Guess Who I Side With Here

Let's start with a simple example of stupidity in the face of terror. Here's the left-wing dishrag's lead editorial today...

Sadly, this attack came just at a moment when there were glimmers of hope and unity. The day before, London had won the right to be host of the Olympics, that great display of international understanding and peaceful competition. And on the morning of the bombings, Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush and the leaders of six other rich and powerful nations were meeting in Scotland to work out a common plan to help those who live in despair in places like Africa, where poverty and disease breed resentment among those have nothing for those who have so much. That juxtaposition of hope and fear is an integral weapon of the terrorist, who seeks not only to destroy life and property but also to disrupt our lives in ways that bring more destruction.

Fear was another inescapable response - the natural fear that this kind of attack, carried out by people with no regard for their own lives or anyone else's, could happen anywhere.

That fear has already led to questions about why the British security agencies did not anticipate the attacks, why the wealthy nations have not done enough about the root causes of terrorism and why Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden continue to function after almost four years of the so-called war on terrorism.

Do these people read what they write? I love the idea that poverty breeds terrorists -- I guess Mohammed Atta and his 18 buddies, most of who were college-educated products of middle class homes, were just an anomoly. There are Americans who live in poverty, but their crimes tend not to involve killing themselves and innocents in pursuit of making a political point. Poor Americans may turn to a life of crime, but they're hardly doing it on behalf of their religious beliefs.

You know, poverty is a significant problem -- but let's take a look at the cause of that poverty. It's not rich Western nations -- it's dictatorial governments that hold their people in poverty that are the problem. Let's bring democracy to the Middle East, and maybe people who live in freedom can escape that poverty.

This stupid theory of poverty generating terrorism of course allows the Times to use the liberal hobbyhorse of "root causes." Apparently, dropping bombs in terrorist strongholds and fighting them on their own turf with a well-trained military fighting force isn't enough; we also need to address Islamo-fascist feelings of isolation and anger, probably dating back to the time of Isaac and Ishmael just to be sure.

Here's an idea. The Times should convince George Soros to spend his billions on alleviating the crippling poverty that creates all these terrorists (hey, it's still a better cause than Moveon.org). Then they can send a squad of world-class psychoanalysts to the Middle East, led by Dr. Phil and the once-ubiquitous Joyce Brothers, to get all the al-Qaeda crazies to calm down. We'll even get all the pharma companies to donate some Prozac and Paxil, to help the worst cases.

That's their method. I prefer Marines and Daisycutters.

And that brings us to the "so-called war on terrorism." If the Times wants to criticize the conduct of the War on Terror, feel free. But don't pretend that there isn't a war taking place, you so-called journalists.

By contrast, we have Christopher Hitchens' column in the Daily Mirror today...

We know very well what the "grievances" of the jihadists are.

The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London. The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won't abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music, and of most representational art. The grievance of the existence of Hinduism. The grievance of East Timor's liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a licence to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way.

FOR a few moments yesterday, Londoners received a taste of what life is like for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, whose Muslim faith does not protect them from slaughter at the hands of those who think they are not Muslim enough, or are the wrong Muslim.

It is a big mistake to believe this is an assault on "our" values or "our" way of life. It is, rather, an assault on all civilisation. I know perfectly well there are people thinking, and even saying, that Tony Blair brought this upon us by his alliance with George Bush.

A word of advice to them: try and keep it down, will you? Or wait at least until the funerals are over. And beware of the non-sequitur: you can be as opposed to the Iraq operation as much as you like, but you can't get from that "grievance" to the detonating of explosives at rush hour on London buses and tubes.

Don't even try to connect the two. By George Galloway's logic, British squaddies in Iraq are the root cause of dead bodies at home. How can anyone bear to be so wicked and stupid? How can anyone bear to act as a megaphone for psychotic killers?

The grievances I listed above are unappeasable, one of many reasons why the jihadists will lose.

They demand the impossible - the cessation of all life in favour of prostration before a totalitarian vision. Plainly, we cannot surrender. There is no one with whom to negotiate, let alone capitulate.

We shall track down those responsible. States that shelter them will know no peace. Communities that shelter them do not take forever to discover their mistake. And their sordid love of death is as nothing compared to our love of London, which we will defend as always, and which will survive this with ease.

In case you're wondering what Saddam apologist/loyalist George Galloway said, here's the quote...

No one can condone acts of violence aimed at working people going about their daily lives. They have not been a party to, nor are they responsible for, the decisions of their government. They are entirely innocent and we condemn those who have killed or injured them.

The loss of innocent lives, whether in this country or Iraq, is precisely the result of a world that has become a less safe and peaceful place in recent years.

We have worked without rest to remove the causes of such violence from our world. We argued, as did the Security Services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the government ignoring such warnings.

We urge the government to remove people in this country from harms way, as the Spanish government acted to remove its people from harm, by ending the occupation of Iraq and by turning its full attention to the development of a real solution to the wider conflicts in the Middle East.

Only then will the innocents here and abroad be able to enjoy a life free of the threat of needless violence.

Yes, let's all pack up and go home, because that will appease them. Appeasement's worked so well in the past, right? By the way, note the tacit encouragment in this note that attacks against Western governments are perfectly reasonable, as long as you don't attack the working class.

Since I feel sick that I just linked to a site called Socialist Worker Online (ugh), here's something fun to close up the post -- a verbal battle between Ron Reagan, Jr. and the aforementioned Hitchens. Battle may be too strong a word -- this was a massacre. The younger Reagan proves that he may have gotten his dad's looks, but he didn't get any of his good sense...

RR: Christopher, I'm not sure that I buy the idea that these attacks are a sign that we're actually winning the war on terror. I mean, how many more victories like this do we really want to endure?

CH: Well, it depends on how you think it started, sir. I mean, these movements had taken over Afghanistan, had very nearly taken over Algeria, in a extremely bloody war which actually was eventually won by Algerian society. They had sent death squads to try and kill my friend Salman Rushdie, for the offense of writing a novel in England. They had sent death squads to Austria and Germany, the Iranians had, for example, to try and kill Kurdish Muslim leaders there. If you make the mistake that I thought I heard you making just before we came on the air, of attributing rationality or a motive to this, and to say that it's about anything but itself, you make a great mistake, and you end up where you ended up, saying that the cause of terrorism is fighting against it, the root cause, I mean. Now, you even said, extraordinarily to me, that there was no terrorist problem in Iraq before 2003. Do you know nothing about the subject at all? Do you wonder how Mr. Zarqawi got there under the rule of Saddam Hussein? Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal?

RR: Well, I'm following the lead of the 9/11 Commission, which...

CH: Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal, the most wanted man in the world, who was sheltered in Baghdad? The man who pushed Leon Klinghoffer off the boat, was sheltered by Saddam Hussein. The man who blew up the World Trade Center in 1993 was sheltered by Saddam Hussein, and you have the nerve to say that terrorism is caused by resisting it? And by deposing governments that endorse it?

RR: No, actually, I didn't say that, Christopher.

CH: At this stage, after what happened in London yesterday?

RR: What I did say, though, was that Iraq was not a center of terrorism before we went in there, but it might be now.

CH: How can you know so little about...

RR: You can make the claim that you just made about any other country in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia.

CH: Absolutely nonsense.

RR: So do you think we ought to invade Saudi Arabia, where most of the hijackers from 9/11 came from, following your logic, Christopher?

CH: Uh, no. Excuse me. The hijackers may have been Saudi and Yemeni, but they were not envoys of the Saudi Arabian government, even when you said the worst...

RR: Zarqawi is not an envoy of Saddam Hussein, either.

CH: Excuse me. When I went to interview Abu Nidal, then the most wanted terrorist in the world, in Baghdad, he was operating out of an Iraqi government office. He was an arm of the Iraqi State, while being the most wanted man in the world. The same is true of the shelter and safe house offered by the Iraqi government, to the murderers of Leon Klinghoffer, and to Mr. Yassin, who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. How can you know so little about this, and be occupying a chair at the time that you do?

I think there's only one way to correctly characterize this conversation, and that's by citing a scene from the Bruce Willis classic, Die Hard...

Dwayne T. Robinson: "I got a hundred people down here and they're all covered in glass."
John McClane: "Glass? Who gives a shit about glass? Who the fuck is this?"
Dwayne T. Robinson: "This is Deputy Chief of Police Dwayne T. Robinson, and I am in charge here."
John McClane: "Oh, you're in charge? Well, I got news for you, Dwayne -- from up here, it doesn't look like you're in charge of jack shit.
Dwayne T. Robinson: "Now you listen to me, you little asshole..."
John McClane: "Asshole? I'm not the one who just got butt-fucked on national TV, Dwayne."

Yippie-ki-yah, Mr. Reagan.