In The Hat

Why We Fight

I thought Bush's opening statement last night was brilliant. I've yet to read a better explanation of what terrorism is and why we must be on the offensive against it than this:

Now is the time, and Iraq is the place, in which the enemies of the civilized world are testing the will of the civilized world. We must not waver.

The violence we are seeing in Iraq is familiar. The terrorists who take hostages or plants a roadside bomb near Baghdad is serving the same ideology of murder that kills innocent people on trains in Madrid, and murders children on buses in Jerusalem, and blows up a nightclub in Bali and cuts the throat of a young reporter for being a Jew.

We've seen the same ideology of murder in the killing of 241 Marines in Beirut, the first attack on the World Trade Center, in the destruction of two embassies in Africa, in the attack on the USS Cole, and in the merciless horror inflicted upon thousands of innocent men and women and children on September the 11th, 2001.

None of these acts is the work of a religion. All are the work of a fanatical political ideology. The servants of this ideology seek tyranny in the Middle East and beyond. They seek to oppress and persecute women.

They seek the death of Jews and Christians and every Muslim who desires peace over theocratic terror.

They seek to intimidate America into panic and retreat, and to set free nations against each other.

And they seek weapons of mass destruction, to blackmail and murder on a massive scale.

Over the last several decades, we've seen that any concession or retreat on our part will only embolden this enemy and invite more bloodshed. And the enemy has seen, over the last 31 months, that we will no longer live in denial or seek to appease them. For the first time, the civilized world has provided a concerted response to the ideology of terror — a series of powerful, effective blows.

The President's partisan opposition (and I include the elite media in this group) are dedicated to placing all the blame for 9/11 squarely at this administration's feet in order to overturn it. What the President did last night was in stark contrast to that. He presented himself and his administration's policies as the forward-looking alternative to the self-serving Dummocrats and 9/11 commission. The emphasis is not (and shouldn't be) on what we should have done with 20/20 hindsight. It should be on how we can prevent this from happening again.

Bush isn't infallible, but he presents a clear vision of what we should do. His opponents can only offer a clear vision of what we should have done. The Dummocrats and media are nothing more than Tuesday Morning Quarterbacks.