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"There are 5,000 mosques in the region calling for jihad," said Dr. Ali Aldabbagh.

That wasn't the answer I expected when I asked Aldabbagh about his country's biggest internal threat. Like the other bloggers gathered at the Heritage Foundation, I wasn’t prepared for the official spokesman for the government of Iraq to credit so much of the violence in his country to radical Islam. But Aldabbagh wanted to ensure we Americans recognized what is at stake and the reason why the violence will continue. "Iraq is not fighting a civil war," he said. "We are defending against a war on civilians."

And its not just in Iraq. As if to underscore Aldabbagh's claim, Al Qaeda bombers in Algeria killed 33 people and injured 200 others this week. It was a reminder that Islamic terror remains a global phenomena. While insular America didn’t wake up to the threat until September 2001, Algeria has struggled against the radicals since 1992. During the past fifteen years, over 100,000+ Algerians have been killed.

It is often said that Generals always fight the last war. A similar claim could be made about the American attitude toward warfare. Having been shaped by our experiences in the Cold War, we prefer to adopt similar measures: containment, isolationism, democracy-promotion. But we've also made the mistake of believing that our current enemy is as rational as the Soviets. Even under the threat of nuclear annihilation, we were optimistic that our enemy shared our basic sense of morality, or at least our instinct for self-preservation. As Sting sang in "Russians": "What might save us, me, and you/Is if the Russians love their children too."

No doubt the Islamacists love their children too. But that fact won't save us-- me, you, or even the Russians--when the radicals are willing to make suicide bombers of their sons and daughters.

Unable to comprehend such utter disregard for human life, we refuse to acknowledge the gravity of the threat. We fail to realize that while we are fighting a "war on terror", the enemy is fighting a "war on civilians." They don’t want us dead because we are in Iraq, or because we support Israel, or because we have a decadent culture, or because of any other "root cause." They want us dead because we are infidels. We refuse to submit to the will of their god and, therefore, deserve to be slaughtered like swine.

We can pull the troops out of Iraq. We can pull our punches on Iran. We can pull the cover over our heads and cower. But there is no where to hide when the enemy is willing to kill innocent women and children--even their own--for the glory of martyrdom. There are 5,000 mosques in the Middle East calling for jihad. The radicals are answering that call by the thousands. How will we respond? When the war is on civilians, there is no place to retreat, no way to surrender, and no room for conscientious objectors.

A "music video" broadcast on a Palestinian Hamas TV station on Wednesday features a young Palestinian girl singing to her mother who is preparing to carry out a suicide bomb attack. The caption of the video reads, "Duha, daughter of suicide bomber Reem Riyashi, sings to her mother." In 2004, Riyashi killed four Israelis after blowing herself up on a border crossing between Israel and Gaza.

Initially the little girl is frightened (“Mommy, what are you carrying in your arms instead of me.") but after seeing her mom on TV, the daughter has a change of heart: “Instead of me you carried a bomb in your hands. Only now, I know what was more precious than us. May your steps be blessed, and may you be flawless for Jerusalem. Send greetings to our messenger Muhammad.”

By the end of the video the girl decides to become a bomber herself. After finding explosives in her mother’s drawer she says, “My love will not be (merely) words. I am following mommy in her steps.”

(HT: Iconia)

Related: The Martyr Plateau: Is the Supply of Palestinian Suicide Bombers Limited?

As the Iraq war enters its fifth year, its time to reflect on some of the things that we've long since forgotten.

1. Most people have forgotten--or never knew--all the reasons we went to war. -- H.J.RES.114 is the Congressional resolution that authorized the President to use force to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein. Most Americans--probably including the 136 Congressional Representatives and 16 Senators who co-sponsored the resolution--have never bothered to read the text and instead parrot nonsense about "why we really went to war." This law, however, provides the complete list of justifications for why we went to war with Iraq. This law establishes the criteria that the American people--through their elected representatives--agreed were sufficient reasons for using force in Iraq. The list includes:

Continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability (false); actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability (true); supporting and harboring terrorist organizations (true); continuing to engage in brutal repression of its civilian population (true); refusing to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq (true); failing to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait (true); demonstrated its capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people (true); attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush (true); firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces (true); harbored members of al-Qaeda (true); continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations (true).

Critics of the war who deny or downplay these reasons for going to war are either ignorant or dishonest. They are either unaware of the real reasons provided to the American people by their legislature or do know and are intentionally being deceptive.

2. The plan to overthrow Saddam began during the Clinton Administration -- The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-338) was a Congressional statement of policy calling for regime change in Iraq which Bill Clinton signed the bill into law on October 31, 1998. The Act authorized the President to provide assistance (including military assistance that didn't require the use of U.S. military force) to anti-Saddam groups working to enact a regime change. This act was also cited in H.J.RES.114.

[Note: This entry was originally posted in September 2004.]

In a recent article in TechCentralStation, Dr. Helen Smith (aka, the Insta-wife), wrote an article warning of the dangers of �overhumanizing� terrorists:

In fact, I believe that the liberal stance of trying too hard to "humanize" our enemies is a mistake that will make the problem worse, and produce more violence rather than less.

...

In our attempt to be overly-tolerant and empathetic, we start to identify too much with the enemy (very much like those suffering from Stockholm syndrome) and start to dehumanize the victims of terror. Surely, the victims of 9/11 deserve more from us than that. As do the potential victims who might be saved by a more realistic, and less "nurturing," approach.

Smith makes some excellent points in the article but it appears that she shares the liberal�s misconception that to be �human� is, at it�s core, to be �good.� Christians, of course, will naturally take exception to this view of mankind. We believe that humans are not inherently good and that our political actions should be developed in light of this understanding. I believe that on this issue in particular, Christian anthropology not only provides the correct view but the only one that can provide an adequate framework in which to form our conception of our �enemy.�

Yesterday, Senator Rick Santorum held a news conference to reveal a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center which admits that since 2003, �coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.� So far, the response to the news has been tepid. Less than a half dozen reporters even showed up for Santorum�s briefing.

�I would think if you're announcing the finding of weapons of mass destruction, you'd get more than four or five reporters,� said Santorum on Hugh Hewitt�s radio show, �but that's all we could seem to drum up.�

The Senator shouldn�t be too surprised. While his intentions are noble, most reasonable people have stopped trying to change people's minds about the way based on finding �stockpiles� of WMDs.

Opposition to the war has nothing to do with the lack of WMDs. It never did. We could find a nuclear bomb in Uday Hussein�s old apartment and John Kerry would still be gearing up for Winter Soldier II. Unless you dropped your moral compass off the side of a swift boat in Cambodia, it�s easy to see that the world is safer because we secured the one WMD that truly mattered: Saddam Hussein.

More important than the weapons that were found (or that have yet to be found) are the ones that will never be created by Saddam�s regime. Many Americans, however, still suffer from the delusion that the only way that Saddam could have been a significant threat was for him to have possessed stockpiles of WMDs.

Shannon Love explains why such thinking is based on a misunderstanding of technology, comparing this misperception to a literary plot device that Alfred Hitchcock called a McGuffin:

In the recent movie "Downfall", which is based on eyewitness accounts during the final days of World War II, Joseph Goebbels and his wife are given the opportunity to have their six young children flee to safety. Magda Goebbels, however, refuses to allow them to leave. Instead, as her kids sleep, the mother inserts a cyanide capsule into each child's mouth and presses their jaws until the capsule breaks. When explaining why she wouldn�t allow her kids to escape, Mrs. Goebbels says, "I can't bear to think of them growing up in a world without national socialism."

�This is the power of ideology,� says Fareed Zakaria, �Magda Goebbels had embraced a horrific world view that made her believe that murdering her children was a noble act.� Zakaria finds in this story the key to understanding what motivates suicide bombers. Radical ideologies are not produced in poverty and disadvantage but in affluence and comfort:

Like all ideologies, radical Islam is a phenomenon of the educated class. From Muhammad Atta to Mohammed Sidique Khan, almost all suicide bombers have been men who read and write. In V. S. Naipaul's book "A Million Mutinies Now," the author interviews a young Hindu fanatic. The man explains his fascistic views, and then Naipaul asks the man's father, who happens to be sitting there, what he thinks. The old man explains that he works at a factory from morning till night and doesn't really have time for these kinds of ideas. Extremist ideology is a leisure-time pursuit.

Why are radical ideologies almost always formed in the educated classes? What is it that compels them to form such belief systems? One possible answer is provided by essayist Lee Harris who claims that ideologies fulfill fantasy roles:

Sen. John Kerry has a new political campaign ad in which he criticizes President Bush for failing to secure 380 tons of explosives in Iraq. The script of the television ad �Obligation� reads:

The obligation of a Commander in Chief is to keep our country safe. In Iraq, George Bush has overextended our troops and now failed to secure 380 tons of deadly explosives. The kind used for attacks in Iraq, and for terrorist bombings. His Iraq misjudgments put our soldiers at risk, and make our country less secure. And all he offers is more of the same. As President, I�ll bring a fresh start to protect our troops and our nation. I�m John Kerry and I approved this message.�

The Kerry campaign released this ad on Tuesday. They should have waited.

Two days later, new light is being shed on the �missing� explosives:

It�s easy to spot the people who haven�t actually read the Duelfer report � they're the ones claiming that the 1000 page document says that Iraq doesn�t have WMDs. Anyone who reads the actual document (rather than just the summary) will find that weapons have been found (53 chemical munitions since May) and that �less than a tenth of one quarter of one percent of the over 10,000 weapons caches throughout Iraq, and visited fewer than ten ammunition depots identified prior to OIF as suspect CW sites.� (Vol. 3 pg. 34) The most that can be claimed about the report is that very few weapons have been found so far and that, with any luck, no more will be found in the future.

But the report also shows why arguments over Iraq current levels of WMDs misses the point. As the findings makes clear, Saddam was eventually going to reacquire WMDs because the French, the Russians, and the Chinese were more concerned about lining their own pockets than they were containing Saddam. We were going to have to face him eventually, whether on our terms or his.

Indeed, the most interesting aspect of the report is the transmittal letter by Charles Duelfer. The twelve page introduction examines the importance of viewing the issues through Saddam�s view of �reality.� It is required reading for anyone who questions what sort of threat the Iraqi tyrant posed to the West.

While there is no substitute for reading the entire section, I�ve highlighted a few of the key passages:

For all our interest in politics, Americans continue to be some of the least politically informed people on the planet. The reader of the average left-leaning pundit blog, for example, would get the impression that the decision to go to war with Iraq ressted solely with President Bush. Most appear not to realize that the authorization to use force was given to the President by Congress by the passage of H.J.RES.114. Even those who are aware of this fact often do not realize that the bill was consponsored by 136 Congressional Representatives and 16 Senators (including Sen. John Edwards).

This law provides the sole list of justifications for why we went to war with Iraq. This law establishes the criteria that the American people � through their elected representatives � agreed were sufficient reasons for using force in order to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein. Critics of the Bush Administration who claim anything to the contrary are either ignorant or dishonest. They either are either unaware of the real reasons provided to the American people by their legislature and their President or they do know and are intentionally being deceptive.

Here is the text of the law authorizing the use of force along with the support for each justification. After reading the list you can decide for yourself where the truth lies:

In 1810, American entrepreneur and Harvard-educated math whiz Francis Cabot Lowell traveled to Great Britain for what he claimed was a tour of the English countryside. While on his trip he was able to ingratiate himself with the local businessmen and arranged tours of the local textile mills. At the time, the British dominated the world textile trade because they possessed one of the great inventions of the Industrial Revolution � the Cartwright Loom.

The British protected the secrets of the Cartwright Loom in much the same way the modern age controls nuclear technology. Along with strict patent laws and legislation, the factories that possessed the looms were fortified with spikes and broken glass. The export of cotton technology was a crime and skilled workers were limited in their ability to travel outside of the country.

Although the textile factories were off limits to foreigners, the local manufacturers allowed Lowell access to their facilities, believing he wouldn�t understand the complex technology. What the British didn�t realize was that he possessed a photographic memory. Lowell memorized the details of the technology and carried it back across the Atlantic.

Upon his return home, Lowell mixed his knowledge with the skills of machinist Paul Moody to produce the first power looms in America. Within six years the British lost their monopoly on textiles as America became a manufacturing superpower. A massive complex of mills sprung up in Lowell�s New England town, making it the textile center of the young nation. After his death, the Massachusetts town was renamed Lowell after the industrial spy and technological innovator.

Another distinction the town of Lowell holds is that it was the adopted home of a carpetbagger who moved to the town in 1972 to run for congress � John Kerry. Although Kerry used the town to launch his political career, he appears to have missed the lesson we learn from the town�s founder: the combination of information technology and production ability is even more important than the possession of the technology itself.

Hiroshima. Three Mile Island. Cherynobyl. Since the advent of the Atomic Age in the 1940s, catastrophic events such as these have caused the general public to develop a deep-rooted fear of radiation. The new threats brought about by the specter of terrorism, particularly the concept of the radiological dispersion bomb (aka �dirty bomb�), have only increased this �radiophobia.� Such threats are indeed real and we must constantly take precautions to prevent such attacks. But we also have a moral and civic duty to prepare ourselves, both physically and � even more importantly � psychologically, should such an attack take place on our homeland.

In fact, the true power of such a device lies not in its ability to spread radiation but in its ability to spread panic and fear. In order to defuse this anxiety we need to develop an awareness of the myths and realities about radiation exposure:

In his recent speeches and remarks about the war on terror, Democratic candidate John Kerry has claimed that President Bush is living in a �fantasy land of spin� and that �entire regions in Iraq are controlled by terrorists.� His running mate has been even more critical, disparaging not only the Bush Administration but the Iraqi Prime Minister as well:

"The best lesson for any fledgling democracy is that leaders should tell the truth, to always be straight with the people," Edwards said. "Prime Minister Allawi's trip to the United States was filled with all the wrong lessons, lessons from an administration that just can't seem to tell the truth when it comes to Iraq."

What is this �truth� that eludes Allawi and Bush? The Democrats appear to believe that the fledgling democracy is a �quagmire�, a �haven for terrorists�, and a country in chaos. Juan Cole echos the sentiment in a post that asks �What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation?�

According to recent news reports, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that a �worldwide intelligence failure led to the belief that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.� Many of us will naturally conclude this is a hasty generalization since the fact that we haven�t found them yet doesn�t mean that they Saddam didn't have them.

But Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan) believes that intelligence agencies worldwide engineered an "assumption train" that led them to conclude that the Iraqi tyrant had large quantities of WMDs:

�When we talk to some of the military generals of the Iraqi Republican Guard, one general will say, 'I thought General So-and-so had it.' You talk to General So-and-so, and he says, 'I thought he had it.' Saddam thought he had it as well."

Confused? Here�s how the assumption train �added on more cars.�:

For all those who would downplay this finding, I offer the following lesson in “terror math":

It takes 1 drop (100 mg) of sarin to kill an average person.

The artillery shell that was found contained 3 to 4 liters of sarin.

1 drop (mg) equals 0.0001 liters (1/10000 of a liter).

3-4 liters equates to roughly 50,000 drops, enough sarin to kill 50 thousand people.

Obviously, it would be impossible to distribute 50,000 drops of sarin in an effective enough manner to kill tens of thousands of people. But consider this:

The artillery shell that was found contained enough sarin that it could be divided up into 16 separate doses.

Each dose could kill 3,000 Americans, the number that died on 9/11.

From that single artillery shell, 16 "new 9/11s" could be attempted.

Many, if not most, would likely fail. But how many would succeed? How many American deaths lay waiting in that one “WMD?" One shell, sixteen “9/11s". Now ask yourself how many more deaths are waiting in shells that were “overlooked" or “misplaced?"

The terrorists don’t need “stockpiles of WMDs." To accomplish their goals, a handful of artillery shells is all that is required. For, unlike critics of the war, the terrorists know how to do the math.

[Note: My original calculations were based on a 1mg dose rather than the 100mg dose which is the required toxicity to cause death. Mike's corrections to my calculations helped me bring them into the proper order of magnitude.]

The debate over whether Iraq had WMDs should have officially ended with the recent explosion of an artillery shell containing sarin nerve agent. This finding isn't exactly surprising since the existence of WMDs has long been a moot point. The only remaining question is how we will find the remaining weapons. Will they be discovered in large stockpiles or will they be found one at a time -- as they are used against us in terrorist attacks.

The critics of the preemptive war in Iraq will no doubt attempt to downplay this incident and this latest finding is unlikely to persuade the of the seriousness of the missing WMDs. If the story receives any degree of media attention at all it will likely only to dismiss its significance. As Hugh Hewitt proposed earlier today, “Let's run a contest to find the first "it doesn't matter" story quote or op-ed."

Hugh didn’t have to wait long. The first quote comes from none other than David Kay, the former top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq. In an interview with the Associated Press, Kay said,

Yesterday Meryl Yourish pointed out that despite the expected outbreak of violence in Israel, the death of Sheik Yassin has not led to "earthquakes" of revenge." James Joyner agreed that this could be viewed as a "positive sign" but added:

I'm afraid there's no "winning" this war in the short term. The supply of fanatics seems inexhaustable.

Joyner is a former Army intelligence officer and one of the most insightful bloggers I know. But he appears to accept one of the most basic myths about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For, contrary to common misperception, the supply of suicide bombers is surprisingly limited.

In the past ten years there have been 99 suicide bombings in Israel. While it is difficult to estimate how many attempts were prevented, it is probably a safe estimate to assume the Israeli security forces catch 9 bombers for every 1 that slips through. That would average out to 100 people willing to become suicide bombers every year for the past decade. That is not, of course, an insignificant number. The damage and loss of life that would result if these terrorists were "successful" would be devastating. But when we look at the overall numbers the supply of willing martyrs is much smaller than might be assumed.

Before we can assess the pathology of the bombers, we should first look at the "normal" rates of suicide in the region. Israeli has a population of 5.1 million Jewish citizens, of which 350 people commit suicide each year. Another 1500 attempts are documented, though because of underreporting the actual attempts could be as high as 3,500 to 4,000. We can consider this the baseline for the number of potential suicides that would be expected.

In November 1984, Fred Cohen, an electrical engineering student from USC, performed an experiment for a weekly seminar on computer security. It took Cohen eight hours to develop a new program called 'vd" which displayed Unix file structures graphically. He provided the program on a Unix system bulletin board and once programmers downloaded it to their system, Cohen was able to acquire, without the knowledge of the users, the system rights to their machines. After the success of the experiment on the Unix system, it became apparent that the same techniques would work on many other systems.

Len Adleman, a colleague of Cohen, called the new technique a 'virus."

From the experiment, Cohen concluded, 'Viral attacks appear to be easy to develop in a very short time, can be designed to leave few if any traces in most current systems, are effective against modern security policies for multilevel usage, and require only minimal expertise to implement." Cohen was right. Three years later, the first PC virus, known as Brain, was written in Pakistan and ushered in a new age of economic terrorism. It is estimated that between 2001-2003, PC viruses cost businesses 98 billion dollars.

Computer viruses provide a model for the interconnection between an inherent trait of human nature (malevolence) and newly harnessed biological concept (self-replication). Viruses have no purpose other than destruction and require for their creation nothing more than a programmer with a malicious intent. Considering the fact that there are over 60,000 such viruses in existence, there appears to be no lack of would-be evil geniuses ready to unleash their monsters on the world.

But what gives the programs their power is their ability to self-replicate. The viruses not only infect a computer or a system but have the ability to recreate themselves in order to infect others. This provides an exponential increase in their destructive impact. Self-replication has an incredible power that, once unleashed, is nearly impossible to control. When unleashed in the form of a computer virus the power can bring computer systems to a grinding halt, causing significant expense and reductions in productivity. But what will happen when self-replication is combined with other forms of technology? As Sun Microsystems cofounder Bill Joy wrote almost four years ago*:

According to Benjamin Franklin, '"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." By this definition we can conclude that the government of Israel is insane. Why else would they continue to assassinate leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad as a way to hinder terrorism? Because, as everyone knows, such actions only lead to more terrorist violence, right?

Wrong.

The Israelis live in a land that is considered strange and foreign to many American editorial writers and pundits. And no, the land in question isn’t the Middle East but rather a place called 'Reality." To live within the realm of Reality requires accepting logic, facts, and certain hard truths that don’t always fit conveniently within a preconceived theory of how the world is supposed to work. This requirement often excludes many otherwise intelligent people from accepting citizenship in that land.

Since the state of Israel, however, would cease to exist if it ever believed the perceptions portrayed in many areas of the American media, it’s probably worth examining some of these differences:

Earlier this month I was encouraged by my country’s willingness to stand with our Spanish allies when they were attacked by terrorists. The refrain of 'We are all Spaniards now" rang out from both ends of the political spectrum. But now, only two weeks later, I’m getting the sense that we don’t always stand with our friends when they are targeted by groups that wish to annihilate them. Or perhaps 'We are all Jews now" just wouldn’t be as catchy.

After Israeli forces killed Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas who was known as the 'godfather of suicide bombers", the U.S., along with every other country engaged in the war against terror, should have cheered. Yassin, after all, is cut from the same cloth as bin Laden, differing, perhaps, only in the number of civilian casualties that can be attributed to him. But as we now know, that is not what happened.

The fact that the European Union condemned the action came as no surprise. The virus of appeasement infected that continent forty years ago and continues its malignant spread through the body politic. But the hypocrisy of the Bush Administration is astounding. Denouncing the assassination as 'deeply troubling" while conducting operations to hunt down and kill bin Laden is morally repugnant.