Once again, the barbarians who are our enemies in the War on Terror have struck a blow against the innocent. This time, they have exploded multiple bombs in London, in three Tube (subway) stations as well as a passenger bus. Dozens of innocent people are dead and as many as a thousand may be wounded. How many more innocents must suffer at the hands of these inhuman creatures in the shape of men before the hard-core anti-war Liberals among us stop giving them cover and support?

Almost immediately, seemingly before the echoes of the blasts even stopped, the recriminations began -- not against the sadistic monsters who target innocent men, women and children for death, but against those world leaders who are trying to stop them, especially President Bush and PM Tony Blair. Leftists like the despicable George Galloway, who was expelled from Britain's Labour party for his comments about the Iraq war, were at their terrorist-defending best. Galloway, who apparently received millions of dollars in oil vouchers from Saddam for his opposition to Saddam's overthrow, stated that "Londoners have now paid the price" for Britain backing America in the War on Terror. Well, London has paid the price for standing up to evil before.

Galloway suggested that retreating from Iraq immediately might appease the terrorists, echoing a persistent defeatist theme coming from the Left. Somehow, the Liberals have deluded themselves into thinking that there was no such thing as terrorism before President Bush and the other Coalition leaders removed one of the biggest terror supporters in the Middle East from power. They have themselves convinced that if America runs away from them, the terrorists will simply leave us alone. But they can't convince those of us who remember 9/11 so easily, no matter how hard they try to pretend that it didn't happen, or didn't matter.

Since 9/11, the US and our allies have finally responded to the menace of al-Qaeda and other terror groups. Al-Qaeda's main base in Afghanistan was destroyed, and the Taliban as well as Saddam Hussein's regime have been replaced with growing democracies. Democracy and freedom are the only cures for terrorism, and the terrorists know it. The fight in Iraq, according to a Congressional study, is the "central battle" for al-Qaeda. That's why they're pouring so much of their resources and manpower into Iraq, trying to prevent the fledgling democracy from taking root there. Meanwhile, the "useful idiots" (Stalin's term for his unwitting Western supporters) on the Left have spent the last three years fighting al-Qaeda's public relations war for them, thinking only of their own political gain.

Our enemies haven't been killing only Iraqis and Americans; al-Qaeda is responsible for the Bali nightclub bombing in 2002, the Istanbul mosque and Casablanca bombings of 2003 and the Madrid train bombing of 2004. The so-called "Chechen separatists" responsible for the Russian plane crashes and school massacre of 2004 were, outside of the "mainstream" media's euphemism fetish, Islamic terrorists linked to al-Qaeda. It seems that not even trying to stop the invasion of Iraq was protection against terrorist attacks, so the Liberal insistence that abandoning Iraq will stop terrorism is ludicrous. Al-Qaeda's goal is to bring the entire world under the sway of their radical brand of Islam, and refusing to fight them won't stop them from fighting you.

It has always been a matter of civilisation versus the barbarians who care nothing for the lives of innocents, who fight to destroy, not expand, civilisation. Our various ancestors fought pirates, Mongols, Huns, and Vikings. The reference to "the shores of Tripoli" in the Marine Hymn refers to the war against the Barbary pirates of North Africa two centuries ago. The Spanish fought the tide of Muslim invasion for centuries, a millennium ago. The Romans fought the Visigoths and Ostrogoths before Rome fell. Even the Sumerians repeatedly fought off those who tried to destroy their civilisation. The fight against Islamofascism is merely the current incarnation of the long war. Now we fight terrorists around the world, and the latest battleground is London.

The British have never been a people liable to meekly surrender to threats. They didn't bow humbly to the Vikings, the French, the Spanish, the Germans or even Irish terrorists, and they don't appear to be faltering now. The British people face the choice whether to band together with us -- as Tony Blair has done -- to hunt and fight the enemy wherever they hide, or fight each other and let the enemy win. According to all reports, the British are coming together exactly as we Americans did after 9/11, and we must stand by them as they did us. We can only win this war together.