Presidential candidate John Edwards tells us the War on Terror is “a bumper sticker, not a plan.” This follows on the heels of the House Armed Services Committee’s decree to stop using “Global War on Terror” and other “colloquialisms.”
In truth, regardless of what Sen. Edwards and his fellows in the House leadership declare or wish, this really is a Global War on Terror—because the jihadists are waging a global war on civilization. The last several days and weeks serve as further evidence of this.
-The Associated Press reported last 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.
-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 last weekend that 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.
-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.
-Likewise, homegrown jihadists have launched or nearly launched attacks in allied nations such as the UK, Germany, the Philippines, and Canada.
-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, which murder and maim peoples of all religions and nationalities.
-Indeed, 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 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.
It’s a pity Sen. Edwards fails to see beyond politics, beyond the bumper stickers.
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