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Jewish World Review Sept. 8, 2003 / 11 Elul 5763

David Horowitz

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How to look at the war on terror

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Imagine the date is September 12, 2001. Ask yourself this question: Are you willing to bet that two years will pass and there will not be another terrorist attack on American soil?

I will wager that there is not one person reading this column who would have made that bet two years ago.

There is only one reason for this relative security that Americans enjoy. It is not that the terrorists have given up their violent agendas or their hatred for us. They have not. It is not because America's borders are secure or because America's internal security systems have been successfully overhauled.

There is one reason - and one reason alone - that Americans have been safe for the almost two years since the 9/11 attacks.

That reason is the aggressive war that President Bush and the American military have waged against international terror and its Axis of Evil. The war on terror has been fought in the streets of Baghdad and Kabul instead of Washington and New York. By taking the battle to the enemy camp, by making the terrorists the hunted instead of the hunters, President Bush and the American military have kept Americans safe.

Now the battlefield of the war on terror is post-liberation Iraq. The jihadists of al-Qaeda and radical Islam and Arab fascism are crawling out of the snakepits of Tikrit and slithering across the borders from terrorist bases in Syria and Iran to attack American troops, UN diplomats and anyone helping the American cause. Their goal is self-evident: To force the collapse of civil order and to inflict enough casualties on American forces that America will withdraw.

Such a withdrawal would be a massive defeat for the forces of order and decency not only in Iraq but in the world at large. It would be a dramatic victory of the forces of evil.

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If Iraq can be secured and become an American ally, then Syrian terrorism and Iranian terrorism and Palestinian terrorism will have no place to hide. American pressure on terrorists everywhere will be dramatically enhanced. If, on the other hand, America withdraws in defeat then terror will flourish again in Baghdad, Basra and Tikrit, but also in Damascus, Teheran and Ramallah.

The way to think about the war on terror is to ask yourself who is supporting President Bush and the American military in this life and death engagement, and who is not?

Help is certainly not coming from the European nations who armed and then appeased Saddam Hussein and opposed the liberation of Iraq and who now refuse to aid America in securing the peace.

Far worse, with exception of fading candidates like Joe Lieberman and John Edwards, it is certainly not coming from the leaders of the Democratic Party who from the moment Baghdad was liberated have with ferocious intensity attacked the credibility of America's commander-in-chief, the justification for our mission in Iraq, and the ability of our forces to prevail.

In this mission of sabotage, no political figure has stooped as low as Al Gore. In the wake of the war that went spectacularly well - the swiftest, most casualty-free liberation of a nation in human history - Al Gore has accused the President of deceit and cynical manipulation of the facts with the purpose of misleading the American public and sacrificing American soldiers. By linking these accusations to the Florida election recount, he and other Democrats have implied that the war was merely an instrument of a partisan plot to deprive them of their claim to the White House.

Gore's bottom line in his August 7 speech attacking the President's conduct of the war on terror was this: "Too many of our soldiers are paying the highest price for the strategic miscalculations, serious misjudgments and historic mistakes that have put them and our nation in harm's way."

Gore's attack will be recorded as a milestone in the sad decline of one of America's great political parties. In breaking bi-partisan ranks in the war on terror, Gore is seconded by both leaders of the Democratic congressional delegation and every Democratic presidential nominee with the exception of Lieberman and Edwards, and by the party's politically activist base.

It is a dark day for Americans when one of their two ruling parties cannot be counted on to support the flag when it is committed in battle, and when the battle is America's response to a bloodthirsty aggressor with access to biological, chemical and perhaps even nuclear weapons.

In a Memorial Day speech to American veterans, President Bush had this to say about our adversary: "The terrorists' aim is to spread chaos and fear by killing on an ever-widening scale….They celebrate the murder of women and children. They attacked the civilized world because they bear a deep hatred for the values of the civilized world. They hate freedom and religious tolerance and democracy and equality for women. They hate Christians and Jews and every Muslim who does not share their narrow and violent vision."

The President vowed to stay the course, but noted that it is only recently that America has done so. "During the last few decades the terrorists grew bolder, believing if they hit America hard, America would retreat and back down."

Perhaps the President had in mind al-Qaeda's attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, when President Clinton and Al Gore backed down.

Perhaps he had in mind al-Qaeda's attack on American troops in Somalia, when President Clinton and Al Gore backed down.

Perhaps he had in mind the attack on the Khobar Towers, a dormitory housing American soldiers, where President Clinton and Al Gore backed down.

Perhaps he had in mind the attack on the USS Cole, when President and Al Gore backed down.

"Five years ago," the President continued, "one of the terrorists said that an attack could make America run in less than 24 hours. They're learning something different today. The terrorists have not seen America running, they've seen America marching. They've seen the armies of liberation marching into Kabul and to Baghdad." And they know and respect the difference.

Now we are engaged in a war to drive the enemy into the ground. We have taken or killed half of al-Qaeda's leadership; we have destroyed the regime of Saddam Hussein - harbor to terrorists and sponsor of suicide bombers -- and captured or killed forty-two of its top fifty-five leaders.

The enemy understands the war we are in. It knows that it is fighting for its life in Iraq. In sabotaging the peace in Iraq, its aim is to intimidate America and force our retreat. In his Memorial Day speech, the President addressed this threat: "Retreat in the face of terror would only invite further and bolder attacks. There will be no retreat."

Al Gore and the Democrats need to heed these words and change their course.

Unless the Democrats get behind this war, they will have no electoral future; if they do not, the nation will have no future that is secure.

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JWR contributor David Horowitz is editor of Front Page Magazine and the author of several books, including, The Art of Political War and Other Radical Pursuits, Hating Whitey, Art of Political War, Radical Son : A Generational Odyssey . To comment, please click here.


Up

08/11/03: Total California Recall
08/05/03: Challenging the racist Dems in California
07/21/03: The Party of Sabotage
07/09/03: The Trouble with ‘Treason’
05/05/03: Taking On The Neo-Coms, Part II
05/01/03: Taking On The Neo-Coms
04/29/03: Everything the Left Said About the War Is Wrong (Including the Claim that It Was Right)
04/16/03: The Doctrine Pre-Emption, a Strategy Under Attack
04/14/03: The next screwing
04/08/03: As a former 'radical,' I see the threat of militant Islam on American campuses
04/03/03: The war refutes the opposition
03/31/03: Moment of Truth (for the anti-American Left)
03/24/03: The Second Front
03/17/03: The Fifth Column Left Declares War
02/18/03: The march to save Saddam
02/10/03: Secessionists against the war
01/21/03: They want to place America under siege
01/15/03: Another political lynching
12/31/02: As we look towards a future filled with the clouds of war
12/17/02: Trent Lott must go
09/04/02: The problem with America's colleges --- and the solution
08/26/02: Ted Koppel's Spin Zone: How Nightline Controls What You See
08/19/02: Reparations buffoons on the Washington Mall
07/30/02: The Destructive Romance of the Intellectuals
07/24/02: Port Huron and the War On Terror
07/08/02: Disturbing holiday thoughts
06/24/02: Know The Enemy (And What He Believes)
06/18/02: Missing diversity
06/06/02: Free the FBI: A plea from a former 'radical'
04/10/02: A Middle East history primer
03/12/02: Appreciating the Commander-in-Chief
02/14/02: Bill Clinton's State of the World
01/17/02: Why Israel Is The Victim And The Arabs Are The Indefensible Aggressors In the Middle East
10/01/01: I know a thing or two about college protest --- and this time the students are dead wrong
09/06/01: Pardoned, but unforgiving
08/07/01: Social Security Reactionaries and Reformers
07/24/01: White, Blind, and Proud
07/11/01: Progressive Crime Wave
06/26/01: Issues that dare not speak their name
06/12/01: The 20th Anniversary of an American Killing Fields
05/23/01: The Triumph of 'Multicultural' Thugs
05/08/01: How Leftists Play the Race Card Against Conservatives – And Increase the Flow of Drugs to the Inner City At the Same Time
03/13/01: Provocative, and proud of it
03/06/01: Dubya's Tax Plan: Don't Feed the Beast
02/21/01: Lazy daze
02/13/01: V-day
02/05/01: You gotta have faith
01/23/01: The Democrat inquisition
01/09/01: Perfect mirror-images of what libs profess to fear
12/12/00: Party without a conscience
12/05/00: Al Gore has poisoned the body politic --- for generations to come
11/14/00: Al Gore is not fit
10/31/00: Party of fear, politics of hate
10/16/00: Dems are lucky to have Gore
09/19/00: A Miracle the Press Will Not Report
09/14/00: It’s the Character, Stupid!: Further Thoughts On “Why Gore Will Lose”
09/06/00: The Death of the Civil Rights Movement
08/22/00: Back to the Future
08/09/00: Bush will win
07/25/00: Conason Unleashed
07/12/00: Our nation's heritage is under attack in our classrooms, so why doesn't anybody care'
07/03/00: Hillary and "The Third Way": How America's First Lady of the Left Has Bamboozled Liberals and Conservatives Alike
06/27/00: AlGore's Missile-Defense Dodge
06/20/00: In the Enemy Camp
06/12/00: Feminism's Dirty Secret
05/18/00: Look who's leading the Virtue Squad in its crusade to purge the House of campaign finance excess
05/08/00: The Mind of the Left From an Amazon Perspective
05/01/00: America's Totalitarian Shame
04/19/00: Political child molesting
04/04/00: What Hillary won't 'fess up to --- and why
03/29/00: No reason To Glorify the Left's Legacy of Violence
03/27/00: Smoke and Mirrors
03/20/00: Deafening Silence
03/15/00: The Lead Investigator Strikes Back
03/08/00: Racial Killings & Gun Control
02/28/00: Primary Lessons
02/22/00: Racial Shakedowns
01/25/00: Intellectual Class War
01/03/00: A faith that ruined whole continents and destroyed a world of human lives
12/28/99: Brain Dead Till the End
12/14/99: Letter to the past
12/07/99: Why Republicans Lose
11/23/99: MLK is no doubt spinning in his grave
11/10/99: Finding the American Center
11/02/99: Reflections on The Road Taken and Not

© 2000, David Horowitz