Mark Steyn on GWOT

I've noticed a pattern with the columns Mark Steyn writes for the British, Canadian, and American press: It all comes back to the Global War on Terror.

There are people out there who want to kill us, and they will not stop until every single one of us is either dead or becomes one of them. Or until we kill them first. It's that simple.

But it's not that simple to the left-leaning media, which has bowed down to the god of Appearing Objective.

Steyn's column in the October 16, 2005, Chicago Sun-Times takes the mainstream media to task for their refusal to properly identify the source of all the terror going on in the world. MSM reports list "insurgents," "militants," "rebel forces," and the like.

Rebels," by the score. But why were they rebelling? What were they insurging over? You had to pick up the Globe & Mail's rival, the Toronto Star, to read exactly the same Associated Press dispatch but with one subtle difference:

''Nalchik, Russia -- Scores of Islamic militants launched simultaneous attacks on police and government buildings . . ."

Ah, "Islamic militants." So that's what the rebels were insurging over. In the geopolitical Hogwart's, Islamic "militants" are the new Voldemort, the enemy whose name it's best never to utter. In fairness to the New York Times, they did use the I-word in paragraph seven. And Agence France Presse got around to mentioning Islam in paragraph 22.

I underestimated multiculturalism. After 9/11, I assumed the internal contradictions of the rainbow coalition would be made plain: that a cult of "tolerance" would in the end founder against a demographic so cheerfully upfront in their intolerance. Instead, Islamic "militants" have become the highest repository of multicultural pieties.

I'm aware the very concept of "the enemy" is alien to the non-judgment multicultural mind: There are no enemies, just friends whose grievances we haven't yet accommodated. But the media's sensitivity police apparently want this to be the first war we lose without even knowing who it is we've lost to.

For those of us who understand what this war is about and who understand the stakes, we must take the battle to this front as well. The GWOT is being fought in Afghanistan and Iraq by our military, coalition forces, and the newly trained Afghan and Iraqi forces. But the propaganda war is being largely ignored here on the home front. We need to be diligent in exposing the MSM whitewash of our enemy. If the left-wing mouthpieces succeed in getting majority opinion on their side, then the GWOT will eventually be lost.

The stakes are too high. We must join the battle every way we can.