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Among the Intellectualoids

(Page 2 of 2)

Try this on for size: the flypaper metaphor describes an effective strategy now being used in the hottest theater of the war on terrorism. It's shorthand for "their turf on our terms," which by definition is more desirable than our turf on their terms.

We do well to remember, as Christopher Hitchens does, that the grievances of jihadists predate and transcend Anglo-American war with Saddam Hussein. One online friend of impeccable judgment speculates that the president himself may inadvertently be a kind of insurance policy for American cities, so long as jihadists share the progressive fear that he's crazy enough to drop the hammer on Mecca if Dick Cheney or Karl Rove is provoked too much.

The obvious but under-appreciated point is that Anglo-American military prowess doesn't relieve the rest of us of our duty to be vigilant. Progressive critiques of current policy seem laughable not only because they bring no credible alternative to the table, but because people who distrust or condescend to the martial and conservative culture of the U.S. military almost invariably invest both that military and its commander-in-chief with ridiculous powers, if only to put a respectable veneer on their own abdication of responsibility.

I'm willing to concede that the flypaper metaphor for combat strategy along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers has a problem. As metaphors go, it's too tame. In flattering light, progressive caterwauling of the kind that provoked this essay represents a cry for help, and a rebellion against flypaper's benign image as genteel pest control near the mint juleps in the dog days of summer.

Given the bombings in England, Indonesia, Israel, Iraq, Russia, Spain, and the United States itself, it shouldn't be hard to push progressives to the recognition that we're in a worldwide war on multiple fronts with nonuniformed adversaries whose religious fanaticism neither asks for nor gives any quarter, but many still fail to see that the only coherent response to Islamofascism is Churchillian. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds; we shall fight in the fields and in the streets. Some pundits don't see that, but then conservatives have long maintained that the education, litigation, and medical marijuana lobbies have lots to answer for.

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Education, Business, Religion, Islam, Law, Military, Iraq, Russia, Israel, Fascism