Friday, September 03, 2004

Fasten Your Seatbelts

It's going to be a rocky election season, says Victor Davis Hanson:

"Almost every day, al Qaeda suspects or affiliated terrorists are arrested somewhere in the world. Islamic fascists blow up Israelis, behead Nepalese, murder Russians children in schools and on the street, and kidnap French journalists (so much for appeasement). They want to destroy trains in New York as they did in Madrid. They seek to ruin democracy in Kabul and Baghdad and take down Russian airliners. Nearly each week they are caught forming cells in Europe and the United States--all akin in their desire for theocracy, incoherent demands, partiality for barbarous methods of killing civilians, and hatred of Western-style liberalism and freedom. Now we learn that they may well turn their attention to targeted assassinations here at home--in the manner in which Osama bin Laden took out General Massoud of the Northern Alliance on the eve of the September 11 attacks, and like the various efforts to incinerate General Musharraf in Pakistan. The problem is not only that such efforts would be aimed at short-circuiting the nerve center of the United States, but also that previous reckless talk on the part of some cultural elites at home would only accentuate the turmoil. "