A sign of desperation

In the past week three of the world's top Islamic jihad terrorists have made their presence known, the most recent being the videotape from al-Qaida's No. 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahri. His tape - along with the Osama bin Laden audio tape and the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi video tape that surfaced earlier - were obviously timed to beef up radical Islam's support for the Iraqi insurgency.

Clearly, the world's three most bloodthirsty terrorists are worried about the growing public support for the democratic Iraqi government, which appears to finally be pulling itself together under the new leadership of Prime Minister-designate Nouri al-Maliki.

The jihadists know that if the al-Maliki government can continue to hold together the support he's getting - not only from his fellow Shiites, but from the Kurds and Sunnis - then the insurgency is finished. A huge plus for al-Maliki is the backing he got Thursday from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric, to disband the militias. This will be key to taming the sectarian strife and the slide toward civil war that both bin Laden and al-Zarqawi are counting on to bring down the democratic government.

By no means is the issue settled. The al-Maliki government still has a number of very sensitive posts to fill, and some wrong choices could still pull the fragile government apart.

Even so, it looks like the war effort by the United States and its allies is going better than is generally being reported - well enough, at least, to begin pulling some U.S. troops out later in the year. It takes tremendous courage for Iraqis to keep signing up for security forces in the face of so much terrorist-inspired death and destruction, but according to U.S. officials the enlistments are growing and the training is improving.

The al-Maliki government also got a boost from the simultaneous visits of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on the heels of the release of the bin Laden and al-Zarqawi tapes. The in-your-face symbolism couldn't be more obvious. While the skulking terrorists could appear only on tape, leaders of the free world supporting Iraq's democratic government could appear on Iraqi soil in person.

What a shame it would be to pull out now when the forces of freedom and history could be shifting in our favor. Incidentally, the bin Laden and al-Zarqawi tapes also were a reminder to the weak-of-heart of what kind of enemy the civilized world is up against. They seek to kill everybody who doesn't agree with their brand of radical Islam, including Muslims.

You can't deal with people like that. Nor can you bargain with them. You have to kill them before they kill you. Let's continue killing them in Iraq so we don't have to kill them in the United States.