Killing America … Twice

[thedrifter]

June 03, 2007, 7:45 a.m.

Killing America … Twice
Militant Islam targets JFK Airport.

By Andrew C. McCarthy

War is about breaking the enemy’s will. Having laid bare the sorry state of our brains and our guts, jihadists are now zeroing in on the will’s final piece: our hearts.

That is the central lesson to be gleaned from Saturday’s news that four Muslim men have been charged with plotting to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport, and with it much of Queens.

We now learn that for radical Islamists, lovers of death, the heart is the jihad’s most coveted prize. Tear it out, and you get to kill not once but twice. So says 63-year-old ringleader, Russell Defreitas, whose nom de guerre is, of course, Mohammed.

Any time you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to do to the United States. To hit John F. Kennedy, wow!... They love John F. Kennedy like he’s the man…. If you hit that, this whole country will be in mourning. It’s like you can kill the man twice.

Defreitas, er, Mohammed is a naturalized United States citizen. He is another splash in that gorgeous mosaic of American Islam — the one over whose purportedly seamless assimilation the mainstream media was cooing just a few days ago, putting smiley-face spin on an alarming Rasmussen poll.

Alas, Defreitas/Mohammed turns out to be the part of the story the press dutifully buried in paragraph 19: He is that nettlesome one of every four American Muslim males who thinks mass-homicide strikes against civilians, like the one he and his cell were scheming, are a perfectly sensible way to settle grievances.

Does this mean he never really assimilated during his long journey from Guyana to treason against the adopted country he so abhors? Not hardly. For that one in four Muslim males turns out to be in pretty much the same place as one of every two members of the United States Congress — already tacking toward two of every three as we look ahead to September. All are content to let Islamist savagery carry the day.

Militant Islam, you see, is mustered in Iraq, where al Qaeda — the inspiration for Defreitas and his cohorts — has called America out. Like Defreitas & Co., Osama bin Laden and his ranks see themselves in a world war between the United States and a vision of Islam shared by tens of millions. (Think one-in-four, writ large). Iraq, they have decided, is their frontline, though very far from their only line. Everywhere, America is their target. Everywhere, terror — the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent men, women, and children — is their weapon of choice.

For the new Democratic Congress and its growing wake of jittery Republicans, that turns out to be a choice worth living with. Oh yes, they’ll sputter about how barbaric and unsavory it all is. But, like those one in four Muslim males, they’re prepared to let terror rule the day. That’s the plan: Al Qaeda blows up things and people; we leave, grumbling all the way home about civil wars and intractable hatreds between the Religion of Peace’s murderous sects; and al Qaeda triumphs … with bin Laden reminding his acolytes: See, I told you, they’re a paper tiger — make it bloody for them and we win.

Naturally, we’ll tell ourselves they’re not winning at all. They want Iraq? Let ‘em have it. Just like — when they killed enough of us — we let ’em have Lebanon in 1983 and Somalia in 1993. Who, after all, needs these hellholes?

Except … militant Islam doesn’t just want the hellholes. It wants everything. It will take the hellholes. For now. But don’t think for a second they’ll be appeased.

The appetite grows as it feeds. Jihadists won’t stop until they break our will. Give them Somalia and they want the World Trade Center. Give them Iraq and they want JFK … and Fort Dix. They’re coming for us, they’re only too delighted to tell us they’re coming for us, and still we’re stunned when their insatiable hatred draws a bead smack in the middle of our shrinking comfort zone — this time, where a thousand flights move 125,000 people every single day.

It wasn’t merely on the flights and the unlucky infidels that Defreitas and his confederates set their sights. The complaint filed by the government explains that the “brothers” wanted to do “something bigger than the World Trade Center.” Defreitas had worked at JFK. He knew its ins and outs. He wasn’t interested in the passenger terminals — that would be child’s play. He homed in on the fuel tanks and pipelines, thousands upon thousands of flammable gallons. Enough to outdo September 11. Enough to decimate the economy. Enough to make of Queens what Ahmadinejad vows to make of Israel … and, eventually, America.

Defreitas and his fellow jihadists, most haling from Guyana but with ties to Trinidad’s ruthless Jama’at al Muslimeen (the Muslim Group), wanted to do their part in what they unflinchingly called “the war for Islam.” They wanted to kill JFK, and kill us. A second time.

They know there’s a war out there. Not just Iraq or Afghanistan, but Dar al Islam and Dar al Harb — jihadists versus civilization. Global. For us to win, it will not be enough to stabilize Baghdad, sow democracy and empower moderates. It’s about breaking the enemy’s will, as they are working feverishly to break ours.

Thanks to excellent police work, this time they were stopped. But there will be a next time, and another. The jihadists know what’s at stake. Do we?

Ellie

[thedrifter]

June 04, 2007, 6:20 a.m.

Significant Others
The JFK Plot and Messers ABCDEFG et al.

By James S. Robbins

Reading the indictment against the four would-be JFK airport bombers, Russell Defreitas, Abdul Nur, Kareem Ibrihim and Abdul Kadir, I was struck by the phrase “together with others” which frequently followed their names. It is on page 1, page 2, page 3, twice on page 4. In the course of the document we are introduced to these others, known only as Individuals A-G. There must be some legal rationale why we can’t know their identities. It surely can’t be to conceal from the Individuals that we know what they were up to; they must have figured out who is which letter by now. But until we know who Messrs. A-G are, we can’t know the extent of the network, or the magnitude of the threat.

Of the six, the most interesting are A and E. “A” is one of the ringleaders of the plan, playing a key role in conceptualizing and promoting it. Yet for some reason, he was not indicted. “E” is even more important — a businessman in Georgetown Guyana, who funds jihadists on their missions and comes across in the indictment as extremely knowledgeable in matters of terrorism. It seems as though he has done this many times before. He served as a mentor for the prospective attackers, but eventually pulled out of the plan when he thought it might be compromised. Good instincts.

“E” is also a friend and associate of Yasin Abu Bakr, leader of the Trinidad and Tobago extremist group Jamaat al-Muslimeen (JAM). He is referred to as “the JAM leader” throughout the indictment, though his identity is well known in the Caribbean. Abu Bakr had fomented a coup against the government in 1990, which failed quickly. Since then he had been in intermittent trouble with the law. The plotters seem fixated on meeting with Abu Bakr, perhaps to obtain funding from him or his sources. Abdul Nur, the only named conspirator still at large, who had previous ties to Abu Bakr, met with him in May and discussed the plan in general terms. Abu Bakr liked the idea and wanted another meeting, but first wanted to do checks on some of the others involved.

But Trinidadian conspirator Abdul Kareem counseled against another meeting. This was wise, since when you have a secret plan to spread mayhem in the United States through large-scale terror bombing, you ought to stay mum. Once you get past a dozen people in the circle it’s not exactly secret. Add the fact that Abu Bakr had been arrested the previous fall, charged with incitement, sedition, extortion, and terrorism. He was due to go on trial June 1, and was no doubt under constant surveillance. You might think this would not really be the best time to take a meeting with him, not if you want to keep your own identity secret. Kareem suggested instead that he bring the plan to his “contacts overseas” to seek their financial and perhaps other types of support. No indication who these contacts were.

The conspirators planned to launder whatever support they received through Abdul Kadir’s Islamic Information Centre in Linden. Kadir is a Shiite, and tied closely to the International Islamic College for Advanced Studies, which is underwritten by Iran. The college’s former Director, Mohammad Hassan Ebrahimi, was kidnapped and murdered in 2004. Kadir took over as interim head. But just as Kareem was sending his emissary (who for some reason is not identified as “Individual H”) to brief the plan to the contacts abroad, arrest warrants were issued and three of the four named conspirators were taken into custody.

Once the case goes to trial one name that may pop up is Adnan Gulshair Muhammad El Shukrijumah — alias Abu Arif, or Jafar Al-Tayar. He is a computer engineer, born in Saudi Arabia, son of a Wahabbist missionary who moved to Guyana when Adnan was three. He later spent many years in Trinidad where he was associated with the Darul-Uloom Insitute, another of the ubiquitous Islamic study centers. He also stayed for a time in south Florida. He has been closely involved with al Qaeda, and it is said he was hand picked by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to maintain the terror network in the Americas. In 2002 he was in Canada looking for “dirty bomb” components, and in 2003 a warrant was issued for his arrest. In 2004 he was named as a prime suspect in a planned attack on the United States, and Attorney General John Ashcroft described Shukrijumah "as the most dangerous of seven Al-Qa'ida operatives suspected of planning strikes in the US." There is a $5 million reward for information leading to is arrest. If word was out in that community about a planned attack on the U.S., Shukrijuma would be someone the plotters would have liked to have met, and vice versa.

Shukrijumah has not been spotted recently, though there was a report that he had holed up with wealthy Guyanese businessman Farouk Razac. Razac had been in and out of trouble with the law for years, on weapons and drug charges mostly. It would be interesting if Razac turned out to be individual E, especially since he was murdered in his home on May 8. His wife, Carolan Lynch, has been charged with the crime, and is also the reigning Mrs. South America. Imagine putting all that together with the JFK plot. If nothing else it’s a great screenplay.

Given the international flavor of this planned attack it struck me as odd that it is being described regularly as “home grown terrorism.” To me that expression implies Americans of long-established families, growing up in the American milieu, turning to political violence as a form of protest. The Symbionese Liberation Army, for example, or the Unabomber, or the Weather Underground. Yes, Russell Defreitas is a U.S. citizen, but naturalized, and clearly not someone who grew up here or bought into the American dream or way of life. Of the other three who were arrested, two were from Guyana and one from Trinidad. The unnamed conspirators are mostly Guyanan, and none are American. Most of the people involved were foreign, the planning took place overseas, the funding came from abroad, and they sought to obtain the explosives from outside the U.S. So this is not “home grown” but definitely international terrorism.

From the indictment one gets the impression of a certain amateurishness among the plotters. Their cell was penetrated quickly — “the Source” was there from the beginning. They would speak openly about the plot until Individual E convinced them to use code language. JFK becomes “The Chicken Farm” — classic. They talked to too many people, and their obsession with meeting with Abu Bakr betrays more a fascination with his star power than a rational estimation of the assistance he could render the plan. The length of the planning cycle worked in our favor, as it did in other plots recently broken up, here and in Britain. The age of the terrorists is noteworthy — attack cells are rarely set up by guys in their 50s.

Many questions remain. Who is individual A who was so involved at the plan’s inception? Who is individual E, the businessman who has made an avocation of providing logistic support to terror cells in the Americas? How much did Abu Bakr know, and what support (if any) did he give? Who were Abdul Kareem’s overseas contacts, who was his emissary, and where was he going? Maybe all this will come out in the trial, but right now it seems like the big fish are not quite in the net.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Massive Terrorist Plot! NYT: See Page 30
By Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 4, 2007

This weekend, federal authorities foiled a stunning terrorist plot by Muslim extremists to kill thousands of our readers, strike the international transport grid, and depress the nation’s economy during its slowest quarter since late 2002 – but enough about that.

That was the message of Sunday’s New York Times.

The FBI had prevented four men, including a former member of Guyana’s parliament, from blowing up John F. Kennedy International Airport – and possibly part of Queens. They hoped to ignite underground fuel pipes, setting off a chain reaction of explosions that would envelop the entire complex. The NY Post and New York Daily News made it front page news. The NY Daily News headlined its story, “They Aimed to Kill Thousands.” The Post included a chilling sidebar, “Pipeline Security A Joke.”



The (inexplicably) most prestigious newspaper in the world put its bland story on page 30. Instead, page one featured yet another story about Guantanamo Bay detainees.



Any junior editor at any county newspaper in the country would have been fired for putting the most reported story in the nation two-and-a-half dozen pages into the well. Aside from burying a major international story that took place in its metro area, the Newspaper of Record took pains to make the Muslim battle plan that could have atomized a portion of its immediate readership appear utterly irrelevant.



The NYT began by obscuring the terrorists’ target. Although it faults the U.S. military for using the term “collateral damage,” the Times wrote as though the plotters only planned to blow up inanimate objects, certainly not human beings. Its opening line read, “Four men, including a onetime airport cargo handler and a former member of the Parliament of Guyana, were charged yesterday with plotting to blow up fuel tanks, terminal buildings and the web of fuel lines running beneath Kennedy International Airport.”



Secondly, it minimized the severity of the plot. JFK “was never in imminent danger because the plot was only in a preliminary phase and the conspirators had yet to lay out detailed plans or obtain financing or explosives.” Besides, “safety shut-off valves would almost assuredly have prevented an exploding airport fuel tank from igniting all or even part of the network.” Move along. Nothing to see here!



And, as they have for the last several plots (Ft. Dix, Miami, etc.), the Old Gray Lady portrayed the would-be mass killers as pathetic and sympathetic. Plot originator Russell Defreitas, 63, was “divorced and lost touch with his two children.” Once homeless, he moved into an apartment where “the weather was rough on his health and the cold was tough on his arthritis.” He now lives on “a run-down block full of graffiti.” He liked jazz, “especially the saxophone.” Friends described him as a “polite man” and “not that bright” – not bright enough to pull off a serious attack.



Much deeper into the story the crack staff fesses up: “Defreitas envisioned ‘the destruction of the whole of Kennedy” and theorized that because of underground pipes, ‘part of Queens would explode.’” He told his co-conspirators he wanted to inflict such massive loss of life that “even the twin towers can’t touch it.” Beyond crippling the U.S. economy (during a downturn), the move would have symbolic value, as well. Americans “love John F. Kennedy,” he said. “If you hit that, this whole country will be in mourning. It’s like you kill the man twice.” Apparently murdering the president’s brother once was not enough for Muslim extremists.



Later still, the Times notes that, while they weren’t al-Qaeda operatives, the four sought help from “extremist Muslim group based in Trinidad and Tobago called Jamaat al-Muslimeen.” They had “precise and extensive” surveillance of their target, which serves 1,000 flights a day. The quartet “was very familiar with the airport and how to access secure areas.” The plotters were motivated by “fundamentalist Islamic beliefs of a violent nature.” (Coincidentally, every terrorist who has killed Americans since the late Clinton administration has also shared “fundamentalist Islamic beliefs of a violent nature.” In fact, “Mr. Kadir, who, along with being a former elected official [in Guyana], is an imam.”) An unnamed law enforcement official told reporters they stopped the plot early for a reason: “if we let it go it could have gotten [serious]; they could have gotten the J.A.M. fully involved, and we wouldn’t know where it could have gone.”



Oh, and one of the plotters is still at large. Perhaps getting “J.A.M. fully involved” now. “The fourth suspect, Abdel Nur, 57, remained a fugitive.”



Too busy to concentrate on news that doesn’t fit, the Times featured another front page story in which the terrorist is portrayed as a victim, this one set in Gitmo. The story begins:



The facts of Omar Ahmed Khadr’s case are grim. The shrapnel from the grenade he is accused of throwing ripped through the skull of Sgt. First Class Christopher J. Speer, who was 28 when he died.



To American military prosecutors, Mr. Khadr is a committed Al Qaeda operative, spy and killer who must be held accountable for killing Sergeant Speer in 2002 and for other bloody acts he committed in Afghanistan.



But there is one fact that may not fit easily into the government’s portrait of Mr. Khadr: He was 15 at the time.



Not only a mere teen, Khadr is:



the youngest detainee at Guantanamo Bay, nearly blind in one eye from injuries sustained during the July 2002 firefight in which Sergeant Speer was mortally wounded and another American soldier was severely injured. Last week, Mr. Khadr said he wanted to fire all of his American lawyers, and some of them said they understood why he might distrust Americans after five years at Guantanamo. (Emphasis added.)



His lawyer, Muneer I. Ahmad is – surprise! – an associate professor at the American University Washington College of Law. Saith Ahmad, “If Omar had had his free choice, what he would have chosen to do is ride horses, play soccer and read Harry Potter books.”



Another innocent betrayed by Bush’s War on Terror! Just like Hillary Clinton.



Only in the 17th and 18th paragraphs of the story do we learn Omar’s father, Ahmed Said Khadr, was a “senior deputy to Osama bin Laden,” and one of his brothers told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, “We are an al-Qaeda family.”



Moreover, the story grudgingly acknowledges international law does not forbid the United States from doing precisely what it is with Omar. Not only is this a non-story, it is an old non-story. FrontPage Magazine covered The Littlest Jihadist as early as 2002 and has run numerous stories about this extremist family, with its extensive ties to the 9/11 plotters. But to the Times, his alleged suffering trumps the suffering of its own readers.



In addition to this meager coverage of a legitimate threat, the NYT editorial page had not a single editorial on the threat to its readers’ hometown, although Sunday’s issue had three editorials targeting President Bush, Dick Cheney, and the “harsh” jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas.



The decisions to put a story portraying the plight of Guantanamo Bay’s beleaguered terrorist population on page one and to ignore the JFK plot in its editorial coverage were transparently political moves. While Muslim extremists wage a hot war against the United States – often centered in one of the bluest cities of the nation – the Left sees its war on President Bush as infinitely more important. Why do anything that would put the spotlight on terrorism, vindicate the present administration, or – worse yet – perhaps elect a Republican in 2008? The NYT would not take that chance, and it had no difficulty altering its news coverage to fit that political template.


Ultimately, said Mark J. Mershon, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York office, the JFK plotters based their actions on “a pattern of hatred toward the United States and the West in general.” One suspects the same could be said of the New York Times.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Killing for Allah at JFK
By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 4, 2007

In August 2006, Russell “Mohammed” Defreitas, a retired employee of New York’s JFK Airport, confided to an acquaintance his “vision” for a jihad terror attack that, he said, would make the attack on the World Trade Center seem small. The plot involved placing bombs in jet fuel lines in the airport, thereby destroying the airport and probably killing thousands.


Besides the mayhem and economic devastation this plot would cause, Defreitas seemed to have been fond of it because of its symbolic value: “Anytime you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to the United States,” he told his acquaintance, who was a man whom he thought he knew from a mosque in Brooklyn and who was actually an informant. “To hit John F. Kennedy, wow...They love John F. Kennedy like he’s the man... If you hit that, the whole country will be in mourning. It’s like you can kill the man twice.” Despite having gained U.S. citizenship, Defreitas, a Guyanese by birth, clearly hates his new country, and wishes to demoralize it in service of its enemies.



Defreitas and his fellow plotters were arrested Friday, with their plot nowhere near completion. One of the other plotters was Abdul Kadir, an imam and a former member of the Guyanese parliament. According to the Wall Street Journal, the plotters were not members of Al-Qaeda, but had some connection with a little-known jihadist group in Trinidad, Jamaat al Muslimeen. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Knox said of Defreitas: “He is the self-proclaimed brainchild of an elaborate plot to blow up JFK airport. His stated goal was to kill as many people as possible.”



Early news reports noted, “the arrests mark the latest in a series of homegrown terrorism plots that targeted high-profile American landmarks.” And indeed, Knox’s words were an eerie echo of the Fort Dix jihad terror plot that was unmasked in May, in which the plotters hoped to kill as many soldiers as possible. The Fort Dix and JFK plotters are evidently among the thirteen percent of Muslims in the United States who support suicide attacks in some circumstances, and these two cases, one following so closely on the other, raise all the more urgently the questions of what American officials can and must do in order to minimize the possibility that one day, one plot like these will succeed.



These plots show again that one need not be a member of Al-Qaeda or some other recognized terror organization in order to plan a jihad terror attack. All one needs is the conviction that the supreme deity wants those who believe in him to commit mass murder, and will reward them for doing so. Assuring us that the vast majority of believers don’t believe this is not enough, as long as that majority does little or nothing to root out the minority who do believe it, and to resist the spread of such views. After the Fort Dix plot was uncovered, mainstream media coverage was much preoccupied with Muslim fears of “backlash” attacks that in reality never materialized, and not preoccupied at all with asking Muslims what they intended to do to make sure that Muslims in the U.S. were taught against the jihad ideology that many of them manifestly hold. About the Pew Research Center poll of American Muslims that showed significant support for suicide bombing and Al-Qaeda, I wrote last week:



Almost six years after 9/11, no pressure is coming either from the mainstream media or law enforcement for Muslim groups in the United States to institute comprehensive educational programs against jihadism in their mosques and schools. This poll, however, shows how much such programs are needed – as well as a national debate about how these groups should be regarded if they refuse or fail to implement such programs.



The JFK plot only makes those programs, and that debate, all the more urgent. Russell Defreitas hated his adoptive land and believed that Islam commanded him to bring it to its knees. What was he learning in the mosque in Brooklyn where he believed he had seen the government informant before? Do any law enforcement officials know the answer to that question? As long as American Muslim groups do not formally renounce the jihad ideology of Islamic supremacism that would destroy American Constitutional government and replace it with Shari’a, and do not expel those who refuse to renounce these beliefs in word and deed, American mosques must be monitored, and American Muslims called to account for harboring this menace.

But before these and other necessary actions can be taken, some mainstream media figures will have to have the courage to pierce the fog of political correctness that envelops us and call for such measures. Those who are looking for an opportunity to demonstrate their courage and patriotism have a superb chance to do so now.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Still A World War
By Alan W. Dowd
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 5, 2007

For anyone who cared to notice, the Associate Press reported on Saturday that US warships struck Islamist terror bases along the coast of Somalia. The nascent anti-Islamist government of Somalia had requested US support during another round of fighting against foreign jihadists, who are pouring into the broken country from as close as Eritrea and as far away as the US and the UK. An unidentified US destroyer answered the request with a volley of cruise missiles. The New York Times reports that US Special Operations units were even involved in aspects of the battle.


It is just the latest reminder that whatever you want to call this bloodied band of peoples under threat from the jihadists—the West, the liberal world, modernity, civilization—is engaged in a world war. Regardless of what the House Armed Services Committee says or decrees or wishes or hopes, this really is a global war on terror—because the jihadists are waging a global war on civilization. But don’t take my work for it.



The Navy delivered its counterstrikes on the Horn of Africa as US forces fight pitched battles against the remnants of al Qaeda and reconstituted elements of the shattered Taliban regime in Afghanistan; wage a bloody counterinsurgency against a toxic amalgam of internal and external, Islamist and Baathist, Sunni and Shiite militants in Iraq; and cruise up and down the Persian Gulf to deter what may be an un-deterrable madman in Iran.



Closer to home—and far too close for comfort—federal authorities announced they foiled a plan to blow up jet-fuel tanks and a fuel pipeline at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The plot was hatched by terrorists with links to “an international network of Muslim extremists,” their goal to cripple JFK and set off a chain reaction of explosions across some 40 miles of pipeline. A US law-enforcement official called it “one of the most chilling plots imaginable.”



Revelations of the conspiracy to blow up JFK come to light just a month after the FBI thwarted a plot by Islamic extremists to assault the US Army base at Ft. Dix in New Jersey and kill “as many soldiers as possible.” Perhaps most worrisome of all, both cells included American citizens. (Of course the good news is that federal law enforcement authorities prevented these attacks. For all their fumbles and failures, the feds are doing something right.)



Likewise, “homegrown” jihadists have launched or nearly launched attacks in allied nations such as the UK (recall the 7/7 attacks and foiled attacks on Canary Wharf, the Houses of Parliament, Windsor Castle and Heathrow Airport), Germany (recall last year’s foiled plan to bomb German rail lines), the Philippines (Australia and Manila just inked an agreement to expand counterterrorism operations in and around Mindanao, where US Special Ops units are believed to be conducting an ongoing hunt for the Abu Sayyaf leadership, which is linked to al Qaeda), and Canada (recall the stunning plan to literally decapitate Canada’s government in 2006).



While we’re in this hemisphere, the State Department concluded in 2006 that Venezuela had “virtually ceased its cooperation in the global war on terror,” adding that Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez was tolerating terrorists on his territory and seeking closer relations with Iran. In fact, Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Venezuela in late 2006.



In January 2004, concerns about Islamic terrorists based in Central America grounded flights inbound from Mexico City. Later that year, as CBS News reported, the Honduran government announced that al Qaeda was trying to recruit Hondurans for embassy attacks. The threat was serious enough for Honduras to declare a “national terror alert” that summer. In addition, US officials believe terror-cell leader Adnan el Shukrijumah met with leaders of an El Salvadoran gang that specializes in smuggling illegals into the United States.



In short, al Qaeda and other jihadists are attempting to gain a toehold in Latin America, or perhaps more accurately, a launching pad.



Back in the main theater of this global war—the Middle East—Israeli forces continue their endless war against rocket-wielding imams and time-bomb terrorists who kill innocents for Allah or sport or whatever reason they use to rationalize their atrocities.



Contrary to what the radicals, revisionists and relativists say, this is not a war against Islam or an attempt by the West to subjugate Islamic people. In fact, it is Muslims who are doing most of the killing and bleeding and dying in this war. Consider the Iraqi and Afghan fronts, where self-style holy men justify and promote the slaughter of their fellow Muslims by the dozens and hundreds.



Consider Lebanon’s second war in as many summers. Last year, it was Hezbollah and their Iranian paymasters who were to blame for the suffering. This year, the Lebanese army is fighting a desperate and courageous battle against yet another branch of Islamic terror—the al-Qaeda-linked Fatah al Islam. Likewise, the Ethiopian military and what exists of the Somali military are fighting other branches of global jihadism in Africa.

In short, as some of us have argued for the better part of a decade, Iraq is just one theater, one battle, in a truly global war. The sooner Americans come to a consensus recognizing this reality, the better. And if we fail to do so by quitting here or there, by ceding one front or another to the enemy, by repeating the mistakes made in Beirut in 1983-84 or Mogadishu in 1993-94, the front will shift back to our own shores.

Ellie