The past week has been a critical week in defining what the War on Terror is all about, specifically delineating the difference between the West and the Muslim extremists that seek to destroy it. In the UK, a group of highly educated Muslims attempted to wreak havoc on England by trying to use car bombs to kill hundreds of innocent civilians. What they tried to do is not as important, however, as who the suspects are. The terrorists, in this case, were not downtrodden Muslims who lived in squalor or oppression, rather, they were highly educated doctors working in the UK. These doctors, who had sworn an oath not to harm, attempted to kill hundreds of innocent people in cold blood in what seems to be an al Qaeda operation.
Almost equally galling is the response to this incident by new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Brown has issued an official directive banning from governmental use the expression "War on Terror" as well as the use of the word "Muslim" when describing acts of terrorism. His justification is to avoid offending the Muslim community. It is precisely such politically correct posturing that endangers Western Civilization. The majority of the Muslim community, as illustrated by this foiled attack, regardless of status or achievement, identifies themselves as Muslims first, ahead of their nationality. The Muslim community has done precisely nothing in the way of cooperating with governments by helping to identify potential terror suspects, and has even failed to credibly condemn acts of terrorism. As a result, the Muslim community deserves no appeasement, but rather more intense scrutiny. Until the Muslim community gets on board with the rest of the civilized world in condemning these butchers, every Muslim should be looked at with increased suspicion.
Prime Minister Brown's approach has proven to be a time honored failure and a show of extreme weakness. History has shown that appeasement does not work on any scale, nor does "understanding" or sympathizing buy goodwill. The more we in the West bury our heads in the sand and try to pretend that international terrorism isn't almost exclusively Muslim, the weaker we appear. Al Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahri said in an internet posting, "I would like to talk to my brothers about the huge blessings which we witnessed after every step toward unity in the combat against Jews and Christians." He clearly is not concerned with political correctness and identifies all Jews and Christians as the enemy, and when we, in the West respond by pussy-footing around trying to avoid offending people, we weaken ourselves.
The ongoing insurgency in Iraq is a good example of how our lack of resolve has emboldened the enemy, as did the aftermath of the Madrid car bombing. In Spain, the country waived the white flag in the face of terrorism, electing a new government and changing policy in Iraq in response to the vicious attack. In the United States, we have hamstrung ourselves in Iraq by refusing to commit the necessary force and tactics to initially pacify the country and crush the insurgency and have concerned ourselves far too much with the conduct of our soldiers and too little with eliminating the enemy. Now, we have put ourselves in a position where a Congress wants us to set a timetable for defeat and withdrawal.
Freedom and security go together, that is the case in the West, in Iraq and throughout the rest of the world. The insurgents in Iraq cheer when they kill other Iraqis because they destroy their security and thus their freedom. Fear is the weapon of the terrorist, and the insurgent. The Bush Administration attempted to give the Iraqi people freedom without security, and that's essentially why Iraq is as it is at the moment. Meanwhile, the terrorists, many of whom expelled the Soviets from Afghanistan think of the West as a giant without resolve and that they can destroy us through fear and that we don't have what it takes to crush them. The West needs to wake up, call a spade a spade, and do what it takes to crush the Muslim extremists on both the international stage and in the domestic arena.
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