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Tuesday 5 February 2008

We must defeat Islamofascism

I have had the pleasure of visiting Israel, our staunch ally, our great friend and the most exemplary democracy in the Middle East, a total of nine times. On one of those trips, I took my then 11-year-old daughter, Sarah, to Yad Vashem. As we faced the grimly surreal pictures from Dachau and Auschwitz, she confronted the horrors of the thousands of bodies stacked on top of one another like so much lumber - six million dead. At the end of our visit, Sarah went to the guest book and wrote simple words that I will never forget: "Why didn't somebody do something?"

That is all she wrote, but with those words, I knew that, in her own way, she "got it."

Unfortunately, some in America, even some running for president, don't get it. Those who don't understand that the war in Iraq is a critical part of the war on terror, don't get it. Those who pledge to withdraw our troops according to some politically-motivated rationale before this war is won, don't get it. Iraq must be stable and secure within its borders. It is not just Iraq's security that is at stake, but the security of the entire region and of the United States.

But among those who seem to want to leave as soon as possible, regardless of the strategic and humanitarian consequences, is Sen. Barack Obama, one of the two remaining Democratic candidates for the presidency. Link