No Matter What

I came across two wholly unrelated things in the past few days that put the War on Terror in perspective for me.

First, I saw the campy 1996 movie Mars Attacks, in which the Martians keep destroying things on Earth while the bumbling government blames it on "cultural misunderstandings" and seeks to play an alien invasion for political gain. In the end, we finally figure out that the Martians are, in fact, attempting to destroy the Earth and all our weapons are useless until it is discovered that the sound of Slim Whitman yodeling makes their heads explode.

The other thing I stumbled upon was Charles Krauthammer's excellent column from last week, in which he notes that Israel has pretty much given its Arab neighbors everything they have asked for at the bargaining table, and yet the Arabs keep coming back to attack Israel.

What is the relationship between these two things? Well, the reaction of our government and media has been much along that of the government in Mars Attacks, while Krauthammer nails the underlying motivations of Islamic and Arab fundamentalism.

In the movie, when the aliens are discovered, it is assumed that since their civilization was more advanced, that it would therefore be peaceful. Similarly, assumptions are made about the Islamofascists every day - such as "they are rational", or "if we give them what they want, they will leave us alone."

Krauthammer points out that Israel has withdrawn from both South Lebanon and Gaza in the past six years, yet Arabs have used these very places as launching points to continue armed conflict against Israel.

Moreover, he notes that the issue for Israel's Arab neighbors is the very existence of the State of Israel itself. The Islamic radicals will not rest until Israel is wiped off the face of the planet. And no amount of negotiating, or brokering cease-fires, is going to change that.

Israel knows that it is literally fighting for its existence as a nation every day. It also knows that the only way to stop a fanatic is by being even more crazy. Israel lives by the motto of, "when fired upon, return the fire." Why? Because to not respond is to allow those who would see Israel destroyed to gain traction. For Israel, who has been under near-constant attack for the 60 years of its existence, proportioned responses are out the window. The opposition must go down and they must go down hard.

The lesson to be learned here is that al-Qaeda and the Iraqi "insurgency" go by the same playbook as Hamas and Hezbollah. There is little room for proportioned responses. These organizations fighting against the United States feel the same way about us that they do about Israel - they want us gone - not from their land, but from all existence. Couple that with the fact that we are seen as Israel's top ally, and we really are dog-meat to them.

So the point is this - it doesn't matter whether or not we kill women and children, it doesn't matter whether or not we build schools and infrastructure in Iraq, it doesn't matter what we do, the Islamofascists are going to hate us, no matter what. That's no cultural misunderstanding, either.

The only reason there has been an Israel since 1947 is that anytime they are attacked, they respond with a smackdown so intense that it sends the fanatic bugs back into the desert and under the rocks. A period of relative peace ensues until some guy grows enough hair on his sack to try it again, then Israel smacks this guy down. And they don't care who gets hurt because A) this is about their literal, not figurative, survival, and B) they know nothing they do is going to satisfy the Arabs, no matter what.

It's a lesson we could stand to learn in our dealings with al-Qaeda and the terrorists in Iraq.