The Nature of the Enemy

Out of the all too large number of jihadist atrocities that occurred this past week, there were two in particular that stood out as representative of the nature of our adversary:

-On Wednesday, a suicide bomber murdered 20 people in a mosque in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The terrorist appears to have been an Arab affiliated with al-Qaeda. The funeral was for a pro-government cleric murdered several days earlier by the Taliban.

-In Baghdad on Thursday, three carloads of terrorists drove through a crowded market area, firing at will. Nine Iraqis, all innocent civilians, were murdered. No US or Iraqi forces were in the area at the time.


In Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the world, we are at war with an enemy who cares nothing for human life, be it Christian, Jew or Muslim, and will commit any atrocity in pursuit of their barbarous totalitarian agenda. A recent post from Iraq by Michael Yon makes this point with unmistakable clarity:

An American soldier told me today that he has been telling kids to stay away from his unit so they won't be killed. This is harder, on all parties, than it might seem to anyone who hasn't seen firsthand how much the kids here love the soldiers. The sound of heavily armored trucks rumbling through the streets has the same effect on these kids as the tinkling bells of the "ice cream man" back home. Imagine having to tell kids to run the other way when they hear the ice cream truck on a summer afternoon.

Recently, an insurgent hid behind a child in order to attack Americans. The tactic came as no surprise to the soldiers here. Terrorists routinely play wounded or feign their surrender in order to get close enough to launch an attack on Coalition or Iraqi Forces. In January I wrote about one bomber who grabbed the hand of a small child while she was playing on a sidewalk. Smiling, he walked with the child in hand, approaching some Iraqi police, and exploded. Americans standing close by were unharmed.

During the month of May in Mosul, there have been so many terrorist attacks killing women and children--often when no American or Iraqi Forces have been in the area-- that they are barely news. It happened again on Saturday. This time by radio-controlled IED.


These are the same terrorists who claim to be the only "true Muslims", and condemn any Muslim who rejects their ideology of death as an "apostate". They commit mass murder in a mosque. They mow down innocent civilians in the street. They murder far more Muslim women and children than they do infidel Americans. Yet all most of the US and international media want to talk about is how many times copies of the Koran were mishandled at Guantanamo. For all of America's might, for all of the courage and dedication of our men and women in uniform, there are times when I fear that the prevailing climate of moral and intellectual vacuity will doom this nation to destruction.