What now?

It seems clear that today's attacks were designed to coincide with the G-8 summit hosted by Prime Minister Blair at Gleneagles, Scotland. At a time when a group of leaders were meeting to address issues of disease, poverty, security and the environment, another group of people; barbaric outlaws, were engaged in a particularly deranged, senseless, non-constructive gesture reflecting the bankruptcy of their values, their feelings of complete impotence and the threats they pose to innocent people worldwide.

I felt it was President Bush who captured the irony of the moment best.

"The contrast couldn't be clearer between the intentions and the hearts of those of us who care deeply about human rights and human liberty and those who kill, those who have such evil in their heart that they will take the lives of innocent folks," Bush said.

Today's attacks again bring home the need for us to remain resolute in taking on this Islamic death cult. While many will blame this morning's attacks on Britain's participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the truth is that even if Britain had not taken part in the invasion of Iraq such attacks would have been just as likely.

The Islamofascists who carried out these brutal attacks would have found some other excuse to kill innocent men, women and children. The inescapable fact is that this radical ideology does not depend upon actions we take or don't take in order to find justification for its own cowardly actions. Rather, all of their motivation is supplied by the simple reality of who we are. They reject our commitment to separation of church and state. They find our popular cultures immoral, repugnant and base. They despise the disparity in living standards between our nations and their own. When they think of the great historical achievements of their societies and reflect on their current downtrodden status, they feel humiliated and seek to ascribe blame to "the other." In something like a space shuttle screaming into orbit, they do not marvel at the human achievement, they view it as yet another humiliation which underscores the contrast between the achievements of the West and their own inability to forge civil societies and thriving economies. To those espousing this radical ideology, everything in the world is a zero-sum game.

To be sure, some of our policies don't create a more hospitable environment. Our policy on Israel, the abuses at Abu Ghraib, "collateral damage" in war zones, support of despotic regimes in the name of stability, all create resentment among the broader populations. But none of these issues are central enough to spur the terrorists' cruel, indiscriminate killing. Rather, these issues become convenient excuses which mask the deep-seated psychological and religious issues for which we could never be responsible. They are leveraged to source new recruits, but at the end of the day, they don't encourage attacks. Which of course, raises a question that Paul posed previously: Is there really anything we can do?

The answer is yes. We need to remember that not all Muslims and Arabs share the views of the terrorists. As in Iraq, there are the terrorists and there is the vast majority of citizens who simply want peace and to advance the lot of their own families and societies. We need to address the hypcorisy in some of our policies, not for the benefit of the radicals but in an effort to reach out to the moderate elements in these societies. We must continue to engage in an effort to promote liberalization in these nations which will result in more freedom and more opportunity. Those with prospects for a future are less likely to blame us for their problems. Those gainfully employed are far more likely to be building roads and chairs and refineries than they are to be building bombs. By continuing to engage and pursue Bush's outreach efforts, I believe this can be accomplished.

But we must also be resolute in fighting the War on Terror. We must never forget the unique heartache and pain suffered by those in New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, Bali, Morroco, Saudi Arabia, Madrid, and now London. These barbarous acts threaten our way of life and we must not yield in the face of such challenges. And we must take on this threat in a multilateral manner.

Regardless of how many feel about the war in Iraq, it is now clearly a central front in the overall War on Terror. You might not agree with how or why we arrived in that country, but we cannot afford to fail and we cannot bend to the calls for us to leave prematurely. While each death and casualty is mourned, we must succeed in Iraq because a failure would simply encourage those who mean us harm. It is my hope that those who oppose the war in Europe will look closely at today's attacks and come to the conclusion that we must all finally come together and win this thing together. For failure threatens us all.