Many in the United States have been unwilling to connect the dots and deal with the grim reality that these events are interconnected. In all of these situations, there is a group of Muslim radicals, Jihadists, who are determined to both take control of the Middle East and destroy Western life in the United States and in Western Europe. Behind these actions, are a number of uneasy allies including most importantly the governments of Iran and Syria, as well as powerful and wealthy individuals in Saudi Arabia and a number of other Muslim nations.

There is an enormous amount of hand wringing and Monday morning quarterbacking in Israel and in Washington about why the war against Hezbollah was not won decisively by the Israelis in a few days as they had achieved victory in 1967 and 1973 against several Arab nations. This intellectual hand wringing is absurd. Israel fought a different kind of war with a different kind of enemy. Hezbollah troops are fanatics for whom death is to be prized rather than avoided. They were heavily armed with modern weapons supplied by Iran and Syria. Moreover, they had six years to dig in and fortify bunkers and underground positions. Finally, they employed the tactic which the United States military is facing in Iraq, namely an enemy which hides in the middle of civilian areas for the simple reason that its adversary, Israel in one case and the United States in the other, is reluctant to cause civilian casualties. This is obviously not a concern of Hezbollah, which fired hundreds of rockets daily at random into civilian areas.

Hezbollah may claim that it achieved a victory by fighting Israel to a standstill. However the destruction within Lebanon, as well as the battering which Hezbollah’s infrastructure and its soldiers took, presents a different picture.

To be sure, Israel did not kill every last Hezbollah soldier. That objective could never have been achieved in any event because the soldiers would simply disperse within the civilian population. However, what Israel has achieved, assuming that the U.N. sticks with the resolution it adopted, is to deprive Hezbollah of its mini-state within Southern Lebanon. This is terribly important because the Iranian sponsored Hezbollah mini-state could have been the source for actions against Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations as well as Israel. However, that mini-state has been destroyed if not weakened.

This brings us to the excellent British intelligence work which avoided a disaster that might have exceeded 9/11 in its consequences. The grim reminder from this incident is that 9/11 was not a single isolated event. Other terrorists with the mindset of the Hezbollah militants are determined to wreak havoc on the United States and Western Europe, as well as Israel. I am tired of reading articles by columnists who contend that President Bush and the United States have created this terrorist threat by launching the war in Iraq. This is ridiculous. 9/11, Osama Bin Laden’s network, and terrorist cells in the United States existed well before the Bush administration launched the war to depose Saddam Hussein, who was a supporter of international terror. Some of those terrorists are still at large in the United States, plotting future attacks. Hopefully, our intelligence will be as good as the British were in preventing these threats.

At the same time, we must attack the cancer at its source. This means not just dealing with the Al Qaeda leaders hidden in caves in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It means organizing a coalition to deal harshly with Iran’s nuclear aspirations. Tehran may have made a mistake in giving Hezbollah the green light to launch this war. It has emphasized for the Bush administration the horrible consequences that might occur if Tehran had nuclear weapons. It has underscored the extent to which Tehran is supporting militant Shiites in Iraq.

The struggle by the United States and its Western European allies against the Muslim Jihadists will be long and difficult, as the Israeli war was against Hezbollah. We must, however, strengthen our resolve at the same time that we enhance our intelligence networks around the world. There is a great deal at stake and not merely the availability of Middle Eastern oil. At risk is our entire way of life.