A viper through a white picket fence

Again today the seething morass of terror, always lurking below the surface, entered the land, snaking its way through our delusive attempts at security like a viper through a white picket fence.

And again, it struck and killed our children, our wives, our husbands, our grandparents, going about their days in a white-washed world.

I am reminded about an article to which a friend recently directed my attention regarding the war in Iraq. As weeks and months of complacency bear weight on our resolve to halt the depredations of evil men around the world, I found myself awakened again to the reality of our culture's struggle. We face an enemy the likes of which we have never known, and on a scale that frustrates what we have come to call our modern might.

Think what you will about the war in Iraq. I confess a complexity of feelings and thoughts on the subject. But still I feel as though the article, linked below, is oddly prescient and worthy of a second look.

It was good to hear the commander-in-chief remind people that this is still the war against terror. Specifically, against Islamo-fascists who slaughtered 3000 Americans on September 11, 2001. Who spent the eight years before those atrocities murdering and promising to murder Americans — as their leader put it in 1998, all Americans, including civilians, anywhere in the world where they could be found.

It is not the war for democratization. It is not the war for stability. Democratization and stability are not unimportant. They are among a host of developments that could help defeat the enemy.

But they are not the primary goal of this war, which is to destroy the network of Islamic militants who declared war against the United States when they bombed the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993, and finally jarred us into an appropriate response when they demolished that complex, struck the Pentagon, and killed 3000 of us on September 11, 2001.

That is why we are in Iraq. (more...)