Victor Davis Hanson released another winner of an article today in which he nails the jihad apologists of the world:
In speeches leading up to the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, President Bush focused on the dangers of Islamic fascism and the efforts, both at home and abroad, to combat them. In response, his election-year rivals fired back that we are no safer than we were five years ago. According to them, we are mired in Afghanistan and Iraq, and have sacrificed our civil liberties while exaggerating the global terrorist threat.
But al-Qaida is not so conflicted. While American politicians tore into each other, Al Jazeera calmly released a video of Osama bin Laden from before 9/11. Given the timing of the tape’s release, you could call it bin Laden’s alternative commemoration of the mass murder of 3,000 Americans.
The film reveals bin Laden strutting through his Afghanistan terrorist camp — and blessing those who were preparing the 9/11 suicide attacks. Other top men in al-Qaida appear, and at least two of the hijackers boast of their planned jihad in Manhattan.
There is a lot to relearn from the footage that we have apparently forgotten in these last five years.
Let’s start with what actually prompted 9/11. Today, according to a Scripps Howard poll, more than a third of Americans suspect the attacks were an inside job (with federal officials either helping the hijackers or at least knowing about them in advance). Meanwhile, a majority of our Canadian neighbors believe U.S. policies were a primary cause of the attack.
But what does the newly released tape tell us? Was 9/11 a result of American support for Israel? Or the presence of our troops in Saudi Arabia, or the U.N. embargo of Iraq — the grievances that bin Laden himself in 1998 cited as grounds for murdering Americans?
Not according to two of the captioned “Martyrs of the Manhattan Raid,” who spoke freely in this newly released tape. Saudi nationals Hamza al-Ghamdi (who helped crash Flight 175 into the South Tower of the World Trade Center) and Wail al-Shehri (who joined Mohammed Atta on Flight 11 to topple the North Tower) mostly voiced anger over Western violence against Muslims in Chechnya and Bosnia (as well as citing furor about Kashmir and the Philippines).
Never mind that the U.S., almost alone among Western countries, criticized Russian tactics in Grozny, and bombed a European Christian country for several weeks to save Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Instead of having any precise claim against America, these killers showed that their hurt arose from their own sense of envy and collective failure — as the now all too familiar references to “being humiliated” and lost honor in the tape attest.
It doesn’t matter what we say or the evidence we produce there will always be apologists for evil. It’s always our fault. Even tho, as Victor pointed out, we were one of the only ones who spoke out against the Russian tactics that so upset the 9/11 attackers.
And then you have 1/3rd of our country who are so looney liberal that they live in a complete emotional world.
Nevermind using any intelligence to view this world they live in, no, its all about “war is bad” “big business is bad” crapola.
As Bruce Bawer points out, these people do not understand our enemy, and do not WANT to understand them for what they really are:
Islamist terrorism continues to be characterized by many as a desperate response to poverty, oppression, and/or Western foreign policies, rather than what it is: a jihad by people who seek to conquer the West as Muhammed did North Africa, subduing infidels and imposing sharia. Only recently did George W. Bush finally confess that we were fighting “Islamic fascists” – only to revert, in the face of criticism, to the empty term “war on terror.”
Some understand the enemy, yet underestimate its capabilities. One’s comfort can be one’s downfall: just as it seemed inconceivable that the Twin Towers could be brought down so easily, so our Western civilization can feel indestructible, and the idea of having to defend it can feel like – well, something out of an old movie. There are few more telling symbols of many young Europeans’ sense of absolute security, their utter unconsciousness of any clear and present threat to their freedom, and the alienness to them of any concept of moral responsibility than the Che t-shirts and Palestinian scarves by which they play at identifying with the perceived glamour of violent revolution against their own civilization.
I see this in the streets of the area I live in all the time. People with Che bumper stickers and shirts, having no real understanding what a evil man this guy was who espoused an evil worldview. But to them it’s “cool” to show off the fact that they support “revolution”…no matter what violence that “revolution” causes.
As Victor points out, we have not been attacked since that terrible day, have taken out a lunatic in Iraq, have freed people living under tyranny in two countries, and are killing or capturing Al-Qaeda leaders by the dozen. All with very very low casualities.
That my friends is called success.
But the left still views it as a failure.

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