In Steve Lopez’s July 13th LAT column, Rep. Jane Harman of Venice, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the Committee on Homeland Security was quoted dispensing a great deal of common sense:

The [terrorists] President Bush calls ‘the bad guys’ are not going to be rehabilitated and we should have the tools necessary to remove them. I’m not in favor of killing people in particular, but I’m not against it.

Unfortunately, Democrats can’t discuss terrorism without injecting at least a little liberalism into the argument. Liberals are not alone in this habit. Conservatives do the same thing to push their agendas. It’s not hard to imagine one social conservative musing to another, “Did you hear about the bombing in London? That’s why we have to pass a gay marriage amendment!”

This partisanship has got to stop. Terrorism is too big and too dangerous to let it be a political football for the left and right. Rep. Harman continues:

“But that will not win in this era of terrorism. What we have to do is win the argument with the next generation. In addition to military force, we need public diplomacy, jobs and educational opportunity, and we need to project American values they’ll respond to.”

These are all wonderful ideals but they would not have done one thing to deter the London bombings, or probably Madrid or the Allah-only-knows-how-many-cells in the U.S. planning similar attacks. If reports from London are true, the attackers were British born, educated, and middle class—meaning they had ample opportunities for employment, education and values. Let’s stop trying to make excuses for the terrorists. They were not forced by circumstances to embark on murderous path.

If you look at the quotes below gathered from a young male Muslim (“Abdul”) who lived in the neighborhood of one of the suspected suicide bombers, you see the real mind set of what we are dealing with:

Abdul argued strenuously that the Sept. 11 attacks must have been condoned by the U.S. government to provoke anger against Muslims because it could have shot down the hijacked planes if it wanted to. He also repeated the canard that no Jews were in the collapsed World Trade Center buildings and claimed that the U.S. $20 bill had a picture of the attack etched into it.

Notice that he didn’t mention jobs or educational opportunities. No his rational is the same kooky rumor mongering so prevalent in Middle East societies. Radical Islam is about hatred of all things not radical Islam and as unpleasant as it is to liberalism that includes us. So what do we do? Well, believe it or not, I am able to quote (directly) from Mr. Lopez’s column on good first steps:

Beef up intelligence. Encourage more denunciation of fanatics by mainstream Muslims. Get Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to focus more on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Develop a domestic energy policy that cuts our suicidal addiction to Middle East oil. Accelerate the training of an Iraqi army and set benchmarks for an eventual withdrawal.

Thanks Steve, now I’ll add a few more:

Declare war on pork spending squandering of Homeland Security funds. Anyone involved with redirecting the budget to protect the port of Long Beach (which just might keep a nuke from coming into the U.S.) and redirecting that money toward a lesser deserving (i.e., pork project) just because it’s in their district needs to be considered an enemy of the nation. While much of our domestic press has their panties in a wad over Karl Rove, the Port of Long Beach is sitting naked because of budgetary diversions. Mainstream media, get your priorities straight.

Stop talking about neutering the Patriot Act. The new generation of radical Islamic terrorists are getting harder and harder to fight. Let’s not reduce the tools available to finding the next group of lunatics who want to detonate a dirty bomb in Manhattan or downtown Los Angeles. Islamic terrorists are not Three-Strikers and law enforcement needs different tools for this breed of combatant.

Stop talking about what a horrible place Guantanamo Bay is. Right now, I’d say that the London emergency workers who are 100 feet underground scraping body parts off of walls have it a lot worse than the folks at Gitmo.

Stop the partisanship when dealing with terror. This means Republicans need to stop saying Democrats are soft on terror and Democrats need to stop being soft on terror.

Stop mixing the issue of our nation’s porous borders with the overall immigration issue. Regardless of how you feel about illegal immigration, driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, etc., no one should want/accept our country to have borders that are easily breached. Furthermore, when you think of illegal border crossings, do not limit your mental image to honest, hard working Mexicans coming north in search of work. According to the U.S. Border Patrol the number of non-Mexicans entering Texas illegally has reached 96,000 so far this year. A Sheriff’s Coalition says that this group includes crossers from countries where al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are known to exist. A Latino rights advocate should be able to support border security without being attacked as a turncoat from the left, and a border state governor should be able to do the same time without being attacked by the LA Times.

Make combating terrorism a part of every pols life. Think that it already is? Think again. Antonio Villaraigosa had the time to talk about planting a gadzillion trees in L.A. and all sorts of wonderful things at his inauguration but he didn’t mention one word about dealing with terrorism in his city which is a verified al Qaeda target. Antonio didn’t get on board until after the attacks in London. Unacceptable.

In sum, terrorism is not a conservative boogie man to push a conservative agenda and Democrats have to stop treating it as such. The attacks in London have once again shown us that terrorism is real and it is ugly. Soon backpack bombs will be capable of containing nuclear material and the stakes will go up a million fold. We’ve been warned, now do we have the stomach to do something about it?

For additional Independent Sources postings on the War on Terror click here.

technorati: war on terror steve lopez

This entry was posted on Monday, July 18th, 2005 at 1:06 am by Insider and is filed under War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.