Junto Boys

BUSH CREATES TERRORISTS? STUPID.

Bush creates dead terrorists. Make Love Not War creates dead Americans, and Brits, and Spaniards, and....

Jonah Goldberg puts down the ridiculous and persistent notion, which I heard Bill Clinton advocating in a recent speech, that charity and winning their hearts is the way to defeat Muslim radicals. Do we want to give that a try for another generation? You have to ask yourself: "Do I feel lucky?"

Every serious analysis of the Islamic world today describes a genuine tectonic shift in a vast civilization, an upheaval that cuts across social, religious and demographic lines. This phenomenon dwarfs transient issues such as the Iraq war. Are we to believe that once-moderate and relatively secular Morocco is slipping toward extremism because we toppled Baathist Saddam Hussein? Do we believe that the mobs who burned Danish embassies in response to a cartoon wouldn't have done so if only President Bush had gone for the 18th, 19th or 20th U.N. resolution on Iraq? Millions of young men yearning for meaning and craving outlets for their rage would have become computer programmers and dental hygienists if only Hussein's statue still towered over central Baghdad? Would the pope's comments spark nothing but thoughtful and high-minded debate from the Arab street if only Al Gore or John Kerry were in office?

Iraq is the excuse du jour for jihadists. But the important factor is that these are young men looking for an excuse. If you live your life calculating that it's a mistake to do anything that might prompt murderers and savages to act like murderers and savages, you've basically decided to live under their thumb and surrender your
civilization in the process.

For me, the truly dismaying news this week didn't come from the NIE but from the German media. A German opera house announced that it would cancel its staging of Mozart's "Idomeneo" because Berlin police concluded that staging the opera - which includes a scene in which Jesus, Buddha, Poseidon and Muhammad are beheaded - would pose an "incalculable security risk" from jihadists. Germany, recall, proudly opposed the Iraq war - but still narrowly missed a Spain-style terrorist attack on its rail system this summer.

A leading Muslim spokesman in Germany explained that he was all for free speech, as long as it didn't offend Muslims. The Germans' all-too-typical appeasement of terrorism no doubt makes them "safer" and "creates" fewer terrorists.

And all it cost them - for now - is Mozart.

The Democrats were so gleeful as Bush's approval numbers trended toward zero. The people want a change, the people want a change! And we are the change, us, hooray for us! But their hand-us-the-war strategy has two major and glaring flaws: they don't want the war and they don't know what to do with the war.

(D) keeps pounding on "Iraq is a mess and it's Bush's fault." (R) will keep hammering on "the global war on terror," "offense not defense," and "long term resolve." See the trees burning out of control. No, see the controlled burn meant to save the rest of the forest.

There is still a lot of cowboy in America, and a lot of hero. The polls are very lopsided in favor of not pulling out of Iraq until the situation there is stable. I can't believe that Americans will choose to sit back and watch as the jihad train runs over the damsel on the tracks. It's not consistent with America's history nor America's character. We are deciding whether we want to be Europe. We don't need more Europe. We already have Europe.