Islamic fanatics will sacrifice everything for amoral cause

There are many well-meaning people who believe that America and the West are not fighting a war on terror, but rather engaged in an epic struggle between Islam and every other faith on the planet. Linda Chavez is one columnist who tries to make that case, using questionable assumptions and drawing faulty conclusions to do so.

Ms Chavez states without hesitation that the goal of terrorists is to convert the infidels or kill them. Yet President Ahmadinejad of Iran doesn't speak of converting Jews. He speaks of resettling them in Germany or Alaska.

Osama bin Laden doesn't speak of converting Christians. He speaks of evicting them from Muslim lands. Osama offered the US and the West a "long term truce" if only Americans would quit fighting Muslims on Muslim land.

Terrorism historically grew out of Arab efforts to evict Jews from the Middle East. The presence of Western oil companies in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf was another unwelcome intrusion of "infidels" into Muslim lands. Terrorism escalated after the American military itself set up bases in Saudi Arabia. Islamic terrorists don't want to convert us as much as they just want us gone from their lands.

Ms Chavez then criticizes Americans (blame America first?). In her mind, instead of tracking down terrorists, "we worry that we might be infringing on their civil liberties." The worry is not so much for the terrorists but that we might be infringing on our own civil liberties. The dragnet of the Patriot Act and the secret NSA surveillance programs is so broad that innocent Americans are inevitably tangled up in it, not just terrorists. Ms Chavez may not mind sacrificing her own liberties to fight Islamic fanatics, but she has no right to speak for all Americans. One of the first Americans, Ben Franklin, put it this way 200 years ago, "Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."

Ms Chavez finally gets it right in her conclusion, "Our best hope for victory may well be that radical Islam, like the Soviet Union, will begin to collapse from within." The best way to speed that day along is for the US to quit invading Muslim countries trying to spread American-style democracy. All we do is rally Muslims against us and create chaos, out of which more hatred and violence are born.