Oderint, dum metuant
<p>In Nablus, a young man is kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists &mdash; who then <a href='http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1149572654519&#038;pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull'>set him free on learning he is an American</a> because they don&#8217;t want to end up like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi so recently did.</p>
<p>I am irresistibly reminded of a piece of cynical wisdom from the mouth of the mad Roman emperor Caligula, born of experience in dealing with the barbarians of his day: <em>Oderint, dum metuant:</em>  &#8220;Let them hate, so long as they fear&#8221;.</p>
<p><span id="more-294"></span></p>
<p>It is best of all to be loved, of course.  But Islamists will never love the khufr; not even the most self-abasing of the postmodern Left&#8217;s bootlickers can make <em>that</em> happen.  The next best thing is that jihadis should crap their pants when they think about the death-from-above consequences of molesting Americans.</p>
<p>I would actually prefer to have them fear molesting &#8220;all civilized people&#8221;, rather than just &#8220;Americans&#8221;.  Unfortunately, I don&#8217;t see the will to instill the required level of fear anywhere but in the U.S., and I don&#8217;t consistently see it here.  Not a single Democrat is willing to talk about <em>making the active enemies of our civilization fear its wrath</em>, which is one of several reasons I can no longer consider voting Democrat.</p>
<p>Then there are the practicalities. The U.S. military is implicitly defending all civilized people whenever it waxes a jihadi, but in our world of nation-states it would be a bit much to require it to explicitly retaliate for the death of (say) a Frenchman.</p>
<p>Still&#8230;having even bush-league terrorists fear harming Americans is a good start, and as neat a vindication of George Bush&#8217;s foreign policy and the war in Iraq as anyone could ask for.  The war is not, after all, breeding terrorists; it&#8217;s killing the leaders and frightening the small fry into letting go their victims.</p>
<p>Caligula may have been a mad bastard, but understood the barbarian mind and the stringency necessary to deal with it better than most of today&#8217;s politicians.  Since they will not love us, let them be afraid.  Very, very afraid.</p>
