Another classic example of how the mainstream media shapes (or tries to shape) U.S. foreign policy appeared in a recent CNN/USA Today poll. Headlines noted the innocuous, if not banal, finding that 52 percent of Americans wish their troops home “as soon as possible.” Naturally the mainstream media characterized these results as a decline in support for the American war effort. The public’s first response to the survey should have been, “Who doesn’t want our troops home ‘as soon as possible'”? The real story here is that nearly half of Americans say they don’t. As for those in favor of an “immediate pullout,” the percentage is still only 38 percent, according to an underreported Rasmussen Reports’ survey.
Polls commissioned by the mainstream media inevitably refer to the insurgency in Iraq as an ongoing “war,” and not just any war, but one opposed by the majority of Americans. The last time I checked the OED a “war” was something like a series of battles fought by professional soldiers, on a battlefield, in the air, or on the sea. But to report that a majority of Americans oppose the “insurgency” somehow doesn’t make the Bush team look bad enough. Besides, how does one oppose an insurgency save with guns and bullets?
Despite the obvious bias, three-fourths of those polled are not buying the liberals’ logic for troop withdrawal. By all accounts the public is smart enough to know that simply withdrawing U.S. troops will not make them one color code safer — despite what liberals (and militant Muslims) say. In fact, the same Rasmussen survey found that 71 percent of Americans believe that withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq is unlikely to stop terror attacks like this summer’s London bombings.
To sum up: The latest surveys find that only about a third of Americans favor immediate withdrawal (and most of these were influenced short-term by media coverage of the recent Hurricanes), that U.S. withdrawal will do nothing to prevent or deter terrorist attacks and will in fact only make the situation worse.
And yet for the anti-war crowd it is only by giving in to every one of al Qaeda’s demands — pulling our troops, forcing Western oil companies out of all Islamic states, and ending support of those murderous Zionists in Palestine — that alone will melt the Muslim’s cold, cold heart. (Though it will have no affect on Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan and the Frenchman’s abhorrence of America.)
THAT MOST AMERICANS oppose an immediate pullout suggests that they have been brushing up on their current events. To wit: that while most Americans will not regard withdrawing from Iraq as a defeat or surrender, the important point to consider is that al Qaeda will. Americans recognize that the terrorists will regard any American pullout as a total victory, and victories tend to embolden jihadists. It was the Red Army’s humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan that gave Osama bin Laden the idea, the confidence, and the will to press on with his jihad against America and the West.
What would such a pullout look like? Civil and religious war between the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shias would likely ensue. In the resultant power vacuum the fascist Baathists may well regain power (they are certainly bloodthirsty enough). A similar pullout in Saudi Arabia would likely signal open season in Kuwait. Saudi King Abdullah has requested U.S. troops remain in the Land of the Two Holy Sites, certain that without an American presence his kingdom will fall to Wahhabian jihadists within a matter of weeks. That would leave much of the world’s energy in the hands of murderous Baathists and Jihadists. What oil that is left will be controlled by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. If you think the Great Depression was bad, consider the consequences of terrorists and communist dictators holding that large a percentage of the world’s energy resources.
But even if the U.S. pulled every soldier, medic, teacher and human rights worker out of every majority Muslim country, the so-called holy war would carry on unabated. The list of perceived Crusaders’ crimes against Islam is far too long to ever write off. Another of bin Laden’s beefs against the U.S. was the sanctions placed on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Is the West prepared to end all sanctions on rogue Islamic states? The U.S. is now considering sanctions on Iran for continuing its nuclear weapons program. That in itself would be enough reason for another al Qaeda attempt on the Pentagon.
Now comes word that French gendarmes have foiled an Islamic terrorist plot to blow up the Paris Metro. If the liberals were correct in their logic, the terrorists would be prizing and praising the French for refusing to fight in Iraq, for supporting the Palestinians over the Israelis, and for generally being a pain in the U.S.’s arse. Instead a member of an Algerian Islamist organization, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, tells reporters that “France is our number one enemy.”
Nor is this a Western problem alone. Just last week 25 people were killed and scores injured after three bombs exploded on the predominately Hindu island of Bali almost three years to the day that 202 people were murdered in a separate bomb attack. Few of us would have thought that vacation hot spot was high on the list of Muslim holy places, but in fact Indonesia is home to more Muslims than any other country on earth. The local Jemaah Islamiah terrorist organization frequently blow ups cafes, cinemas, and discos, not least because it considers these places immoral, sites of sinful and lustful behavior. Jemaah Islamiah is also seeking to establish a pan-Islamic state that will include Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and the southern Philippines island of Mindanao. Just how will withdrawing from Iraq keep you safe on a Bali beach as you roast peacefully in the sun, a Singapore Sling in hand? How will bugging out of Baghdad protect Russian school children like those butchered last year in Beslan? The key Koranic verse is the one that orders Muslims “to do good and prevent evil,” evil being just about everything Westerners do from praying together, to sunbathing on a beach in Bali. Simply being an infidel is enough of a crime for some jihadists.
Jihad is just another name for permanent war. Currently the bin Ladenists and Jihadists are being kept busy in Iraq planting roadside bombs. If not for Iraq, they would be in Afghanistan creating similar mayhem. If not in Afghanistan they would be in Palestine or Saudi Arabia or Turkey, or yes, America. At least for now we know where they are.
The bin Ladens are in this for the long haul. If the House of Islam has been ineffective for the past couple hundred years it is because it has been so backward and poor it couldn’t afford bombs or flight lessons. This new generation of terrorists is heir to a fortune in oil revenues, or in the case of the bin Ladens, a fortune from construction work funded by oil rich nations like Saudi Arabia. And money makes the world go boom!
If liberals want to end terror attacks and gain the love of Muslims militants, they had better be prepared to surrender to bin Laden and convert to Islam. There is no other way. I wonder how Cindy Sheehan would look in a burka?
