The Grim Reality

US Army General John Abizaid has issued a warning that if world doesn't figure out how to stem Islamists, we're going to face a third world war.

Army General John Abizaid compared the rise of militant ideologies, such as the force driving al Qaeda, to the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s that set the stage for World War Two.

"If we don't have guts enough to confront this ideology today, we'll go through World War Three tomorrow," Abizaid said yesterday in a speech titled The Long War, at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, outside Boston.

If not stopped, Abizaid said extremists would be allowed to "gain an advantage, to gain a safe haven, to develop weapons of mass destruction, to develop a national place from which to operate. And I think that the dangers associated with that are just too great to comprehend."

Abizaid said the world faces three major hurdles in stabilising the Middle East region: Easing Arab-Israeli tensions, stemming the spread of militant extremism, and dealing with Iran, which Washington has accused of seeking to develop nuclear bombs.

"Where these three problems come together happens to come in a place known as Iraq," said Abizaid, who earlier in the week warned Congress against seeking a timeline for withdrawing US troops from the country that is wracked by insurgent and sectarian violence.

I hate to break it to Abizaid, but we're already in a global war against the Islamists. It's been declared by the jihadis for years now. Simply look back to the 1990s and Osama's calls for global jihad if you doubt that.

Call this the modern equivalent of the phony war if you like, but it is war nonetheless. The Islamists are watching our every political action and response intently, looking for weakness and a lack of resolve, which they will exploit.

The uptick in violence appears to coincide with the US elections, along with the results of the elections. That doesn't bode well for Congressional Democrats who have been told by Abizaid that a swift withdrawal would be real bad news. Damn near catastrophic to the Iraqis, let alone what it would do for US national security.

The question that detractors of the Iraq campaign avoid like the plague is a simple one. Al Qaeda and jihadis who are intent on killing Americans and imposing their way of life on the rest of us are in Iraq. Yet these detractors think that we should leave Iraq post-haste. Where's the logic in leaving the battlefield where we can kill them. It would seem that the detractors don't think that the jihadis should be taken at their word, which includes the spread of Islam at swordpoint and forcing the submission to their brand of Islam or face the stern consequences.