Read The Final Move Beyond Iraq: The Final Solution While the World Sleeps Online
Authors: Mike Evans
Lesbian writer Susan Sontag wrote in defense of those who called the hijackers “cowards”:
And if the word “cowardly” is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday’s slaughter, they were not cowards.
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Not cowards? Nineteen men sauntered aboard four airlines loaded with passengers—men, women, and children—took control of those giants of the air, murdered not only the passengers but thousands of other innocent bystanders without ever looking them or their families in the eyes—and that is not a cowardly act?
Yet another writer took Americans to task for the upsurge in patriotism and the number of American flags that were raised in the days immediately following the terrorist attack. The flag was purported to be a visual symbol of bigotry, criminality, hatred, and even homophobia in America.
The novelist Barbara Kingsolver jumped into the mêlée with this liberal, enlightening pronouncement:
Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It despises people of foreign birth. It has specifically blamed homosexuals, feminists and the American Civil Liberties Union. In other words, the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder. Whom are we calling terrorists here?
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President Bush was repeatedly denounced for having stated unequivocally that America would hunt down the perpetrators and punish the planners of the attack on America. The president was careful to explain that any strike would be specifically directed at the organizations that funded and harbored terrorists worldwide. In an address to the joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001, President Bush precisely identified the target:
Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.
Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.
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The president warned the American people not to expect the war on terror to be concluded swiftly:
Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.
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And so, the war against bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan was launched. In two short months, the Taliban had been routed, and a new leader, Hamid Karzai, was in place. During his State of the Union address in January 2002, President Bush was able to tell the viewing audience that America had “rid the world of thousands of terrorists, destroyed Afghanistan’s terrorist training camps, saved a people from starvation, and freed a country from brutal oppression.”
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Attention quickly turned from bin Laden and Afghanistan to other countries that harbored and funded terrorists—namely Iraq. Saddam Hussein was clearly pleased with the overt attack on Americans in their own homeland. Hussein had for decades provided a safe house for international terrorists. He gave sanctuary to Abu Abbas, the mastermind of the
Achille Lauro
hijacking in 1985, and Abu Nidal, a terrorist mercenary said to be responsible for the deaths of as many as nine hundred people. He also provided safe harbor for the lone escapee from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Abdul Rahman Yasin. Hussein doled out large sums of money to the families of suicide bombers that died in attacks against the Jews in Israel. It seemed only natural to turn the attention in the war on terror to Saddam Hussein.
It is interesting to note that the focus on Saddam Hussein began not with President George W. Bush but with former president Bill Clinton in 1998. In 1998, Hussein ousted the UN weapons inspectors in clear violation of the ceasefire agreement following the first Gulf War. The Clinton administration requested that Congress draft what was called the Iraqi Liberation Act. The act proposed that a regime change be sought. The bill, as signed by Clinton, stated that “it should be the policy of the United States to seek to remove the Saddam Hussein regime from power in Iraq, and replace it with a democratic government.”
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Furthermore, the Senate approved the use of force in order to achieve that objective. It was overwhelmingly supported by a majority in both the House and the Senate.
With such a show of support for regime change in Iraq, it was only natural that President Bush might expect the same kind of support from Congress when Saddam Hussein began to openly defy UN calls for weapons inspections. The president appealed to the UN to call a halt to Hussein’s game playing. In his speech, he reiterated that all of the sanctions and incentives to tempt Hussein to comply had been in vain. A toothless UN was impotent against the “butcher of Baghdad.”
Across the country, murmurs of dissent became a roar of antiwar protests. Even Jimmy Carter entered the fray on the side of the dissenters. He averred that Baghdad posed no threat to America. Carter’s declaration was soon accompanied by a similar statement from the ubiquitous Al Gore. The cacophony grew as senators Tom Daschle and Ted Kennedy joined in the debate. It seemed that many could not quite understand how a brutal dictator that had at various times invaded both Iran and Kuwait, committed mass murder with WMDs against his own countrymen, and opened his borders to avowed terrorists could possibly pose a threat to anyone.
As the countdown to an Iraq invasion proceeded, the number of antiwar protestors grew, not just in the United States but worldwide. Were they protesting the attack on America by Al Qaeda? Were they protesting Hussein’s brutal attacks against his own people? No, the targets of the demonstrations were the United States and Israel. America was labeled a “terrorist state” and President Bush equated to Adolf Hitler. The Washington protest crowd included the likes of Representative John Conyers and Charles Rangel, and New York City councilman Charles Barron. In his comments, Barron cast the United States into the same “axis of evil” category with Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.
Unfortunately, not every liberal in America agreed with talk show host Alan Colmes, of
Hannity & Colmes
fame. In his book
Red, White, and Liberal
, the very liberal Mr. Colmes wisely said, “The time to debate going to war was before the fact. Once American men and women were in harm’s way that debate was over and lost by those of us who opposed the intervention.”
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Conversely, a professor of anthropology at Columbia University, Nicholas de Genova, gave this rousing speech at what was cavalierly called a “teach-in”:
Peace is not patriotic. Peace is subversive, because peace anticipates a very different world than the one in which we live—a world where the U.S. would have no place…. The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military. I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus.
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Oddly enough, Dr. de Genova made these comments in reference to:
…the ambush of U.S. forces by an al-Qaeda warlord in Somalia in 1993. The Americans were there on a humanitarian mission to feed starving Somali Muslims. The al-Qaeda warlord was stealing the food and selling it on the black market. His forces killed 18 American soldiers and dragged their bodies through the streets in an act designed to humiliate their country.
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The hateful rhetoric aimed at American troops engaged in life and death battles did not lessen when American troops marched into Baghdad on April 9, 2003; indeed, the hue and cry to bring the soldiers home only rose. Even as Hussein’s heinous prisons were emptied and his monstrous torture chambers taken apart, even as tons of humanitarian aid flowed into Baghdad to feed the hungry and provide much-needed medication to the ill, the liberal Left was condemning the U.S. incursion into Iraq. Like de Genova, the most open and voluble of the detractors were among America’s university elite.
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SLAMOFASCISTS:
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There has long been a fascination in the Islamic world with all things Hitler. In fact, the Arab states of Syria and Iraq, both Baath Party regimes, were patterned after Hitler’s Fascist concepts. Just as Hitler’s vision was a world under the domination of his Nazi regime, so the vision of today’s radical Islamic clerics is a world under the domination of Islamic, or Sharia, law.
This was never more apparent than when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini launched his Islamic revolution even as the shah of Iran was fleeing the country. As I stated earlier, it was Khomeini who dubbed America “The Great Satan” and tagged our closest ally, Israel, “The Little Satan.” Truthfully, these are the only two nations with the ability and the hope of the moral clarity needed to quench the flame of Islamic revolution before it ignites across the globe.
The liberal Left in America took up the banner of the oppressed and downtrodden in Iran and ran with it. What followed was a litany of charges leveled against America for her support of the shah’s regime, for supporting Israel locked in a life-and-death struggle with the Palestinians, for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, for Vietnam, and so on. Palestinian terrorists became “freedom fighters,” and the innocent victims of their atrocious acts became the instigators simply for daring to live in Israel. Suicide bombers who brought devastation to buses, restaurants, busy shopping malls, and even schools were given the religious designation of martyr.
Radical Islam has given birth to a weapon that truly cheapens human life: the suicide bomber. But this will be as nothing compared to the weapons of mass destruction under preparation in radical Islamist states—weapons whose targets may begin with Israel but ultimately are aimed at the world’s greatest democracy.
The secular, liberal Left refuses to accept the very serious threat posed by the Islamic radicals. They refuse to accept the fact that every American, place of origin not withstanding; every Jew, wherever found; and every Muslim who disagrees with the particular philosophy of the Islamic fanatics is a target. University professors will not be spared simply because they have supported the radical any more than the leftists siding with Khomeini were in deposing the shah; erudite philosophers will not be spared because of their education, and the religious Left will not be spared simply because of their worldview on religion. While their support is now welcomed and heralded worldwide by terrorist organizations, once the terrorists reach their goals, they will turn their guns on these as infidels just as they did following the Islamic revolution of 1979. No, everyone will be required to conform to the doctrines and dictates of the mad mullahs who have hijacked an entire religion—or else.
In fact, on February 26, 1993, Yigal Carmon, counterterrorism advisor to the prime minister of Israel, warned the Pentagon that, in his estimation, radical Islam was an imminent threat to America. At the end of his briefing, he was told by smirking critics that they did not consider religion to be a threat to national security.
Following his address at the Pentagon, Carmon flew to New York City, where, while having lunch at 12:18 p.m., a huge explosion took place nearby: Islamic terrorists had attempted to blow up the World Trade Center; one thousand were injured and six killed.
Islamic terrorists finished the job on September 11, 2001, and still no one wants to admit
why
we were attacked—just by whom. But Osama bin Laden is just the vanguard of a religious hatred that will engulf the entire world if not stopped.
Days before the 9/11 attacks, the UN sponsored a World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance. Hidden behind that grand title was a hate-filled attack against Western democracy in general and the United States and Israel in particular. Charges such as racism, slavery, and colonialism were leveled against these two democracies. It was not surprising that the Muslim regimes still using these practices escaped such criticism. No mention was made of the genocide in Rwanda or Iraq; no condemnation was levied against Iran’s use of children as minesweepers during the Iran-Iraq War; nor was there a mention of the suppressive regimes in Saudi Arabia or of Syria’s subjugation of the Lebanese people.
In attendance at the conference were such stalwart liberals as Jesse Jackson and Julian Bond and ten members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus. In a world forum, the group took its own country to task and called for the United States to pay trillions of dollars in compensation for the slavery that had been abolished in the United States in 1865. No such demands were made against other states, including those African nations that willingly participated in the trafficking of human beings. Although Cuba is said to have imported more slaves than the United States, favorite son Fidel Castro escaped condemnation unscathed. This only served to underline the double standard practiced by the UN.