…Davis Hanson.

When the killer of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh confessed last
week, he boasted, "I can assure you that one day, should I be set free,
I would do exactly the same."

If many progressives in the
Netherlands expected the Dutch-Moroccan Mohammed Bouyeri would cite
past ill-treatment by Westerners, they were sorely disappointed.

Instead,
the psychopath icily advised the mother of the murdered van Gogh: "I
have to admit I do not feel for you, I do not feel your pain" and "I
cannot feel for you. … because I believe you are an infidel."

Thousands
of innocent civilians such as van Gogh have been murdered by Islamic
extremists — in Darfur, Gaza, India, Israel, Lebanon, London, Madrid,
Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey and the
United States. The carnage gives credence to the adage that while the
vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists, the vast majority of
global terrorists most certainly are Muslims.

The killers
always allege particular gripes — Australian troops in Iraq, Christian
proselytizing, Hindu intolerance, occupation of the West Bank, theft of
Arab petroleum, the Jews, attacks on the Taliban, the 15th-century
reconquest of Spain, and, of course, the Crusades.

But in
most cases — from Mohamed Atta, who crashed into the World Trade
Center, to Ahmed Sheik, the former London School of Economics student
who planned the beheading of Daniel Pearl, to Magdy Mahmoud Mustafa
el-Nashar, the suspected American-educated bomb-maker in London — the
common bond is not poverty, a lack of education or legitimate
grievance. Instead it is blind hatred instilled by militant Islam.

Civilization
has only two choices. It can continue appeasing these murderers,
looking in vain for "root causes" of the mayhem. Maybe Mohammed Bouyeri
did not have equal opportunity in the Netherlands? Maybe $50 billion in
past American aid to Mohamed Atta’s Egypt was too little? Maybe Britain
was too insensitive to its Muslim minorities? Maybe the price paid for
Middle East oil really is too low?

Or the United States
and its allies can deny suspect Middle Eastern males entry into the
West while distancing themselves from all Middle East dictatorships,
which neither punish nor even shame thousands of their citizens whose
money and psychological support fuel murderers across the globe.

We wait for a Western leader with the intellectual integrity and guts at last to say, "Enough is enough."