The latest fashion among the anti-war Left is to insist that the terrorist bombings in Great Britain and Spain (a year earlier) are incited by "Bush's War." The invasion of Iraq, apparently, is the trigger for Islamic extremists around the world.

A recent British intelligence report leaked to the New York Times "substantiates" the "Iraq effect" as motivation for suicide car bombers in Baghdad and the back-pack murderers in London.

Apparently the report states: "events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of range of terrorist-related activity in the United Kingdom." So the Left has taken that one analysis as justification for their call for a pull out from Iraq.

Much has been written about the roots of Islamic extremism and terrorism by those with vast expertise in the subject. But what makes this latest turn by the Left all the more puzzling (and dull witted) is that Islamic terrorists act violently against the West without regard to American - indeed, Western -- motives and missions. Iraq may be the excuse of the moment, but a virulent anti-American, anti-west philosophy fuels terrorism across the decades.

American aid enabled the mujahadin to force the Soviets to retreat from their attempted annexation of Afghanistan leaving the country in Muslim control. More recently, the United States ushered in a new Muslim government in Afghanistan that conducted elections for the first time in that nation's history.

It was American military intervention in 1991 that liberated Kuwait and protected the fundamentalist Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (which has used its wealth to spread the viral Wahhabi sect throughout the world) during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

The American air war in the Balkans was predicated, in part, on saving Muslims from "ethnic cleansing" by Serbian forces, even as the United Nations stood idly by in supposed safe havens like Srebrenica in July 1995 as Muslims were slaughtered by the thousands. Furthermore, the West (including Americans) have participated in bringing Slobodan Milosevic, the ousted Serb leader, to trial in front of the international tribunal at The Hague, established by the United Nations to deal with crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia.

The Clinton and Bush Administrations both condemned the Russian carnage in the largely Muslim republic of Chechnya.

Islamic Egypt remains one the largest recipients on foreign aid (about $2 billion annually) by the US Government as part of the Camp David Accords. For years, Muslim Pakistan received American military assistance and equipment to the detriment of our relationship with India, a free, multi-cultural democracy.

President George W. Bush echoed the Arab call for Palestinian statehood, even though Hamas and Islamic Jihad want to keep Israelis and Palestinians mired in a bloody conflict.

The overthrow of the Hussein dictatorship by the United States has allowed Shiite Muslims and Kurds to emerge from years of repression despite the fact that many Iraqi Shiites are loyal or sympathetic to the Iranian regime, an arch-enemy of the United States.

American military forces were diverted from its core responsibilities during wartime and a growing nuclear threat on the Korean Peninsula to assist in the rescue and recovery of Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation in the world, after the deadly tsunami late last year.

American-led pressure forced the withdrawal of Syrian occupation forces from majority Muslim Lebanon, an occupation that barely generated a yawn from Leftists tired from decrying the Israeli occupation of the West Bank or the American intervention in Iraq.

The United States, from the Camp David Accords to the present day, have spent more than two decades giving aid and comfort to Muslims around the world. Yet, the response by Islamic radicals has been bloodshed:

∗ The bombing of the World Trade Center in New York in February 1993;
∗ The killing of 19 American soldiers at a base in Saudi Arabia in June 1996;
∗ Bombings at American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998;
∗ The attack on the USS Cole in 2000;
∗ The suicide missions of 9-11 that murdered thousands.

Osama bin Laden once issued a statement declaring that "to kill the Americans and their allies--civilian and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it." And so they do no matter if we topple their dictators or give voice to their oppressed minorities; no matter if we bring their killers to justice or spend hundreds of millions on humanitarian aid missions.

American policy in the Middle East is not without its failures and hypocrisies but the leftist assertion that the war in Iraq is a cause of terrorist activity must be rejected as fallacious. Even more, it is laughable in light of American assistance to Muslim nations despite Islamic violence against America and her allies.

John Colyandro is director of the Texas Conservative Coalition