The idiocy of appeasement

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"Last week's terror bombings in London should be seen as a reminder not just that [President] Bush's [Iraq] war was a hideous diversion of focus and resources from the essential battle against terror, but that it has actually increased the danger of terrorist attacks against the U.S. and its allies." A loony rant from British MP George Galloway? No. That's New York Times columnist Bob Herbert yesterday.

Indeed, Mr. Galloway said nearly the same thing hours after Thursday's attack, and was quickly censured. Now we know that it wasn't because of what Mr. Galloway said; it was when he said it. Mr. Herbert knew better to save his "Blame Bush/Blair" comments until after most of the bodies had been counted.

It's frustrating, though hardly surprising, that nearly four years after September 11 the Western left refuses to understand our enemies. On that day, the United States was not in Iraq or Afghanistan. It should be equally as obvious that we weren't in either country when terrorists slaughtered Olympic athletes in Munich in 1972.

But while Messrs. Herbert and Galloway glory in their "enlightened" views, al Qaeda and its affiliates understand us better than we sometimes understand ourselves. They advise their followers to charge torture when captured -- and Congress goes into a tizzy. They feign outrage at the alleged destruction of a Koran -- and then send a suicide bomber to blow up Muslims in Baghdad. They petition Western governments against "hate crimes" -- such as a bill in Britain that would criminalize "religious hatred" aimed primarily at Islam -- and then murder Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh for making a critical movie of Islam. And now, tragically, they slaughter Britons and say it was because of Iraq and Afghanistan. So Mr. Herbert blames Messrs. Bush and Blair.

Lenin had a name for his Western sympathizers. He called them "useful idiots," because they were too busy running public relations for Soviet Russia to realize that they also were in Communism's crosshairs.

The Iraq and Afghanistan war undoubtedly ignited the passions of many Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere. There are certainly more Islamist terrorists in Iraq today, and many more around the world, than four years ago. But this is entirely natural, as history has shown. Many Germans who were not themselves Nazis in 1939 still rallied to Hitler's war when Allied bombs fell on their homes.

To argue resistance to the enemy is counterproductive is to rule out any active defense. To say that a war should not be fought because it might increase -- temporarily -- the size of the enemy leaves only one logical policy: appeasement. And we should know by now that there is no way to appease Islamofascists. Were there no Iraq war, terrorists would cite Guantanamo, or Israel, or the fact that Western women are free as an excuse to blow us up.

No single victory in Iraq or elsewhere will make us completely safe. However, when they strike us, our first response cannot be to wonder whether it's safer not to fight at all.