Making enemies

Since the 64th anniversary of Pearl Harbor was Wednesday, the event has gotten me thinking about the state of thinking about war in today's America:

Specifically, what if the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor today? What would we hear from Ted Kennedy, or Howard Dean, or Cindy Sheehan? From MoveOn.org? From the various media outlets?

You know as well as I do: that it was our fault, that "There was no link between Germany/Hitler and Pearl Harbor," that those who died on "Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy" deserved it, that we should try to see things from their perspective, that we need to pull out of the Pacific and so on.

Well, there is just one thing to say about those who take the analogous positions today: the blow the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor was specifically hoped back then to generate the reactions we are seeing today. The immediate goal was to cripple US military power in the pacific to buy the Japanese time to grab what they could, and then bring us to what was supposed to be a "final decisive battle" and defeat us.

But the hope was so to demoralize us that we would lose our will to fight, to the degree that the enemy would indeed be able to follow through on Admiral Yamamoto's warning that to end the war with us, they'd have to "dictate peace terms in the White House."

Sounds as if they may have jumped the gun by about 64 years, doesn't it?

One is tempted to wonder where the quest to "understand" the terrorists or to "be their friends" will lead. But actually, there is no doubt in my mind. Nor, apparently, in the minds of those terrorists:

You may or may not have heard about four members of a peace activist group, the Christian Peacemaker Teams, grabbed by terrorists in Iraq back on Nov. 30.

That seizure, of folks who have made it their business to "get in the way" of US forces trying to subdue the terrorists fighting against us and the Iraqi government (even as they sought to "get in the way" of the Israelis trying to combat Palestinian terrorism in years past) tells me three things about this war.

First: as has been noted before, you don't have to make yourself a target for terrorists to become a target for terrorists. The UN found that out the hard way in July 2003 when terrorists blew up its Baghdad headquarters, killing 21 people including the head of the reconstruction effort.

The news media found it out back in February 2002 when the terrorists in Pakistan who kidnapped newsman Daniel Berg chopped his head off. That was on top of ambushing, capturing and then killing four Western journalists in Afghanistan in the final stages of the rout of the Taliban.

The French found it out when two of their own journalists got kidnapped in Iraq earlier this year, and had the lesson driven home with all the riots the country endured recently -- all of which just happened to originate in areas heavily populated by Muslims.

The Germans found it out when terrorists grabbed archeologist Susanne Osthoff about the same time they snatched the Christian Peacemaker Teams people. Osthoff has lived in Iraq for decades, according to news reports. So the terrorists either had to know she was no threat to them (if they were really Iraqis just trying to drive out foreign occupiers) or didn't care (because, as we have been saying all along, they are not Iraqis but foreigners themselves).

And now, Christian Peacemaker Teams, whose efforts to "get in the way" of our troops comes about as close as possible to working against us (and therefore on behalf of the terrorists) without actually taking up arms against us, have found it out: you don't have to make yourself a target for terrorists to become one.

Second: the seizure of these four should demonstrate far beyond the shadow of any doubt who the enemy is in this war and why he must be fought wherever we find him. Just as in the case of Daniel Pearl, these folks could have served the terrorists' purposes, by blurring the line between us and the terrorists -- as indeed they spell out on their website www.cpt.org in their expressions of concern "for the well-being of all Iraqis who are suffering under occupation."

In fact, CPT's so-called Iraq Team has a statement posted on the website that "We … condemn our own governments for their actions in Iraq."

Further, the terrorists have grabbed these people to demand the release from captivity of Iraqis detainees held in US and Iraq prisons. But that's what these guys are there to do! "Team members accompanied the Iraqi people through the U.S.-led 2003 war and continue during the post-war occupation to expose abusive acts by U.S. Armed Forces and support Iraqis committed to nonviolent resistance," says the website.

Nonviolent resistance to what? Us? Doesn't that mean they are using nonviolent methods to do what the terrorists are using violence to do? So aren't they working with the terrorists toward the common goal?

And the terrorists grabbed 'em.

* Which brings us to the third lesson from the seizure of the Christian Peacemaker Team members in Iraq. We will win this war.

That's because, even more than in the case of the murder of Daniel Pearl, the enemy has shown he is as stupid and short-sighted as he is brutal and dangerous. In Daniel Pearl's case, they killed someone who could have "told their story," and fed the myth that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. And it's not as if the media as a whole had up to that point been the least bit unsympathetic to terrorists in general.

The Christian Peacemaker Team members were actually working toward the same goal as the terrorists: getting us out of Iraq. So the enemy targets his friends.

Can you think of anything more stupid?

Now: can there be any doubt who will win this war, between us and the terrorists?

And isn't it abundantly clear there can be no middle ground between us and them?

Dubya has it right: either you're with us or you're with the terrorists.

And if you can't make up your mind, don't worry.

They'll do it for you.

Gary Exelby is the editor of the Daily Statesman. E-mail him at gexelby@dailystatesman.com and visit his website at http://exelby.vnovus.com.