WHILE THE RIGHT FIGHTS, THE LEFT HAS A BRAIN FART

We on the right and in the center might as well face a disturbing fact: We're fighting this war by ourselves. The left wants no part of it, doesn't understand it, isn't interested in it and wants the whole thing to pass like a kidney stone.

Not that the rest of us like war. We don't. But 9-11 brought home a hard fact to us--that some subset of the Islamic world wants us dead--and forced a response from us--we're not the ones gonna do the dying, at least not without a fight.

So fight we have, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. To the initial attack and the first campaign, the left responded with a mixture of apoplexy and fear. Some bravely put on a game face and went along, but some did not. They tried to blame it all on us--remeber the "root cause" crowd? Remember Robert Fisk's "I deserved getting beat up because I'm a Westerner" nonsense? Some others just put up a peace sign and said "War is not the answer," though that set never did spell out just what the answer is when you're faced with a group of zealots with loads of cash, connections to despots with some industrial might and a penchance for nasty weapons, and those zealots want to kill you. What is the answer, if war isn't? Send in Interpol, only to watch the Taliban mow them down with Kalishnikovs? Sick Kofi Annan on them? Yeah, that'll make us safer.

No, the left didn't answer that question about war, preferring instead to deflect. They predicted quagmire in the graveyard of empires, they told us how the Brits and Soviets got their heads handed to them by those mythic Afghan fighters, they warned us about the brutal Afghan winter, and generally tried to make us all uneasy about the course we had been forced by circumstances to follow. They tried to scare us, then shame us, into inaction. Even if we win, there will be a humanitarian catastrophe the likes of which the world has never seen, etc. Had we listened, Osama bin Laden would still have his terrorist camps today, and for every terrorist the police could nab, al Qaeda could churn out three or for more. Today those camps are gone. We are safer precisely because we ignored the left.

Then came Iraq. The left put up argument after argument--it's unjust, it's illegal, Saddam's no threat to us, ad infinitum. Many of the left that actually supported the Afghan campaign joined their more hardened anti-war brethren when it came time for a showdown with Saddam. To arguments that Saddam had terror connections, even the death--in Baghdad--of lifelong terrorist Abu Nidal could not convince them otherwise. To arguments that Saddam had defied 12 years of international law on his weapons programs, they yawned, or cried foul on the sanctions, or both. They simultaneously wanted to make the UN the centerpiece of our effort to hunt down terrorists, yet ignore the mountain of UN case law against Saddam, case law that actually demanded resumption of war.

But we went into Iraq anyway, deposed Saddam anyway, brought some measure of freedom to Iraq anyway. After Saddam's fall, the truth began to leak out. There were hundreds of thousands of mass graves all around that beaten country, and the press had covered it up to maintain its access. There were rape rooms and children's prisons and electical devices meant to be attached to a man's private parts, either to make him talk or just to amuse the Saddamite sadists. Hussein's boys were notorious torturers and murderers, but because they were who they were, no one could do a thing about them.

Those wretched criminals died with guns blazing away at American troops, but did the left see fit to condemn them even then? Sadly, no. Another brain fart--the left just cannot think straight. They accused our troops of brutality, of excessive force, even while some lefties wondered why it took our troops with their superior numbers and firepower several hours to finally kill off Saddam's spawn.

And now we have Saddam. The difference between Saddam Hussein and Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler is merely one of scale. They are all killers of unthinkable numbers. Saddam ruled a country where it was possible to kill off a million or so, and that is what he did, Kurds and Marsh Arabs and Shiites and anyone else he felt like killing. He also killed off hundreds of thousands of Iranians and Kuwaitis and fired missiles at a neutral Israel. He even briefly invaded Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. He tortured, he executed and he ruled with fear and terror for thirty years. He built a nuclear plant thanks to French benevolence, though his oil-rich country had no need of peaceful nuclear energy. What do you suppose that plant was for, before Israel flattened it? Do you suppose he just forgave and forgot the raid on Osirak?

But again, many on the left react to world events with a brain fart. They just don't know how to respond. If it's not a waterfront bike path or another entitlement expansion, much of the left just doesn't know how to get passionate about it. Howard Dean says Saddam's capture doesn't make us safer. Taking a terrorist kingpin, and an enemy of the United States, off the streets doesn't make us safer. Former hero John Glenn echoes. Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright wonders--she now says she was joking--whether the Bush administration doesn't have Osama himself locked away somewhere, a kind of human hedge fund for the president's political fortunes.

All along the way, the left has generated conspiracy theories or concocted controversies to dent support for the war. They tried to turn the heroics of Flight 93 into a conspiracy that shot it down. They tried to turn 9-11 itself into a conspiracy. When we captured scores of Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the left protested incarcerating them. Then they told us, erroneously, that we had "created" Osama bin Laden. They told us the same about Saddam Hussein, though the US trade with him amounted to just $2 billion, compared with tens of billions in arms trade with France, Germany, Russia and China. We didn't build him a nuclear reactor, but we're the ones who somehow made the monster because we leaned toward him when he fought the mad mullahs in Tehran. The war in Iraq, according to Senator Ted Kennedy, was concocted on President Bush's Texas ranch for purely political purposes. The fall of Saddam was a hoax, according to the lefty set, and his statue only fell because we ordered Iraqis to pull it down. Now that Saddam is off the streets, his capture is also apparently part of some conspiracy.

Brain farts. Nothing but brain farts. The left just cannot cope with irritatingly good news. Or can they?

Are these people mad? Has a majority of the left--the part that supports Howard Dean though he hosts racists fund raisers and lifts charlatan and race-baiter Al Sharpton above credible candidates for the presidency--simply decided to extend its long vacation from reality?

Are they just brain farting, passing noxious gas instead of thinking hard about saving civilization? Unfortunately, that is the least disturbing explanation for their behavior. Because if they know what they're doing, if they're thinking clearly and still coming up with this nonsense, they're actively doing all they can to undermine the war, and with each step toward victory they become less and less helpful to the cause. To what purpose would they hinder the war? To help fundamentalist Islamicists, even though these same lefties blast nearly all Christians as "fundamentalists?" To bring arrogant America to its knees, to teach her a lesson? Or just to bash President Bush and regain political power? Or all three, to one extent or another?

Their reasons are pretty much irrelevant. Whatever motivates them, the fact is that much of the left has become a collection of Hanoi Janes, actively and intentionally undermining the war. Their world collapsed around them with the fall of the Soviet Union, the left has lost all relevance. Islamicism is the new ascendant anti-capitalist power, and its energetic aggression seems to have lured much of the left--the factions that crave power above all else--to its side.