And then there is Syria. The country is ruled of, by, and for Alawites, who rule in the armed forces but who constitute only 12% of the population. So far Bashar al-Assad appears to think he can continue in power -- the Alawites are not even regarded as orthodox Muslims by the Sunnis who make up 70% of the population in Syria -- by placating the Shi'a of Iran (by acting as a conduit for Iranian weapons and money to Hezbollah, and by standing by Iran diplomatically). Part of his strategy also involves placating the Sunnis of Syria by allowing other Sunnis -- particularly the exiled Ba'athists of Iraq who want to reinstall there something like the regime that Saddam Hussein had created, with the Sunni Arabs on top -- to enter Iraq to conduct attacks to destabilize the Shi'a-controlled government.

Syria is not only a permanent threat to Jews in Israel (and as far away as Buenos Aires) but also to Christians in Lebanon -- even though the Alawites protect the Christians in Syria. (The Christians in Syria are a source of support for them and could never be a threat, unlike the Sunni Muslims.) Syria is also a regime with close ties to both Hizballah and various "Palestinian" terror groups. Why should not Syria become at some point part of the "central front" in the "war on terrorism," possibly along with Iran? (It was Iranian clerics who decided to officially elevate the Alawites to full-fledged Muslim -- albeit Shi'a -- status.)

And then there's Saudi Arabia, with a regime of those Al-Saud princes and princelings who, all daggers and dishdashas and sneers of cold command, toy with the Americans, even as they hire an army of propagandists to write Op/Ed articles on the bestial behavior of those quite unreasonable Israelis (when the Arabs have cried Peace! Peace! for so long, but because of Israel, there is no peace). These princes and princelings continue with their promotion of Islam, and of the most uncompromising and therefore most sinister and malevolent form of Islam -- their own homegrown Wahhabi version. The Al-Saud, with a regime that gets good press for its ballyhooed ability to "turn terrorists around," in fact does nothing more than persuade some Muslims who were attacking the Saudi government for being in bed with Infidels, that the Saudi regime is as true-blue Muslim as they come, not an Infidel-lover among them. And how do they do it? Well, imams are sent in to the jails, armed with the Qur'an, and also able to tell those prisoners all the wonderful things the Al-Saud are doing to spread Islam everywhere, conducting Da'wa, building mosques and madrasas, and step by step doing far more to bring about the end result -- the ultimate triumph of Islam -- that those prisoners so ardently desire. They convince them that the Saudis, with their sly ways, have managed to do far more for Islam than those terrorists did, in their obvious way, on the eleventh of September, 2001.

And it's true. Despite appearances -- or despite what American officials continue to pretend to believe because it is easier than recognizing the grim truth -- those Saudi princes are doing everything they can, through deployment of the Money Weapon, to further the cause of Islam. And they are more cunning and effective, in their bankrolling of everyone. Didn't the fact that 15 (or was it 16?) of the notorious novemdectet were Saudis show that Saudi Arabia is doing something right, and managed to remain regarded by those credulous Americans as still a "staunch ally"? And isn't this the very best way of being left alone to promote, through money, the precious lifeblood of Islam in Europe and North America and everywhere that mosques, madrasas, and propaganda need to be funded? And isn't that also Jihad? Isn't that just as important to swell, inexorably, the numbers of Muslims, and thus the participants, directly or indirectly, in support of the Jihad, or struggle, to remove all obstacles to the spread and then the dominance of Islam?

And haven't rich and powerful Saudis -- above the laws of the West, able to call of investigations of billion-dollar bribery scandals, for example -- given money to Bin Laden, and to other organizers and recruiters of Islamic terrorists, even in Europe itself (see Bosnia)? And all the mosques and madrasas and campaigns of Da'wa that the Saudis pay for in the West create more and more and more Muslims. The more Muslims there are, the greater the pool of potential terrorists, and the larger the number of those who believe in Jihad and will support or pursue it by other means. This in turn leads to a greater expense and a more nightmarish problem (see Great Britain, see France) for the security services of the Infidel nation-states that have allowed this problem to build and build. They keep whistling in the dark, prating about greater efforts at "integration" that, despite the texts and tenets of Islam will somehow succeed with more than a handful of Muslims within the Western, Infidel world -- as if Muslim immigrants posed exactly the same problems, but no more, as Chinese or Hindus or Vietnamese Buddhists or other non-Muslim immigrants.

So even if you right now want to join the American government in pretending, or even believing (it's hard to decide which is worse) that Saudi Arabia is a "staunch ally" in the "war on terrorism" because, you see, "it too is threatened," won't you at least agree that Saudi Arabia, too, might someday be recognized as a "center" in the "war on terrorism"? (And remember: it is "threatened," but the Saudis simply re-program their homegrown terrorists to concentrate entirely on Infidels, and to leave the Al-Saud alone, as devout promoters of Jihad in every way they can promote it.)

And what about a member of NATO, Turkey? In Turkey, once seen as thoroughly, permanently secular in its orientation, Islam is back with a vengeance, as Erdogan step by systematic step undoes the secularists. The systematic constraints put in place by Ataturk and his followers are being taken apart, and an attempt is made, by the imposition of a $2.5 billion dollar fine, to simply crush the most powerful media opposition to Erdogan, and to thereby threaten through misuse of the tax power to destroy others who might oppose Erdogan, Gul, and all the others -- don't forget Fethuleh Gulen, living safely in his American exile, which is also convenient for the more efficient running of a pedagogic empire, the pedagogy in question being that which focuses on Islam, a kind of higher-education version of madrasas. The university rectors, and the journalists, and the lawyers, and the professors, and the curators at Topkapi, and the art gallery and bookstore owners and habitues, and a dozen Orhan Pamuks, cannot prevent Turkey from becoming more and more like the Arab states and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran ought to have been held up by Turkish secularists, who let down their guard and allowed the army to be the main guarantee of Kemalism instead of relentlessly pushing the country westward. Could it be that in a future not far away, Turkey, stout provider of troops to NATO during the Korean War, listening post and provider of airbases during the Cold War, might become -- whether Erdogan succeeds in consolidating power, and whether or not Turkey becomes part of the E.U. -- a "center" of the "war on terrorism"?

And what about -- oh, go around the world and ask what is going on in Chechnya, or Bosnia, and whether you have heard of Chechens or Bosnian Muslims being picked up in the most distant, seemingly oddest places, for participating in terror attacks.

And while we are at it, are there no recruits? Has no one been plotting, scheming, training, and then taking part, enough to make the countries that they now live in possible future "centers" in the "war on terrorism"? This is happening not in Iraq and Afghanistan, not in Pakistan and Syria and Iran, not in Saudi Arabia, not in Yemen and Libya, but in other countries, NATO countries that possess arsenals of the most advanced weaponry, and civilisationally are part of, and the heart of, the West. Wherever immigrants may come from, America remains, in its political and legal institutions, its language, its literature, its art, its science, a child of Europe, and its fate is tied to that of Europe. America would suffer terribly were it to see those who gave it birth succumb to Islam.

We seek it here, we seek it there, we seek that "center" of the "war on terrorism" everywhere. But we need not look here and there, because there is no "center." Muslim terrorism will take place wherever there are a sufficient number of Muslims ready and able to participate directly in violent Jihad, and those who one day are willing only to promote Jihad through non-violent means could, at any time, and for any number of reasons, metamorphose into those who are now willing to use violent means -- that is, qitaal (combat), including what we have no trouble identifying as terrorism but that Muslims see merely as a form of qitaal that is justified because Infidels are militarily superior, and that just isn't fair.

How long will it be before enough plots are hatched in such unlikely-sounding places as England and France and Denmark and the Netherlands and Belgium and Germany and Italy, and one or two or many more of them, become "centers" in the "war on terrorism"? And long before they become those "centers," they are already places where the Jihad, rightly defined, is underway. Now it's a question of having this most obvious of observations becoming recognized, and understood, in those corridors of power all over the Western world -- the ones that have those banana-peels strewn about, and on which policymakers keep slipping and taking their falls, and their pratfalls. La commedia è finita, however. At this point, no one should be laughing.