VDH: Yes, This is a War

As usual, I offer a link to Victor Davis Hanson's Friday column for National Review Online. Dr. Hanson reminds us that Islamist terrorism did not start as a result of the Iraq War, will not be appeased by any concessions we might make, and is the mortal enemy of the entire Western world. Ideally, people wouldn't need to be reminded of such facts. Unfortunately, the current political and intellectual climate in America and Western Europe is less than ideal:


So it is was becoming clear that butchery by radical Muslims in Bali, Darfur, Iraq, the Philippines Thailand, Turkey, Tunisia, and Iraq was not so tied to particular and "“understandable"” Islamic grievances.

Perhaps the jihadist killing was not over the West Bank or U.S. hegemony after all, but rather symptoms of a global pathology of young male Islamic radicals blaming all others for their own self-inflicted miseries, convinced that attacks on the infidel would win political concessions, restore pride, and prove to Israelis, Europeans, Americans - and about everybody else on the globe - that Middle Eastern warriors were full of confidence and pride after all.

And Then They Came After Us


Dr. Hanson also wrote a similar piece for Friday's Washington Times that's worth a look:

In the West, the new orthodoxy is that removing the theocratic Taliban in Afghanistan was the "correct" war that enjoyed widespread European and American support. In contrast, George W. Bush, in a "unilateral" and "pre-emptive" fashion, unnecessarily attacked the "secular" Saddam Hussein.

The terrorists, unlike us, make no such distinctions. Both actions, they insist, were equal affronts to radical Islam.

Enough is Enough