Accommodating Islam

You should have guessed that yesterday's entry would have exhausted my optimism. On a more somber note, columnist Diana West argues that the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent terrorists attacks in Madrid, London and elsewhere have, perversely, caused "an accelerated campaign of accommodation of Islam's law in the West."

As West notes: "Paradoxically, such fast-track accomodation has occurred even as any and all connection between jihadist acts and Islam - specifically Islamic war doctrine - have been emphatically ruled out by our leaders, both civilian and military." Americans seem to be asleep, not even noticing, let alone discussing, the advances made by Islamists.

Bush's critics, particularly those on the left, are right: this isn't a 'war on terror'. But they and the Bush administration are very, very wrong to downplay or deny the fact that terrorist actions are carried out in the name of a political Islamist ideology inimical to Western civilization. You can't win a war that you can't even name. As West points out, 9/11 shouldn't be viewed as a natural disaster, like a hurricane. It was indeed a deliberate day of infamy.