From Mike Rosen in the Rocky Mountain News, with thanks to Nicolei:
A signal contribution of the 9/11 commission report was to identify the enemy bluntly. More specifically than generic terrorism, the commission declared we are under attack from “Islamist terrorism.” This is an enemy unlike our former adversary, the Soviet Union, during the half-century of the Cold War. The Soviets were ideologically committed, powerful and ruthless, but they were also rational. The nuclear weapons standoff never escalated to all-out war because neither side was suicidal.
Today, the delivery systems of weapons of mass (as well as smaller scale) destruction are fanatical, irrational, embittered, disenfranchised, psychotic, suicidal religious zealots, many of whom perceive that they have little to lose in this ephemeral world, and hope for eternal rewards in the hereafter. These aren’t the kind of people who respond to negotiations.
Call it what you will – radical Islam, Wahhabism, Jihadism – it’s a cancer on civilization that must be forcefully removed, just as Nazism had to be eliminated in the last century. Until we come to grips with that reality, we will not devote the will, the resources and the sacrifice necessary to win this latest world war. After 9/11, many Americans have come to understand this.
The next 9/11 might persuade some more. The French, among others, are still pathetically in denial….
… these heroic “lions of Islam” don’t just murder Americans. They’re equal-opportunity butchers of all “infidels.”
In Khobar, that meant innocent, unarmed civilians whose primary sin was having a different religious belief from theirs. If this cancer is ever to be effectively eradicated, it would best be done by civilized Muslims, their own countrymen. One wonders if there are enough of them and if they’re up to the task?