Today the news is filled with the usual mix of good and bad related to the war on terror.
There are the usual howls of distress by the legacy media (Bob Herbert in the New York Times; his first sentence tells you all you need to know: "It is now generally understood that the U.S.-led war in Iraq has become a debacle." To Herbert, the war is all about oil. All I would ask Herbert, who seems to know how to manipulate language in a remarkable mimicry of sapient life, is, if the war is only for oil, wouldn't it have been easier and cheaper to lift sanctions, help the Iraqi oil industry recover, and buy the oil? The anti-war crowd never seems to answer that one.)
There are hopeful signs in the international arena, an anti-terror rally in Egypt, a foiled terror attack in Russia, more arrests in England. There are hopeful signs here at home, a CAIR spokesman condemning terror (from Powerline):
Top U.S. Muslim scholars issued a "fatwa," or religious edict, against terrorism on Thursday and called on Muslims to help authorities fight the scourge of militant violence.
Yet the troubling signs, of radical Islam becoming increasingly desperate and nihilistic, are also apparent:
European OK or no, Tehran to restart nuclear program
Opinion: The Muslim mind is on fire
Iran confirms it has developed long-range missile capability
And perhaps most troubling in the context of the war in terror, an article from the New York Sun, Muslim 'Moderates' And Terrorism, by Fiamma Nirenstein. She describes the reactions of some of the poor Egyptian laborers working in the tourism industry who were injured in the Sharm el Sheik explosions last weekend. They have minimal sources of information and are firmly entrenched in the paranoid world view that gives sustenance to the Islamic fascists. These men hate the terrorists and would fight them if they could. These are the moderate Muslims we need to turn against the bin Ladens of their world.
But then, if it's so, why can the great moderate Muslim world not really fight their own enemy? They themselves give me the answers: "Bin Laden? The Muslim Brotherhood? Certainly the terrorist attacks are not their work, no! This is a lie. A Muslim could never do this. And if they say they do it in the name of Islam, they are not Islamic; or, most likely, this shows, like the television says, that someone uses the name of Islam just to hide the real perpetrators."
Anyhow, Islam is out of the question, And then, we ask again, who is behind the attacks? Well, you know the answer, they smile with a smart expression. Mahmoud, who comes from a periphery of Cairo, where he now cannot go back because he doesn't have the money for a bus ticket, knows the answer, and so do all his other friends, about 10, all from the same town, now all together as one, standing in the corridor of the Hospital of Sharm, no air-conditioning, their friend Khaled in bed with a wound in his back ("I was lucky. Nadem had both of his legs amputated," Khaled says).
They know the answer, yes: the television said that only the Israelis and the Americans have a real interest in seeing Egypt on its knees; General Fuad Allam said that the perpetrators of the Taba attack of October 2004 were apparently linked to the Israeli security forces, and so, supposedly, it is today. Also Al-Jazeera and even Al-Arabia interviewed "experts" to confirm this point of view. A big, beautiful guy with a red T-shirt just puts it down bluntly: "We know only what the television tells us.";
The news today suggests the Islamic fascist terrorists are in trouble. Their cause is being rejected in Iraq and all they have left is to kill other Muslims. They attack their own in Egypt and murder scores. They are being captured in great numbers not only in Iraq, but also in England, Russia, India, and in the United Statse. Yet...
Iran, the font of so much hate, is racing to obtain nuclear weapons. The fascists' grip on the levers of power in Iran seem unassailable. They will have a nuclear weapon long before democracy can begin to cure the psychotic illlness that is endemic in the area. If they fail in derailing the Iraqi experiment next door, their rage and humiliation will be terrible to contemplate.
We are potentially entering the most dangerous of times. Often, it is just proir to defeat that an enemy
is most dangerous. If Iran is boxed in, and Syria is pulled out of thier orbit, with bin Laden hiding in the hills of Pakistan, with the Saudis and Pakistanis continuing to play their carefully calibrated double game, and with the walls closing in, the temptation to strike out in a spectacuar, bloody way can only escalate.
Would we be well advised to notify Musharaf and his generals, the Mullahs, the Saudi princes, that it is not Mecca at risk if we are attacked, but they themselves and all they care about? Idle threats are never worth making; is there anything we can do that would tip the balance more in our favor in the next few dangerous years?
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