Publius' Forum

By Warner Todd Huston

"Unless we in the West adapt more quickly than do canny Islamic terrorists in this constantly evolving war, cease our internecine fighting and stop forgetting what we've learned about our enemies---there will be disasters to come far worse than Sept. 11."
-Victor Davis Hanson

I can only imagine that many Americans don't really believe that we are at war with Islamofascism because they have not been hurt badly enough by the enemy to desire to answer the call to arms. Many Americans refuse even to admit that the threat we face in militant Islam is a fascist styled movement in the first place. Many don't see the damage already done or the damage that could be done in the future... the near future at that.

Unfortunately, we are faced with a serious flaw in human nature and that is explanation in and of itself as to why we just cannot yet get serious about this war. Rarely does man take steps to avoid catastrophe whether on an individual or societal basis, be they clashes of civilizations or natural disasters the effect of which could have been made less severe with but some few sensible policies.

While man rarely takes the steps needed to avert disaster, after a disaster there are all kinds of steps taken to prevent future recurrences of whatever that disaster might be -- it is then that finger pointing becomes epidemic. History shows that there are all kinds of instances where the dots lined up to disaster when we look into the past with our 20/20 hindsight employed. We plainly see, for instance, Hitler's lead up to WWII and all the obvious warnings that called out to the world, a call to which few paid any heed.

As many have pointed out, today we face 1938 all over again in that the world refuses to listen to the clarion call to war being made by the Hitler(s) of the 21st century. And, even after we lost nearly 3,000 every-day citizens in the World Trade Center destruction of 9/11/01, we have Americans doubting if we are, indeed, at war.

What will it take to make them take seriously our enemy's desires to make war on us? Many refuse even to listen to the overt claims of belligerence by our avowed enemies and the actions that back that sentiment up.

Perhaps only pressure from our fellow citizens will awaken those who are floating through life without a care in the world?

Perhaps it falls to us, those who realize we really face the same kind of world-wide danger faced by the generation of WWII, it falls to we, the descendants of Churchill and FDR, to urge our neighbors and countrymen to face this challenge. We cannot let up on our call to arms, to alert our fellows to the danger we all face.

That means that Islamists must be made as much an enemy as the "Hun", the "Jap", the "Nazi", whatever we called the enemy in the past, that was threatening the world.

Today, the enemy is Islam... yet not Islam. And therein lies another thing preventing many to understand this war. Being children of the reformation and enlightenment thinkers of the 1700's and before, the west -- America in particular -- is loath to denigrate an individual’s religion, so any condemnation of Islam in total makes us squirm. Of course, that is a good propensity, but in this case it is misguided to a dangerous degree.

Certainly we can allow Muslims their belief without desiring to kill them all. But, Islam today is not merely a religion, but is being used as the basis for government in every Islamic nation and this is what we fight. Westerners successfully separated church and state long ago, but Islam has accelerated the mixture.

We’ve faced this before. Many mistake Nazism for a simple system of government. But Hitler did not sell Nazism as a simple alternative to communism or capitalism. He sold it as a religion, a deep belief in the superiority of the German people. He sold it as if the Germans had a divine right to lead. The Japanese, with their Shintoism and ancestor worship, did the same thing. Japanese Imperialism was not just a “government” but a religiously ingrained belief in their divine rights as Asians.

So, any claims of attacking "Islam" makes a westerner shrink in discomfort, but it is a notion we must warm to or we will find ourselves oppressed, murdered, and impoverished by fascist Islam.

Now, what do we do?

Like in WWII, the only way to win this war Islam has brought upon us is to kill millions of them quite regardless of their individual "guilt". Sadly, that means lots of women, lots of babies, and lots of old men must die.

It isn't that we revel in their deaths. We certainly mourn it. It truly makes us angry. But they have brought this war and we must end it -- and if we don't everything we are and have is threatened with extinction by Islamists. Just as we killed millions of Japanese and Germans to end that threat we must kill millions of Islamists.

It truly is us versus them.

There ARE no "innocent" Islamists. We cannot allow the thought of "innocence" to invade our resolve. In this way, billions and a far-flung future of Muslims that might live in peace, observing their religion peacefully, will be free of the current dominance of Islamofascist horror and oppression.

So, if we must call them fascists, then we should do so. We must destroy this link between government and Islamism, attacking it until it becomes anathema to posterity for Muslims. The sooner this happens the better off posterity will be.

Let the leftists of the future write their tsk-tsking books 100 years hence on how horrible these days are, let them blindly excoriate our finishing this fight like our ivory tower historians do the use of the "A" Bomb at the tail end of WWII. But let them write their misreading of history in the comfort of a time when Islam is as dead as a guiding force for world wide terror as Nazism and Shintoism now is.

For that matter, let it be as dead as Christianity closely intermingled with government is now dead. After all, a thousand years ago Christianity was a worldwide threat to peace and the oppression that religion caused forced the west to shuck religion away from our forms of government. The only way for Islam to become peaceful is for so many Muslims to die now that the idea of using Islam as a governing ideal within government is anathema to Muslims forever more. Muslims must feel so injured by their former belief in Islam that they could never make themselves associate it with government again. Just like Nazism and Shintoism are now shunned, in that same way let Islam so be shunned.

I didn't start with this opinion years ago. When 9/11 happened, I thought that this was just the action of a few radical Muslim nuts. But it is not so. The actions of Islamofascists are a direct and logical extension of Islam. Just as Communism must, in the end, lead to collapse, Islam as a part of government must lead to worldwide war.

Islam is anti-capitalist, anti-modern, anti-freedom, anti-individualist, anti-human rights... it is AGAINST every single thing we stand for in the west and against every ideal that has brought real peace and prosperity to so many billions of mankind.

We must stop them from coming to our shores. We must stop their charities and organizations -- like CAIR -- from raising money or even existing in the west. We must make it very difficult for their Mosques to stay open. We must revoke all student visas for peoples who live in Muslim nations and profess a belief in Islam. We need to step up surveillance on Muslims in the west. They should be looked upon with suspicion for our own protection. Islam must be isolated and contained.

I am saddened that I have had to come to this conclusion. I'd much rather it had been true that only a few Muslims felt the hatred for everything western that they do. It would have been so much less distressing if it were true that there are only a few bad apples in Islam. I would have loved to live and let live.

But, they have revealed themselves over and over again, to be enemies to the world. Oppressors who wish to destroy everyone in their path. Warpers of religion, usurpers of truth, murderers, thieves, inhuman animals.

Let their blood flow in the streets like great rivers as penance for their evils.

This message must be drummed from sea to shining sea and in every part of Europe -- which is far more at risk than the USA, by the way -- or we will surely lose this war, diminish ourselves, and end the era of freedoms and liberties that so many have died to assure. And we will do it with a whimper unless we stand up and say NO, Islam IS the enemy.

Let us hope they do not write those history books 100 years from now asking why we sat idly by and did nothing as Islamic fascism spread throughout the world?

It’s time to fight.