|
|
|
Jewish World Review July 8, 2005 / 1 Taamuz, 5765 A horrific reminder By Rich Lowry
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
It's a war. Whenever we begin to forget that, we get a horrific
reminder.
This summer the air palpably began to leave the war on terror.
In the U.S., media coverage gravitated to shark attacks and missing
girls — just as it had prior to Sept. 11. The world, at least that
portion of it represented by the G-8 summit, had focused its
attention on self-flagellating debates about who is and who is not
providing enough humanitarian aid to Africa.
We had "moved on," or at least were trying to. But just as
President Bush had hoped to move on from Iraq to domestic issues
after the successful Jan. 30 elections, only to learn that a live
shooting war cannot be ignored, so it is that the larger struggle
with al-Qaida and its affiliates cannot be ignored either, because
it too is a live shooting war. British Prime Minister Tony Blair's
efforts to placate Bono and friends on global poverty look faintly
ridiculous now that the London attacks have laid bare what should be
his chief duty and that of other Western leaders — protecting the
public from slaughter.
We are facing a global insurgency of Islamic militants who will
hit anywhere, from Mosul to London. Their goal is totalist. They
want, first, to drive us from the Middle East, then, to establish a
caliphate there, and finally, to absorb the West into their
theocracy. If this seems absurd, well, fanatical murderers are not
usually known for their finely modulated objectives.
Critics of Bush and Blair argue that the Iraq War has nothing to
do with the war on terror. But the terrorists have always known
better. They realize that Arab radicalism's loss of Iraq and the
establishment in Baghdad of a decent, stable, anti-terrorist state
would be a grave ideological blow. So it is probably no accident
that two of the most high-profile terror attacks since 9/11 have
been directed at Spain and Britain, whose leaders stood with Bush in
a key meeting at the Azores islands in Portugal in March 2003 to
give Saddam Hussein one of his last ultimatums.
The Spanish cut and ran from Iraq after the Madrid train
bombings in 2004, hoping to take the target off their back, but
painting one all the larger on the backs of any countries supporting
the fight against extremism in Iraq. The Brits, having suffered much
worse during the Blitz and the height of the IRA bombing campaign in
the 1970s, won't surrender so easily.
In this war someone can be on the front lines whether he is on a
bus in Tavistock Square or on a U.S. Army helicopter in Jalalabad.
Commercial aviation appears pretty well locked down in the West —
or so one hopes — but mass transit, with its multitude of access
points and its countless fast-moving passengers, is impossible to
secure in a similar fashion.
Americans can take some cold comfort in the fact that al-Qaida
surely would prefer to hit here in the States, but seemingly can't
manage it. Such an attack, of course, could take place tomorrow. But
that it hasn't yet is probably some testament to the efficacy of the
Patriot Act, the immediate detention of hundreds of Muslim
immigration violators after 9/11 (most, no doubt, innocent of any
evil intention, but perhaps a crucial handful not), and tighter
border control in general. Britain passed a new Prevention of
Terrorism Bill only in March and, like most European countries, has
relatively lax immigration and asylum policies.
Of course, all of these anti-terror initiatives in the U.S. have
been criticized by the ACLU and the usual suspects on the left. What
they don't acknowledge is what we've been reminded of yet again —
it's a war.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Comment by clicking here.
© 2005 King Features Syndicate |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
