Terror Threat Will Outlast Bush And Iraq

This week the American public will surely be focused on Iraq, as Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker present their reports to Congress.

Petraeus and Crocker undoubtedly will speak of the striking military success of the surge strategy, while Democrats will try to focus on the failure of Iraqi politicians to reach agreement on major issues.

But Iraq is not the only challenge America will face in the coming years. Islamist terrorists will continue to try to attack the U.S. and undermine, if not destroy, our free society. Americans, for all the media's concentration on Iraq, seem aware of this — and will be keeping it in mind as they decide on how to vote next year.

That's the message you get from an interesting poll conducted in mid-August by Public Opinion Strategies, a widely respected Republican firm, for the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Unlike most polls, it doesn't include specific questions on Iraq, but rather focuses on the wider struggle.

Blood is going to flow in even greater quantities around the world until the rest of the world (including the rest of our country) wakes up and realizes that until terrorism is viewed by all people the same way cannibalism and incest is, the problem is not going to go away.

The answer to terrorism is ruthless prosecution until death. The people around the world who give their various issues creedence only serve to generate more terrorism.

Whatever we do, whether we stay and fight, or throw down our rifles and run screaming into the sea, the war will not end this year or next. We are in a twenty-year war. This war is going to go on for some time. We can confront it, and fight them at a place of our choosing, or we can try to ignore them and bleed at times and places of their choosing.

And whatever we do, whether we stay or withdraw, the killing will go on in Iraq. If we stay, the insurgents will continue to blow up Iraqi innocents by the hundreds, and the occasional American soldier, while themselves dying in droves. If we leave, the shia-sunni bloodletting, and the parallel wars against Iraqi innocents and against any Iraqi foolish enough to have trusted us will ramp up to genocidal levels not seen since, well, Saddam left office in a bit of a rush.

The ever-more-gray American Left likes to credit itself with ending the war in Viet Nam, and bringing peace to Indochina. They couldn’t be more delusional. The killing didn’t really start until we left; millions died when American troops were no longer there to push back. Genocidal monsters don’t stop killing when you stop shooting back, far from it. When you stop resisting is when they really get busy filling the boneyards.

Wars like the one we are in now don’t always end in a VE Day celebration. But they decide if the monsters must hide in caves and basements and strike from the shadows, or if they get to come out into the light of day, uniforms freshly starched, with government salaries and government issued sedans.

until the rest of the world (including the rest of our country) wakes up and realizes that until terrorism is viewed by all people the same way cannibalism and incest is, the problem is not going to go away.

"Terrorism" isn't the issue here. Extremist Islam is.

Terrorism is what weaker groups resort to when they have no other means. Whatever you think of their issues think of the Basques, think of the IRA, think of the Symbionese Liberation Army.

War is what stronger groups resort to -- whether American revolutionaries, Nazis, whatever.

There's an intermediate category, for example the French Rèsistance, but their focus was not on the populace but the invaders. (I am not quite sure where the Celtic Breton population in France is in regards to French rule.)

I would disagree with you on this point. Terrorism IS the issue, in my opinion, and Islamofascism is the proponent du jour.

There are plenty of examples of armies taking the lives of civilians who are not directly “involved” in combat, but the specter of mass murder of a completely uninvolved civilian population is much clearer today than at any point in history.

I see the point you make, but I think it is much more serious in the direction of terrorism and not Islam.

“it is much more serious in the direction of terrorism and not Islam”

Excuse me?

Last time I checked, terrorism is a strategy and not an ideology.

Show me, therefore, the Buddhist terrorists, the Shinto terrorists, the Hindu terrorists, the Christian terrorists, the Jewish terrorists, the Santeria terrorists, and ET CETERA!!!

Terrorism is in the very fabric of Islam as THE means to intimidate, subjugate, and kill all those unbelievers who fail to accept Islam.

Such as me, for instance. Come and try to kill me, O Muslim, and I will profane your corpse with unholy pork. No paradise, no virgins for you, mon vieux.

;^)

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