“I can see how this is not connected with Iraq.”

Let me say that you are idiots. What was the big liberal whine after 9/11? “You should have connected the dots!”

Anyone that doesn’t think that all of the Islamofascists aren’t related to Iraq is blind in one eye and can’t see out of the other.

Every piece of Islamic fascism, whether Saddam, Osama, JI, the brotherhood, Hezbollah, Beslan, etc., etc. is ALL related to Iraq.

It is not a cause and effect relaionship anymore than every strand of wool in a sweater has a “cause & effect relationship with each other, BUT, theyt ARE related.

We are in a war against the forces that would install the great Islamic Caliphate complete with Sharia across the world, killing any infidels that might complain.

Iraq was a large piece of this with the continual violation of the terms of the ‘91 cease fire and the flouting of all those UN resolutions. The proximate worry was that Saddam’s WMD would be placed in the hands of terrorists. The GOAL was & is to plant a cancer cell (individual freedom & democracy) in the heart of the beast.

This is not a war against one king and one kingdom. Not even against one nation-state, nor even an alliance of same (see Axis powers of WWII).

This is a war against an overarching, nascent, theocratic despotism which is made up of many disparate but inter-related pieces from the MILF in the Phillipines to the GSPC in Algeria, to the loners and self constructed cells in Atlanta, Toronto, Birmingham, London, etc.

The internecine warfare among the various Islamic factions will be held, more or less, in abeyance until the war of civilizations is won. Then Osama and Ahmaneedastraitjacket and Hassie Nassie will turn on each other. Their view is me against my cousin, but my cousin and I against the world.

Wake up!!!!!! We are the world and all those loosely related cousins are together in their hatred for us and our ways. They don’t need to be closely coupled to strive for the same goals.

I’m not going to be a dhimmi, are you?

He is also against serious efforts to deal with the threat of a nuclear Iran.

It’s not all that difficult for people to extrapolate from the damage terrorists can do with non-nuclear weapons to the damage they could do with nuclear ones.

Roger says that the foiled terrorist plot is bad news for the Lamont campaign. He says “no one looks dopier today” than Ned Lamont voters. Lamont of course is not at all against protecting America from Islamic terrorism, of which this event is obviouly an example. He is against, as Andy S. points out, continued US occupation of Iraq. That’s his platform, and that’s why he beat Joe Lieberman last Tuesday.

So — for the UK arrests to be bad for Lamont, this would be because Connecticut voters, as a result of this foiled criminal plot by what appears to be native born citizens of that liberal democratic country known as the United Kingdom, are now convinced of the need to redouble our efforts to build a liberal democratic society in Iraq!

“Tony Blair and Labour, even more unpopular than Bush and the Republican Party, have avoided any ludicrous attempt to link this to “the broader war on terror”, or to the mess in Iraq. ”

I can see how this is not connected with Iraq. But no one is arguing that it is, are they?

I cannot see how it is not connected with the war on terror. What could possibly be more connected than this incident?

Mainly, I guess, because British voters, unlike many Republicans and “independent” eoconservatives in the USA, would find such tortured connections repulsive.

Just remember, this cuts both ways. Having the Unitary Executive accuse Ned Lamont voters of giving direct encouragement to Al-Qaeda, might bring out some of the otherwise discouraged Republican base in November. But it all fires up the not-so-discouraged Democratic base as well.

I am a college-educated former liberal actress who believed the fulfillment of self-indulgent narcissistic celebritism was the greatest acheivement one could endeavor. Through my work I even spent years perpetuating the Great Society myth. I was so selfish that I am ashamed to say I missed the entire Reagan Revolution. It took me 40 years, when 9/11 came, around to finally understand what I had failed to see all my life.

Which explains why I now adhere to what Reagan stated long ago:

“Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again.”

I hope it is not too late for me to help change the destructive mistakes myself and my generation has made because I now see that Roger’s daughter and her generation is going to pay a heavy price for my ignorant failure.

Like the Lamont voters, I was college educated and thought of myself as a “smart guy”. The stereotypical “Reagan Democrats” were blue-collar workers with a high school education, maybe less. But they saw what I could not see and understood what I failed to understand. So much for my college education.

I can understand where you are coming from on the Iraq War. Any foreign missions where Americans are placed on the line should necessarily be questioned seriously.

The problem, as I see it, is that a rather illiberal tradition holds far too strong a position in Islamic cultures today and has for quite some time. Not to say that all Muslims are or have been subscribers to such a philosophy (the farthest thing from it, from what I have read), merely that in stark contrast to the West, ideas basically centering around a religious case against human liberty get serious support. This was the case in the West once, of course, and thankfully we have moved beyond this. Defeating terrorists one after another is never going to end the threat to western liberal democracies – there are more than enough Irans and Bin Ladens to spawn them – the “battle for hearts and minds” will. Not to make them view the US or any other state as a friend (though that would be a nice side effect), but rather to change perceptions of the world from a Hobbesian place of division, of misery, of fear that needs an imposition of heavy-handed order to a place of opportunity, potential, and progressive development demanding liberty as its highest political end.

I’m far from being an adequate solutions guy on it all, but I think I’ve got a fair idea of where things need to head. How can the Islamic world develop culturally to in effect no longer be at a war of ideas with the West? How did the West develop historically, from Athens to the Scholastics to the Renaissance to the Enlightenment and beyond (and just about everything in between) and how do trends in the Islamic world compare? By understanding the nature of the “clash of civilizations”, ours can win it by fighting effectively and transforming the very nature of the clash. Will Iraq further this end? Will crushing Hezbollah? Will confronting Iran?

As for the means, I’ll offer what little thoughts I can. War by itself will not win the day. But neither will pacifism. Islamic fascism can be buried just as soundly as its ancestor, but an alternative (liberal democracy in Islamic civilization) must be both seeded, and empowered (at times, as an effect of war) to reach its true potential and bear the fruits of peace. You do, however, need to seed it first. And that’s a task capable of just about anything other than a government.

What a difference a day makes. I can only imagine the pressure put upon Joe Liberman (one of the most decent man in Washington) to “tone down” his message lest he appear to close to fear/war monger Bush. And here we are, the very next day not doubting, indeed betting on Joe’s reelection given the very circumstances that were said to be his demise.

Thank God Joe Liberman did not follow the Spaniard model; blindfold secured, elected the appeasers who’s policy of weakness has only served to embolden more terror. By AndyS logic (posted above) Israel’s incursion into Lebanon and the clearing of that threat is foolhardy too. Right AndyS? We should just sit back, relax perhaps?

If we could only clone Joe, with the ease Jajj cloned smoke over Lebanon, more courageous representatives aware and able to see the reality of terror for what it is – nothing to fog over with political spin.