Daniel in Brookline

The temperature down there was at least 20 degrees beyond any measure of hot. The air was filthy with dust, darkness, and the menace that wafted like a stench off all the bombs, bombs, and more bombs. I was sitting on bombs and missiles that I could not identify--there was not enough floor cleared for three men to stand. There were mortar rounds, some with fuses, some without. Some fuses had no safety pins. Some rounds had charges on the fins.

The soldiers inside the hell hole passed up a green ball, about the size of a large cantaloupe, and handed it over to another soldier who began to walk with it, and he said, “I wonder what this is?” Someone looked and said, “STOP. Don’t move. Don’t put it down. You hear what I say? Don’t move. Wait right here.”

It is almost certain now that last week's attacks on the London underground were carried out by young British men of Pakistani background. British intelligence estimates that 10,000 to 15,000 Muslims living in Britain support al-Qaeda.

It was not supposed to be like this. The idea was that tolerance and liberalism towards migrants would in turn make migrants tolerant and good citizens. Instead, Britain became a haven for terrorists. Did the bomb blasts in the London Underground mark the death of multiculturalism?

No wonder Irshad Manji has received death threats since appearing on British television: she is a lipstick lesbian, a Muslim and scourge of Islamic leaders, whom she accuses of making excuses about the terror attacks on London. Oh, and she tells ordinary Muslims to “crawl out of their narcissistic shell”. Ouch.

The underlying problem with Islam, observes Manji, is that far from spiritualising Arabia, it has been infected with the reactionary prejudices of the Middle East: “Colonialism is not the preserve of people with pink skin. What about Islamic imperialism? Eighty per cent of Muslims live outside the Arab world yet all Muslims must bow to Mecca.” Fresh thinking, she contends, is suppressed by ignorant imams; you can see why she has been dubbed “Osama’s worst nightmare”.

“The good news,” she insists, “is it doesn’t have to be like this.” She wants a reformation in Islam, returning it to its clever, fun-loving roots. “The world’s first ‘feminist’ was an 11th-century Muslim man. Baghdad had one of the first universities in the 9th century; the Spanish ‘Ole!’ comes from ‘Allah’; Islam even gave us the guitar.” But now it gives us the suicide bomber: why?

“In continental Europe people of faith are regarded as second-class citizens. In America Muslims are allowed to earn their status by competing. In Europe, Britain included, your past establishes your identity much more than your future. If you don’t have the lineage here people might well feel disaffected.” She points out that American mosques display signs proclaiming: “God bless America”; inconceivable here.

Osama bin Laden's standing has dropped significantly in some pivotal Muslim countries, while support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence has "declined dramatically," according to a new survey released yesterday...

The new poll also found that growing majorities or pluralities of Muslims now say that democracy can work in their countries and is not just a Western ideology. Support for democracy was in the 80 percent range in Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco. It was selected by 43 percent in Pakistan and 48 percent in Turkey -- the largest blocks of respondents in both countries because significant numbers were unsure.

"They are not just paying lip service. They are saying they specifically want a fair judiciary, freedom of expression and more than one party in elections. It wasn't just a vague concept," Kohut said. "U.S. and Western ideas about democracy have been globalized and are in the Muslim world."

MAXINE McKEW: Prime Minister, if as you say you can't rule out that possibility that we could have potential bombers right here in Australia, what if today's announcement, this redeployment to Afghanistan and our continued presence in Iraq is all the provocation they need?

JOHN HOWARD: Maxine, these people are opposed to what we believe in and what we stand for, far more than what we do. If you imagine that you can buy immunity from fanatics by curling yourself in a ball, apologising for the world - to the world - for who you are and what you stand for and what you believe in, not only is that morally bankrupt, but it's also ineffective. Because fanatics despise a lot of things and the things they despise most is weakness and timidity. There has been plenty of evidence through history that fanatics attack weakness and retreating people even more savagely than they do defiant people.

• Saddam was a known supporter of terror, Palestinian terror in particular; families of Palestinian suicide bombers were heavily compensated by Saddam, even at the height of UN sanctions. There was no telling when the money might go elsewhere.
• Saddam had a known tendency to strike out without warning. He'd done so against Iran in 1980, and against Kuwait in 1990. He'd even viciously attacked Iraqis, using chemical weapons. There was no telling whom he'd attack next, given the whim and the opportunity.
• Saddam had a known antipathy to the United States. He'd tried to assassinate a former President of the United States in 1993; statements and murals denigrating the United States were plentiful in Saddam's Iraq. There was no telling when he'd decide that it was America's turn to become a target.
• Saddam had a known thirst for weapons of mass destruction, and had openly boasted of his WMD programs. His nuclear-weapons potential was seriously delayed in 1982, with the destruction of the Osirak reactor complex; but there was evidence that he had worked hard to restart the program. He was known to have used chemical weapons, and was known to be strongly interested in biological weapons. There was no telling when, aided perhaps by another rogue regime or by an unscrupulous Western power, he might get his wish.
  
• Finally, Saddam had a known tendency to hide what he had. He was known to lead weapons inspectors around by the nose, enjoying his own game of cat and mouse; perhaps he never expected the world to call his bluff. Regardless, there was no telling what he already had, waiting for an opportunity.
  

If anything, Mr. Bush in recent times has not stressed Saddam's ties to al Qaeda nearly enough. More than ever, as we now discuss the bombings in London, or, to name a few others, Madrid, Casablanca, Bali, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, or the many bombings in Israel--as well as the attacks on the World Trade Center in both 1993 and 2001--it is important to understand that terrorist connections can be real, and lethal, and portend yet more murder, even when they are shadowy, shifting and complex. And it is vital to send the message to regimes in such places as Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran that in matters of terrorist ties, the Free World is not interested in epistemological debates over what constitutes a connection. We are not engaged in a court case, or a classroom debate. We are fighting a war.

Actually, there were many connections, as Stephen Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn, writing in the current issue of the Weekly Standard, spell out under the headline "The Mother of All Connections." Since the fall of Saddam, the U.S. has had extraordinary access to documents of the former Baathist regime, and is still sifting through millions of them. Messrs. Hayes and Joscelyn take some of what is already available, combined with other reports, documentation and details, some from before the overthrow of Saddam, some after. For page after page, they list connections--with names, dates and details such as the longstanding relationship between Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Saddam's regime.

...

The difficulty lies in piecing together the picture, which is indeed murky (that being part of the aim in covert dealings between tyrants and terrorist groups)--but rich enough in depth and documented detail so that the basic shape is clear. By the time Messrs. Hayes and Joscelyn are done tabulating the cross-connections, meetings, Iraqi Intelligence memos unearthed after the fall of Saddam, and information obtained from detained terrorist suspects, you have to believe there was significant collaboration between Iraq and al Qaeda. Or you have to inhabit a universe in which there will never be a demonstrable connection between any of the terrorist attacks the world has suffered over the past dozen years, or any tyrant and any aspiring terrorist. In that fantasyland, all such phenomena are independent events.

It needs to be seen and said clear: there are, amongst us, apologists for what the killers do, and they make more difficult the long fight that is needed to defeat them. (To forestall any possible misunderstanding on this point: I do not say these people are not entitled to the views they express or to their expression of them. They are. Just as I am entitled to criticize their views for the wretched apologia they amount to.)

The plea will be made, though - it always is - that these are not apologists, they are merely honest Joes and Joanies endeavouring to understand the world in which we all live. What could be wrong with that? What indeed? Nothing is wrong with genuine efforts at understanding; on these we all depend. But the genuine article is one thing, and root-causes advocacy that seeks to dissipate responsibility for atrocity, mass murder, crime against humanity, especially in the immediate aftermath of their occurrence, is something else.

Mr. Truman was a good friend of Justice Brandeis, and when he was in the Senate, he used to go, almost every week, I believe, to the Justice's at-homes. On Monday evenings.

It may have been Justice Brandeis who told him, as the Justice once told me, that: 'Some questions can be decided even if not answered.' He meant by that that it isn't always necessary for all the facts on a given situation to be available. They almost never are, perhaps never are. And it isn't necessary that one side be wholly right and the other totally wrong, because that seldom happens either.

It is enough, the Justice used to say, that the scales of judgement be tipped in one direction, and, after a decision is made, he would say, "One must go forward wholly committed.'

The British and many Continental police forces have long experience of terrorism, and are good – within the political constraints they operate under – at dealing with it. [...] Now, as then, prestige targets will be secured against terrorism, and that will leave soft targets – in a word, you, your morning bus ride, that little restaurant you like. And, as in Israel, Europeans will get used to the idea that every so often, entirely at random, there will be days when your husband or daughter or best friend sets off for work and doesn't come home.

It was the late Ayatollah Khomeini who popularized the idea that the United States is the Great Satan – a shrewd shorthand in that it acknowledges not merely that the hyperpower is evil, but that he is a great seducer too. And when one contrasts the vast number of British, European and Canadian jihadists who've turned up in the thick of it in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Iraq, Israel, Bosnia, Chechnya and beyond with the relatively insignificant number of American Muslims so embroiled, one begins to appreciate that the Great Satan is indeed a relatively effective seducer – at least to the extent that America seems to be doing a better job at assimilating Muslims than Europe or Canada.

nothing you do, how many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our cities, where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another... Whatever you do, how many you kill, you will fail.

The choice is not one of being terrorized or not. The choice is whether you go down fighting or not. Either Western civilization subdues these people, or it submits to them. Those are our choices.

Bombs all over London, very little movement other than the sound of the emergency services rushing to the 7 confirmed blast sites.

And you wonder why we fight?

We fought you in the fields of Flanders

We fought you through the fields of France and in the fields and streets of Northern Ireland.

We will fight you on the streets of Basra and if you decide to come to London, we will fight you there.

All of Hitlers bombers and V weapons couldn't daunt us, neither will you.

Ironic that when the G8 leaders are trying to do something about some of the worlds problems, the barbarians are hammering at the gate. Well, open the gate says I and bring it on...we have seen this all before. We have defeated this all before.

Now if you will excuse me, I am going to try and get home to my family.

God bless

What kind of men were the 56 signers who adopted the Declaration of Independence and who, by their signing, committed an act of treason against the Crown? To each of you the names Franklin, Adams, Hancock, and Jefferson are almost as familiar as household words. Most of us, however, know nothing of the other signers. Who were they? What happened to them?

Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much to create, is still intact.

... I like to see facts presented in a simple, straightforward manner. I have long been baffled as to why some people still do not understand why we are in Iraq. I am "just" a homemaker, most of my time being spent taking care of my husband and my home. But I read, and I listen, and even I have been aware of many of the Iraqi terrorist connections mentioned in your article. So it has been puzzling to me that self-sharpened pointy-headed liberals, like Reid and Gergen and those at the New York Times, so stridently deny any connections between Iraq and al Qaeda. What is the motive? Is it that ignoring or denying the connections frees them from the responsibility of taking or supporting action? Could it be that simple?

Things are pretty simple in my world.

You recognize the connections, you support the action (or take it, if you are able). You don't recognize the connections, you don't support the action.

Men and women rotate in and out of Iraq. We call it "The Sandbox." When they leave, we cry. When they get home, we cry some more. They go off to fight, we hold the fort. Everybody does their job.

The terrorists are bent on attacking Americans. The Americans are going to be either highly trained, heavily armed professionals over there, or happily oblivious, defenseless civilians over here. You choose.

Some say the above is only valid until we are attacked on U.S. soil again. Oh, I don't know. I've kind of enjoyed the last four years of being able to go to Wal-Mart without fear of being blown to smithereens by a suicide bomber.

The media lament the influx of "insurgents" into Iraq. So…the terrorists flooding into the waiting arms of the most lethal military around is a bad thing?

Many want a "timetable" for the end of the war. Me too. As soon as the terrorists announce their timetable for implementing a "Be Sweet to Infidels" policy, we should reciprocate by announcing our timetable for ending the war.

Too many troops killed, they say. Now if the troops are the ones fighting and dying in the war (and they are), and the President enjoys overwhelming support among the troops (and he does), then there must be something the media are missing. Hmmmm…

Too much money spent, they say. There is always a price to be paid. You pay in taxes, the troops pay in blood. You choose. (Also, see above.)

So what is my point? Simply this: The politicians, the pundits and the media need to get out of the military's way and let them do their job. Reid and Gergen and their ilk don't have to worry that they'll be asked to do anything scary if they acknowledge the obvious connections between Iraq and al Qaeda. Lots of people have already recognized them and have volunteered for the scary stuff. It's 9/11, stupid.

[Name withheld]

"I assume the war in Afghanistan is over, or is the contention that you have [is] that it continues," Nancy Pelosi replied to a reporter on June 22. A few moments later she declared that "[t]his isn't about the duration of the war. The war in Afghanistan is over."

[Russian State] Prosecutor Ustinov has already summoned Moscow rabbi Zinovy Kogan, chairman of the Congress of Jewish Organizations, for questioning in order to determine whether the Shulhan Arukh should be banned for "racist incitement." He took this action after receiving a letter last January, signed by 500 patriotic Russians, calling the Jewish religion "anti-Christian and inhumane" and demanding that the Shulhan Arukh be banned.