I was talking on the phone a few weeks ago with a friend who said that the only issue that mattered to him this November is the war on terror. “If we don’t get the war right,” he said, “the Medicare prescription plan won’t matter, Social Security won’t matter, nothing else will matter.”

In 1851’s running of the America’s Cup yacht race around the Isle of Wight, the schooner America raced 15 yachts orf the Royal Yacht Squadron. Waiting near the finish was Queen Victoria. America won by 20 minutes, so far out in front that when it appeared on the horizon it sailed alone into view of the waiting crowd. “Which ship is that?” Victoria asked. A naval officer looked through his scope and replied, “It is America.” Victoria then asked, “Who is in second?” The officer looked again and again saw only America. “Majesty,” he replied, “there is no ship in second.”

The prosecution of the war against Islamist terrorists is so far in front as the leading issue today that truly, there is no issue in second, not close enough to be a serious challenger to the gravity of the Islamist threat.

Hence, The SF Examiner wonders whether Americans are sleepwalking into a gathering storm, much as the British did in the 1930s.

This is indeed another time for choosing. Embattled Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said it well in a recent speech. "The war is at our doorsteps and it is fueled, figuratively and literally, by Islamic fascism nurtured and bred in Iran, "Santorum warned. "… Many Americans are sleepwalking, just as they did before the world wars of the last century. They pretend it is not happening, that it all has to do with the errors of a single American administration, even of a single American president. … It’s time to wake up."

Is the war in Iraq like Vietnam, as its opponents declare and its supporters deride? Hollywood screenwriter Dan Gordon says that after the Vietnam war, “No Viet Cong Followed Us Home.” He’s willing to grant any negative argument about the Bush administration that anyone wants to make.

And you don’t like the war. You were lied to. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Bush and the neocons made it all up. They duped us. They duped you. They duped me. They duped Hillary and Kerry. They duped us all. Dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe. Done deal. Not only did they dupe us, but they dicked it up, made every mistake in the book.

Pick whatever argument you like. They should have had more troops. They should have had less troops. They should have listend to Chalabi. They shouldn’t have listened to Chalibi. Bremer was right. Bremer was wrong. Rumsfeld’s a bozo. Bozo could have done a better job. I’ll sign on to any part of it you like. They said this is a part of the war on terror, and of course that’s a lie too.

Ooops.

What do you mean, oops?

Well, what I mean is that part is actually true.

What part?

The part about Iraq being a part of the war on terror.

You’ve got to be kidding. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11! There was no connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda!

Maybe not, but there is now.

Well, who’s fault is that?

Doesn’t matter.

What do you mean it doesn’t matter?

I mean, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how we got there. It doesn’t matter how you think you were lied to. It doesn’t matter if you think there was a connection between Sadam and Al-Qaeda. The only thing that matters now is that both Al-Qaeda and Iran and the terrorist groups they back and inspire believe that Iraq is their decisive battle. They have chosen it as the place where they will defeat America, and unlike the Viet Cong, they will not stay put. They will follow us home.

I urge you to read a long essay by novelist Orson Scott Card, of which this one short excerpt in which he observes that those who call for immediate or near-immediate) withdrawal from Iraq,

… see Americans dying and they have no hope of victory. The Iraq War (as they call it) is costing lives and shows no sign of ending. Meanwhile, Iran is getting nuclear weapons, North Korea already has them, Syria and Iran are sponsoring continuing and escalating attacks on Israel — how can we possibly “win” a war that threatens constantly to widen? Let’s cut our losses, retire to our shores, and …

And will you please stop and think for a moment?

There is no withdrawal to our shores. American prosperity requires free trade throughout most of the world. Free trade has depended for decades on American might. If we withdraw now, we announce to the world that if you just kill enough Americans, the big boys will go home and let you do whatever you want.

Every American in the world then becomes a target. And, because we have announced that we will do nothing to protect them, we will soon be trading only with nations that have enough strength to protect their own shores and borders.

Only … what nations are those? Not Taiwan. If they saw us abandon Iraq, what conclusion could they reach except this one: They’d better accommodate with China now, when they can still get decent terms, than wait for America to walk away from them the way we walked away from Vietnam and Iraq.

We cannot win by going home. In a short time, “home” would become a very different place, as our own prosperity and safety steadily diminished. Isolationism is a dead end. If we lose our will to protect the things that support our own prosperity, then what can we expect but the end of that prosperity — and of any vestige of safety, as well?

The frustrating thing is that if people would just look, honestly, at the readily available data from the Muslim world, they would realize that we are winning… .

On terrorism, novelist Roger L. Simon quoted Leon Trotsky: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” So to all the sleepwalkers out there, or those who simply swim in the Egyptian river about the nature of Islamism and its jihadis, undertand this: You may not be interested in al Qaeda, but al Qaeda is interested in you.

No, not me? you reply. Not me, I’m a peace-loving, non-ideological, live-and-let-live, hyper-tolerant citizen of the world, they don’t hate me or wish me ill!

But are you Muslim? More accurately, are you a radicalized, reactionary Muslim? Because Islamists who bomb and murder don’t care about your gentle, organic-foods lifestyle and your self-congratulatory tolerance culture or your identity politics and they don’t care whether you think Muslims are oppressed or misunderstood or whether you think that Islam itself is the paradigm of religious practice, if religion must be practiced at all. They don’t care whether you oppose the Religious Right, what candidates you vote for or the kind of car you drive. Dan Gordon again:

[M]ake no mistake about who it is they want to kill. If you are a Christian they want to kill you. If you are a Jew they want to kill you. If you are a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Taoist, or a Jain, or a Muslim of a slightly different creed, they want to kill you. If you a secularist and believe in gay marriage, gay adoption, gay rights, or gay pride, they want to kill you. If you watch movies and like rock n’ roll, if you read Playboy, or Cosmo, if you wear mini-skirts, or “allow” your daughter, wife or girlfriend to do so, they want to kill you. When they say convert to Islam or die, they mean convert to Islam or they will kill you.

I know you don’t like that. I know you don’t want to believe that. I know you would like to believe only a cross eyed, red necked, right wing, apocalyptic, bozo hick like George Bush would believe such a thing, but that won’t let you off the hook. However much you don’t want to believe it, however much you would like it to go away, however loudly you whistle in the dark and comfort yourself with the sweet thought of Nancy Pelosi hanging her drapes over Denny Hastert’s fat, dead, humiliated body, it is still true.

There are a lot of serious issues facing this country, but compared to the Islamist threat, they are not close enough even to be seen as in second place.

While we’re on the topic of Iraq and the GWOT, let’s take a short review of the strategic plans of important combatants.

You may recall that I wrote on July 22 that Israel, in its campaign against Hezbollah, was carrying out a spasm, not a strategy. It’s one thing to have strategic goals that’s not the same as having a strategic plan. Israel had the former but not the latter. In Sept. 2003 I wrote basically the same critique of al Qaeda, that Osama bin Laden had strategic goals but no actual plan to accomplish them.

In October 2003 I explained what was then the American strategy in, “The Big Picture.”

I have been thinking for some time now that the same sort of criticisms I made of the strategic thinking of al Qaeda and Israel has become germane to the Bush administration. I held beginning in early 2003 that the case for the Iraq war was just, resting only partly on Saddam’s WMD programs. And when I wrote The Big Picture, it seemed that the administration was thinking long term. But it seems that their thinking froze before 2003 ended and events since then haven’t reinvigorated their strategic thinking.

For the nonce, I urge everyone to read retired Lt. Col. Joseph Myers’ essay, “America’s Strategic Fix and Our New Decision Points.” I plan on writing more about this in coming days.

Updates at end of post.

The total news focus this morning is on the arrest of 21 suspected al-Qaeda-related terrorists for a plot to blow up 10 airliners over the Atlantic Ocean, en route to the US from Britain.

British authorities have admitted its fulfillment was very close; US Secretary of Homeland Defense Michael Chertoff said this morning at a televised press conference that the plot was “well advanced.” Only in the last two weeks did the investigation of the plot conclude that it was directed at the United States, Chertoff said. He also said the plot was “getting very close to the execution phase.”

If the plot had succeeded the death toll might have exceeded that of al Qaeda’s attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Ten Boeing 747 airliners easily carry far more than the 3,000 people who died in New York, Arlington and Pennsylvania. Airliners.net says that the Boeing 747-300 model has a,

Flightcrew of three, with two pilots and one flight engineer. Typical two class seating arrangement for 470 (50 business class including 28 on the upper deck and 370 economy class).

Adding the three flight crew and 10 attendants per plane gives a total of 483 souls on board per plane when filled. That capacity filled at only 63 percent average per plane means that more than 3,000 people would have died if all 10 planes crashed.

On Dec. 21, 1988, Libyan terrorists used explosives to bring down Pan Am flight 103, flying from London to New York. The aircraft fell onto Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 aboard as well as 11 persons on the ground.

On July 17, 1996, another Boeing 747, TWA flight 800, blew up after taking off for Paris from Kennedy International Airport in New York. All 230 persons aboard died, the aircraft falling, burning, into the water. An investigation concluded an electrical failure caused the crash.

Update: is there a North Korea connection?

Update: The Telegraph writes about, “How terrorists could have made a ‘liquid bomb‘”

Update: Commenter Lost Knight says that the 747-300 is used for cargo flights, having been superceded for passengers by the 747-400. Airliners.net says that the passenger capacity for the dash-400 is 416 plus two flight crew and a flight attendant cohort of (my estimate) 10, making 428 altogether.

If the aircraft targeted by the plotters were modern Boeing 777-300s, the death toll potential looks even worse. It can carry up to 550 passengers (the “all economy high density configuration”). But a “typical” passenger configuration is 386, plus two flight crew and, say, 10 attendants. Even so, 10 “typical” 777s only three-quarters-full carry as many people as died on 9/11, give or take a dozen or so.

That’s why some observers say the “Thwarted plot may have been ‘the Big One’.”

The invaluable Andi photoblogged a visit to Ground Zero with her Army captain husband, who is close to his deployment date to Iraq. A true why we fight piece.

Ah, poor Karl Rove. His mind-control abilities seem to have degenerated over the years. After all, it was only three years ago that he could sit in a darkened room in the OEOB, concentrate real hard, and by distant psychodynamic effect, get a US Senator say this:

There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. And that may happen sooner if he can obtain access to enriched uranium from foreign sources — something that is not that difficult in the current world. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction. …

The global community — in the form of the United Nations — has declared repeatedly, through multiple resolutions, that the frightening prospect of a nuclear-armed Saddam cannot come to pass. But the U.N. has been unable to enforce those resolutions. We must eliminate that threat now, before it is too late.

Which senator? Oh, just guess.

CBS News reports, “Dems Force Closed Senate Session.”

Democrats forced the Republican-controlled Senate into an unusual closed session Tuesday, questioning intelligence that President Bush used in the run-up to the war in Iraq and accusing Republicans of ignoring the issue.

“They have repeatedly chosen to protect the Republican administration rather than get to the bottom of what happened and why,” Democratic leader Harry Reid said.

Bill Quick responds, “If the Democrats want to have a big debate on the war and pre-war intelligence, I say bring it on.” In the spirit of a rousing good public debate, here I offer a short collection of quotes of what the president and members of his administration said about the threat from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Specific sources are listed at the end:

First quote:

We began with this basic proposition: Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to develop nuclear arms, poison gas, biological weapons, or the means to deliver them. He has used such weapons before against soldiers and civilians, including his own people. We have no doubt that if left unchecked he would do so again.

Saddam must not be prepared to defy the will — be permitted — excuse me — to defy the will of the international community. . . . So long as Saddam remains in power he will remain a threat to his people, his region and the world. . . .

The Cabinet Room, The White House

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you for this opportunity to address America’s friends throughout the Arab and the entire Islamic world. . . .

Saddam has ruled through a reign of terror against his own people and disregard for the peace of the region. His war against Iran cost at least half a million lives over 10 years. He gassed Kurdish civilians in Northern Iraq. In 1990, his troops invaded Kuwait, executing those who resisted, looting the country, spilling tens of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf, firing missiles at Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Israel and Qatar. He massacred thousands of his own people in an uprising in 1991.

As a condition for the Gulf War cease-fire, Iraq agreed to disclose and to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, and to demonstrate its willingness to live at peace with its neighbors. Iraq could have ended economic sanctions and isolation long ago by meeting these simple obligations. . . .

Saddam simply must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons.

Never again can we allow Saddam Hussein to develop nuclear weapons, poison gas, biological weapons, or missiles to deliver them. He has used such terrible weapons before against soldiers, against his neighbors, against civilians. And if left unchecked, he’ll use them again.

The Secretary: Well, the president has all the options, and we are watching very carefully, and we have basically said that this cannot go on indefinitely, and as the president said yesterday, the Iraqis do not need any further warnings. . . . You know, it’s quite typical of the way they’ve been operating. They will not accept responsibility themselves for what is going on. They are the ones that have had the opportunity since the end of the Gulf War to comply. You know, this has been one of the clearest sanctions regimes with the clearest road maps that have ever existed in terms of how to get from Point A to Point B, . . . And it is not the US’ fault; it’s not the UN’s fault; it’s Saddam Hussein’s fault. . . . .

We are very concerned about what is happening in terms of his weapons of mass destruction. He is a threat to the neighborhood. He has actually, as we know, invaded a country. He is also a threat because he wants to have and has had these weapons of mass destruction.

Second, if Saddam can cripple the weapons inspections system and get away with it, he would conclude that the international community, led by the United States, has simply lost its will. He will surmise that he has free rein to rebuild his arsenal of destruction. And some day, make no mistake, he will use it again, as he has in the past. . . . .

If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors; he will make war on his own people. And mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them.

Let me close by addressing one other issue. Saddam Hussein and the other enemies of peace may have thought that the serious debate currently before the House of Representatives would distract Americans or weaken our resolve to face him down. But once more, the United States has proven that, although we are never eager to use force, when we must act in America’s vital interests, we will do so.

We believe the President, with his duties as Commander in Chief, has the authority to do this, and particularly given the resolution in the wake of the Gulf War. But we will continue to work closely and consult with Congress.

Sources:

1. TRANSCRIPT: CLINTON REMARKS ON IRAQ DECEMBER 19, 1998

2. VIDEOTAPED REMARKS BY PRESIDENT CLINTON TO THE ARAB WORLD December 19, 1998

3. RADIO ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT CLINTON TO THE NATION, 19 December 1998

4. SECRETARY OF STATE MADELINE ALIBRIGHT, PBS interview, Nov. 12, 1998.

5. STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT CLINTON, 16 December 1998, on Iraqi Air Strikes,

6. White House Briefing, November 12, 1998, spokesman Joe Lockhart in response to a question whether President Clinton needed congressional approval to conduct military action against Iraq.

Update: This too.

As I posted earlier today, I think this morning’s speech by President Bush was one of the finest (probably the finest) he has given on this subject, and really on any subject. It was lucid, well organized and detailed. Herewith my commentary on the first half or so. Second half to follow.

After introductory pleasantries, noting the recent fourth anniversay of the 9/11 attacks, the president got right to the point:

We will confront this mortal danger to all humanity. We will not tire, or rest, until the war on terror is won.

This is not the same as saying, “stay the course.” This is an affirmation that the United States will not be “the weak horse” that Osama bin Laden promised Muslims it would be. War is, as has been endlessly noted, a contest of wills. The president affirmed that our will is and will be unbroken. The rest of the speech he explained why it must be so.

[Al Qaeda’s] ideology is very different from the religion of Islam. This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent, political vision: the establishment, by terrorism and subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom. These extremists distort the idea of jihad into a call for terrorist murder against Christians and Jews and Hindus — and also against Muslims from other traditions, who they regard as heretics.

A bit of a mixed message here, I’m afraid. On the one hand it reiterates, as needs be done, that the war against the terrorists is not a war against Islam. On the other, denial of religious freedom for non-Muslims is not a radical idea in Islam, it’s a solidly central tenet. The “Muslims from other traditions” means the Shiites, especially of Iraq, who are being targeted by al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). But the vituperation of Shia Muslims, who account for about eight percent of all Muslims, is again a central tenet of millions of Sunnis, especially Arab Sunnis and more especially Saudi and Saudi-taught Muslims. For the president’s domestic audience, this paragraph is very good, but for non-radicalized Sunnis I am not sure it will resonate as well, and those are the hearts and minds we are trying to influence away from extremism.

Then the president explained how, “Islamic radicalism is more like a loose network with many branches than an army under a single command.” But they “share a similar ideology and vision for our world.”

We know the vision of the radicals because they’ve openly stated it — in videos, and audiotapes, and letters, and declarations, and websites. First, these extremists want to end American and Western influence in the broader Middle East, because we stand for democracy and peace, and stand in the way of their ambitions. …

Second, the militant network wants to use the vacuum created by an American retreat to gain control of a country, a base from which to launch attacks and conduct their war against non-radical Muslim governments. …

Third, the militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia.

This was an excellent rendition of the goals of al Qaeda and its allies. None of this is inference on the president’s part. Osama bin Laden stated these goals a long time ago. I had a long post delineating this in September 2003.

With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation.

It needs to be said and Bush said it well: al Qaeda has global goals, nothing less than the domination of the entire planet by Islam, or its version thereof, anyway. Violent Islamic radicalism is an imperialistic movement that its adherents believe has Allah’s blessing. This war is not one that is simply going to go away. As the 9/11 Commission stated, al Qaeda was at war with us during the 1990s, but we weren’t at war with them. I’ve linked before to Strategy Page’s recent essay on al Qaeda’s objectives, based on work by Jordanian journalist Fouad Hussein. “Several al Qaeda leaders were interviewed for the book, including al Qaeda’s man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.” It’s pretty much what I outlined in Sept. 2003 but more sequentially organized. The essay is not long, so read it now before continuing here!

Some might be tempted to dismiss these goals as fanatical or extreme. Well, they are fanatical and extreme — and they should not be dismissed. Our enemy is utterly committed. … Evil men, obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience, must be taken very seriously — and we must stop them before their crimes can multiply.

As I wrote in October 2001,

Imagine asking Adolf Hitler what was his objective in killing millions of Jews. He would have answered nothing except that he wanted to destroy Jews. There is a nihilistic evil sometimes loose in the world that beggars comprehension. Nihilistic evil seeks to destroy for destruction’s own sake. There is no virtue in nihilistic evil that can be appealed to. … Nihilistic evil is power without conscience.

The president then elucidated how “the militant network … thrives, like a parasite, on the suffering and frustration of others. The radicals exploit local conflicts to build a culture of victimization, in which someone else is always to blame and violence is always the solution.” And he spent a paragraph on how modern information technology makes recruitment and training of new terrorists easier. Then he named names:

The influence of Islamic radicalism is also magnified by helpers and enablers. They have been sheltered by authoritarian regimes, allies of convenience like Syria and Iran, that share the goal of hurting America and moderate Muslim governments, and use terrorist propaganda to blame their own failures on the West and America, and on the Jews.

I doubt that Iran is an “ally of convenience” since its Islamic Republic was a prototype for Talibanism and it remains the closest thing to it since the liberation of Afghanistan. But there is no doubt that Syria, like Saddam before his fall, is an ally of convenience. Syria is not an Islamic state but a Baathist-socialist one, which is evil in the eyes of al Qaeda. So why does al Qaeda truck with them? Because bin Laden said to do so in early 2003, before Iraq was invaded:

Socialists are infidels wherever they are. . . [but] it does not hurt that in current circumstances, the interests of Muslims coincide with the interests of the socialists in the war against crusaders.

Back to President Bush:

Over the years these extremists have used a litany of excuses for violence — the Israeli presence on the West Bank, or the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, or the defeat of the Taliban, or the Crusades of a thousand years ago. In fact, we’re not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We’re facing a radical ideology with inalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world. No act of ours invited the rage of the killers — and no concession, bribe, or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder.

I wrote in September 2001 (reproduced here),

This struggle is not principally a clash between political systems. It is a clash of incompatible world views and irreconcilable ways of understanding the nature of reality itself.

In an interview with the BBC, former American special envoy to the Mid-East peace process Dennis Ross [Clinton’s emissary] said that radical Islamic fundamentalists do not hate America because of its support of Israel, which would be a political issue. “They hate who we are,” he said, “they see us a threat to their religion.”

America was not attacked on Sept. 11 because we support Israel. Quite the opposite, Islamists oppose Israel because it is western. Al Qaeda’s hostility to western culture is the foundation of their hostility to Israel. The West is their principal enemy, not specifically Israel. If America utterly renounced Israel, broke all diplomatic and economic ties with Israel, and took up the Palestinian cause, bin Laden and al Qaeda would still attack us.

The president:

Against such an enemy, there is only one effective response: We will never back down, never give in, and never accept anything less than complete victory.

There simply is no other choice that constitutes survival, especially survival as a free, democratic people. As I wrote in “Does anyone doubt we must win this war?“

There are only four basic possible outcomes of this war:

1. Over time, the United States engenders deep-rooted reformist impulses in the Islamic lands, leading their societies away from the self- and other-destructive patterns they now exhibit. …

2. The Islamofascists achieve their goals of Islamicization of the entire Middle East, the ejection of all non-Muslims from Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Persian Gulf, the destruction of Israel, and the deaths of countless numbers of Americans.

3. Absent achieving the goals stated just above, al Qaeda successfully unleashes a mass-destructive, mass-casualty attack against the United States and total war erupts between the US and several Islamic countries.

4. None of the above happen, so the conflict sputters along for decades more with no real changes: we send our troops into combat intermittently, suffer non-catastrophic attacks intermittently, and neither side possesses all of the will, the means and the opportunity to achieve decisive victory. The war becomes the Forever War.

If you can think of a significantly different possible outcome, leave a comment explaining. But of the four above, only the first is acceptable, or even thinkable, for us or for human flourishing in general.

The president continued:

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. … And in spite of this veneer of religious rhetoric, most of the victims claimed by the militants are fellow Muslims.

When 25 Iraqi children are killed in a bombing, or Iraqi teachers are executed at their school, or hospital workers are killed caring for the wounded, this is murder, pure and simple … . These militants are not just the enemies of America, or the enemies of Iraq, they are the enemies of Islam and the enemies of humanity.

Yes, Al Qaeda’s primary war at this time is against other Muslims.

At this point the president transitioned to describing concrete things the US and its allies have done and are doing to combat Islamist terrorists in mlitary, political and economic arenas. And that makes a good place to end this part of my analysis, for this is already long enough. More later (I hope).