Photo caption: "Forty-two years of nightmare...Now has come the time of Jihad!" -- courtesy Uncle Sucker (photo via John Rosenthal)

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Back in August 2005, I wrote a column on what was a particularly great day for sharia, or Islamic law. It was a day that marked

the end of the constitutional wrangling in Iraq and the beginning of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the West Bank. Both events — fought for, facilitated, even micromanaged by the U.S. of A. — should expand the domain of Islamic law, which codifies female inferiority and religious inequality. ... By day's end, Iraq, if it settles as expected on a draft constitution based in sharia, and Gaza, as a new sector of the already sharia-vested Palestinian Authority, will have joined the community of nations at odds with the Free World.

This is what struck me at that time and ever since:

We may be citizens of a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, but our liberty has shrunk under measures we take to ward off Islamic terror attacks, and our dedication to equality looks tatty as we go about making the world safe for ... sharia.

"Making the world safe for sharia" is the perversion of the Wilsonian ideal that bedevils our time. It came about in air-conditioned tents and conference rooms where Americans worked with Iraqis and Afghans to write their new constitutions, both of which enshrine sharia as the highest law in those respective lands. I don't think these Americans had (have) any idea of what this meant, not really. For these deeply irresponsible, see-no-Islam policy-makers, then, making the world safe for sharia was an unforseen and even still unseen by-product of nation-building in the Islamic world, as noted many times in this space. I wouldn't be surprised if these same officials and consultants are still scratching their heads over why it is that the introduction of ballot boxes into these outposts of the umma didn't automatically and instantly extend the Enlightenment for all -- if they think about it at all.

That was then.

Something else is happening with the new war in Libya (can I be writing those words?). Just as time has marched on, so, too, have events. Barack Hussein Obama, without even perfunctory consultation with Congress, has committed US forces to military action against Libya at the behest of the UN and the Arab League (the latter has already changed its mind). But it is not sharia we are unwittingly making Libya safe for, as fatuous enablers of the democratic process in Islam; this time, we -- US, British and French forces -- are making the world safe for jihad.

We are openly fighting on the side of Islamic jihadis: Al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood, off-brand jihadists, complete unknowns (and culturally inculcated Jew-haters).

A line has been crossed. We need to un-cross it as soon as humanly possible.