It's All One War--Part IX

After "dissing" "Red Ken" (accurately), Jonah Goldberg lays out the logic, in today's DC Examiner:

For years we've been told that the war in Iraq was a mistake because the real enemy was al-Qaida or Jihadism. Iraq is a "distraction" and all that. ... And all along, Blair and Bush have been saying the exact opposite: Iraq is the central front in the war on terror.

And yet, when terrorists strike in London, the pro-war folks says this has nothing to do with Iraq and the anti-war crowd says it does.

This is exactly backward.

Indeed, isn't the determination of Jihadi fanatics to defend Iraq by attacking London exactly the sort of evidence required to demonstrate a linkage between terrorism and Iraq? If America and Britain invaded Canada, Islamic terrorists wouldn't care. But when we invaded Baghdad they immediately declared it to be the defining battle of their movement. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaida in Iraq, has flatly declared that the future of their cause depends on the outcome of the fight in Iraq.

Doesn't this suggest that the war in Iraq and the war on terror are bound together?

I've always said so--but not connected with Israel or America's actions in the Muslim world. Victor Davis Hanson agrees:

In any case, anti-Semitism, oil, fear of terrorism — all that and more fooled us into believing that Israel’s problems were confined to Israel. So we ended up with a utopian Europe favoring a pre-modern, terrorist-run, Palestinian thugocracy over the liberal democracy in Israel. The Jews, it was thought, stirred up a hornet’s nest, and so let them get stung on their own. . .

Billions of dollars poured into frontline states like Jordan and Egypt. Arafat himself got tens of millions, though none of it ever seemed to show up in good housing, roads, or power plants for his people. The terror continued, enhanced rather than arrested, by Western largess and Israeli concessions.

Then the Islamists declared war on the United States. A quarter century of mass murdering of Americans followed in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, East Africa, the first effort to topple the World Trade Center, and the attack on the USS Cole.

We gave billions to Jordan, the Palestinians, and the Egyptians. Afghanistan was saved from the Soviets through U.S. aid. Kuwait was restored after Saddam’s annexation, and the holocaust of Bosnians and Kosovars halted by the American Air Force. Americans welcomed thousands of Arabs to our shores and allowed hundreds of madrassas and mosques to preach zealotry, anti-Semitism, and jihad without much scrutiny.

Then came September 11. . .

And then? Charles Krauthammer wonders in today's WaPo:

Where are the fatwas issued against Osama bin Laden? Where are the denunciations of the very idea of suicide bombing? Europeans must demand this of all their Muslim leaders. They must also dismantle and destroy all "known" Islamist cells before trains and buses are blown up.

As MaxedOutMama says, "Freedom is not, and never will be, compatible with abject cowardice." Agreed.

What's the lesson? Listen to Hanson:

Jihadists hardly target particular countries for their “unfair” foreign policies, since nations on five continents suffer jihadist attacks and thus all apparently must embrace an unfair foreign policy of some sort. . .

Second, thinking that the jihadists will target only Israel eventually leads to emboldened attacks on the United States. Assuming America is the only target assures terrorism against Europe. Civilizations will either hang separately or triumph over barbarism together. It is that simple — and past time for Europe and the United States to rediscover their common heritage and shared aims in eradicating this plague of Islamic fascism.

While liberals fiddle, two boys -- one under 18 -- were "hung, for homosexuality, in Iran":


(Source: ISNA Iranian News, via Andrew Sullivan, via Gay and Right, via Maggie's Farm, via True Grit) (Whew!)
And, of course, Rome -- along with Madrid and London -- burns.

(via SC&A)

More:

The Art of the Blog examines the "myth of the moderate Muslim."