The Quagmire Deepens

Captured Female Soldiers May be Kept as Slaves

Abdul-Satar al-Bahadli, a follower of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, has announced that female British soldiers who are captured while serving in Iraq may be kept as slaves; and has offered a bounty for those women captured and turned over to the religious leaders in Basra. His comments came as a part of the sermon he gave today. Any women soldiers, he said, will be kept as concubines.

Does this barbarism require any additional comment? Does anyone still think that there is really no difference between Christianity and Islam?

Folks, I really believe that we -- the vast majority of the American people -- don't get it. We don't understand who, or what, we're fighting against, and why. We're going to wind up losing in Afghanistan and Iraq, as we have been losing in Kosovo, and Bosnia -- losing, even though we may take and hold the territory itself.

When I taught world history, I began by telling my students to learn three rules: (1) Follow the money. (1a) Watch the wars - they tell you where the money is. (2) Ask yourself, "What's the agenda?" What's happening now in the "War on Terror" doesn't fit within this system of rules. That's because this is not a war for the control of land, or people, or natural resources -- it's part of the war between the darkness and the light.

At its roots, the War on Terror is a battle between the followers of Allah and those who do not. The jihad seeks to establish the supremacy of Allah, to impose submission to Allah (Islam means "submit") upon every person on the face of the earth. Those who reject this must be destroyed. Not only that: the jihad will not end until either its goals are accomplished, or the last mujahideen departs from this life. (A mujahideen is a Muslim guerilla warrior engaged in a jihad.) As it is not our policy to practice extermination...

This is not a conventional war. It cannot be fought by conventional means. If we don't grasp this...