"You've got to be taught to hate and fear

You've got to be taught from year to year

It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear

You've got to be carefully taught." –– ("South Pacific," music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein)

DUBLIN –– Looking at the faces of two young men who were among the purveyors of death at Mumbai, India's Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels, Chhattrapati Shivaji Terminus station and Leopold's restaurant, makes Westerners recoil, and not just in horror. We also question how anyone could be so insensitive to the value of human life. See song lyric above.

The killers –– these and others over many years –– use Islam as the foundation for their indoctrination, coupling it with the belief that Western society is weak and unwilling to do what is necessary to properly defend itself. They have literally bet their lives that the West will meet their force with something less commanding. And that is why they have –– and are –– infiltrating Britain, much of Western Europe, America (and India) through immigration and high birth rates.

The Palestinian residents of the tiny, crowded Gaza Strip –– one and a half million people crammed into an area about twice the size of Washington, D.C. –– elected the terrorist group Hamas to govern them in 2006. Hamas –– the Islamic Resistance Movement –– has as its announced goal the destruction of Israel.

Under a series of Clinton–era agreements, Israel ceded civilian government over the West Bank and Gaza Strip to Yassir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority. These agreements were supposed to be the foundation of long–term peace between Israel and the Palestinians, but Arafat’s sustained terror campaign against Israel –– the “second intifada” which began in 2000 –– along with Hizballah’s Lebanon–based terror, precluded any progress. Now Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah Party president of the Palestinian Authority, has no more authority over Hamas than Canute did over the ocean’s tide.

Samuel Huntington, the distinguished American political theorist who died in the waning days of 2008, was bold and controversial in his scholarship that presciently predicted the sort of world in which we are fated to live.

In a 1993 article later issued as a book, "The Clash of Civilizations," he defined the conflict between the West and Islam as not one of political ideology (as in the Cold War) but as a clash of cultures rooted in religion.

Although he was hooted down in many quarters probably for violating the laws of political correctness, the validity of his analysis is confirmed by 9/11 and the crises manifest around the world.

A principal aim of al–Qaida is to re–establish the caliphate to rule all Muslim lands and as much of the world it could conquer or convince, offering America peace once it had agreed to convert.

Two events earlier this month summed up differing views of George W. Bush's Middle East record.

In one, Bush himself offered a valedictory speech, declaring that "the Middle East in 2008 is a freer, more hopeful, and more promising place than it was in 2001." In the other, an Iraqi journalist, Muntadar al–Zaidi, expressed disrespect and rejection by hurling shoes at Bush as the U.S. president spoke in Baghdad, yelling at him, "This is a farewell kiss! Dog! Dog!"

Ironically, Zaidi's very impudence confirmed Bush's point about greater freedom; would he have dared to throw shoes at Saddam Hussein?

When I first heard that Barack Obama said he had decided to include his middle name, "Hussein," in his swearing–in ceremony, I wondered whether the satirical Web site ScrappleFace had tricked the mainstream media.

Surely, after Obama's acolytes scolded commentators for using Barack's Muslim–sounding middle name during the campaign, the president–elect himself wouldn't so quickly reverse course. But, in fact, he did.

In an exclusive interview with the Chicago Tribune, Obama said he'll use his full name in the ceremony like every other president.

I have no problem with that, as far as it goes. But Obama went further. He's not using his middle name simply because it's his middle name, but as part of a deliberate strategy to "reboot America's image" among the world's Muslims. He also plans to deliver a major speech in an Islamic capital, possibly within the first 100 days of his presidency.

Why, you might ask, is all this necessary?

Victims caught in terrorist atrocities perpetrated for Islam typically experience fear, torture, horror, and murder, with sirens screaming, snipers positioning, and carnage in the streets. That was the case recently in Bombay (now called Mumbai), where some 195 people were murdered and 300 injured. But for the real target of Islamist terror, the world at large, the experience has become numbed, with apologetics and justification muting repulsion and shock.

If terrorism ranks among the cruelest and most inhumane forms of warfare, excruciating in its small–bore viciousness and intentional pain, Islamist terrorism has also become well–rehearsed political theater. Actors fulfill their scripted roles, then shuffle, soon forgotten, off the stage.

Will the horrors unleashed by Islamic terrorists in Mumbai cause any second thoughts by those who are so anxious to start weakening the American security systems currently in place, including government interceptions of international phone calls and the holding of terrorists at Guantanamo?

Maybe. But never underestimate partisan blindness in Washington or in the mainstream media where, if the Bush administration did it, then it must be wrong.

Contrary to some of the more mawkish notions of what a government is supposed to be, its top job is the protection of the people. Nobody on 9/11 would have thought that we would see nothing comparable again in this country for seven long years.

Why was India –– a nation that has suffered enormously from terrorism in the past seven years –– unprepared for the Mumbai attacks? And why are America, Britain and most of the rest of the civilized world equally unprepared even now, so many years after 9–11?

London’s Telegraph reported Monday that “the former head of Britain’s SAS has revealed that Britain is not adequately prepared for a Mumbai–style terror attack. He said hundreds of civilians would have been massacred if such an assault was carried out in this country.”

The primary reason for this unpreparedness, of course, is the unwillingness or inability of government, law enforcement, and the mainstream media to confront the ideology of the jihadists and the Islamic doctrines that provide the foundation for that ideology.

The Mumbai metropolitan area is home to an estimated 19 million people, but it took just 10 men to shut the city down.

Last week's terrorist attacks involved a handful of men armed only with guns, grenades and homemade bombs. They killed more than 170 people, closed universities and businesses, shut down India's National Stock Exchange and did incalculable economic damage to a country that boasts the world's third–largest military and internationally respected police and intelligence services — none of which managed to prevent the attacks.

Sound familiar?

The attack in India was not the test of Barack Obama's mettle that Joseph Biden has predicted. But it was a test. The terrorists were communicating who they are and what they want. Obama, like the rest of us, can choose to understand – or we can wrap ourselves in comforting illusions.

The Times of India instructed its readers: "Terrorists have no religion." That's a lovely sentiment but it bears no relationship to reality. In Mumbai – as in London, Madrid, Bali, New York, Jerusalem and so many other places – the slaughter was carried out by men who regarded themselves as jihadis, holy warriors, doing Allah's will. Aijaz Zaka Syed, a columnist for the Dubai–based Khaleej Times, faces this fact: "How many innocents have to die in the name of Islam," he asked, "before Muslim leaders and countries take effective action to deal with the nuts, who are out to destroy us all with their nihilistic cult?"

Enough with the pseudonyms. Western civilization isnt at war with terrorism any more than it is at war with grenades. Western civilization is at war with militant Islam, which dominates Muslim communities all over the world. Militant Islam isnt a tiny minority of otherwise goodhearted Muslims. Its a dominant strain of evil that runs rampant in a population of well over 1 billion.

Enough with the psychoanalysis. They dont hate us because of Israel. They dont hate us because of Kashmir. They dont hate us because we have troops in Saudi Arabia or because we deposed Saddam Hussein. They dont hate us because of Britney Spears. They hate us because we are infidels, and because we dont plan on surrendering or providing them material aid in their war of aggressive expansion.

The defiant words a former third–grade teacher spat at a judge in Alexandria, Va., in April are more poignant now that sources in the Indian and U.S. governments are saying they believe Lashkar–e–Taiba (LET), a Pakistan–based terrorist group, was behind the mass murder in Mumbai, India, last week.

"What government was supposed to be intimidated by my actions?" Ali Asad Chandia asked U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton at the April hearing where the judge reconfirmed Chandia's 15–year prison sentence, according to The Associated Press. "Do you think the government of India will feel intimidated by a few boxes of paintballs?"

The savage terror attacks in Mumbai send three powerful messages to all Americans who are willing to pay attention:

1. The threat of Islamo–Nazi terror remains real and urgent, and Americans must not take our safety for granted. While both the public and the president–elect focus almost exclusively on our dire economic challenges, we tend to dismiss the possibility of new terrorist attacks on American soil. Exit polling after the presidential election showed that less than one–in–ten considered terrorism a serious issue for the candidates; the unheralded but significant success of the Bush administration in the seven years since 9/11 has lulled the American people into a false and foolish sense of security. The experience in Mumbai shows the way that a small handful of determined and well–trained fanatics can murder hundreds, while paralyzing the financial center of India for several days.

The atrocities in Mumbai have left reporters and commentators floundering for explanations. Why India? Was this a local terrorist group or al Qaeda? Why single out Americans and Brits if they also targeted Indians in the railway station? Why attack some obscure Jewish organisation? And so on. They are floundering because they still just don’t get it. The atrocities demonstrated with crystal clarity what the Islamist war is all about – and the western commentariat didn’t understand because it simply refuses to acknowledge, even now, what that war actually is. It does not arise from particular grievances. It is not rooted in ‘despair’ over Palestine. It is not a reaction to the war in Iraq. It is a war waged in the name of Islam against America, Britain, Hindus, Jews and all who refuse to submit to Islamic conquest. The Mumbai atrocities told us very clearly a number of things.

Let's try for a moment to read the mind of an al–Qaida operative in the remote mountains of Waziristan as he listens to the news on the radio.

His worldview has been roiled recently by two events — one confounding his image of the West, and the other confirming it.

The upsetting news for our imaginary jihadist is the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States. This wasn't supposed to happen, in al–Qaida's playbook. Their aim was to draw the "far enemy" (meaning America) ever deeper onto the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Instead, the jihadists must cope with a president–elect who promises to get out of Iraq, and whose advisers are talking about negotiating with the Taliban. And to top it off, the guy's middle name is "Hussein."

The final debate between John McCain and Barack Obama was primarily about the economy. That was appropriate and understandable. The big winner was Toledo’s new favorite son, Joe the Plumber – who will now be able to charge a lot more for his pipe–wrench artistry. And he will never again have a problem getting a table at Tony Packos.

It would be wise, however, for all Americans to remember something very important that is being overshadowed by the current cultural obsession. We are all concerned about our money. But the stakes right now are higher than mere dollars and cents.

In other words: It’s not just the economy, stupid.

The recent distribution of some 28 million copies in the United States of the 2005 documentary "Obsession" has stirred heated debate about its contents. One lightening rod for criticism concerns my on–screen statement that "10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide support militant Islam."

The Muslim Public Affairs Council declared this estimate both "utterly unsubstantiated" and "completely without evidence." Masoud Kheirabadi, a professor at Portland State University and author of children's books about Islam, informed the Oregonian newspaper that there's no basis for my estimate. Daniel Ruth, writing in the Tampa Tribune, asked dubiously how I arrived at this number. "Did he take a poll? That would be enlightening! What does 'support' for radical Islam mean? Pipes provides no answers."

Actually, Mr. Pipes did provide answers. He collected and published many numbers at "How Many Islamists?" a Web log entry initiated in May 2005.

First, though, an explanation of what I meant by Muslims who "support militant Islam": these are Islamists, individuals who seek a totalistic, worldwide application of Islamic law, the Shariah. In particular, they seek to build an Islamic state in Turkey, replace Israel with an Islamic state and the U.S. constitution with the Quran.As with any attitudinal estimate, however, several factors impede approximating the percentage of Islamists.

How much fervor: Gallup polled over 50,000 Muslims across 10 countries and found that, if one defines radicals as those who deemed the 9/11 attacks "completely justified," their number constitutes about 7 percent of the total population. But if one includes Muslims who considered the attacks "largely justified," their ranks jump to 13.5 percent. Adding those who deemed the attacks "somewhat justified" boosts the number of radicals to 36.6 percent. Which figure should one adopt?

WASHINGTON –– The potentates on the Potomac have been so busy ranting about an imminent financial "catastrophe," dissecting Sarah Palin's debate debut and prognosticating John McCain's political demise that other news –– particularly about the war being waged against radical Islam –– has been hard to find. Here are some facts about the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan that haven't captured the attention of our so–called mainstream media:

First, and most importantly, the campaign in Mesopotamia is all but won. This week, the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines arrived in Anbar province –– once the bloodiest place on the planet –– to assume the mission of honing the skills of Iraqi forces, who are now responsible for security in the largest of Iraq's 18 provinces. Iraqis –– instead of Americans –– now are conducting most combat operations against al–Qaida remnants and Shiite militias throughout the country.

Since 9/11, I have made a practice of trying to conduct an in–depth interview with every author of every book I consider crucial to understanding the war in which the West is engaged. I call these books collectively "The Necessary Bookshelf," and frequently urge my listeners and readers to begin their study of them as soon as possible.

Understanding al Qaeda's true character, structure, and strategy provides important clues about why the organization has not been able to ignite a global jihad. Still, the organization poses a grave threat to international stability and to the United States in particular. The next generation of al Qaeda leaders may be able to deliver more localized sporadic deadly attacks.