This is as confusing to read in The Sunday Times as it was in the Wall Street Journal. She argues so much with herself that it's hard to see what she really wants to happen. But the last two paragraphs maks it clear: the battle is to defend Western civilization against Islamic fundamentalism and oppression. This battle, like the Alamo, is worth dying for.
THIS is what I feel is the essence of Fallaci:
As my father said when he asked the anti-fascists to join the resistance and as I say when I talk to those who honestly believe in a Pax Americana, people must conquer freedom by themselves. Democracy comes from civilisation. And in both cases one must know what they consist in. How I wish this nation could read and take to heart the lessons this woman has learned through blood and fear. Islam does not direct its adherents toward democracy, it directs its enslaved minds toward theocracy. If the Bush administration is making one fundamental error, it is in expecting minds so long oppressed by Islamism to embrace democratic principles.
The West is in a war for its survival. Perhaps Usama acted too soon (impelled, one could conjecture now, by the insistence of his associate of convenience, Saddam), but the fact of our war with radical Islamism is upon us in full. Now is the time to knock over the pins of this cult of allah underpinned by forced adherence to the worship of a false god of peace. Now is the time to offer liberation and see what will come of it. At least, when liberating, we can destroy the current stocks of weapons of mass destruction ... until the radicals develop more as they pour out lying phrases of freindship and cheap oil. ...
Yes, I've grown very skeptical of peaceful coexistence with the vast majority of Islam, for it is hallmarked mostly (because of Saudi Wahhabiism, no doubt) by undercurrents of intolerance, suspicion, and fanaticism. I watch men like Mansoor Ijaz perform on the news, yet I know in my heart that he represents only the small minority practice of Islam. For the brainwashed majority, jihad is the obliteration of anything not stamp approved by the radicalized Imams, world-wide.
I hope Fallaci lives to be 120! And continues to issue these sometimes conflicted missives. Perhaps more will awaken to the truths now living themselves out on the world stage. Westerners and Islamics may yet awaken, but I'm becoming more skeptical with every treacherous move by France and Germany and Russia ... and the democrat party of America, as it tries in every way it can, to thwart this administration in order to win future elections among a possibly decimated population assaulted all the more due to democrat obstructionism and treasonous rhetoric from their deposed from rule leadership.
I prefer Patton's analogy about dying for this war: I (or we) won't die at the barricades of this war. Instead we will kill, we will send them back to Allah in droves. The virgin factory won't be able to keep up.
She's right about the enemies of the west which are already in the west, however. We need to treat them as the enemy that they are and deal with them on a permanent basis. They must be flushed out, and eliminated from the gene pool.
The left speaks of a coming revolution here in the US - and maybe they are right about that. How foolish on their part, since they don't own guns. But once joined, the internal warfare that they may indeed initiate will finally cleanse this land of their communist ways. For that, I would thank Bin Laden.