The seizure by Western, NATO forces, using American airpower -- is there any thought of an American base in Ethiopia, the last known address of that fabled Christian king Prester John, and a name which resonates as much today in some minds as it did when the Negus, Haile Selassie, showed up to plead his case before the League of Nations. That mental substratum (Selassie, Ethiopia, fascism, the Christian kingdom beyond the Muslim-conquered lands led by Prester John who would help to rescue beleaguered Western Christendom) can be appealed to, can be played upon. And if a few thousand American and Western troops can wipe out the Janjaweed in a day, which is merely an agent of the Khartoum regime, this will hearten black Africans, especially Christians, everywhere -- in East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia itself), in southern Africa (including those in South Africa who in Cape Town have experienced the intermittent acts of nightclub-bombing that the devotees of Islam engage in to remind everyone of the immorality of alcohol and other mild diversions), and of course in West Africa, especially in southern Nigeria, and the Ivory Coast (where the Christian fear of foreign Muslims has been regarded with cruel indifference, even hostility, by the French government that, as we all remember thought nothing of destroying, at one blow, the entire ivoirian air force, and has shown in other ways its hostility to the Christian leaders, and popular street movement, determined not to let the Ivory Coast be overwhelmed).

The West has been here before, with the Mad Mahdi, and The Four Feathers (see the old movie, then read the recently-republished book), and Chinese Gordon, and Kitchener of Khartoum. Yes, and Churchill's "The River Wars." But this time it is not that "we have the gatling gun and they have not" but rather -- we have the planes, the helicopters, the everything, and they have not.

Think of the pictures -- the photographs, not the fauxtogrphs -- of those grateful black faces surrounding the American troops (some of them also black). Think of that spectacle. Think of the declaration that Darfur, and for that matter the entire southern Sudan, which has endured over the past 20 years enslavement and mass murder of the black African Christians and animists, will be "protected" -- yes, the Protected Peoples, but not as Islam defines them -- until such time as a referendum can be arranged. Oh, let the U.N. do the arranging, and let the Muslim, especially Muslim Arab states, raise Cain, raise holy hell, do whatever they can to stop this, and thereby, of course, with each maneuver, and each feint, they will only be demonstrating, to the world's non-Muslims but also the world's non-Arab Muslims, the Arab supremacist doctrine of which Islam has always been the most powerful, most horse-powered vehicle.

Stop the Jihad in its African tracks. Do everything to force Infidels into no longer denying the evidence of their senses. Pull off the cloak of camouflage wherever it exists (as with that careful repackaging of the Lesser Jihad against Israel as merely a striving for the "rights of the 'Palestinian' people." Create situations, through the often modest application of military force, that will expose the fault lines of Islam, between Arab and non-Arab Muslims.

It would take very little. Far less than is risked, or squandered, every day, in tarbaby Iraq. But that tarbaby is using up men, materiel, money, and morale, and getting in the way not of the "war on terror," but the much larger war, using against those promoting Jihad, the very instruments that they employ, or at least diminishing their successful employment of such instruments. Lessen their ability to accumulate, and then deploy, the "money weapon"; make propaganda -- or rather, simply tell the truth, constantly, about the doctrine and practice of Islam over 1350 years, and do not worry about alienating so-called "moderate" Muslims. Their cooperation will be obtained not by lying about Islam, but by threatening their interests, threatening to harm them economically and to expel them from their comfortable positions in the West. That is what will obtain their cooperation with Western security services -- that, and those willing to spy for money, or subject to the kind of pressures that security services in some other countries have employed so so successfully.

There are opportunities.

Iraq presents the perfect opportunity to resurrect, in some fashion, the Iran-Iraq War, by allowing the permanent sectarian split to widen, and doing nothing to prevent the sending of arms, money, and "volunteers" by both Sunni Arab states, and by Iran -- let them, and don't worry about the final outcome, because the situation is such that no final winner is likely ever to emerge, and the fault line between Sunni Islam and Shi'a Islam will run through Iraq, and forever be threatening tremors as far away as Pakistan, Yemen, and Lebanon.

And Sudan presents another: the opportunity to push back the forces of Islam, to foil the Egyptian and Arab League attempt to further islamize the southern Sudan and further arabize Darfur, in the hope of completely refashioning that artificial construct, the largest so-called country in Africa, and then on, ever on, to Ethiopia.

Who was that political boss or magnate in the Mauve Decade who famously said when queried by investigators or journalists, hoping to exculpate himself: "I seen my opportunities, and I took 'em." He was just one more malefactor of great wealth, trying to offer some semi-plausible and semi-humorous defense for his outrageous behavior.

But it's not a bad idea for the Bush Administration, or any successor, to be able to say about the war, the world-wide Resistance, to the forces of Jihad (or Jihad and Shari'a, if you wish):

"We seen our opportunities, and we took 'em."