a friend sent me this - thought it was apropros for today's discussion
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War On Terror: London subways that once provided shelter against the Nazi onslaught have been bombed by Nazism's descendants. The issue should not be why they hate us, but why we must prevail.
Some in Britain will claim that its role in the war on terror has, as our Nancy Pelosi said after President Bush's speech on Iraq, made that country a "magnet for terrorism." They will no doubt demand Britain's withdrawal from what JFK might have called the "long, twilight struggle" against terrorism.
London now joins Madrid, Bali, Casablanca, Baghdad, Fallujah and, of course, Washington and New York, among others, as battlefields in the war on terror. But the Britain of Tony Blair is not likely to "go wobbly" as did the Spain that cost Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's party its power when similar blasts rocked Madrid. Nor should it. The stakes are too high.
Spain retreated, an example of Winston Churchill's observation that "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."
There are those who want us to retreat as well, to set a date for our exit from Iraq. But there is no place to hide and there is no exit strategy except for victory. Rather than feed the alligator, our liberation of Iraq and the spread of democracy in the Middle East is an attempt to drain the swamp.
Those who think they hate us because of what we do — from supporting Israel to liberating Iraq to mistreating prisoners of war at Guantanamo — are wrong. Al-Qaida is at war with Western ideas, ideals, culture and societies, and not just with states and their foreign policies. They hate us for who we are and the fact that we exist.
In a speech before a joint session of Congress on Sept. 20, 2001, President Bush correctly pointed out the real reasons they hate us: "They hate what they see right here in this chamber — a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."
Bush rightfully called the 9-11 terrorists and their ilk "the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism."
The West, Britain included, tends to engage in a frenzy of self-flagellation, blaming the world's ills on a legacy of unbridled capitalism and colonialism. We hold rock concerts to end poverty even as we fight global warming by signing treaties that would create it. We worry if those who would fly planes into our buildings are too cold or have a lawyer.
But, as columnist Charles Krauthammer once observed, "if poverty and destitution, colonialism and capitalism, are animating radical Islam," how do we explain that one of the first acts of the Taliban in Afghanistan was to blow up two massive 1,500-year-old statues of Buddha carved into a cliff?
As Krauthammer explained, they did it for two reasons — the statues represented an alternate faith and a great work of civilization. To the Taliban, to al-Qaida and to radical Islam, the presence of both was and is intolerable, as is democracy and freedom in Iraq or anywhere else.
Those who obsess over whether Bush lied about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction would do better to wonder what terrorists would do with one. Imagine such nihilism in possession of a nuclear weapon. They would be no less reluctant to plant one in a London or New York subway than they were to saw off the head of Nicholas Berg.
Those who whine about the U.S. Patriot Act should ask themselves: Why have we not been hit again since 9-11? It's not that our terrorist foes have mellowed; it's that they've been stopped cold. Keeping the act and other anti-terrorism tools is vital.
And those who think we can continue to let terrorists live in our midst should take this as a wake-up call. Britain has been a model of tolerance, doing nothing for years as mullahs spew venom from its nation's mosques and turn Islam's holy houses into terrorist recruiting depots. Britain's forbearance was returned with hate. We should take note.
Our enemies are at war with civilization itself, the advocates of a new dark age. In this war there can be no substitute for victory.
