Blair responded by asking the man what the Muslims had to “feel angry about” when we had removed “two utterly brutal and dictatorial regimes” and replaced them with “a UN-supervised democratic process” and he wondered why they were angry at us, but not at the people doing the killing.
Blair went on to say, “This extremism can be defeated. But it will be defeated only by recognizing that we have not created it; it cannot be negotiated with; pandering to its sense of grievance will only encourage it; and only by confronting it, the methods and the ideas, will we win.”
I wish American politicians would cut out that one line from Blair and carry it around with them as some do a pocket-size version of the Constitution. Maybe it would remind them that terrorism is not something we created, is not something that can be negotiated with, nor should it be pandered to, and that only by confronting it will we win. Sadly, I fear that too few of them actually believe those words anymore.
In the months, and even for a few years, following September 11, the horror of the attacks was still fresh and the importance of strongly addressing the threat of Islamic jihadism was understood. Today a growing number of Americans entertain wild theories that it was not 19 jihadists that brought down the Twin Towers, but rather was forces within our own government. Almost six years later, with no additional attacks on U.S. soil, many have grown weary of the fight. Some now even refuse to recognize the threat. In 2003, Michael Moore famously denounced George Bush’s “fictitious war.” Four years later, John Edwards, a major candidate in the Democrat’s presidential primary, said there was no war on terrorism – that it was just a “bumper sticker slogan.”
Those in the government who have to review the daily threat assessments know that there is nothing fictitious, or “bumper sticker,” about the terrorist threat. Those in Iraq discovering torture manuals in al Qaeda safe houses, or finding the mutilated bodies of their fellow soldiers tied to bombs, know that the terrorist threat is real. Hopefully it won’t take another September 11 style attack on U.S. soil to remind those who have forgotten who the real terrorists are.