Chasing the Wind

Source: Wall Street Journal
Garry Kasparov, the world’s leading chess player from Russia, has a great article in Opinion Journal today entitled, “Stop the Moral Equivalence; Suicide-bombing and hostage-taking vs. democracy.”

Some key quotes:

It is not only Al Jazeera talking about “insurgents” in Iraq, it is CNN. Many in Europe and even some in the U.S. are trying to differentiate “legitimate” terrorism from “bad” terrorism. Those who intentionally kill innocent civilians are terrorists, as are their sponsors. No political agenda should be allowed to advance through terrorist activity. We need to identify our enemy, not play with words.
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The situation is worse in the Muslim world. Calling the terrorists “militants” or “radical Islamists” presupposes the existence of moderates willing to confront the radicals. Outside of Turkey, it is very hard to find moderate clerics who will stand up to Islamist terrorists, even though the majority of their victims are Muslim. In Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr has been murdering his religious opposition and using armed gangs to establish political rule. He appears immune to anything resembling condemnation. We know that his militia receives outside support–and where would it come from other than Syria and Iran?
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Gen. Musharraf in Pakistan and the Saudi royal family are supported by the U.S. and given free reign to limit human rights because they are considered the lesser evil. Yet the more favor they have with the U.S., the more they are hated at home, empowering the extremist opposition. Everyone gets what they want in the short run but it is a recipe for inevitable meltdown.
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The Islamic public-relations offensive is focused on proving that the West is corrupt and offers no improvement on the despots in charge throughout the Islamic world. At the same time, Al Jazeera isn’t examining Vladimir Putin’s war against Muslims in Chechnya. All of Chechnya is one big Abu Ghraib, but the Islamic world pays scant attention to the horrible crimes there because Mr. Putin shares their distaste for liberal democracy. The war is not about defending Muslims; it is about Western civilization and America as its representative.
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It is a mistake to see the debate on how to deal with terrorism along antiquated political lines. Partisan politics have played a role, but for the most part the battle to do what is necessary to win this war has freely crossed traditional party boundaries. One’s beliefs about tax policy and social benefits have little to do with how to deal with the terrorist threat being generated in the Islamic world.
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In this fight the enemy does not play by our rules, or by any rules at all. WMD will be in terrorist hands eventually; conventional wisdom recognizes this reality. Concessions and negotiations at best only delay catastrophe. Europe and its people are in this war whether they acknowledge it or not. Those who would appease terrorists must realize that by pretending that this battle does not exist, they will soon have blood on their hands–both real and metaphorical.

The battle is here, whether we want it or not. The attack on 9/11 should show us once and for all that ignoring the problem won’t make it go away, the enemy will bring the problem to us.

Moderate Muslims enjoy their human rights, but they’ve found that taking a moderate position is as offensive to the extremists as outright opposing them, as the US currently is. Extremist have made several attempt at assassinations of the Saudi and Pakistani leadership. Europeans might mistakenly believe that the Madrid bombing was the result of their participation in Iraq, but that’s no more true than we provoked them into 9/11 or into beheading Nick Berg.

We had no choice about whether we wanted to be in this war. Our only choice was whether we were going to fight back.