Reaching Across the Aisle

I am a proud veteran of the US Army's 7th Infantry Division, Light, a Ronald Reagan Republican, and a card-carrying member of the vast, right-wing conspiracy. There are shades of grey in my political opinions, but for the most part I stand the line with the Republican Party. That's why it comes as no small surprise to me that I am so enamored with my current girlfriend. She's a liberal democrat, with a cat named Mao, who thinks that my right wing, meat eating, military t-shirt wearing, SUV driving lifestyle is anathema to all that is good and pure in the world. In fact, she is in direct opposition to 90% of that which I hold dear. Believe me when I say that Matlin and Carville have nothing on us, and yet, something about us works surprisingly well.

In the current political climate it is not unusual to have friends and family on separate sides of nearly every issue. Heated discussions erupt over dinner tables and through closed bathroom doors all across the country, probably more often than any of us like to think. Recently, my inamorata and I were strolling lazily down South Street in Philadelphia when a long-haired, DNC t-shirt and Birkenstock wearing, self professed Socialist approached us about donating to the Cause. Apparently, we republicans, who are responsible for all of the world's ills, need to be combated at the grass-roots level, and this "peaceful warrior" was part of the legion sallying forth to do so. I informed him that I was on the opposing team and stepped away, but the communist in my ladylove would not let her pass without at least some street-level commiseration. I watched, with no little amusement, as they decried the malfeasance of the evil republican machine. When she had sympathized enough with her kindred spirit, she grasped my hand in hers and we went upon our merry way.

We have had two more than irate arguments, each of which resulted in one of us refusing to speak to the other. One concerned immigration, and one the veracity of the reasons for going to war in Iraq. I would love to be able to tell you that we found a middle ground, or listened with an open mind to each other's position, but in these cases we did not do much more than fume at each other. In that, we seem to be a nearly perfect microcosm for the country as a whole. There is some overlap of political consideration. After all, 90% of politics is local, but on a wide variety of issues we will seemingly never agree. In my mind this makes her naive to the notion that there are carnivores loose in the world who would do us harm. To her, I am simply a lost, misguided soul.

In the end, for us, it all comes down to good, old-fashioned boy/girl stuff. I love her gentle touch and she swoons at my kiss. She champions me and I hold doors for her. She laughs at my jokes and I listen to her when she speaks, even if it is the bottom of the ninth with two out. She recently received a new credit card and, when they did not have available the emblem for the college where she teaches (yes she is part of academia in addition to everything else), she chose instead the symbol for my first love: the New York Yankees. Lest you think she has somehow come back from the dark side due to me, you should know she has, of late, decided to cheer for France in the World Cup. She even attempted to trick me into drinking Evian last night. In fact, she recently developed the tactic of using t-shirts of mine she finds offensive as sleep wear, assuming that this will cut down on my ability to sport them. I guess she does not realize that seeing her in an "I Love Halliburton" t-shirt, whatever the reason, cheers me to no end.

Life is a strange and wondrous thing. It is fraught with strife and turmoil, beauty and love. It alternately angers and exhilarates me. I am amused and aghast, seemingly every day. Why then should my closest relationship be any different? Seen in the context of life as a whole, shouldn't we all be "sleeping with the opposition", as it were? Isn't close proximity to those who disagree with us the only way to affect change? If we are going to solve any of the problems currently bedeviling the country, do we not have to start with discussions on a personal level? All liberals are socialists, and all socialists are communists, but since my vegetarian (of course) sweetheart was persuaded to eat a BLT (on white bread, no less) for dinner the other night, can a boycott of the hippie bastion of Whole Foods be far behind? So, the end result of dating the other side is bringing them over to the tent where, hopefully, they will stay for barbecue, and who knows, maybe even cast, under protest no doubt, a vote for McCain in '08.

Death of A Salesman

The death merchant, known as the Prince to Osama bin Laden, is dead. His safe house destroyed by two 500lb bombs, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq lived for 52 minutes before expiring. The man who believed it acceptable to cut off the heads of those he deemed apostates suffered nowhere near enough to atone for the acts of terror he both committed and inspired. Die he did though, and the world is better off for it. Alone in my living room at 4:00am last Thursday morning, I cheered the news that Musab Abu al-Zarqawi had been killed by US forces. I cheered not only because one of the most vile, murderous, loathsome, evil creatures ever spawned had received his just due, but because his death is sure to have lasting effects, out of context with the death of one man, on the global war on terror.

Much has been made recently of the notion that his particular cell of Al-Qaeda was small, and barely more than a regional player. Pundits from far and wide have weighed in to pontificate on how this will have little to no impact on the war in Iraq, much less the global War on Terror. What is neglected in that opinion is the charismatic, iron-fisted nature of Zarqawi. He ran Al-Qaeda in Iraq with a no nonsense attitude that brooked no dissent. His goal of repelling the infidels from the Middle East was to be accomplished three ways: first, he was an instigator of a rabid, radical Islam that demanded the faithful attack the US and its allies at all points of the globe; second, he trained terrorists in Iraq, (some 300 according to Jordanian security forces), who were then sent back to their home countries to await the time when fomenting terror could exact the most casualties; and third, to attack US forces himself whenever and wherever he could.

His handiwork has been seen in Jordan and in Chechnya. Western intelligence forces confirm that dozens of young, militant Muslim men have been intercepted on their way to fight in Iraq, or stopped while planning to do so. His death, if nothing else, momentarily arrests that flow. His successor, allegedly named yesterday, does not yet hold the charismatic sway among the radicals that Zarqawi did. In the internecine fighting that is sure to develop, considering the vacuum he left behind, his force will be broken into factions and weakened through death, attrition and neglect. When these new factions rise up to make names for themselves they will be forced to crawl out from the cracks that currently shelter them, and it is then that US military force can make its mark. More will be killed, and the remnants will be that less able to wage war.

It is not simply that he led what has been termed a splinter group of Al-Qaeda. Zarqawi was poised to challenge bin Laden directly for, if not operational control, then spiritual control of the worldwide network that is Al-Qaeda. Bin Laden does not specifically order many attacks, but he inspires a great number; one need only look to the recently uncovered plot in Canada to see aspects of both men. To the young would be jihadists Zarqawi, not bin Laden, exemplified the current fighting spirit. Bin Laden, while still revered as a sheik, is seen more as the elder statesman, with Zarqawi as the Islamic warrior on the frontlines. His death, then, leaves the movement without a warrior prince in the mold of Darius. Someone that could physically take the throne from the heretics and infidels is suddenly absent, and no talk of virgins and martyrdom can replace that.

Surely, Zarqawi's death is not the end of anything. In fact, it is sure to spawn a spate of violence that will spike in the coming weeks. What his death changes though, is the dynamic of the conflict. By pushing the advantage, US and Iraqi military forces have a narrow window in which to turn the tide against the less experienced members of not only Al-Qaeda in Iraq, but the network as a whole. It is time to begin the fight we should have started years ago, namely one of no quarter asked, none given. Special Operations forces have started that directive pointedly. Some three dozen raids on suspected terrorist hideouts have been carried out since Zarqawi was killed. It is time to send the message that the sleeping giant is awake. Putting Zarqawi's head on a pike alongside the road to Baghdad may be too much to ask of the Iraqi and coalition forces, but, to take a page from Gen. Black Jack Pershing, we could send a more poignant message. We should, quite publicly, butcher a hog and wrap Zarqawi's remains in its skin, before unceremoniously dumping his body in an unmarked grave. We should then announce that this is the fate that awaits any radical Muslim who attacks us, or our allies. This would directly address terrorists all over the world. You can still play the game, if you wish, but no virgins nor martyrdom await you. You will be revealed to this world, and the afterlife at once, as what you have always been: an unclean, low-rent thug who has done nothing but pervert a religion for your own ends. Only then will we stem the tide of terror and allow freedom loving people everywhere the right to pursue happiness. Only then can we, and those like us, truly be free.

Lead the Way

Rudyard Kipling famously described what was once the job of a journalist in his poem The Elephant's Child. It reads, in part

I keep six honest serving men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

That stanza encapsulates the supposed ends of a hard news story. Apparently though, the major American newspapers have come to redefine who. The New York Times and The Washington Post have done stories in the past few days detailing a plot uncovered by Canadian police this weekend. In the event you were busy watching American Idol reruns On-Demand, 17 Muslim men were caught red-handed in the act of attempting to secure three tons of ammonium nitrate, or three times as much as Timothy McVeigh used in Oklahoma City. They ranged in age from their late teens to one in his early forties. They were all Canadian citizens, who had been nurtured by the state, all men and all, as described by both the Post and Times, of Southeast Asian descent. Not until the second page of the story, in either paper, did we learn that they all belonged to the same mosque.

Today being the 62nd anniversary of D-Day I could only wonder what the boys of Pointe du Hoc would think of that. On that day 225 US Army Rangers jumped off British landing craft and, braving hails of machine gun fire, ran to the bottom of a nearly sheer, ten story cliff, atop which supposedly sat a battery of naval guns capable of wiping the attackers from both the beaches and the seas. These guns were defended by battle hardened German soldiers intent on kicking the landing force back into the sea. As the German soldiers rained grenade and automatic rifle fire down upon them the Rangers began to climb. When one Ranger fell another would take his place. They climbed, returned fire and, eventually, captured the land at the top of the cliff. Of the 225 Rangers that started the ascent, 90 remained able to fight on in the battle to recapture Europe.

What does one cowardly act nipped in its nascent stages have to do with one of the most heroic missions ever undertaken by soldiers you ask? The answer is simple: the 2nd Ranger Battalion's men climbed because they recognized that there was no choice. They were not ambivalent about the idea that they were fighting consummate evil. It was do or die, and they did both. Sadly, neither writer of this week's Post and Times stories shares that emotion. Both journalists have forgotten, or choose to ignore, that who someone is carries weight. It is the basis of all police work, and once was the basis of journalism too.

The Toronto Star got it right though, in today's edition. In a city that was arguably a target for terror, the major daily newspaper called this what it is: terrorism perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists. The editorial stated, "Clearly, there are simple truths arising from the weekend events, most notably that all 17 of the people arrested are Muslims. Our important efforts at cultural understanding cannot disguise that fact." In a country awash in political correctness our neighbors in The Great White North, at least on the Star's editorial staff, recognize that the only way to defeat evil is to target it. All 17 of those arrested were Muslim, just as all 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Muslim. We can disagree as to whether they were acting in direct contravention of the Qur'an's teaching, or not, but we cannot disagree that they were all Muslim.

Why then did two of the United State's most prestigious newspapers choose to bury this fact? Sadly, it appears they wish to cloak these acts in some sort of aberrant cape. It is here that we are constantly reminded that not all Muslims are bad people. In fact, most are hard working, honest, decent people who just want to raise their kids. I cannot disagree that most Muslims are such, but I can disagree with the notion that these terror attacks are an aberration. They are premeditated, fundamentalist visions for an all Islamic world. Up until I see massive street protests, like the one excoriating newspapers for printing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, from these supposed moderate Muslims, I can only presume that the rank and file Muslim, both here and abroad, believes these acts to be, if not tacitly okay, than at least understandable; something we, and Britain, Spain and Canada, brought on ourselves through our failure to heed the Prophet's words.

The Rangers at Pointe du Hoc were not the only Rangers who acted heroically on the beaches of Normandy. The 5th Ranger Battalion gave the regiment it's motto. While literally thousands of men were pinned down on the beaches of Normandy 62 years ago, General Norman Cota spotted a group of men armed with equipment for blowing holes in the maze of obstacles arranged on the beach. "What unit is this?" he shouted. "5th Rangers, sir!" came the reply. "Well, god-damnit then Rangers, Lead the Way!" Without hesitation these Rangers, like their brothers on the cliffs, jumped up and, under murderous heavy weapons fire began inching up the beach. One wonders what these men would think of the notion that we might hurt some unoffending Muslims feelings if we identified terrorists by their religious affiliation. I can only presume that the sheer lunacy of it would be unfathomable to a group of young men, many unable even to shave, who behaved so majestically under the toughest of conditions. As then, we are at war with an enemy bent on world domination. Unlike then though, our enemy does not wear a uniform to readily identify himself. They hide in crowds of civilians and cowardly attack those least able to defend themselves, while cloaking themselves in the garb of god.

There are no fortifications for brave men to storm, or cliffs for them to climb in the war in which we are currently engaged. We are at war with an enemy who seeks to conceal himself until he strikes, not at soldiers, but at civilians. We will never defeat this evil among us until we learn to accept, and acknowledge, our enemies commonalities, of which the most prominent feature is a shared belief in radical Islamic domination, by any means. If we are going to defeat this enemy, freedom loving people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, here and in Britain and in Canada and, yes, in Iraq and Iran must realize that we are, like those Rangers on the beaches of Normandy so long ago, in this together. Otherwise we are simply sacrificial lambs waiting for the slaughter, and unworthy of the history of those Rangers, and men and women throughout our past, who have spilled their blood so that we could be free.