligence level, one can imagine a renewed cooperation among intelligence forces against a violent foe. A clearer sense of the stakes in a fundamentalist struggle against the West. The cartoons have caused the West to circle their wagons in defense of their way of life; better Western coordination should reduce the enemy’s supply of rifles wherever they are and whatever form they may take.