Jihad? What Jihad?

Fareed Zakaria demonstrates why Newsweek is fading into justly deserved oblivion. With a perfectly straight face, he declares that because Al Qaeda hasn't been able to top 9/11, it was never much of a threat and that the United States "overreacted."

Tell that to the victims of Madrid, Beslan, Bali, London, Baghdad, Khandahar, Moscow, Bombay, Fort Hood, etcetera after bloody etcetera. Tell it to those who survived by sheer luck aboard the shoe bomber's plane, the panybomber's plane, the dozen airliners that escaped destruction over the Altantic on a single afternoon, the innocent people of Time's Square, London again, Glasgow, and on and on.

Tell that to Europeans and Britons who see their countries facing the greatest invasion since the 7th century by Muslims who include those in large numbers who struggle daily to turn Europe into part of the Umma, its people into dhimmis, and their coreligionists into subjects of the Sharia law that many risked their lives to flee. Tell it to the French who see cars set alight nightly, the Norwegians whose women wear headscarves for fear of rape, to the ghettos that have become no-go areas to "infidel" police.

Tell it to the Danish cartoonists who hide for fear of their lives, the publishers who censor themselves, and to the survivors of Theo Van Gogh, Daniel Pearl, and all the other headless victims of barbarism perpetrated by alleged followers of the Religion of Peace.

Tell it to the Coalition soldiers who still die every day in Afghanistan and battle in Iraq despite Mr Barack Hussein Obama declaring that the page has been turned and his people should forget about that unwanted distraction to his Socialist agenda. Tell it to the Iranian woman who was shown "mercy" when her stoning to death was commuted to a public flogging. Tell it to those of us who see the mad mullahs of Persia coming ever closer to building nuclear weapons that they have every intention of using. Tell it to Mr Geert Wilders, who has just had a fatwa put on his head demanding that he lose it.

No, Mr Zakaria, the United States didn't overreact. Saying that Al Qaeda hasn't been able to bring down the Sears towers despite years of American opposition proving that there was never any threat is like saying that a low crime rate despite the prisons being full proves that there was never a crime problem. You are arguing that the results of an effective solution means that there was never a problem in the first place.

Also, Al Qaeda was never the enemy; they were the foremost of a broad front of enemies dedicated to a Jihad that lusts for nothing less than the destruction of civilisation and its replacement by a universal gulag for all mankind. We fight a sick ideology, not a tactic or a group.

Overreaction? The United States, the West, Christians, moderate Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Athiests, Shintos, Animists, and all civilised men everywhere haven't reacted enough. As to Mr Zakaria's rhetorical question of when do we declare victory, we do so when relationships between Islam and other faiths are resolved in men's hearts and not through the gun, the knife and the bomb. Victory is when the last, scattered Jihadists know the fear and despair of the few remaining Nazis as they flee friendless and alone from the relentless hand of justice to the desolate corners of the Earth and their hateful ideology is rejected and reviled for all time.

We have victory when they are gone and forgotten.