Woodstock, 2007

One of the two most common themes that are repeated in media circles are also perhaps the two most common lies that have crept into the broader American way of thinking on current affairs. First, there is no connection between the broader issue of international Islamic terrorism and the war in Iraq. Second, the violence being visited upon Americans is simply a result of our presence there -- and therefore, our departure would certainly end our danger in the Iraq crisis.

Was there a connection between the Iraqi government and global Islamic Jihadists before September 11th and the invasion of Iraq? I don't know. We may never know exactly. Based on my knowledge of that regime, it's thuggish and criminal dealings, and the resources it commanded, combined with the aspirations and restrictions on groups like Al-Qaeda and others certainly would indicate to me something like this: if the Jihadists were not tied in any way, or had not thought of tying themselves to the Iraqi regime, the ought to have, and were very much simpletons if they did not.

However, this is hardly the issue.

A fool (one unblinded by the mantras that ooze into our lives every day) can see that there is certainly now a connection. Iraq has become a Woodstock for Islamic Jihadists, in a way. A generation of the worst throughout the Middle East are flocking to Iraq to take on the new Crusaders in what they see as -- to borrow the label that an American commander famously applied to fleeing Iraqi soldiers -- a target-rich environment. They come from all the different brands of Militant Islam.

There are the thuggish, criminalistic, drug-smuggling Arabs who make up Al-Qaeda, whose goal seems little more than a global ring of disenfranchised anarchists thriving on violence and crime and money. There are the clever and methodical agents of the Qods Force, and the Revolutionary Guards from Iran, combined with their protoges, Hezbollah, who are bent on a global religious and political agenda. And then there are the individual young men of the Middle Eastern world, covering the spectrum from fanatically religious to nihilistic, who have been raised with their heads filled with the notion of tearing down, tearing down, tearing down, and never building -- whose fathers were off fighting and throwing rocks at Israelis instead of building cities and whose mothers carefully recited the blazing words of the Qor'an to them from the age of innocence onward.

There is hardly a tie at all between Iraq and Islamic Global Terror -- they are the same. Without these international villains, Iraq would be at peace. So they say we have created a breeding ground for terrorism. Perhaps so. But this was not just our doing. We did not ourselves create it -- it has been decades in the making, as the poison of Naziism and Stalinism slipped into the already boiling pots of Islam. Perhaps centuries in the making.

In reference to the second observation, I again submit that only a fool could presume that if we turn tail in the face of difficulty, our lives will be saved. It is vitally important that people understand -- and I have very real experience with this -- that there are those in this world who, rationally or not, hate us, and will do us harm, whether in their nation or ours. I believe that bringing things to a front -- making a stand -- is right.

And it also occurs to me: in another place and time, the accusation that we had brought about the confluence of these elements would be a heroic description. To borrow a (perhaps cliched) Western analogy, it would seem that Wyatt Earp's stance brought about the gathering of the most vicious elements of western gangs. The whole group might not have accumulated if he had not so stood.

If the nations of Europe had not taken a stand against Naziism and later Stalinism, than perhaps 60 million people would not have died as a result of those conflicts last century. Are they therefore guilty of that blood? Or was it perhaps the right thing to do regardless?

I heard a reporter compare thenumber of people killed by international terrorism last year to the number of people struck by lightning -- about 400. So why the preoccupation? Are those 400 worth thousands of of our lives?

I do not hesitate to say yes.