Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Oriana’s death!
Oriana Fallaci, too famous to live long!
Civilization ne’er lost a person of so much worth.

The world ne’er had a journalist until her time.
Virtue she had, deserving to command:
Her brandish’d pen did blind men with her beams:
Her arms spread wider than a dragon’s wings;
Her sparking eyes, replete with wrathful fire,
More dazzled and drove back her enemies
Than mid-day sun fierce bent against their faces.
What should I say? her deeds exceed all speech:
She ne’er lift up her hand but conquered.

This epitaph, written originally for King Henry V who died of illness in his mid-30s, portended disasters that began with the loss of England’s French possessions and culminated in the Wars of the Roses. The man whom Shakespeare called “the Star of England” left no successors except for squabbling and self-serving nobles followed by a Kumbaya-singer who was doubtlessly reincarnated as Jimmy Carter. There are few internationally-known journalists who can fill Oriana Fallaci’s shoes either.

Even Tunku Varadarajan’s “La Fallaci” in today’s Wall Street Journal (http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/tvaradarajan/?id=110008955) yields too much to political correctness by denouncing Oriana Fallaci’s greatest virtues as faults. His eulogy begins on the right note:

…a spokeswoman for the Musharraf dispensation in Pakistan observed yesterday that “anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence.” Once more, the West has collided with the Muslim world; and once more, it is the West that is scrambling to soothe “the hurt.”

Furthermore, he quotes “La Fallaci” as saying,

“The moment you give up your principles, and your values . . . the moment you laugh at those principles, and those values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period.”

That is indeed our problem. We are too concerned with multiculturalism and political correctness to state openly that Euro-American Civilization is superior to militant “Islamic” cultures that stone women to death, cut off heads and various body parts for real or imaginary offenses, and administer 750 lashes for “mocking Islam.” Militant Muslims have even forced certain places in the United Kingdom to ban the display of the Union Jack because they find Saint George’s cross [Michael Savage whining tone] offensive [/Michael Savage whining tone]. Well, here is all we have to say to them:

And one for our friends across the Atlantic:

The Kumbya-singing, however, begins toward the end of Varadarajan’s article:

Ultimately, it has to be said that her fear of Islam, and of Muslims, unhinged her. Or, more accurately, disconcerted her to the point where she became unable to distinguish the incendiary from the provocative. An expert diagnostician she may have been, but her bedside manner–her constant references to Muslim immigrants as “invaders,” to Europe as “Eurabia”–undermined her ability to achieve the goal she sought, which was to awaken the West to the very real dangers of cultural conflict in its midst.

We disagree. Oriana Fallaci provided exactly the kind of rhetoric that we need to save our civilization from being overrun by mindless hordes of savage barbarians whose openly-stated goal is to either convert us to their violently-primitive beliefs or slit our throats. When a horde of bloodthirsty savages encamps outside your walls– or even worse, has already infiltrated your cities and countryside– you raise the call to arms with the most direct and explicit language you can find. “The Redcoats are coming!” cried Paul Revere as he rode through the countryside. “Japs Bomb Pearl Harbor!” proclaimed two-inch (at least) newspaper headlines on 8 December 1941. “Nazis Invade Poland!” the same headlines had screamed in 1939. “Militant Islamic Invaders Cut Theo Van Gogh’s Throat, Rape European Women!” We must state the facts bluntly and even brutally if we are to save our culture and indeed our lives.

General Patton, who was probably the best commander that the United States ever produced– easily on a par with Russia’s Suvorov and England’s Duke of Wellington– also had a big mouth that often got him in trouble. It got him in trouble because most people don’t like to hear what often needs to be said. Patton was often crude and course, and his profession was violent, but Patton and not Jimmy Carter is what we need when Nazis plan to turn half our country into lampshades and soap while Imperial Japanese want to behead the other half, or use it for bayonet practice as they did with Chinese prisoners.

Men cannot be excited to kill by soft words spoken in an uncertain voice. When General Patton spoke, every man knew exactly what was demanded. Gen. Patton would explain, “It takes a lot of talking to get our American young men ready to kill, to murder. …The language of war is not polite. War is hell. It is difficult to make our fine American youth understand that the enemy wants to kill him. …I use the language of soldiers who are ready to kill. (Porter Williamson, Patton’s Principles)”

Oriana Fallaci was not polite either and she used the language that needed to be used. Mr. Varadarajan concludes:

Here’s an illustration of what I mean, from a letter she wrote to me in March of this year. (I have left what she described as her “Fallaci English” unedited.) “In the speech I gave at the Italian consulate in New York to accept one of the four golden medals I have received in the last two months, I told that I had drawn a cartoon on the Prophet and his nine wives including the 9 year old one and his sixteen concubines including the she-camel. But I had not published it because I had not been able to draw well the she-camel. (True). The author of the booklet which asks the Moslems to eliminate me in accord with four Suras of the Koran even sued me . . . Meaning now in Italy they even appeal to the Italian law to incriminate an Italian citizen for a ‘vilifying’ cartoon that nobody has seen.”

This is acid, bitter, marvelously funny. Oriana Fallaci was very brave. Perhaps a little too brave. But now is not the time to judge her by proportions.

We disagree with the criticism that she was “perhaps a little too brave.” In most conflicts, whether political or physical, the one who hesitates and allows excessive caution (as opposed to due diligence) to undermine his or her confidence is usually the one who goes down before an adversary who, to quote von Clausewitz, “like the untamed elements, knows no law other than his own power.”