V for Victory

I watched the movie V for Vendetta this weekend. One of my geeky quirks is that I like watching the extra features that come on DVDs. It amazes me how obtuse Hollywood can be.

One of the central themes of the movie is that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Sadly, this has become a mantra of the radical anti-war left. A poisonous line of thinking that tries desperately to equivocate the violence used by men like George Washington with the violence used by Osama bin Laden.

The left is so absorbed with the notion of violence being universally bad. Regardless of the reason or the outcome, violence is bad. This is a wholly absurd notion even on the face of it. What V for Vendetta argues is that what we label terrorism is the result of the actions taken by the individuals against the governing powers of this world.

When a government is oppressively tyranical as the British government in the movie clearly is, the duty of free people is to oppose such governments and put their leaders to the sword if necessary. In 1776 our country fought against such a government that was genuinely oppressive and we won our freedom and independence. What we fight against in the war on terrorism isn't oppression. What we're fighting against is an attempt to impose an oppressive theocracy over our lives.

Make no mistake, radical Islam intends to force every one of us into its laws. Imagine a world where women are nothing more than property, were non-muslim men are only slightly better than that. A world where a muslim can kill a non-muslim and not only won't they go to jail, but its highly unlikely that they'll even be detained by the police. A world where you have to pay a special tax just to have the priviledge of not being muslim.

But Islam is a religion of peace is the rebuttal to any criticism of what radical Islam intends to impose on the khafir west. My sister is an Arabic translator and it is true that the word Islam does in fact translate into a concept that is best described as peace. However, this peace is the peace of a subjugated slave. The peace of knowing you don't have any freedom to deal with life's difficult decisions. It is this peace in which I, and many others, refuse to live in.

It is not against a tyranical government that men like Osama bin Laden fight. It is not against the vices of western culture that cause the men that run Iran to refer to America as "the Great Satan". It is against what we consider our virtues that they find their offense. The virtues of cooperation regardless of religion, the virtues of treating women as equals, the vitues of free speech, and the virtues of capitalism are what radical Islam despises about the west. You see it in Denmark, were they riot in protest of the freedom of the press. You see it in pre-liberation Afganistan where Buddhists and Hindus were required to wear identification similar to what the Jews had to wear in Nazi Germany. Yet in a stunning display of historical ignorance, George Bush is the one equated with Hitler.

The difference between Washington and bin Laden then is not necessarily what they're fighting against, but rather what they seek to replace should they be successful. Washington intended to put the ultimate power over government in the hands of the people. Bin Laden intends to put the ultimate power over people in the hands of the leaders of an oppressive interpretation of Islam. If you cannot see the difference, you're beyond the hope of reason's truth. My hope is that people like you never again return to power in this country.

This is what bothers me about the left in recent years. I've never once heard a prominent Democrat politician speak of victory in the war on terrorism. Even reading between the lines, I have to question if they'd stand up and fight to preserve our way of life at all. If the Jihadis were at the gates of the White House, would they lift a finger or wait for diplomacy to run its course? I have to conclude that the answer to that is directly dependant on the party affiliation of the current political occupant of that building. The defeat of Liberman only serves to underscore the fact that the Deomcratic party is hopelessly obsessed with the notion of peace merely being the absence of formalized armed conflict. Their approach to the war on terrorism apparently cedes the exclusive right to the use of force to our enemies. How do you negotiate with someone whose ideology proceeds from the starting point that non-muslims are not even human? What concession do we make just to get them to acknowledge our right to even exist? Yet, the only things we hear about here in the US is how many mistakes we're making in Iraq and Afganistan. You hear nothing of war heroes from either theater of war because to lionize individuals for killing an enemy we're not entirely sure is our enemy is akin to granting legitimacy to this war in particular and war in general.

The left has proven to me that in five years they have no plan to win a war against islamofacisism. They protest loudly and at every opportunity. They hate Bush simply because he's a republican and not a socialist. Any conflict initiated by him must therefore be his fault entirely. My question to the left is a simple one. How many US citizens must be killed before you wake up and recognize the evil of our time? The evil that would place every woman who knows how to read in prison or put them to death. The evil that doesn't recognize a woman's right to choose...when she goes to the grocery store or what she wears. The evil that would force at the point of a gun people to convert to their religion or die. No matter what you think, George W. Bush is not an evil oppressor bent on taking away your civil liberties to give the government more power. Try talking to a survivor of the holocaust to find out what real tyrany is all about. However, those who wish to do us harm (like those on 9/11 actually did) are true oppressors. When the left wakes up from their infantile daydreams and realizes how foolish they sound, perhaps we can actually motivate people and win this war.

I pray that this country will not have reason to remember the seventh of November 2006 as a day when we tossed out the notion of victory and settled for a Democratic victory.