I am still amazed to hear our enemies given a pass just two years since 9-11. I replied that, these days, one cannot open a newspaper or turn on the TV news without reading or hearing about some heinous bombing somewhere in the world and the perpetrators of these acts are all Muslims. In some cases, they are Muslims killing other Muslims.

What is it about "intellectuals" that permits them to explain away the horror of the worst attack on the U.S. homeland with talk of Middle Eastern Muslims living in poverty and under the boot of despotism as the "reason" for their rage? The reason for their poverty and their enslavement is Islam. Even Muslim intellectuals no longer shy from chiding their co-religionists for failing to admit this. The way Islam is taught throughout the Mid- dle East leaves too many Muslims ignorant of the real world and prone to blame all their problems on Jews, the United States of America, and anyone who disagrees with the local imam.

Another disturbing development of late is the notion that, while the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a success, everything since has been a failure and that President Bush has led us into a "quagmire." Indeed, the Liberal media was shouting quagmire as our military was achieving a stunning victory. How can anyone be so stupid as to think the U.S.A. and its coalition allies such as Great Britain and Spain could instantly rebuild Iraq after Saddam Hussein, his family, and fellow gangsters in the Baath Party had spent more than thirty years looting that nation and leaving its infrastructure to rot? Why are we being told that no plans for the aftermath of the liberation had been made, when it is evident that the U.S.A. has swiftly installed an Iraqi governing council and is engaged in rooting out the deeply entrenched remnants of what Saddam left behind?

And what problems are being encountered? Again, the answer is rooted in Islam. We are told that Saudi extremists and other jihadists are flooding into Iraq to wage a guerrilla war on our forces there. No one in the area wants to see the U.S.A. succeed. Not Iran, a nation that is our implacable enemy so long as the ayatollahs rule that country. Not Syr- ia, Saddam's partner in crime, a country where a comparable despotism rules. Not the Saudi Royal family, which has ample cause to fear the establishment of a democratic government in Iraq. Not al-Qa'ida or what's left of the Taliban. In short, the only people who benefit from the liberation of Iraq are the ordinary Iraqi citizens, who no longer have to fear ending up in mass graves, and the Kurds, who no longer have to fear being gassed to death in the streets of their cities. And, may I add, the rest of the world.

And why would anyone suggest turning Iraq over to the tender mercies of the United Na- tions? Time and again, the UN has stood by idly while those whose lives were entrusted to them were led away to be killed. While useful in providing aid in the aftermath of con- flict, the UN is useless in every other manner, particularly peacekeeping. Thinking themselves invulnerable to Islamic terrorism, the UN has had to go back to the drawing board following the recent bombing of their Baghdad headquarters.

Frankly, I am not terribly fond of "intellectuals," although writers are, by trade, part of this colloquium. History has repeatedly demonstrated how intellectuals--or pseudo-in- tellectuals--put forth economic and other theories that always manage to kill millions of people. Communism comes to mind. I am not terribly fond of "orthodoxy," no matter who practices it. And I will give no quarter to those too blind to see that America and its allies are locked in a battle not of their own making, but one that has been thrust upon them by Islamists and those who support them, either openly or by their silence.

Islam is waging a battle against civil liberties, freedom of religion, human rights, and the other accoutrements of Western civilization. Islam has taken on the world.

Whose fault is it? Let's start with Mohammed, self-proclaimed "final" prophet of Allah. Let's stop making excuses for the barbarity being perpetrated in the name of Islam and get on with the business of destroying its eager martyrs.

Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, Communications Director of the American Policy Center, and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly column, "Warning Signs," posted on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center (www.anxietycenter.com). A compilation of his past columns, entitled Warning Signs, is published by Merril Press. In addition to Warning Signs, Caruba is the author of A Pocket Guide to Militant Islam and The United Nations vs. the United States, both of which are available from the National Anxiety Center, 9 Brookside Road, Maplewood, New Jersey, 07040.

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