Victor Davis Hansen Refocus

After all the bullshit about forged evidence from Bush's military past, VDH puts a few things back in perspective.

Chechen Islamicists burn up Russian airliners and shoot schoolgirls — and say they are victims, deprived of the chance for their own autonomous theocracy. Beheaders in Iraq decapitate Americans, Pakistanis, Koreans, Japanese, and Nepalese — only to claim that these are infidels guilty of trying to build roads and bridges. Italian humanitarians and charity workers are kidnapped by Islamicists. In the "holy" city of Najaf, religious extremists bomb innocents, not only without gratitude for those who freed them from Saddam, but full of hatred for those who would bring them consensual government.


Islamic terrorists kidnap French journalists and threaten them with execution, demanding that a sovereign nation previously known for its appeasement of radical Middle Eastern rogue regimes overturn a law protecting secular life in its schools. Hamas "freedom fighters" blow up buses inside Israel and call the dead children Zionists who belong in the sea.

Islamic fascists incinerate dozens in Madrid, and claim they have a right to do so because of the Spanish role in ridding the world of the Hussein clan — or was the real rub the Reconquista? Australians in Bali are engulfed in flame by car bombers for the felony of being Western visitors in an Islamic enclave.

Sometimes it is hard to tell wether releasing the obvious forgeries about Bush serve any other purpose than to get out of the defensive and go on the offense (talking about the Kerry team and its proponents). Even if that is the case, it also draws peoples attention away from what is really important: WW4.

Ask yourself: What do a Russian ten-year-old, a poor black farmer in Darfur, an elderly pensioner in Israel, a stockbroker in New York, and a U.N. aid worker in Afghanistan have in common? In the last three years, they have all died in similar ways: Unarmed and civilian, they were murdered by a common cowardly method fueled by a fascist ideology.

At some point, the leaders of the Western world (if there are any left besides George W. Bush and Tony Blair) are going to look at all this madness worldwide and come to the bitter conclusion that there is a disgusting pattern: Not every Muslim is a fascist terrorist, but almost every fascist terrorist is a Muslim. Killers are not screaming "Hail Mary" when they machine gun children in the back, slit the throat of airline stewardesses, or blow pregnant women up on buses across the globe. And they are not the subjects of condemnatory fatwas in Iran or Saudi Arabia.

I have called Islam a cancer of the planet. When I do this, I mean every Muslim who perpetrates terror, or fails or refuses to condemn it without qualifications. Muslims like these make up the vast majority of Islam.

Much of the Islamic Middle East continues to blame others for its own induced catastrophe, apparently unaware — thanks to the lever of oil it didn't discover, doesn't know how to develop, and uses to intensify rather than alleviate its poverty — that its entire culture is becoming an international pariah. Islamic young men on European flights are looked at with distrust; they are not welcome in Russia. China wants none of them. They are wary of visiting India. Australia learned from Bali. The whole world is watching — in disgust.

In short, the suicide bomber, the improvised explosive device, the car bomb, the televised beheading, the wacko fatwa, the sleazy propaganda streamer on the Internet, the new cult of death — all cowardly and lethal phenomena — these are now the innovations that the world associates with the Middle East in lieu of gene research, car production, or computer breakthroughs. If you look for gender equity in the Middle East, you won't find it in Arab Olympic delegations, Saudi schools, or the Iranian government, but in the opportunity for young women to blow themselves up right beside men. Indeed, killing infidels is the nascent women's-liberation movement of the radical Muslim world.

There is of course a small but bright spot of light in the dark hellhole that is Middle-East - and it is hated most for all that brightness.

Hansen thinks Beslan may have been a turning point, the straw that broke the camels back.

The U.S. military — not NATO, the U.N., or the EU — shut down the al Qaeda sanctuary in Afghanistan and the nightmare of Saddam's Iraq. It is the only protector of the effort to jumpstart reform in Iraq. Appreciation of that power impressed both Pakistan and Libya. Threat of that force keeps terrorist killers in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran careful not to leave visible tracks among their compliant, but also apprehensive, hosts. India understands that; so does China. Russia also grasps that there is now no appeasement possible with Islamic killers. How the Arab-Islamic world managed to unite over 3 billion nuclear Anglo Americans, Indians, Chinese, and Russians in their suspicions of it will be a case-study in imbecility for diplomatic historians for decades to come.

I hope they are united. I am too cynical to even hope, let alone believe that given some time and enough money, countries like Russia will easily change priorities and course again. But I do agree that no matter who the allies of the day may be, the use of maximum force is an essential tool in this fight. It is the one thing they understand.

Read all of Victor Davis Hansen's latest gem here.