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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (690975)	7/8/2005 11:52:10 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Will yesterday's savagery reunite the West against its common enemy? Friday, July 8, 2005 12:01 a.m. That was an impressive sight yesterday, in Gleneagles, Scotland, of British Prime Minister Tony Blair responding to the London terror attacks flanked in solidarity by all the world's major leaders. Now let's hope those leaders react with the resolve President Bush showed after 9/11, rather than retreat the way Spain did after the Madrid bombings last year. A group calling itself the "Secret Organization--al Qaeda in Europe" claimed responsibility for the bombings, and the attacks bore the hallmarks of Islamic terror. The four explosions were coordinated, designed to kill civilians, and timed for political effect at the start of the G-8 summit. The al Qaeda message justified the murders because British troops are in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it threatened Denmark and Italy if they didn't withdraw their troops. The best response would be for G-8 leaders to immediately expand their commitments to both countries. Islamists are most dangerous when they sense weakness. And they can be forgiven for detecting it as they've watched debates in Europe and the U.S. in recent months. The calls to close Guantanamo, the recriminations over rendition of terror suspects, the demands for a "date certain" to withdraw from Iraq: In the mind of al Qaeda these are all signs of the West's flagging will to prevail. Certainly we should have learned by now that appeasement wins no reprieve. The terrorists don't hate what we do as much as who we are, so there is no safe place to retreat to. Spain's post-Madrid departure from Iraq hasn't spared that country from further terror attempts. Even a complete Western withdrawal from Iraq would still leave the continuing affront to al Qaeda that is its presence in Afghanistan. And retreat from battling the Islamists in the Middle East would only make it easier for them to take the battle to us at home, as they did yesterday in London. That al Qaeda's tactics have changed to smaller bombings is notable, though of little comfort. As in Madrid, the London explosions lacked the diabolical audacity of flying planes into the Pentagon. But as allied defenses against major targets have been strengthened, the terrorists are striking soft targets with bombs that are very hard to detect. While each explosion is smaller, the cumulative death toll can still be terrible (at least 38 killed and 700 wounded in London as we went to press). America may be less vulnerable than Europe to this Israelization of terror, but it is hardly immune. The U.S. Islamic population is less radicalized than Europe's and, unlike in Israel, the terrorists lack the safe haven of Palestine. But it is virtually impossible in a free society to stop a fanatic willing to kill himself with a backpack full of explosives. That Islamists haven't mounted such an attack in the U.S. suggests not they aren't willing but that they haven't been able to. And one reason has been the forceful American response in the wake of 9/11. Yet that resolve continues to fade along with the public memories of that day. For months the debate in Washington hasn't been over how best to fight terrorists but how harshly we treat them. Rather than strengthen the Patriot Act, Congress wants to weaken it by creating a library loophole. The press corps has wallowed in Abu Ghraib as the defining event of the entire Iraq War. In the wake of London, the political attacks on Guantanamo deserve special mention here. That detention center is designed to hold precisely the kind of stateless, uniform-less terrorists who carry out such attacks. Clearly these men remain a threat, and we have to find somewhere to put them once they are captured so they can't return to kill more innocents. Senator Joe Biden and others who want to close Guantanamo have to tell us where they'd rather have such men detained, or why in the world they'd let them go before this war is over. Closing Guantanamo now strikes us as appeasement, pure and simple. Which brings us back to those G-8 leaders. The solidarity that existed after 9/11 splintered all too easily in the wake of Iraq, and it hasn't returned even though both Mr. Blair and President Bush have been re-endorsed by their electorates. France has been especially unwilling to let NATO play a larger role in Iraq, as if the main security threat to Europe isn't the terrorism that has its wellspring in the Middle East. Only yesterday al Qaeda's wing in Iraq claimed it had killed Egypt's ambassador to Baghdad and promised to kill "as many ambassadors as we can." The terrorists believe Iraq is the central battlefield in the war on terror, even if some in the West still don't. Perhaps the London bombings will inspire a new shared determination. Yesterday Mr. Blair read a joint statement of the leaders present, including France's Jacques Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schroeder: "Today's bombings will not weaken in any way our resolve to uphold the most deeply held principles of our societies and to defeat those who would impose their fanaticism and extremism on all of us. We shall prevail and they shall not." More than what they say, the world will be watching what those leaders now do, al Qaeda most of all.