What George Bush achieved. And didn't.

When you consider the following, the fatuity and reckless political irresponsibility of the liberals' grandstanding, posturing, and chest thumping on Iraq and whether Bush lied come instantly into focus.

If you think about nothing else, consider just the chilling implications of what Mr. Hitchens has to say about the placement of al Qaida sympathizers in the Pakistani nuclear program.

What "Iraq" really signifies is a huge tactical success on our part.

Thanks to President Bush, the United States put a giant, flashing, yellow U-turn arrow into the GPS road map dreamed up by al Qaida and its loopy hashishim:

I still think—or should I say hope?—that the sheer operatic insanity of September 11 set back the Islamist project of a "soft" conquest of host countries, Muslim countries included. Up until 9/11, the Talibanization of Pakistan—including the placement of al-Qaida sympathizers within its nuclear program—proceeded fairly smoothly. Official Pakistani support for Muslim gangsters operating in Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India went relatively unpunished. Saudi funds discreetly advanced the Wahhabist program, through madrassa-building and a network of Islamic banking, across the globe. In the West, Muslim demands for greater recognition and special treatment had become an accepted part of the politically correct agenda. Some denounced me as cynical for saying at the time that Osama bin Laden had done us a favor by disclosing the nature and urgency of the Islamist threat, but I still think I was right. . . .

. . . Liberalism has found even more convoluted means of blaming itself for the attack upon it. But at least the long period of somnambulism is over, and the opportunity now exists for antibodies to form against the infection.

Was he ever right.

Whether Mr. Bush and our quondam allies (a) merely delayed the implosion of the West or (b) pointed the way to the discovery of the toehold of conceptual clarity against a heretofore low-profile enemy isn't clear. Not at all. The somnambulism to which Mr. Hitchens refers after all occurred side by side with smaller-scale attacks on the West no less outrageous in their goals or methods than the Muslim attack on 9/11.

Mr. Hitchens also cites Sam Harris's observation:

The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.

The usual usage of the word "fascist" is in the context of an attempt to describe someone or something as "really, really, really mean."

This is so because it is the unstated goal of the left to delegitimize the antipode of "multiculturalism is wonderful." Since multiculturalism is the radical acceptance of all claims to legitimacy made by any member of any other culture -- no matter how debased, backward, ignorant, or vicious -- it is in its very essence a rejection of any claim by any Western culture that it is superior or legitimate in any respect.

"Fascism" has been used in the past by leftists to conceal the alarming similarity between fascism and communism. Now the term is employed more to delegitimize any group of citizens who reject the wholesale unselective welcoming into their midst of debased doctrines and the people who revere them.

If what Mr. Harris wrote is true, it is a measure of the feckless nature of Western political leadership that the banner of fidelity to one's own Western culture should be carried by minority parties and cast away by the majority parties.

In this regard, President Bush has failed as grandly as he has succeeded against Muslim terrorism and quiet al Qaida infiltration. Saudi proselytizing of our criminal population and sponsorship of the most debased flavor of Islam in our very midst continues apparently without objection by Mr. Bush. He fails miserably to guard our borders. His concept of citizenship is that it is a cheap and easy thing.

Ordinary citizen seethe over their enlightened leaders' failure to stand up for them, their culture, and their borders . . . and their frustration grows.

Unfortunately, the citizenry have failed, too, by not supporting political leaders willing to stand up for cultural integrity, persistent attacks upon known terrorist states, citizenship as a precious gift, and defense of the borders. Another major catastrophe will alas be necessary before Americans' fingers can be pried away from the ardently sought "middle of the road" where, as the joke goes, you only find dead armadillos.

"Facing the Islamist Menace." By Christopher Hitchens, City Journal, Winter 2007