For all those lefties who really believe George W. Bush is nothing more than Darth Vader wedged into a Brooks Brothers suit, Musab al-Zarqawi’s warnings to Iraqi voters in the days immediately preceding the Jan. 30 elections must have been disappointing. In case you missed it, al-Zarqawi, fittingly enough, Al Qaida’s Number 2, cleared up a few things for the world in a missive to the world in general and to potential Iraqi voters specifically.

“We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology,” Zarqawi declared in a statement. “Democracy is also based on the right to choose your religion,” he said, and that is “against the rule of God.”
In case any of our friends like Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry are worried that al-Zarqawi just slipped “off-message” for a moment, it may be helpful to remember what bin Laden himself had to say on the subject in December; “Anyone who participates in these elections  has committed apostasy against Allah.”

And really, these sentiments regarding democracy are nothing new.  Consider what Sayyid Qutb, one of the pillars of “Islamic thought” had to say on the subject of democracy way back in 1957: “In the world there is only one party, the party of Allah; all of the others are parties of Satan and rebellion. Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah; and those who disbelieve fight in the cause of the rebellion.”
So Pelosi, Boxer, Reid, Dean, Kerry and the intellectual giants who can put their complete thoughts on the war in Iraq on a 36? by 36? sign to be carried a the protest du jour, can bleat all they want about “no blood for oil,” “wrong war, wrong place, wrong time” and “Halliburton, Halliburton, Halliburton” all they want. But this war is about terrorists trying to destroy democracy and democratic nations by any means necessary. And whether he ever acknowledges it, Bush has drawn a line in the sands of Iraq, and invited Islamic fascists of every stripe to square off against our military.

It’s an ingenious strategy, one that carries the added benefits of freeing an oppressed nation, ridding the world of a tyrant of historic proportions and sending a message to places like Syria (which in all likelihood is now storing Saddam’s WMD) that tyrants must now toe the line. And that’s working; hasn’t Mr. Qaddafi been on his best behavior lately?

Our friends on the left seem to be missing the point of all of this. They refer to the people who are shooting RPGs at our troops and who are beheading everyone in sight as “insurgents.” They also cry about how terrible the war is, and how every day terrorists stream into Iraq to fit the “occupying forces.” Uh, that’s exactly what we want them to do. Come to Iraq, and take on the greatest military force the world has ever known. Invite your friends. Unfortunately, for nearly all of them, it’s a one way trip.

But they don’t realize these terrorists are flocking to fight U.S. troops in Iraq to stop democracy. And they’re in a panic because the impotence (politically, obviously) of the Clinton administration lulled them into believe they could attack the world’s foremost proponent of democracy and peck away at it endlessly. What the terrorists didn’t foresee was an American president willing to set up a battleground on their turf, with the prize of a major Middle Eastern nation’s political future as one of the prizes to go to the victor. Rather than blowing up your local Starbucks, or ripping through your neighborhood elementary school with AK 47s and grenades, the terrorists are on their heels, on the defensive, trying to protect their own turf from “the wrong ideology” that is democracy.