What War?

Many critics of the Bush administration, from the left and from the right, believe we can take our marbles and go home from Iraq, and we and the world will be fine. But can we?

I remember a 10th district Democrat candidate for Congress, who lost to Mark Kirk(R-Il) in his first race, claiming that America essentially did not need a foreign policy, our oceans would protect us. Even pre-Sept. 11th this was a ludicrous assertion. Via RCP, David Warren:

For about five-and-a-half years now, I've been trying to make sense of the strange war going on between the West and "Islamism", for the readers of this newspaper. It is a war to which none of the rules of Western warfare, or international law, can be applied. When we try to apply such rules, we can do so only for ourselves.

This column is an attempt to state the obvious. As usual, I make no apologies for trying to comprehend things at the broadest level of generality, and in the simplest terms. Some writers pursue the subtle; I am usually looking for the plain. I believe a general failure to grasp the obvious permits much false subtlety. To my mind, people who do not grasp there is a war on, and that it is a war that will determine how our children will live, and their children's children, lack an elementary purchase on reality.....

Though on one level, this strange war is as old as the 14-century clash between Islam and Christendom, it has taken a form that is a new thing under the sun. This "new thing" didn't begin on Sept. 11th, 2001, but well before that; it only became visible to many on that day. There had been about 8,000 terrorist hits on Western, or Western-associated targets in the 20 years before the World Trade Centre went down. There are now more than 10,000 hits per year. Seemingly permanent battlefields have emerged in several locations, including Iraq and Afghanistan, but also Sudan, the southern Philippines, and quite arguably, urban France. Many still argue that the war is a figment of the Bush administration's imagination. How I wish they were right.....

And if Muslim fanatics succeed, as they appear to be doing, in defining Islam as what they profess, the moderate Muslim is left with an ugly choice between supporting them, and apostasy.

How do we measure progress or regress in this war?

The only plausible answer I can think of is, by our success in establishing secular, nominally democratic, political and economic regimes throughout the Muslim East, which rule in defiance of fanatic claims. But awkward as this answer sounds, it becomes meaningless if we in the West do not begin to recover a robust sense of what we are about.

That is why we in America must support the war.

It not only concerns us, but the future of our children and those growing up in the rest of the world. And let's hope the Washington Post, hardly a cheerleader for President Bush, is right in suggesting in their editorial, "A Dagger in the Heart of Al Qaeda", that the latest Al-Zarqawi tape is an admission of defeat and that Iraq has turned the corner.