So, up in Seattle, a Muslim goes Jew hunting in a target-rich environment, killing one and wounding several others, all of them women, one of them pregnant (he almost got a twofer, there). Once again, we’re assured by the authorities that there’s no reason to think that this is terrorism. In fact, the police are now reportedly guarding the local mosques against “retaliation,” ignoring the fact that the vast amount of such incidents seem to occur not against mosques (in which much hateful propaganda is propagated), but against synagogues.

Stop and think about the absurdity of that for a moment. A man walks into a building full of Jews, says that he’s angry about Israeli actions, and starts shooting at innocent civilians. But we should be relieved, I guess, because it’s not terrorism.

This is just the latest example of the ongoing folly, begun in the wake of September 11, of calling the conflict in which we suddenly found ourselves (but had really been going on since at least 1979) a war against “terror.” As has been oft stated before, while the people who are trying to kill us largely are terrorists, the terror is a tactic (and a very successful one, given the nature of our news media), not a cause. Anyone can engage in it, and to say that we are at war with terror is to misidentify the enemy, in a profound and counterproductive way.

The problem of this misnaming of the war manifests itself in many ways. It allows opponents of the liberation of Iraq to claim that it had nothing to do with the war, because somehow “terrorist” has been rendered synonymous with Al Qaeda and bin Laden, and as we all know (at least those of us fundamentally and perhaps willfully ignorant of the actual history), Al Qaeda would have nothing to do with Saddam, and vice versa. By focusing exclusively on the “terrorists” that are Al Qaeda, it obscures the much larger enemy. And it allows the “authorities” to absurdly claim that the Pakistani who just went on the shooting spree in Seattle isn’t a “terrorist,” because he didn’t bring along his Al Qaeda membership card and decoder ring.

As was the case with the first three world wars, we are at war not with terror or any other particular tactic, but with an idea, or rather, a large set of ideas, most or all of which are inimical to our culture, and to the civilization that is an outgrowth of the Enlightenment. There is no win-win outcome to this war. There are, in the words of divorce courts, irreconcilable differences between the West and the Jihadis. There is, ultimately, not room enough on this planet for both ideologies, because theirs demands submission of all to it.

And despite their sectarian differences, it is an idea shared by Al Qaeda, by Hezbollah, by Hamas, by the Taliban, and by (unfortunately) vast swaths of people across the Middle East and Asia. It is not a new idea–this is just the most recent flareup of a war that has been going on for over a millennium. All that is new is that technologies have evolved, and our culture softened and grown unconfident in the value of our own ideas, in a way that gives them hope that finally, victory may be at hand.

Israelis, even the Israeli left, now finally understand that “land for peace” was a chimera, a hopeless endeavor, because their enemy doesn’t want land, or peace. They are like the alien in Independence Day who, when asked what it wanted of us, hissed, “I want you to die.”

Our culture is an offense to them, our material success is an offense (and rebuke) to them (because infidels have no right to be successful), our very existence, and particularly the existence of Jews in what they consider their own holy land, is an intolerable ongoing offense to them, made more offensive by the fact that this lowest form of life has made the desert bloom in a way that they never could.

It is all one war, and it’s not a war against “terror.” It is a world war largely of the Anglosphere (and some of its new allies, such as Poland and eastern Europe, and Israel–an honorary member) against fundamentalist Islamism. It is a war in which much of Europe has been cowed into sitting on the sidelines, by the enemy within. Russia and China are torn, partly for purely mercenary reasons, because our enemy is hungry for their arms and has abundant resources with which to purchase them, and partly due to their desire to see the Anglosphere and particularly its lead nation, the “hyperpower,” brought low. But Chechnya and the Uigers in western China demonstrate that they will only be able to feed others to the alligator for so long, before they become the next meal.

We are at war with an idea, and it’s an idea shared by the man up in Seattle. Part of that idea is that Israel shouldn’t exist, and that it’s intolerable when it does anything to defend itself and ensure its future existence. That part at least of the idea was clearly shared by the shooter in Seattle, by his own words. He may not (or he may) be a member of Al Qaeda, but we are not at war exclusively with Al Qaeda, which is just one front, one manifestation of the much larger enemy. We battle over a divide of ideologies, and there are many on the other side of that divide, some of whom, sadly, live among us. And they can unfortunately constitute a fifth column. He walked among us, in normal garb, but when he felt his time come, he picked up arms and made war against the nation that had welcomed him, and not against our military, but against helpless women.

The authorities don’t want to call him a terrorist. Fine.

Let us, then, call him what he is. He is the enemy. He is a foreign operative on our soil, a spy, a combatant out of uniform, and there is no need for a civil trial. The laws of war allow him to be summarily shot. And if that were to happen, it would, finally, be a welcome recognition of the true nature of this war.

[Late Saturday morning update]

Hugh Hewitt has some related thoughts.

[Early afternoon update]

Steve Sailer says: “Anti-Semitic terrorism … another job Americans just won’t do!”

[Sunday morning update]

In honor of the occasion, Mark Steyn reprises an article from the LAX 4th of July shooting a couple years ago: “Fancy that, another free-lance Jihadi.”

Claudia Rossett talks about disproportionate responses by the UN.

Where are all the so-called “human rights” organizations? When will someone formally accuse Hezbollah of war crimes? Hiding weapons and fighters among a civilian population is a war crime. Making war out of uniform, or wearing the uniform of the enemy, is a war crime, and both are illegal via the Geneva Conventions. But when Lebanese civilians are killed or injured as a result of these actions, the autonomic response in Turtle Bay and among the NGOs is to blame the Jews.

Joseph Farah (a Christian Arab, for what it’s worth) says that we’re in neither World Wars III or IV. This is just the latest flareup of the original world war, going back centuries:

If the radical Islamic jihadists in the Middle East

It’s a sad commentary on public debate that this has to be done over and over again, but Jeff Jacoby dismantles (once again) the imbecilic “Chicken Hawk” “argument:”

“Chicken hawk” isn’t an argument. It is a slur — a dishonest and incoherent slur. It is dishonest because those who invoke it don’t really mean what they imply — that only those with combat experience have the moral authority or the necessary understanding to advocate military force. After all, US foreign policy would be more hawkish, not less, if decisions about war and peace were left up to members of the armed forces. Soldiers tend to be politically conservative, hard-nosed about national security, and confident that American arms make the world safer and freer. On the question of Iraq — stay-the-course or bring-the-troops-home? — I would be willing to trust their judgment. Would Cindy Sheehan and Howard Dean?

Arnold Kling discusses the knotty problem of hostage-taking nations and movements that are at the root (at least tactically) of the war we’re in.

As long as we let these creatures continue to flout the Geneva Conventions without even calling them on it, while demanding that we grant Geneva protection to them, there will be little hope of winning.

No problems with Damascus or Teheran, according to them:

Hezbollah and Hamas should be integrated into peaceful politics, and third countries should not be blamed for the current Middle East crisis, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.

“We need to find a way for Hamas and Hezbollah to achieve their largely legitimate political goals through participation in political life … and not through force,” Lavrov told the Echo Moscow radio station Wednesday, adding that less radical parts of Hezbollah and Hamas could return to peaceful politics.

So, the destruction of Israel and eventual worldwide domination of Islam is a “largely legitimate political goal”?

This is looking more and more like a world war every day.

[Via Andy McCarthy]

And what a weekend to be immersing myself in a space conference.

As one wag once said about the Balkans, the Middle East seems to be producing a little more history than it can locally consume.

Mark Steyn discusses the shocking truth–that George Bush didn’t invent war:

Lawrence Keeley calculates that 87 per cent of primitive societies were at war more than once per year, and some 65 per cent of them were fighting continuously. “Had the same casualty rate been suffered by the population of the twentieth century,” writes Wade, “its war deaths would have totaled two billion people.” Two billion! In other words, we’re the aberration: after 50,000 years of continuous human slaughter, you, me, Bush, Cheney, Blair, Harper, Rummy, Condi, we’re the nancy-boy peacenik crowd. “The common impression that primitive peoples, by comparison, were peaceful and their occasional fighting of no serious consequence is incorrect. Warfare between pre-state societies was incessant, merciless, and conducted with the general purpose, often achieved, of annihilating the opponent.”

…One swallow doesn’t make a summer, of course, but I wonder sometimes if we’re not heading toward a long night of re-primitivization. In his shrewd book Civilization And Its Enemies, Lee Harris writes:

“Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe. . . . That, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary.”

For many, it still apparently is.

This primer may offer some reasons that Israel isn’t being more aggressive with respect to Syria. They need to come up with a way to neutralize these things.

This primer may offer some reasons that Israel isn’t being more aggressive with respect to Syria. They need to come up with a way to neutralize these things.

This primer may offer some reasons that Israel isn’t being more aggressive with respect to Syria. They need to come up with a way to neutralize these things.