There was a moment following the 7/7 attacks on London’s subway system where I actually thought that the left’s eyes had been opened to the danger we faced. There were encouraging condemnations of the act from sources such as London Mayor “Red” Ken Livingstone whose notorious coddling of Islamic extremists pegged him as the #2 terrorist apologist right behind the unrepentant and even more noxious George Galloway. There were even liberals in this country who unequivacably condemned the acts as barbaric and unwarranted.

Sadly, the moment passed. Reverting to form, the western left has indulged in an orgy of Bush hating to the exclusion of any kind of rational response to the threat from Islamic extremists. This was made crystal clear yesterday when, following the failed bombing in London, a British reporter asked an accusatory question of Australia’s hard nosed Prime Minister John Howard who was visiting Tony Blair at the time of the attack. The reporter practically blamed Howard and Blair for the attack because of their support for the United States in Iraq. Here is part of Howard’s brilliant response:

Can I just say very directly, Paul, on the issue of the policies of my government and indeed the policies of the British and American governments on Iraq, that the first point of reference is that once a country allows its foreign policy to be determined by terrorism, it’s given the game away, to use the vernacular. And no Australian government that I lead will ever have policies determined by terrorism or terrorist threats, and no self-respecting government of any political stripe in Australia would allow that to happen.

Can I remind you that the murder of 88 Australians in Bali took place before the operation in Iraq.

And I remind you that the 11th of September occurred before the operation in Iraq.

Can I also remind you that the very first occasion that bin Laden specifically referred to Australia was in the context of Australia’s involvement in liberating the people of East Timor. Are people by implication suggesting we shouldn’t have done that?

When a group claimed responsibility on the website for the attacks on the 7th of July, they talked about British policy not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan. Are people suggesting we shouldn’t be in Afghanistan?

I’m afraid the courageous Aussie should have saved his breath. The problem isn’t that the British reporter and western left have forgotten any of the litany of Islamist attacks over the past few years. The problem is, they remember but have failed to draw the necessary lessons both from the current scourge of Islamist thuggery and from history.

For I have come to the conclusion that most of the opposition to the Anglosphere policies of pre-emptive war, democractization of the middle east, and securing the home front comes not as a result of any treasonous tendencies on the part of liberals but rather the failed intellecual fallacies of a bygone era; the appeasement initiatives of England and France of the 1930’s.

It may be well to recall that at that time, appeasement was looked on as the only rational response to aggression. It was the perfect marraige of high minded ideals with hard headed reality (or so it was thought). The idea was that the aggressive confrontation with Hitler proceeded from real grievances – in this case the Versailles Treaty – and that in order to avoid war it was necessary to settle those grievances by giving Hitler what he wanted.

Looking at it from our perspective, it seems like folly. But from the perspective of the overwhelming majority of voters and the leadership class in France and England, anything was preferable to reliving the slaughter in the trenches that occurred during WW I.

This rationale seems to have taken control of the left as they desperately thrash about looking for a way – any way – to avoid confrontation with the terrorists. And like their ideological ancestors from the 1930’s, they are seeking to dismiss this agression in favor of what they see as a reasonable justification for it. Ted Lapkin’s article in NRO is instructive in that he shows how this logic has consumed the liberals:

The far Left has similarly proved unable to liberate itself from the web of rose-tinted delusions that it has spun about the nature of Islamic extremism. After each al Qaeda outrage, leftist ideologues are quick to castigate their own countrymen for a catalogue of sins, both real and imagined. With a perverse combination of self-loathing and adoration of the enemy, the radical Leftist mantra preaches that if only we were nicer, the jihadists could not fail to love us. It’s our own fault if Osama bin Laden doesn’t realize what good people we are.

And all the while, these “progressive” academics, pundits, and politicians engage in ridiculous intellectual contortions designed to mitigate the guilt of the terrorist perpetrators. When push comes to shove, some intellectuals believe that Islamism is simply an understandable reaction to what they describe as “Western imperialism.”

Self loathing aside, there are other powerful emotions at work here. The question “Why do they hate us” resonates much more with them than it does with the right or with realists. Writing in the New York Times, Oliver Roy reminds us of the answer to that question; we’re in the way:

Another motivating factor, we are told, was the presence of “infidel” troops in Islam’s holy lands. Yes, Osama Bin Laden was reported to be upset when the Saudi royal family allowed Western troops into the kingdom before the Persian Gulf war. But Mr. bin Laden was by that time a veteran fighter committed to global jihad.

He and the other members of the first generation of Al Qaeda left the Middle East to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980’s. Except for the smallish Egyptian faction led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, now Mr. bin Laden’s chief deputy, these militants were not involved in Middle Eastern politics. Abdullah Azzam, Mr. bin Laden’s mentor, gave up supporting the Palestinian Liberation Organization long before his death in 1989 because he felt that to fight for a localized political cause was to forsake the real jihad, which he felt should be international and religious in character.

From the beginning, Al Qaeda’s fighters were global jihadists, and their favored battlegrounds have been outside the Middle East: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and Kashmir. For them, every conflict is simply a part of the Western encroachment on the Muslim ummah, the worldwide community of believers.

For the left however, the reason they want to kill us does not include the re-establishment of an Islamic Caliphate as a result of global jihad. In fact, the goals of our enemies can be safely ignored because they seem so unreal. So rather than deal with the universiality of Islamic terrorism, the left takes a much narrower view. As each new outrage occurs, they seek to “understand” the announced motivations of the terrorists rather than deal with the overarching objectives of our enemies.

A diariest on Daily Kos recently put up a poll on how to “solve” terrorism. Here are the revealing responses:

How should we solve terrorism?

Try to get Israel to act like a better neighbor in middle east. 8 votes – 11 %
Try to get moderate Muslims to discourage terrorism strongly 8 votes – 11 %
We need to work for economic justice for disenfranchised Muslims 23 votes – 34 %
We need a worldwide dialogue on Islam’s association w/ world 11 votes – 16 %
War, war, kill, kill, bomb, bomb, destroy, destroy 1 vote – 1 %
None of the above—you idiot! 16 votes – 23 %

(HT: Museum of Left Wing Lunacy)

Fully 61% of the respondents believe in some kind of dialogue or “economic justice” as if either were in our power to achieve. But it illustrates a way of thinking that seeks to placate our enemies rather than defeat them.

Ace has some serious thoughts about this appeasement impulse on the left:

Note to the left: Osama bin Ladin, Al Zarqawi, and the rest of the Islamofascist killers aren’t even offering you an armistice. Quite the opposite. They have said, multiple times, that they intend to kill you or subjugate you and you cannot buy their peace simply by giving into their demands.

But that makes those on the left worse than Chamberlain

When Chamberlain came back from Munich waving the agreement in which England and Germany agreed to always resolve their differences in “The Spirit of Munich,” little did the deluded British Prime Minister realize the irony in his betrayal of the Czechs. For within two years, the Nazis would overrun most of Europe and his tiny island nation would be left on its own to face the German onslaught.

It remains to be seen if the western left will have the scales fall from their eyes in time to help to save our common civilization from the ravages and hatred of our enemies.

UPDATE

Jeff Goldstein links to the Oliver Roy piece in the Times I highlighted above and then goes deeper by quoting extensively from an extraordinary article by Reuel Marc Gerecht in The Weekly Standard (which I intend to use as a basis for an article that will appear in The American Thinker next week).

Gerecht’s learned thesis is a blueprint for both tactical and strategic moves we should be making in the WoT. Goldstien sums up nicely:

Fortunately, many of us have already reached the conclusion that the spread of democracy in the mideast is the single greatest threat to radicalized Islam—if only as a way, in the Roy / Gerecht paradigm of a radicalized Western Islamism leading the charge of holy war, to disabuse Westernized jihadists of a number of ready made excuses for their fight—something the American people made clear when they reelected President Bush in November.

Now if we can only convince the rest of the world of the need to sign on.

Easier said than done but something we have to keep plugging away at. A good chance may come in September as it appears that Gehard Schoeder will lose bigtime in elections to Angela Merkel’s Christain Democrats. And while Merkel appears to be no Iron Lady in that she has already promised not to help us out very much in Iraq, she may prove easier to work with on combating Muslim extremism than the insufferably anti-American Schroeder.

It’s been said elsewhere; I don’t think it’s an accident that the three strongest proponents of confronting the Islamists – Bush, Blair, and Howard – all won resounding victories in the last year while the political fortunes of their tormentors – Chirac and Schoeder – are in the toilet.

Ah! Sweet irony!