Posted on 08/20/2003 9:33:44 AM PDT by winnebago1
To: Friends
From: Gary L. Bauer President American Values
Date: Wednesday, August 20, 2003
Jerusalem and Baghdad Carnage
We should all force ourselves to read the first-person accounts in the morning newspapers of the carnage in Jerusalem and Baghdad. As horrifying as the descriptions are of broken bones, ripped flesh and spilled blood, the reality they represent could help shatter the myths that still drive the world's response, including that of the United States, to Islamic jihad.
The Jerusalem bombing took place on a bus selected specifically because it was packed with children. Jerusalem hospitals, several of which I have visited in the last year, were overwhelmed last night with victims, many of them infants and toddlers. The bomber, a school teacher, was a Palestinian jihadist. A video tape released by Hamas showed him holding the Koran in one hand and a machine gun in the other. His wife released a statement shortly after the bombing praising his martyrdom. She was proud her husband had killed children - after all they were only Jews.
When reports of the dead children reached an Israeli prison, the inmates "applauded joyously and passed out candy" when they heard the news. These are the kind of men our leaders have been pressuring Israel to release from prison as a "peace gesture" to keep the "sacred" Road Map moving forward. This is the mindset of the people who will be part of the Palestinian state that is supposed to exist side by side in peace with Israel.
An unnamed "top official" in the Administration is quoted this morning as saying there is no panic over the bombing because, "Everyone understands there are going to be setbacks the closer we get to a true political solution." Setbacks? Easy to say when you are sitting in a plush office in Washington, D.C. and when it is not your children being scrapped off the sidewalk.
The Baghdad slaughter received most of the attention in the media this morning. As I write, no group has yet claimed credit but suspicions center on Ansar al-Islam, a terrorist group with ties to Al Qaeda. Its members and other jihadists have been streaming across the border from Iran, Syria and Palestinian areas in recent weeks.
U.N. officials were just stunned that they had been singled out. You could almost hear the sense of betrayal in their voices. After all, the United Nations had tried mightily to thwart America's liberation of Iraq every step of the way. If the U.N. had prevailed, Hussein would still be in his palaces and his "boys" would still be raping and pillaging. Moreover, the U.N. is there now to look out for the Iraqi people, unlike those "imperialist" American occupiers. The U.N. was so anxious to avoid being associated or identified with the U.S., it requested that U.S. guards outside the U.N. headquarters be kept to a minimum. The bomber must have gotten a chuckle out of that.
So, Kofi Annan is left to ponder today the fact that appeasement of evil will not spare you in the end. Thugs and terrorist smell fear and it whets their appetite for more death and destruction. But it does speak volumes about the evil we are dealing with. Humanitarian efforts and reconstruction efforts designed to help the Iraqi people are regularly sabotaged by Islamic fanatics. They care more about killing Americans and other westerners than they do about helping their own people.
Baghdad and Jerusalem are merely different battlefields in the same war, just like New York, Washington, D.C. and a field in Pennsylvania were on September 11th. We cannot turn back now. Mr. President, drop the Road Map, rally the free world, and destroy these thugs now before more innocents die.
And keep a stiff upper lip.
A great rallying cry.
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