Daniel Greenfield / Sultan Knish Articles at DanielGreenfield.org

The one thing that gave me hope for my generation was our cynicism. We might not believe in anything, but at least we wouldn't believe in everything. We might be apathetic, but that just meant it was harder to enlist us in causes. We didn't just march to the beat of our own drummer, we questioned the need for having a drummer and a beat. We were burnt out on everything and done with it all. Of course it wasn't really like that. Generation X became obsessed with authenticity the way that the Baby Boomers had with realization. Reality TV overseen by Baby Boomer producers and catering to Generation X combined the two and made it seem revolutionary. The Baby Boomers may have given us navel gazing music, but Gen X's obsession with authenticity gave us grunge and rap as their defining genres. In its on way, Generation X was as narcissistic as the Boomers. It just didn't want to be seen that way. Like the Baby Boomers it was obsessed with selling out, but in a genera...

Someone chalked a long red line along the street outside my building. The line is sloppy, it turns, wavers and meanders. Car tires have already rubbed it pink in places and dogs have done to it what large four-legged animals do naturally when taken out of the confines of narrow apartments. The line turns a corner and dives inside a pothole near an exposed sewer grate. And then it is gone. Obama's red line is more famous than my red line. It appears in the Washington Post and the New York Times. There are reams of speculation over what the nature of the red line is, whether the red line has been crossed, what Obama should do about the crossing of the red line and how many devils can dance on the edge of a red line while juggling Sarin canisters.   Despite being much more famous, Obama's red line matters about as much as the one in front of my building. It's there one day and gone the next and no one really cares. The red line, the famous one in D.C. is meaningless. It ...

The left has a clearly defined set of responses to a terrorist attack. After all the hopes for a properly right wing terrorist have come to naught, it begins the long slow process of rolling back the laws and emotional attitudes stemming from the attack. For it, terrorism, like anything else, either fits into its narrative or conflicts with it. The narrative defines the world, past, present and future, in terms of the political agenda of the left. An event that clashes with the agenda must have its meaning changed so that the power of the narrative is restored. Most violent attacks, from a street mugging to September 11, cause people to seek out security by combating the attackers. The left's task is to shift the narrative so that people see it in an entirely different way. The perpetrators become the victims by the trick of transforming the real victims into the real perpetrators. The lesson shifts from going on the offense to learning not to give offense. The process is gra...

The circle of men whirls around the fire, hand in hand, hand catching hand, drawing in newcomers into the ring that races around and around in the growing darkness. A melody thumps through the speakers teetering unevenly with the bass, the sound is both old and new, a mix of the past and the present, like the participants in the dance, the traditional garments mixing with jeans and t-shirts until it is all a blur. It is Lag BaOmer, an obscure holiday to most, even to those who come to the fires. The remnants of the Jewish Revolt against the might of the Roman Empire are remembered as days of deprivation in memory of the thousands of students dying in the war, until the thirty-third day of the Biblical Omer, part of the way between Passover and Shavuot, the day when Jerusalem was liberated. Deprived of music for weeks, it rolls back in waves through speakers, from horns blown by children and a makeshift drum echoing an ancient celebration when men danced around fires and shot arro...

THE WAR THAT WON'T GO AWAY After the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Obama asked, “Why did young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities and our country, resort to such violence?” In Obama’s speech, the willingness of the Tsarnaev brothers to kill the people of the country they had grown up in is a paradox. But it isn’t a paradox; it’s the point. Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev carried out the marathon massacre not because they were on the outside, but because they were on the inside. Islamic terrorism was their way of expressing their American identity. When they detonated bombs at the Boston Marathon, they weren’t doing it as Chechen Muslims, but as American Muslims. There is a reason why second and third generation Muslims are more likely to turn terrorist than their immigrant parents. It is because they have become American, British, Canadian and Australian part of the way. They have gone deep enough to begin making a claim on the country. The West...

Means, opportunity and motive are the three crucial elements of investigating a crime and establishing the guilt of its perpetrator. Means and opportunity tell us how the crime could have been committed while motive tells us why it was committed. Many crimes cannot be narrowed down by motive until a suspect is on the scene; but acts of terrorism can be. Almost anyone might be responsible for a random killing; but political killings are carried out by those who subscribe to common beliefs. Eliminate motive from terrorism and it becomes no different than investigating a random killing. If investigators are not allowed to profile potential terrorists based on shared beliefs rooted in violence, that makes it harder to catch terrorists after an act of terror and incredibly difficult before the act of terror takes place. The roadblock isn't only technical; it's conceptual. Investigations consist of connecting the dots. If you can't conceive of a connection, then the investiga...

The murderer is the new celebrity. He emerges out of nowhere with a rags to mass murder story, and is swiftly accorded all the trappings of fame. Reporters track down anyone who knew him to learn about his childhood and his main influences. Relatives and friends both contribute fuzzy anecdotes, mostly indistinguishable from the ones they would present if he were competing on American Idol or running for president. The disaffected form fan clubs around him. The experts discuss what his rise to fame means. Books are written about him and then perhaps a movie. And then it ends and begins all over again. The Tsarnaev brothers, the living one and the dead one, are already receiving that treatment. Like most murderers they have already become more famous than their victims. More famous than the rescuers. The original Tamerlane is better known than any of his countless victims. The new one is already eclipsing his victims. Before long one of those Chechen bards whose videos he tagged into...

Terrorism, like urban crime, is one of those things that you're not supposed to think about too much. It's fine to talk about your emotions after a bombing or a mugging. You can even share stories and eventually learn to laugh about it. What you cannot do is talk about where it comes from except in the vaguest terms of social conditions. Like pollution from industry or corruption from government, it's one of those toxic spinoffs of our modern society. It's just there and we don't much talk about it. Islamic terrorism is considered a social problem in Europe. Ask an expert and they'll talk your ear off about unemployment, racism, overcrowded housing and the same long list of reasons used to explain urban crime. The United States is slowly coming around to that same point of view. Forget the great debate between whether people kill people or guns kill people. The conclusion reached by most governments before your grandfather was born is that social conditions ...