The idea that we can hunker down here and hope that the radical Islamic threat will not affect us is dangerous and ill-informed. We are not just battling ISIS, but the entire global threat that has spread to Asia and Africa.
Jan Karski, the famous Polish hero in WWII who met with FDR to describe his firsthand knowledge of the Nazi concentration camps and the Holocaust, and who moved to the US and taught at Georgetown (I had one of his classes), said the following:
Democratic societies demonstrated on this occasion as on many others, before and after, that they are incapable of understanding political regimes of a different character….Democratic societies are accustomed to think in liberal, pragmatic categories; conflicts are believed to be based on misunderstandings and can be solved with a minimum of good will; extremism is a temporary aberration, so is irrational behavior in general, such as intolerance, cruelty, etc. The effort needed to overcome such basic psychological handicaps is immense….Each new generation faces this challenge again, for experience cannot be inherited.
