Freedom Loving Conservative

According to a recent article on WorldNetDaily.com intelligence analysts in the U.S Department of Defense have concluded that “most Muslim suicide bombers are in fact students of the Quran who are motivated by its violent commands – making them, as strange as it sounds to the West, “rational actors” on the Islamic stage.”[i]  This conclusion stands in stark contrast to the prevailing wisdom among media elites, academics, Islamic apologists, and most disturbingly, the vast majority of elected Democrats.  In the article their view is presented by Professor Robert A. Pape of the University of Chicago, who is quoted as saying “Suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation rather than a product of Islamic fundamentalism.”

Professor Pape also wrote an op-ed piece in the September 22, 2003 edition of the New York Times in which he postulated that 1) the global phenomenon of (suicide) terror attacks are not religiously motivated; 2) that the current U.S. policy of vigorous military action and the spread of democracy is counter-productive and may cause more attacks against U.S. interests; and 3) that strengthening domestic security measures is the best approach to counter the phenomenon.

He based his hypothesis, in part, on his compilation of statistical data related to the total number of suicide attacks perpetrated globally between the years 1980 and 2001.  His findings indicate that, during this time period the “leading instigator of suicide attacks is the Tamil Tigers in Sri-Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but are adamantly opposed to religion.”  This group, he claims “have committed 75 of the 188 incidents.”[ii]

He cites three main lines of argument in support of his thesis: 1)The fact that “nearly all suicide terror attacks occur as part of organized campaigns, not as isolated or random incidents;” 2) That “liberal democracies are uniquely vulnerable to suicide terrorists;”  and 3) that “suicide terrorist campaigns are directed toward a strategic objective.”[iii]

He concludes his essay by stating that the United States should – to lessen the frequency and mitigate the effects of suicide terror attacks – tighten its border security, reduce its energy dependence, and “abandon its vision of empire and allow the United Nations to take over the political and economic institutions in Iraq.”[iv]

Professor Pape’s theory is flawed in several respects:  He bases his theory that suicide terror attacks are motivated by strategic and political goals rather than religion on strictly statistical grounds and not empirical ones.  Using his research, it is clear that a majority (60%) of suicide attacks perpetrated during the sample period were committed by Islamic fundamentalists, not secular Marxist’s.  He curiously based his theory of suicide terror on a minority of the incidents in the sample (Sri Lanka).  Pape then draws the erroneous conclusion that the “presumed connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism is wrongheaded, and it may be encouraging domestic and foreign policies that are likely to worsen America’s situation.”[v] He proceeds to formulate his recommendations for U.S. security based on the actions of an entity (the Tamil Tigers) that had never attacked American interests, while seemingly ignoring the fact that nearly every terror attack on the U.S. was committed by Islamic radicals.

This is akin to the U.S. basing its post December 7, 1941 foreign policy on the actions of the Soviet Union rather than those of imperial Japan and fascist Germany.  All were clearly belligerent powers, but the Soviets then, like the Tamil Tigers today, were not our immediate concern and had never attacked the U.S.  In contrast, radical Islamic terrorists, like the WWII era Japanese and German’s, have attacked the U.S., her interests, and allies scores of times since 1980.  It is simply irresponsible to predicate national security strategy on the wrong enemy.

In his analysis, Pape ignores the fact that as Samuel Huntington has said “Islam has bloody borders.”[vi]  The primary motivating factor that encourages Islamic terrorism is Islam itself.  Their goal is not merely “the expulsion of American troops from the Persian Gulf,”[vii] as Pape asserts, but as Daniel Pipes has written:

“As London’s Daily Telegraph puts it ‘problems in Iraq and Afghanistan each added a new pebble to the mountain of grievances that militant fanatics have erected.’ Yet neither is decisive to giving up one’s life for the sake of killing others.  In nearly all cases, the Jihadi terrorists have a patently self-evident ambition: to establish a world dominated by Muslims, Islam, and Islamic law, the Shari’a.  Or, again to cite the Daily Telegraph, their ‘real project is the extension of the Islamic territory across the globe, and the establishment of a worldwide Caliphate founded on shari’a law.’”[viii]

As Mia Bloom of the University of Cincinnati has stated “Pape’s model correctly identifies the motivations of nationalist-inspired suicide terrorists; however it does not fully explain why religious groups (with goals beyond territorial demands) might use it.”[ix]

His emphasis on the vulnerability of liberal democracies is also problematic.  In the words of Mia Bloom: “In instances when illiberal authoritarian regimes have gone head to head against opposition groups (before their strategies had advanced to include suicide terror,) the groups are eliminated.”[x]  And as Bloom points out, the examples Pape cites in support of this contention (Sri Lanka, Russian Chechnya, and the West Bank) were hardly liberal democracies.

Pape asserts that the West should take a purely reactive posture by erecting walls and increasing immigration controls and by pulling American forces out of Iraq, where he asserts, much like the recently leaked excerpt from the National Intelligence Estimate, their presence drives the recruitment of terrorists intent on killing Americans.    However prior to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan by coalition forces, U.S. civilians and interests were already the frequent targets of Islamic terror attacks in spite of decades of U.S. policy stressing this type of passive, law-enforcement emphasis to anti-terror strategy; since then, the attacks on the U.S. have been against not defenseless civilians but against military targets with the capacity to defend themselves.

Pape prescribes that “the best approach for states under fire is probably to focus on their own domestic security while doing what they can to see that the least militant forces on the terrorists’ side build a viable state of their own.”[xi]  This recommendation directly contradicts his derisive criticism of the U.S.’s “visions of empire.”  The U.S. is not amassing a global empire by temporarily occupying two former state sponsors of terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan and incubating representative democracies in their place; we are, in fact seeing to it that “the least militant forces…build a viable state of their own.”

Robert Pape’s analysis of suicide terrorism is flawed because he stops short of fully explaining the roots of its Islamic manifestation – the primary form of the phenomenon the West now faces.  His recommendations to combat the threat are based largely on the non-Islamic variety of suicide terror – a minority overall and not aimed at the West.  Nevertheless, his emphasis on domestic security measures are reasonable and sound and there is no reason immigration/border controls (and increased energy independence) cannot be part of an overall counter-terror strategy which includes attacking nations and that support terrorism against the West; the two approaches are not mutually exclusive.

The good news is that those most responsible for our protection – the U.S. military, not cloistered academics, seem to have a more realistic grasp of our enemies’ true motivations.

Since the very beginning of recorded history, the region known as the Middle East or Mesopotamia has been embroiled in a state of almost continuous conflict.  The reasons for this legacy of bloodshed are manifold, with each battle having characteristics as varied and unique as the antagonists themselves; however there are certain underlying factors that make this part of the globe particularly fertile ground for conflict.  Among these are its physical environment, strategic geographic location, and the religious fervor of its inhabitants and invaders alike.

The climate of the Middle East, in the words of historian Arthur Goldschmidt, “tends to be hot and dry.  Most parts get some rainfall, but usually in amounts too small or too irregular to support settled agriculture.”[i]  This scarcity of land suitable for development in a region with an arid climate, surrounded by vast deserts, imposing mountains, and a growing and diverse population made competition for its control fierce.

Known to historians as the cradle of civilization, or Fertile Crescent, it is where histories first known settled communities developed.  As heretofore primitive man progressed from the nomadic hunter-gatherer to begin farming and cultivating the land and domesticating animals, the fertile river valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (in modern-day Iraq), and the Nile river valley in Egypt, land well suited to agriculture and grazing of livestock, were the ideal location for permanent settlement, and soon became bustling metropolises.

As the populations of these urban centers swelled, their growing complexity and vulnerability required organization and leadership.  As its rich land was irrigated and cultivated, food surpluses provided the privileged in these communities with leisure time with which to think, build, innovate, and invent.  The resulting technological advancements (the wheel, tool-making, metallurgy, writing) made diversification of the economy possible; and the scarcity of stone, metal, and wood, all essential for farming, building, and defense, made trade essential. This vigorous economic activity and trade created great wealth in these early cities.  It also required a great deal of cooperation between people as the emerging division of labor (farmers, herdsmen, artisans, etc.) made neighbor increasingly dependent upon neighbor. The static location, sedentary lifestyles, and relative wealth of its people made them easy and inviting targets for raids by nearby nomadic peoples in search of booty and slaves, and invaders from the steppes of central Asia seeking conquest.  These factors, along with the technological and logistical complexity of irrigation projects and collective defense led to the development of formal government structures.[ii]

The governments of these early Mesopotamian cities, such as those of Sumer, histories first known great empire in the region, were initially led by the priestly class, because, as historian John Keegan points out “mythic intercession with the Divine by the priests progressively invested them with political power.”[iii]  These priests presently evolved into kings whose administrative, economic, military, and spiritual functions became absolute political power.  And as Keegan further states “Sumerian cities early began to dispute among themselves over boundaries, water, and grazing rights … as a result, warfare increasingly dominated Sumerian life.”[iv]  Battles for control of scarce natural resources soon became wars of conquest and empire building by powerful monarchs.

As mankind progressed, advanced civilizations developed in Egypt, Europe, India, and China, and the Middle East became a gateway or transit route between these great cities.  And control of these trade routes became lucrative in its own right through taxation and raiding.  This led rulers from the east and west to periodically expand into this strategic area to protect their merchants or to fill their treasuries with revenue from trade levies.  The wealth thus generated led to the founding of new cities and the raising of new armies and often brought one empire into direct contact with another.  Like the grinding of tectonic plates along fault lines, these encounters would increasingly bring the disparate cultures of east and west together and spark many wars of conquest between them.

Perhaps the earliest example of this clash of civilizations was the great Persian wars of the fifth century B.C.  When the independent city-states of the Greek mainland aided their cousins under Persian rule in Anatolia (modern western Turkey) in revolt, Xerxes, “King of Kings”, ruler of the greatest empire the world had ever known, set out to punish the Athenians by expanding his rule west of the Bosporus strait.  He launched a series of massive invasions of Greece and was dealt stunning defeats at such famous battles as Marathon, Salamis, Plataea, and the heroic, but doomed stand of King Leonidas and his Spartan “three hundred” at the pass of Thermopylae.

These attacks on Greece would serve, in part to inspire the Macedonians under Alexander the Great to respond in kind by invading and crushing Persia in the fourth century B.C., bringing the region, briefly, under Greek rule.

The Sumerian, Persian, and Greek empires are but three among the many powers to dominate the region through the centuries.  The Assyrians, Babylonians, Romans, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols, to name a few, alternately wrested control of the region from its previous overlord; and with it, its accumulated wealth, natural resources, and control of lucrative trade routes.

These trade routes would retain strategic and economic value until the age of European exploration, which was sparked by the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Turks in 1453.  The fall of Constantinople had two immediate and profound effects on the west, and as a result, on the rest of the world: it sent thousands of scholars and learned monks fleeing into western Europe for safety from the rampaging Muslim conquerors, bringing with them a thousand years of accumulated learning and the seeds of the Renaissance; and it necessitated the search for sea-routes which would by-pass the hostile Muslim-controlled land routes through the Middle East.  This effort ultimately led to Columbus’s discovery of the America’s while in search of a westward route to the Far East.  And the global hegemony which accompanied the West’s resurgence during this period, ironically, has enabled them to dominate the Middle East in the centuries since.

In addition to the competition for natural resources, and control of strategic land routes, an even more volatile catalyst to violence and war emerged in the region in the seventh century A.D: religion.  The Prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam, began at this time, a series of military campaigns in the name of Allah, to spread Islam throughout the Arab world.  This mission of Jihad, or holy war, was continued by his successors, or Caliphs, as the Dar-al-Islam (house of Islam) grew in the following centuries to dominate nearly all of the former Christian lands of the Middle East, Asia Minor, North Africa, Spain, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe.  The wave of Islamic conquest into Western Europe was stopped by the Frankish army of Charles Martel, grandfather of Charles the Great, Charlemagne, at the battle of Tours in 732.

As historian Thomas Madden wrote “Unlike Islam, Christianity had no well-defined concept of holy war before the Middle Ages.  Christ had no armies at his disposal, nor did his early followers.”[v] However, in the year 1095, in response to a request for aid from the Eastern Roman emperor Alexius I Comnenus, whose capital was once again under siege by a Muslim army, Pope Urban II, at the Council of Clermont, called on Europe’s Christians to raise an army and aid their beleaguered brethren in the east.  The Pope further urged those who answered his call-to-arms to liberate the Holy Land from its brutal Turk overlords to make safe Christian pilgrimage to the birthplace of Jesus.

The series of campaigns that followed and continued for two centuries have come to be known as the crusades and the reconquista, and were a belated response to four hundred years of organized Muslim jihad warfare against Christendom. The crusades would have a profound effect not only on Middle Eastern history, but on the western way of warfare for centuries to come.  As Keegan wrote, “The conflict resolved the inherent Christian dilemma over the morality of warmaking by transmitting to the West the ethic of holy war, which was thereafter to invest Western military culture with an ideological and intellectual dimension it had thitherto lacked.”[vi]

The Muslim ethic of holy war endures to this day in the Middle East.  With the military supremacy of the ascendant West absolute in modern warfare, pious Muslim fundamentalists seeking martyrdom in jihad have sought a new outlet in the form of Islamic terrorism.  The enduring appeal to jihad can be traced directly to Islam’s holy book, The Koran; seen as the very word of God himself, as revealed to His Prophet, it elevates death in battle for Islam as the most pious act one can perform, and promises rich rewards for martyrs.  Verse 9:19, for example states “Do you pretend that he who gives drink to the pilgrims and pays a visit to the Sacred Mosque is as worthy as the man who believes in God and the Last Day, and fights for God’s cause?…Those that have embraced the faith, and left their homes, and fought for God’s cause with their wealth and with their persons, are held in higher regard by God.  It is they who shall triumph.  Their Lord has promised them mercy from Himself, and His pleasure and gardens of eternal bliss where they shall dwell forever.”[vii] Many other verses also guarantee paradise for those killed in jihad.

Today’s Middle East is still embroiled in conflict.  The coalition war vs. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the remnants of his regime, and Islamic terrorists; the Arab-Israeli conflict; Iranian and Syrian state sponsorship of terrorism; sectarian violence between competing Muslim sects, each considered by the others to be infidels or apostates, against whom it is a Muslim duty to wage jihad; Iranian pursuit of a nuclear weapon and with it the ability to “wipe Israel off the map’, as its leader has promised.

All of these conflicts can trace their roots, in whole or in part, to the three root causes of conflict responsible for most of the endemic violence that has plagued the region for many thousands of years.  And ultimately, if one is to believe in prophesy as written in the book of Revelations, Armageddon (Rev 16:16), the site of the great penultimate struggle between the forces of good and evil, is believed by many scholars to be the ancient city of Megiddo in Israel.  This city sits astride a strategic land route between Egypt and Syria, and has been the site of more battles in recorded history than any other. (Most recently in WWI, where the Turks and British clashed) It is, according to prophecy, in this most war-torn place in the globe’s bloodiest region where the Middle East’s and the world’s final battle will take place.

The Middle East today is, as it was throughout its history, ruled with an iron fist by a motley collection of monarchs, dictators, tyrants, and theocrats. (With the exception of secular Turkey, Jewish Israel, and the embryonic democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan)  This legacy of tyranny includes an intellectual and economic stagnation, which has led to what historian Bernard Lewis has called “a downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, poverty and oppression.” [i]And when coupled with the Quranic imperative for jihad, this combustible cocktail has resulted in the modern-day scourge of Islamic terrorism, and war, once again, with the West.  The sad plight of the people of the region is no mere accident of history; nor is it a legacy of colonialism, or Western imperialism.  It is, in fact, the inevitable result of fourteen centuries of adherence to the dictates of the revelations of the Quran, the actions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (hadith), and his early successors, or Caliphs  (the sunna).  The principal cause of this malaise is Islamic fundamentalism. Islam is defined as the absolute submission to the will of God.

The Quran, according to Islamic tradition, is the eternal, infallible word of God, which was revealed to the last of the Prophets, Muhammad, by the Angel Gabriel in 610 AD. The Quran, along with the sunna form the basis of sharia or the Holy Law of Islam.  In the earliest days of Islam the Ulama, or Muslim jurists, debated the meanings of the Quran and hadith to emerge at a consensus of believers, or ijma.  According to Sunni (some 80% of all Muslims) doctrine this period of ijtihad, or the use of reasoning or opinion with respect to Islamic law, was closed in around 900 A.D.;[ii] thus the sharia as it stood at that time is the sole source of law recognized by Islam today; no room is left for human innovation, compromise, or debate.  The very idea of an elected body of Legislators enacting laws outside of sharia is anathema to any strict adherent to the faith.

The Prophet Muhammad, the rightly guided servant of God, was himself a despot who served as both spiritual guide and self-appointed head of state; after his death, historian Arthur Goldschmidt points out “Almost all rulers succeeded by either heredity or nomination; no one thought of letting the people elect them.”[iii]  The concept of self-government, being incompatible with Islamic doctrine and unknown to Arab culture, the people of the Muslim Middle East were, and are at the mercy of whatever strongman seizes power in each state.  It is demonstrable that there is a directly proportional relationship between strict adherence to Islamic law and a commensurate lack of individual liberty.  One need only compare the freedom and the trappings of modernity in strictly secular-Islamic Turkey to the repression and backwardness of the recently deposed hard-line Islamic Taliban in Afghanistan to see the effects of fundamentalist Islam on individual liberty.

While there is a lack of political liberty generally under sharia, the plight of women under Islamic law is decidedly worse.  According to Goldschmidt “Muslims may worship anywhere, but men are encouraged to do so publicly as a group; women usually worship at home.”[iv]  Since the Mosque is the only forum for unfettered political discourse, women, as a practical matter are automatically disadvantaged.  Worse still, the Quaran- the very basis of Islamic society – explicitly emasculates women, placing them at the mercy of men.  One example is sura 4:34 which states “Men have authority over women because God has made one superior over the other…Good women are obedient…as for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and beat them.”[v]  The lack of women’s rights under Islamic law, while unjust in its own right, has the practical effect of removing more than half of the productive population from the work force, academia, and government putting those societies at a direct disadvantage relative to the West.

If Islamic fundamentalism leads to the subjugation of women and political autocracy, then it contributes also to the intellectual and hence economic stagnation of Islamic society; in fact, these very phenomena were cited by the United Nations’ “Arab Human Development Report”, released in 2002, and written by a distinguished group of Arab intellectuals, as the main reasons the Arab world is “lagging behind” advanced nations.[vi] Middle Eastern, Islamic civilization was at its height during the Middle Ages while Western-European Christendom was gripped in its so-called “dark age”.  While the relative ascendancy of Islamic culture at this time is debatable, (many of its achievements during this period were actually Byzantine Christian or the work of Jews and Christians living in Islamic lands) there is no doubt that it was, at a minimum comparable to that of Christendom.  The ensuing centuries, however have seen Middle Eastern cultures languish while the West advanced by leaps and bounds due mainly to its heritage of rationality and the fact that, as Victor Davis Hanson puts it “our universities are free, our governments elected and tolerant, our people welcome to choose any religion or none, and our schools are secular and meritocratic rather than fundamentalist and tribal.”[vii]  Education in an Islamic state, in contrast, tends to consist of madrasas that focus almost exclusively on memorization and recital of the Quran and propagandist vilification of the west. It is an oft-repeated axiom that Islam is a religion of tolerance; it manifestly is not.

Under Islamic law the treatment of non-Muslims is even worse than that of women; as Lewis puts it “Tolerance may not be extended to those who deny the unity or existence of God-to atheists and polytheists.  These, when conquered must be given the choice of conversion or death which later might be remitted to slavery.”[viii]  Jews and Christians, or what the Quran calls “People of the Book” fare somewhat better under sharia, but are hardly equal; by virtue of sura 9:29 of the Quran they are assigned the status of dhimmi, and as such are to be fought “until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued.”[ix]  In practice dhimmi, as Lewis points out “were not allowed to forget their inferiority.”  Among many other restrictions and humiliations, they were forced to pay a special tax, or jizya; could not testify before Muslim courts; could not marry Muslim women; were required to wear distinctive clothing; could not ride horses or carry weapons; and could not build new churches.[x]

Free societies are predicated on the concept of equality under law.  Under Islamic law only male Muslims are equal. Another popular label applied to Islam is “religion of peace”; but as Lewis states, referring to Muhammad and his successors, “They were almost continuously at war-first against the pagan Quraysh, and then after the death of the Prophet, in wars of conquest.”[xi]  The Quran itself contains scores of verses that command the faithful to commit violence and make war or jihad until all people accept the true faith or the suzerainty of their Muslim overlords.  It even has verses that stipulate how to divide the booty won in battle.  These verses are not historical narratives of past engagements, but rather mandates for right behavior in God’s service.  The verse of the sword in Sura 9:5, for example, states, “slay the idolaters wherever you find them.  Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them.” [xii] This verse was among several cited by the terrorist Osama bin Laden in his Sermon for the Feast of the Sacrifice in which he calls September 11, 2001 “that blessed Tuesday.”[xiii]  

Some, such as Iranian scholar Amir Taheri, argue thatthose who quote the Quran to justify violence and oppression have hijacked Islam to achieve political ends.[xiv]  Taheri calls this “neo-Islam”- a political movement, not an expression of religion; however, in Islam, there is no distinction between religion and politics.  In fact the actions of many terrorists and tyrants are quite consistent with the actions of the Prophet and the traditions of Islamic law.  After the famous battle of Badr, for example, the head of a man named Abu Jahl was presented to the Prophet, who then “gave thanks to God.”[xv]  During the same battle, a man named Uqba was captured, bound, and brought before the Prophet.  Uqba begged for mercy imploring of his captor “But who will look after my children, o Muhammad?” The Prophet responded “Hell!” and ordered the prisoner killed.[xvi]  If the Prophet was divinely inspired in all he did, as Islamic doctrine holds, then is not the leader of Al-Queda in Iraq, Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi truly serving his God when he saws off the head of a bound infidel captive such as Nick Berg? To overlook, as Taheri suggests, the exhortations to violence, subjugation, slavery, and intolerance found in the Quran would create an impossible paradox; Muslims are not given a line-item veto with which to cherry-pick tolerant Quranic verses, while dismissing others as mere relics of a by-gone era.  If the Quran is the perfect word of God, as Islam holds, then such discrimination would amount to apostacy, punishable by death under Islamic law; otherwise this act, taken to its logical conclusion would fatally compromise the validity of the Quran, exposing Muhammad as a false Prophet.  (Would God have revealed some untruths to a true Prophet?)  This exercise in rationalizing the Quran is thus self-invalidating.

What, then hath Islam wrought?  In short, a natural inclination towards despotism in government; indoctrination in education; inequality in fact; regression in intellectual pursuits; a pervasive pathology of victim hood and hopelessness which breeds resentment; and a handy outlet for pent-up rage: violent jihad against the west.   If the nations of the Middle East wish to emerge from their current dark age, they must follow Turkey’s lead and explicitly marginalize Islam, removing its retrograde teachings from the functions of a secular, modern government, which will serve all citizens justly and equally.

In a recent New York Post column the erstwhile conservative Maggie Gallagher pledged her allegiance to Senator John McCain in his bid to end what he calls the torturing of prisoners held by American forces.  This abuse, he says, should be remedied by forbidding any agent of the U.S. government from engaging in “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.”

This is but the latest in a long string of issues on which the “maverick” senator has sharply and sanctimoniously rebuked conservatives.  These self-righteous policy crusades are no more than cynical pandering to Beltway media elites.  In a city renowned for its hyper-ambitious, self-serving politicians, John McCain’s recent obsessions expose him as first among equals.

On one hand he deprives American citizens of their clearly enumerated 1^st amendment privileges (McCain-Feingold) and now with the other he wants to expand the 8^th amendment (proscription of cruel and unusual punishment) to protect Islamo-fascist socio-paths.  In this current debate his positions would be merely irritating were they not so grievously dangerous.  The vague and subjective language McCain proposes and Gallagher endorses does no less than help Al-Queda re-write its training manual to aid terrorists in frustrating U.S. interrogators. (Indeed, the Al-Queda training manual found in England in 2002 instructs captured terrorists to make allegations of torture against the “security services.”)  In so doing he succeeds also in shifting international attention away from the monsters cutting off the heads of little girls (whose only crime consisted of attending a Catholic school in a Muslim country) and onto U.S. military and law enforcement personnel who not only risk their lives but must now also worry about prosecution and trumped-up civil-rights violation charges.

As if right on cue, Saddam Hussein is now accusing U.S. military personnel of beating and torturing him.  It is, alas, not surprising that John McCain would be singing from the same sheet of music as congressional Democrats, what is insidious, however is that not only has the butcher of Baghdad joined their choir, but that the hymnal from which they sing is our enemies training manual.  Whoever made the observation that politics make strange bedfellows could not have imagined the bed consisted of a spider hole.

Maggie Gallagher, for her part, continuously uses the word torture, which is already illegal under both U.S. law (18 USC sec 2340A) and international treaty. (Geneva Convention, Convention against torture UNGA 12-10-1984)  What are really at issue are interrogation techniques that confuse, disorient, and discomfort terrorists to make them more susceptible to questioning; nobody is advocating or condoning torture.  Yet bizarrely, Gallagher morally equates these techniques to forced abortions in China.

She also refers to the “strange code of morality” which would allow “the killing of a terrorist but not his stressful questioning to prevent further murders…” as Christianity.  As any student of Christian theology knows, St. Augustine’s “Just War Doctrine” states, among other things: “the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.”  Now, admittedly, I’m no mathematician or theologian, but by my calculations making a blood thirsty, mass-murdering terrorist stay awake for 24 hours in a

cold, dark room with a bra on his head is slightly less evil than letting several thousand innocent Americans be incinerated in an imminent terrorist attack.

As one of countless New Yorkers who lost friends on 9/11, I’ll conclude by quoting George Orwell: “If you hamper the war effort on one side, you automatically help out the other.”  Senator McCain and Maggie Gallagher should focus their righteous indignation on our enemies and not on those responsible for our protection.