Terrorism

Flags

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The USA has troops fighting in numerous locales, especially Iraq and Afghanistan, against the most brutal of enemies. Israel is engaged in a ground war against a terrorist organization that murders Jews with rockets and calls for Israel’s annihilation. India has endured many years of Islamic terrorism, including the recent atrocity in Mumbai. The British have home-grown a population of Muslim terrorists, though thanks to the skill of their police and counter-intelligence forces, managed to prevent a gigantic episode of mass murder.

This is a global war. There are many fronts. The Leftist delusion that this is all Bush’s fault would be comical if it were not dangerous. 9/11 happened before we invaded Iraq, after all. The “Bojinka” aircraft massacre plan would have occurred long before that. The first WTC attack almost brought down one of the Twin Towers, and was meant to.

This is a long war. It has been going on for a long time, and will be with us for a long time to come. The countries whose flags are on our masthead are finding themselves compelled to be allies in a war they would prefer not to be involved in. But they are in it, like it or not.

The “Islamic fascists” as President Bush calls them, are going to be defeated. But not soon, and at no small cost.

Grab That Cash With Both Hands and Make a Stash

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Steven den Beste has retired from political blogging, but he wrote a very interesting post back in 2004. In Up Against The Wall, Steven points out the moment when US foreign policy shifts so far as our stance on the Palestinians.

President Bush gave a speech in June of 2002 where he pledged support for the formation of a sovereign Palestinian state, but only if they first renounced terrorism. One of the conditions for this was the dismantling of organizations that currently perform terrorist acts, and even organizations which conducted terrorism in the past. This obviously isn’t going to happen as long as the Palestinians are eager to elect openly genocidal terrorist organizations to head their government.

Steven makes a lot of really interesting points in his post, and I urge you all to take a few minutes to read the whole thing. (Steven clarifies some of his points in this follow up post.) There is, however, one aspect to Steven’s original essay that I would like to focus on here.

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Moral Equivalence: Why We Are Not the Same

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Amid news about the recovery of the corpses of two American soldiers, and that the soldiers may have been tortured before decapitation, I’ve seen a troubling pattern here on the home front. People seem to be going beyond blaming President Bush personally for the deaths of the two soldiers; now, with none other than Andrew Sullivan leading the charge, critics of the President are claiming that the torture of hostages by terrorists is somehow morally equivalent to the torture of enemy combatants by U.S. personnel:

Some people wonder why I remain so concerned about torture, and the surrender of our moral standing with respect to this unmitigated evil. Maybe the news of captured, tortured and murdered Americans will jog their conscience. Or maybe it will simply reinforce the logic of torture-reciprocity endorsed by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Gonzales.

While I share Andrew’s concern about the use of torture, I must disagree with his faulty logic that Islamoterrorists torture because we torture, in some hocus pocus, smoke-and-mirrors “cycle of violence” that is so much en vogue among many members of the Left. Even a passing glance at the video messages from terrorists, such as the late and unlamented Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, will show that fighting Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, basing troops in Saudi Arabia, enacting sanctions against Saddam Hussein, invading Afghanistan, are all nothing more than raisons du jour for the terrorists. Their aim is nothing more than the complete takeover of the world by their extremist version of the already-intolerant Wahabbi sect of Islam. Pay attention, and you’ll see calls by Osama bin Laden for the reconquest of al-Andalus, and calls by Zarqawi for the extermination of Shiites whom he sees as apostates, and therefore far more deserving of hell than even “infidels and crusaders”. No, Andrew, the torture of non-Muslim hostages predates even the Iraq War. But I guess that would throw off the “everything is Bush’s fault” tint to your world view.

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