The American Spectator

Whenever I or other folks write or even talk about the War on Terror, liberals are quick to deliver their favorite line with the obligatory sneer: “Have you ever served in the military?” When my answer, that I don’t believe in women in the Armed Forces, produces the requisite foaming at the mouth, I follow that up with, “Have you?”

It’s amusing to hear liberals call Bush Administration officials and their supporters “chicken-hawks” day after day, especially when that term literally refers to “hawks that prey on chickens.” Notwithstanding the fact that one need not experience something to have some degree of expertise concerning it — I don’t know many historians who slogged through the Peloponnesian War but there are plenty of experts on it — what makes pacifists and anti-war niks think they’re more informed on matters of war than anyone else?

But experts they are, whose opinions and credentials are unchallenged by the media because they are on the proper side. This week’s edition of the “Chris Matthews Show” was, as usual, both exasperating and comforting: exasperating because of the one-sidedness of the debate, and comforting because anything else would have been shocking on an otherwise tranquil and beautiful Sunday morning.

Led by General Dan Rather, Matthews and his panel of battle-hardened military authorities representing the BBC, NBC News and the New Yorker Regiments, sat in judgment of the topic: “The road to 9/11: who was behind it? What drove the killers? Plus, five years after 9/11, is Al Qaeda a gang or an idea — and can we beat it?”

p>Summing up the glory days of his former seat on the throne of influence, Dan, the former newsman said: br> /p> blockquote> br> I hear time after time, after time, people say, “What the hell is going on here? I’ve lost any sense of what the war is about.” I’m not saying they should feel that way. I’m simply trying to be a reporter and say, that’s the way people feel. br> /blockquote> br> Right. But wasn’t that the plan Dan? To keep the American people in the dark as to who we’re fighting and why? As if to clarify, perky Katty Kay added, “This is an extremely complicated issue. It takes five years of research and a huge book [by one of her co-panelists] to try to understand the motivation of Al Qaeda.”

Well no, not really Katty. Contrary to the Matthews’ crack roundtable assertions, we knew fairly early on “why they hate us.” And it has nothing to do with anything more complicated than this: Al Qaeda and its affiliated groups are sworn to destroy any and all peoples who dare to obey to man-made law rather than submit to their twisted rule of Sharia.

p>And that is why we from time to time — in between planes crashing into buildings, car-bombings, beheadings and other subtle hints — receive charming invitations to convert to Islam, like this most recent one delivered by erstwhile California headbanger Adam Gadahn, aka “Azzam the American”: br>