On the folly of Anglo-American appeasement

British columnist Melanie Phillips, at Realclearpolitics. com,
THE still escalating confrontation over the Danish cartoons dramatically illustrates the now pathological reluctance of the leaders of Britain and America to face up to the blindingly obvious and the extent to which they have already run up the white flag in the face of clerical fascism.

With holy war declared openly upon the West, with death threats being issued against cartoonists and editors, with Danes, Scandinavians and other Europeans being hunted for kidnap and in fear of their lives, with blood-curdling intimidation, with mob demonstrations, calls to behead westerners and rallying cries for holy war by Islam against Europe, the governments of Britain and America are busy prostrating themselves before this terror, apologising for causing offence and blaming the victims of this assault.

Meanwhile, their intelligentsia earnestly debates whether it is wrong to insult someone else's religion, as if this were a university ethics seminar rather than a world war being waged by clerical fascism against free societies and with people in hiding and in fear of their lives for having exercised the right to protest at religious violence and intimidation ...

The cartoon jihad has made one thing crystal clear. No more alibis. The roots of global terror do not lie in Iraq, nor in Israel/Palestine, nor in Chechnya, Kashmir or any of the other iconic conflicts that are said to be its cause.

They lie instead in the Islamists' rage that their religious culture is not in power across the world, their determination to subordinate that world to its tenets and their truly pathological belief that it is they who are under attack if their victims dare defend themselves. Twelve scribbled drawings have lifted the veil - on both the nature of the threat and the disarray that greets it.