And this is not a liberation war, a war like the second world war. (By the way: neither is it an “oil war”, as the pacifists who never yell against Saddam or Bin Laden maintain in their rallies. Americans do not need Iraqi oil.) It is a political war. A war made in cold blood to respond to the holy war that the enemies of the West declared upon the West on September 11.
It is also a prophylactic war. A vaccine, a surgery that hits Saddam because, among the various focuses of cancer, Saddam is the most obvious and dangerous one.
He is also the obstacle (Bush and Blair and their advisers believe) that once removed will permit them to redesign the map of the Middle East as the British and the French did after the crash of the Ottoman empire.
To redesign it and to spread a Pax Romana, pardon, a Pax Americana, where freedom and democracy reign; where nobody bothers us any longer with attacks and massacres. Where everybody can prosper and live happily as in the fairy tales — nonsense. Freedom is not a gift, like a piece of chocolate, and democracy cannot be imposed with armies.
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The modern concepts of freedom and democracy are totally unrelated to the ideological texture of Islam, and totally opposed to the despotism and tyranny of theocratic states. In that ideological texture, it is God who commands, it is God who decides the destiny of man, and men are not the children of God: they are his subjects, his slaves. Inshallah — as God wants — inshallah.
Thus in the Koran there is no room for individual judgment, individual choice and freedom. There is no room for a regime that, at least in law, is based on equality and universal suffrage. In fact Muslims do not understand these modern concepts. They refuse them and hope to erase them from our lives by invading and conquering us.
Upheld by their stubborn optimism, the same optimism for which at Fort Alamo they fought so well and all died slaughtered by Santa Anna, Americans think that in Baghdad they will be welcomed as they were in Rome, Florence and Paris. “They’ll cheer us, throw us flowers,” a Washington egghead joyfully said to me.
That hoped-for bouquet is where "Islam means peace" will come back to haunt us. Our leaders do not correctly perceive our enemy, and do not recognize the clash of civilizations that has been thrust upon us by the devoted followers of Mohammed.
The founder of Islam was a butcher and a conqueror, who enslaved millions. Can true Muslims be any different? Those who emulate Mohammed will always be with us, so long as Islam remains a viable force. If we do not know our enemy, how can we hope to prevail? How can we win the War, if we're unprepared to define the peace?
If we fight under the delusion that "Islam means peace," we will settle for a peace that means Islam. There can be no victory without the unconditional surrender of our enemy. Without that surrender, all our bugles and drums and parades will be nothing more than vain charades... and we will have once again put off the real war for a later, and more bloody day.
