Opaque Lucidity

The Frontline Is Everywhere

The arrest this morning of 21 people in the UK on suspicion of planning to blow up aircraft over the Atlantic reminds us all that we are at war with Islamo-facists, and that while we are on guard more than ever, we will be attacked again. Maybe next year. Maybe today.

The events of today remind me of what so many people (Howard Dean, Hillary Clinton, Michael Moore) have said about Osama Bin Laden. They believe that we have failed to score a victory in the War on Terror because OBL is still on the loose somewhere in the mountains of Pakistan/Afghanistan. Their thinking, I suppose, is that if we had his head on a stake the war would be over and everyone could come home. Or, at least, that’s what they would demand.

This is September 10th thinking, and it’s dangerous. Al Queda and its fellow travelers are not centralized armies that can be defeated by capturing or killing the leadership caste. They are loose, small groups who operate independently and may not have communications with anyone once they receive their seed funding. They are not of one nationality or race and the only thing they have in common is their perversion of Islam and their hatred of the West.

Bin Laden will one day be found, and the world will be better with him no longer on the loose. But it will do little to stop this war. Everyone who is an adult today will probably not live to see a time when the Western world is free from the threat of radical Islamic terror. Victory will only come when that ideology is dead.

As for Dean, Clinton and Moore…well, they’ll never get it because it’s not in their best interests to understand.