Earlier this month the Washington Post's Richard Cohen wrote, "As the lats susan Sontag bravely pointed out in a New Yorker essay published right after Sept. 11, 2001, those terrorists attacks were in response to American policy in the Middle East- not as Bush has said repeatedly since, because Islamic radicals cannot abide freedom."
In short, the notion that America is in a war for freedom over tyranny has elicited bipartisan snickering and guffawing. In the wake of Bush's innagural, the chorus of complaints intensified. And understandably so, given the fact that his address was the most forceful articulation of his "freedom" vision to date.
But before the the cackles could reach their crescendo, the naysayers hit an inconvenient snag. Musab al-Zarqawi, the "prince of Al- Qaeda in Iraq, appointed by Osama Bin Laden, came out and agreed with President Bush. "We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology, " Zarqawi declared in a statement. "Democracy is also based on the right to choose your own religion," he said, and that is "against the rule of God."
Now this doesn't mean that Bin Laden and Zarqawi aren't motivated by less lofty- or merely different-principals than an Islamic rejection of democracy. To be sure, bin Laden's initial grievances included America's relationship with Sauid Arabia, Israel and all the usual complaints. but underlying all these gripes was an idelology-and remains an ideology-opposed to freedom and democracy.
Those who pooh-pooh the notion that our enemies hate freedom believe that such an ideologically totalitarian movements can exist within it's own borders indefinately. All we have to do is teat them like a hornet's nest and don't upset them (no matter that they topple their own governments and seek ever more conquests).
more.........www.townhall.com/columnists/jonahgoldberg/printjg20050126.shtml
In short, the notion that America is in a war for freedom over tyranny has elicited bipartisan snickering and guffawing. In the wake of Bush's innagural, the chorus of complaints intensified. And understandably so, given the fact that his address was the most forceful articulation of his "freedom" vision to date.
But before the the cackles could reach their crescendo, the naysayers hit an inconvenient snag. Musab al-Zarqawi, the "prince of Al- Qaeda in Iraq, appointed by Osama Bin Laden, came out and agreed with President Bush. "We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology, " Zarqawi declared in a statement. "Democracy is also based on the right to choose your own religion," he said, and that is "against the rule of God."
Now this doesn't mean that Bin Laden and Zarqawi aren't motivated by less lofty- or merely different-principals than an Islamic rejection of democracy. To be sure, bin Laden's initial grievances included America's relationship with Sauid Arabia, Israel and all the usual complaints. but underlying all these gripes was an idelology-and remains an ideology-opposed to freedom and democracy.
Those who pooh-pooh the notion that our enemies hate freedom believe that such an ideologically totalitarian movements can exist within it's own borders indefinately. All we have to do is teat them like a hornet's nest and don't upset them (no matter that they topple their own governments and seek ever more conquests).
more.........www.townhall.com/columnists/jonahgoldberg/printjg20050126.shtml
