Know The Enemy (And What He Believes)[BRILLIANT David Horowitz Article]

THE WAR WE HAVE joined is defined by three simple but brutal facts. Our enemy is able to penetrate our borders and strike us in our homes; he can strike us with weapons of mass destruction; and he has made clear his intention is not to change our policies or to force our withdrawal, but to obliterate us and destroy our civilization. Because of these facts, the imperative of defending ourselves as quickly and effectively as possible is more important in this war – by a factor so great as to be impossible to calculate -- than any we have ever fought.

In all wars the first essential is to know your enemy. Everything you can do to thwart his objectives or to protect your life and the lives of your countrymen depends on this knowledge. But if the war is a war of terror, in which stealth warriors target civilians, the importance of this knowledge is even greater still –again by a factor so large as to be impossible to calculate.

Who, then, is the enemy that has struck us and who threatens our destruction? Officially he has been defined in terms that invoke "terror" and "evil," that are generic and that really describe the means by which he has chosen to fight the war, and not why he is fighting or how we have become his enemy. They do not tell us who he is. This failure to name our enemy is already a source of great weakness in erecting our defenses. This ignorance is the most pressing danger to us, after the threat itself. Already, in attempting to establish security perimeters at our borders, and in our airports and harbors, we have denied ourselves the ability to target the specific groups who have targeted us. The policy that will not identify the enemy by name is a policy that asks us to fight in the dark. Yet every terrorist who slips through these nets is capable of killing tens of thousands of innocent Americans.

Yet, we already know who our enemy is, no matter how many choose to deny it. Almost a year has passed since the attacks on Wall Street and the Pentagon -- the twin symbols of American wealth and power. We have seen the face of the enemy, even if we are still reluctant to name him.

We are at war with radical Islam (not all of Islam but with Islamic radicals). And we are – or should be – at war with their allies, the international radical left. Both see us as the embodiment of evil – racism, oppression, on the one hand, and the frustrations of Islamic societies on the other. Both, therefore, seek our destruction.

The publication of a new al-Qaeda manifesto, translated by the Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI) makes its agendas abundantly clear. The statement called, "Why We Fight America," and was issued by al-Qaeda spokesman, Suleiman Abu Gheith and appeared on an al-Qaeda website hosted by Center for Islamic Research and Studies.

The al-Qaeda statement begins by asking why the world is surprised by what happened on 9/11 – pretty much the question that Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Edward Said, Barbara Kingsolver, Arundhati Roy and sundry professors at anti-American rallies on college campuses across the country asked within weeks of the horrific attack. And the answer is pretty much the same for both as well:

"What happened to America [on 9/11] is something natural, an expected event for a country that uses terror, arrogant policy, and suppression against the nations and the peoples, and imposes a single method, thought, and way of life, as if the people of the entire world are clerks in its government offices and employed by its commercial companies and institutions."

Anyone who was surprised by 9/11, the al-Qaeda statement continues, does not understand the root causes of the attack and in particular "the effects of oppression and tyranny on [the victims’] emotions and feelings." Instead, such people must think, "that oppression begets surrender, that repression begets silence, that tyranny leaves only humiliation."

In fact, according to al-Qaeda, humiliation, deprivation and oppression inspire righteous rage against the oppressor. And this righteous indignation is what al-Qaeda’s war is about. Of course, unlike the Western left, al-Qaeda does not wage its war in the name of an international proletariat and its goal is not a secular socialist utopia. Al-Qaeda’s war is about the future world reign of Islam. The al-Qaeda statement asks: How can a Muslim accept humiliation and inferiority "when he knows that his nation was created to stand at the center of leadership, at the center of hegemony and rule, at the center of ability and sacrifice? … When he knows that the [divine] rule is that the entire earth must be subject to the religion of Allah – not to the East, not to the West – to no ideology and to no path except the path of Allah?…"

Credulous apostles of appeasement in the West like Ted Turner and Cherie Blair (wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair) are so superior in their own minds to the Muslims who hate them that they don’t consider the possibility that the Islamic faithful could actually mean what they say. Justifying Arafat’s suicide brigades, Blair said, "As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress." This is an inanity heard nightly on cable talk shows from the left. It is the propaganda line of Machiavellian spokesmen for the terrorist cause like PLO spokesman Abudl Rachman and westernized apologists like Hussein Ibish who equate the terrorists’ terror with the victims’ response. But it ignores what the combatants say about themselves and their inspiration, and patronizes them in the process.

The Middle East Research Institute has also translated an interview given to the Arab press by a mother of a suicide bomber, who has nothing to say about root causes like poverty, or thwarted national desires or "social injustice." (Indeed when the al-Qaeda spokesman speaks of his "nation" he clearly means the entire world of Islam, and not any particular state whether Afghanistan or Palestine or Saudia Arabia or Iraq.) What she says is this:

The will to genocide is not specific to the martyrs who blow up little children, but is shared by the community of radical Islam. It comes not from despair, but from a hope of heaven – from extending the territory of Islam and doing Allah’s will. Nothing could be more obvious to anyone paying attention. That is, to anyone paying attention without the screen of liberal arrogance, which denies what it has seen in order to explain it. And thereby understand it. And thereby surrender to it.

The hope for heaven – or for the global reign of Islam as the path to heaven -- is generically the same fanatical inspiration that caused believers in socialism (a heaven on earth) to kill tens of millions of innocent unbelievers during the 20th Century. It is the same faith that causes progressive fellow travelers like Ted Turner, Barbara Kingsolver and Edward Said to support the agendas of America’s enemies. And of perverse America-haters, like Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky to support any anti-American war.

The present war against us may be about humiliation and a sense of inferiority stemming from Islam’s centuries of eclipse, but it is not about despair. The new statement from al-Qaeda is not addressed to people who have nothing. Quite the opposite It is an incitement to people who have something -- and who might be reluctant to give up what they have -- to sacrifice life itself for the glory of Islam: "As long as the Muslim knows and believes … he will not – even for a single moment -- stop trying to achieve [the universal triumph of Islam], even if it costs him his soul…his time, his property and his son, ..."

This is not a war about land in the Middle East or the structure of a Palestinian state, or a U.S. military presence in the Arabian peninsula. It is a war about redemption. In this it exactly parallels the Communist threat from the past. In the eyes of the Communists, America stood in the way of heaven – a socialist paradise in which racism, sexism, and economic inequality would vanish from the earth. In the eyes of radical Islam, America -- the Great Satan -- stands in the way of Islam’s rule, and thus of human redemption and it is for this reason America must be destroyed.

Thus, the al-Qaeda proclamation: "America is the head of heresy in our modern world, and it leads an infidel democratic regime that is based upon separation of religion and state and on ruling the people by the people via legislating laws that contradict the way of Allah and permit what Allah has prohibited. This compels the other countries to act in accordance with the same laws in the same ways … and punishes any country [that rebels against these laws] by besieging it, and then by boycotting it. By so doing [America] seeks to impose on the world a religion that is not Allah’s…"

Americans wake up! Your enemies hate you for who you are. They hate you because you are democratic, and tolerant and unbelieving. They hate you because you are Christians: "America’s standing with the Christians of the world against the Muslims has stripped the camouflague from its face." And they hate you because are Hindus and Buddhists and secularists and Jews.

This war is not a war we are facing. It is a war we are in. Americans have hardly begun to understand this, but the enemy is already keeping score: "We have not reached parity [with America’s alleged attacks on Muslims. [Therefore], we have the right to kill 4 million Americans – 2 million of them children – and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons, so as to afflict them with the fatal maladies that have afflicted Muslims because of the [Americans’] chemical and biological weapons."

Americans have also only begun to understand that if radical Islam is one face of our enemy, the other is the radical left. For two hundred years the radical left has believed in a religion promising a heaven on earth whose end justifies any means. That is why progressives like Lenin and Stalin and Pol Pot killed so many innocent people. That is why radical leftists in America and other European countries have joined in denouncing America’s war of self-defense and in abetting the Arab crusade to obliterate Israel and (in the process) exterminate the Jews of the Middle East.

How serious are some American leftists about abetting the war to destroy their own country? Attorney Lynne Stewart is a veteran of the radical left going back to the 1960s and is the lawyer for the "blind sheik" who led the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Six people were killed in the attack and 1,000 injured. Stewart is associated with the Center for Constitutional Rights and has been a supporter of Communist causes and Arab terrorists for her entire professional life. Recently, the Attorney General indicted Stewart for helping the "blind sheik," who is now in prison, to communicate with his terrorist followers in the Middle East and further their bloody agendas.

A chorus from the left has attacked Attorney General Ashcroft for infringing on the civil liberties of the imprisoned terrorist and his "lawyer." Stewart has been defended as a persecuted civil libertarian by the left-wing National Lawyers Guild, the ACLU, The Nation and other institutions of the "progressive" left.

In 1995, Lynne Stewart was interviewed by the New York Times, which reported her radical beliefs. ""Ms. Stewart suggested that violence and revolution were sometimes necessary to right the economic and racial wrongs of America’s capitalist system." Among other things, Lynne Stewart said this: "I don’t believe in anarchistic violence, but in directed violence. That would be violence directed at the institutions which perpetuate capitalism, racism, and sexism, and the people who are the appointed guardians of those institutions, and accompanied by popular support."

The World Trade Center is an institution which perpetuates capitalism and -- in the eyes of the left -- racism and sexism as well. According to every leftist – from the Nation magazine to the Chomsky fifth column (the distance is not great) --, America is a land of capitalism, racism and sexism, and the enforcer of capitalism, racism and sexism globally. This is the world that the Islamicists call Dar Al-Harb: The world of darkness. The world that is not socialist (for the leftist believers) and that is not Islam (for the faithful). According to Lynne Stewart and the al-Qaeda spokesman, the people who dwell in Dar Al-Harb and support its profane agendas deserve to die. This is what the present "war on terror" is about. Americans better understand it sooner than later.

Sorry Poohbah, but I agree with allrightnow. There may be a compromise that perhaps we can all agree on. Fly a huge sortie over Mecca and Medina to show them we can get them at will and then drop a low yield nuke in a desert (they seem to have plenty of sand). Then tell them the next time we suffer an attack they will be facing and praying to a giant mushroom cloud 5 times a day. I think that would put an end to all this running around trying to prevent an attack without having to kill any of them (Other than the ones who have already attacked us of course). Just a thought.

Ah, there is nothing truly new under the sun.

Your proposal is known as the "nuclear warning shot."

It manages to combine the weaknesses of both unrestricted urban bombardment (annoying the locals) and timidity (not having the testicular fortitude to back up your bluster). It's been proposed several times, going back to before Hiroshima; it's been rejected by everyone who understands how people think and react.

Like it or not, this is going to be a very long, hard job. Unlike television, there is no magical solution that will solve it right after the last commercial break. Dropping bombs all over the place is not going to actually accomplish the mission.

One of the principal motivations for the September 11th attacks was the polarization of Islam and Western Society. Osama wanted this and quite frankly, has achieved it. Rather than look at this in a defeatist manner, we should at least take comfort in it happening now rather than 100 years later when many of these nations may have had ICBM's capable of reaching the US. We need to capitalize on this opportunity and will get nowhere by attacking the figureheads of the Islamic hatred of the west that prevails in most Arab nations. Treating a symptom will not cure a disease.
I don't know if you have ever been in a fist fight and lost but the first time you are hit in the face it makes you madder than hell and you fight back harder. However if your opponent is able to continue hitting you over and over, pretty soon you want to stop fighting. As for your contention that the vast majority of people around the world would not act in a to self preservation you need look no further than the recent Israeli (accidental) machine gunning in a Palestinian market. Why by your reasoning, were the Palestinians running away from rather than towards the enemy?
As for the Strategic Bombing Survey, the jury is out:

"The economic consequences of the physical damage wrought by air attack are closely interrelated with the concurrent effects of the interdiction of imports, the cumulative effects of under-maintenance of plants, and the declining health, vigor and determination of the Japanese people."
"By December 1944 air attacks from the Marianas against the home islands had begun, defeats in the Philippines had been suffered, and the food situation had deteriorated; 10 percent of the people believed Japan could not achieve victory. By March 1945, when the night incendiary attacks began and the food ration was reduced, this percentage had risen to 19 percent. In June it was 46 percent, and just prior to surrender, 68 percent. Of those who had come to this belief over one-half attributed the principal cause to air attacks, other than the atomic bombing attacks, and one-third to military defeats."
"A striking aspect of the air attack was the pervasiveness with which its impact on morale blanketed Japan. Roughly one-quarter of all people in cities fled or were evacuated, and these evacuees, who themselves were of singularly low morale, helped spread discouragement and disaffection for the war throughout the islands."
Seems convincing to me. Might also note the effect on Iraqi morale in the Gulf War.
By the way, I don't condone the nuclear option. Sets a bad precedent and the world might notice that we tell other nations not to build them but don't seem to mind using them ourselves.

There are a number of things we need to do, both long-term and short.
In the short-term, racial profiling needs to be done. We're not in any great danger from old ladies who use walkers.
But in the long term, I think we need to re-evaluate a lot of things. Not just our foreign policy or our battle plans, but our views on what is valuable and why.
In all cases, value depends upon supply and demand. If there is a large supply of any commodity, the value goes down until the demand reduces the supply enough for the value to go back up. It works for gasoline, hogs, grain and ...life.
My life is very valuable to me and to a small circle of family and friends. But to a Muslin terrorist it's worth nothing. Nor are the lives of millions of other Christians or Jews or Bhuddists or...whatever. Indeed, if the whole lot of us were exterminated the world would be a better place for Islam and they would breed until they filled it.
We need to stop believing that life is too precious to waste and start wasting a few billion muslims.
I know, that's genocide and that's a bad word. But will it be a better word if they do it to us? Some have suggested we might finally get the idea when a band of terrorists manages to set off a nuke in one of our cities. I doubt it. Unless they can gather all the liberals into the same city at the same time and then set off the bomb there will still be some idiot who thinks we can talk our way out of the mess.
There is only one way out and it has been proven to work. Rome got tired of being picked to pieces by the Carthaginians and simply destroyed them. They killed the men and boys, enslaved the females, leveled the city and poured salt on the fields they had grown their crops in. Genocide? Sure, but there were no more Carthaginian wars either.

A long time ago - longer than I like to think about - I had a high-school teacher who impressed two things upon my mushy brain. First, China (or any populous country like China) cannot be defeated by ordinary means. Ordinarily, the prevailing army must occupy the territory to impose its will upon the populace. Within a couple of generations, the forces of the conquerors are assimilated into the local population and they become Chinese - or whatever.
Second, You cannot defeat an idea with conventional warfare tactics. You can destroy ships, armies, cities -- all kinds of infrastructure, but so long as people are left alive, the idea will remain alive.
My wife has a Master's degree in Divinity, so she has read a good deal more of the Bible than I have. She tells me that when God instructed the Jews to go into a certain land they were always told to kill every man, woman, child and domestic beast. They never did. They always left a few alive and they always paid for it later.

Has anyone noticed a pattern to my ramblings yet? If the moderators leave this post in (and they might not, it is very politically incorrect) you may get the idea that I favor the total destruction of Islam. If you were to come to that conclusion you'd only be partially correct.
Last month my neighbor's dog jumped a six-foot fence and killed one of my wife's cats. I told my neighbor that I had no hard feeling against him or his dog, but if it happened again I'd kill the dog. Yesterday it happened again and I killed the dog. I took no pleasure in doing it but it had to be done. My neighbor was a bit upset, but he understood.
If the Muslims will stay in their yard I will have no reason to wish them ill. They can even come over to play with our cats - as long as they play nice. But if they hurt me or mine I will show no mercy.

Horowitz is apparently more moderate than you are. Unlike you, he doesn't condemn every Muslim man, woman and child as evil but only singles out radical Islam.

Huh? I don't believe all Muslims are evil. I'm merely pointing out the fact we are facing a religious conflict, one that can't be solved by accomodation.

Look, whether you like it or not, the West is becoming Islamicized. Muslims have vastly more children than Christians or Jews, and are immigrating to the West by the millions every year.

This means the demographic characteristic of the West is changing year by year, from a liberal and secular Judeo-Christian milieu to a conservative, intolerant Islamic one.

Consequently, it is only a matter of TIME, and for sure within the 21st century, when the majority of the population of the West will become Islamic.

What's going to happen then? All the advances that made the West the pinnacle of human society in relation to freedom, tolerance, woman's rights and technological advancement will be erased. Don't you think it's odd not one out of the top 500 global brands originate from Islamic countries? Don't you think its odd no Islamic nation is at the forefront of any scientific endevour? Is there an Islamic spacefaring nation or one with advanced industrial, computer, aviation or medical capacity? No, and there can't be any because of the rigidity of Islam, that prevents innovation and independent thinking.

Why in the world would we be stupid enough to throw all the societal advantages of the West away just for the IDEAL of religious and cultural equality? Are you so willing to condemn your children, grandchildren and especially great-grandchildren to the rule of Islam? Don't you want your descendants to live in freedom, peace and prosperity, or do you prefer they live in an Islamic society as found in the Middle East? Because as surely as the grass is green, that's going to be the future of the West unless we muster up the courage and halt all future Muslim immigration and make religious or nonreligious conversion the condition for acceptance of Muslims.

Muslims immigrate to the West because they know they can enjoy freedom and prosperity in a manner that doesn't exist back home. However, the vast majority of these Muslim immigrants aren't assimilating and are bringing with them the intolerant teachings of Islam and the cultural baggage they grew up with.

Why do you think anti-Semitism is exploding across the West? The violence isn't coming from the non-Muslims. The greater the number of Muslims, the greater the pressure for them to vote as a bloc to change the culture of their adoped country in the West. This is why Sharia laws are beginning to be allowed in many European countries. Suddenly, women no longer have equal rights with the Muslim man and can be divorced by a simple sentence repeated three times. Suddenly, one can't walk the streets of certain neighborhoods in London, Amsterdam and dozens of other European cities if one isn't wearing clothing identifying them as Muslim. Suddenly, attempts are being made to introduce legislation prohibiting any criticism of Islam while allowing Islamic criticism of others.

The world is changing, old ideals are being discarded. Until people like you realize there's nothing wrong with making religous (or nonreligious) conversion of Muslims conditional for immigration and citizenship; the West is doomed to obliteration.

Oh, and finally, condemning people like myself for merely pointing out the obvious isn't going to make the problem go away.

One of the principal motivations for the September 11th attacks was the polarization of Islam and Western Society. Osama wanted this and quite frankly, has achieved it.

And a ham-handed response would set that attitude in concrete.

Rather than look at this in a defeatist manner, we should at least take comfort in it happening now rather than 100 years later when many of these nations may have had ICBM's capable of reaching the US.

I'm not looking at it in a defeatist manner: you are.

We need to capitalize on this opportunity and will get nowhere by attacking the figureheads of the Islamic hatred of the west that prevails in most Arab nations. Treating a symptom will not cure a disease.

No, instead, let's just randomly bomb a population of 1.2 billion people for the crime of being born in the wrong culture.

I don't know if you have ever been in a fist fight and lost but the first time you are hit in the face it makes you madder than hell and you fight back harder.

Uh-huh--that's the point.

However if your opponent is able to continue hitting you over and over, pretty soon you want to stop fighting.

This isn't a fistfight, buddy.

And many of these "fistfights" "end" as you describe--right up to the moment where the "victor" turns his back and gets a Louisville slugger applied to his skull with considerable force, or they haul out a dagger and stuff it into his back, or they haul out a gun and shoot the winner in the back.

As for your contention that the vast majority of people around the world would not act in a to self preservation you need look no further than the recent Israeli (accidental) machine gunning in a Palestinian market.

Immediate self-preservation is one thing. However, the social dymanics of populations under aerial bombardment are very different.

Notice that it didn't stop the Palestinians from performing another suicide bombing.

Why by your reasoning, were the Palestinians running away from rather than towards the enemy?

Do you understand the need for revenge in human beings? Whole epics have been written on the topic. They may flee today, but anyone who lost a relative in that incident is a good candidate for "martyrdom operations."

As for the Strategic Bombing Survey, the jury is out:

"The economic consequences of the physical damage wrought by air attack are closely interrelated with the concurrent effects of the interdiction of imports, the cumulative effects of under-maintenance of plants, and the declining health, vigor and determination of the Japanese people."

Congratulations. If you look carefully, you'll see that that portion of the USSBS is discussing the mining campaign, not the firebombing campaign.

"By December 1944 air attacks from the Marianas against the home islands had begun, defeats in the Philippines had been suffered, and the food situation had deteriorated; 10 percent of the people believed Japan could not achieve victory. By March 1945, when the night incendiary attacks began and the food ration was reduced, this percentage had risen to 19 percent. In June it was 46 percent, and just prior to surrender, 68 percent. Of those who had come to this belief over one-half attributed the principal cause to air attacks, other than the atomic bombing attacks, and one-third to military defeats."

The people were still going to fight to the absolute death--and take a lot of Americans with them. But you cheerfully ignore that. Why were they going to fight to the death? Because we had convinced them that all we wanted to do was exterminate every last Japanese, so they figured that they might at least give themselves some sideboys for when they reported to Yasukunai.

Your external behavior is the only guide many people out there have for evaluating your overall intentions. A campaign of the type you describe conveys the message that you merely want them to die--so the people get convinced to take some infidels with them.

"A striking aspect of the air attack was the pervasiveness with which its impact on morale blanketed Japan. Roughly one-quarter of all people in cities fled or were evacuated, and these evacuees, who themselves were of singularly low morale, helped spread discouragement and disaffection for the war throughout the islands."

And had we come ashore in 1945, they would have made us pay blood for every square inch of Japanese soil.

Seems convincing to me.

Yup, weasel-worded studies always seem convincing to armchair commandos.

I really miss the days when wars were settled with the sword and pike--because the folks who advocate murdering (yes, I am specifically using that term) thousands of civilians could be told "Fine, here's a sword, knock yourself out." Today, they don't have to see the consequences of what they advocate.

Might also note the effect on Iraqi morale in the Gulf War.

A different dynamic was in play there. It was obvious that we were systematically destroying their ability to fight a modern war. What the Iraqis learned early on was to stay away from their equipment. What you would teach the Islamic world is that we'll kill people just for the heck of it, and that we really ARE the Great Satan.

By the way, I don't condone the nuclear option. Sets a bad precedent and the world might notice that we tell other nations not to build them but don't seem to mind using them ourselves.

Wow. The only thing that stops you from using nukes is that someone MIGHT want to pay you back in like coin.

Thank you for proving my point...

The problem will not go away if adopt an eternal war footing against milllions of Muslims. That is pure utopianism and is doomed to lead to disasterous blowback.

Funny, the Muslims sure don't think so. What do you think they've been trying to do since Mohammed started the faith in the 7th century? To them, life and the meaning of Islam IS an eternal conflict, between the believer and the non-believer. Not only this, but they now have a nearly 1300-year track record proving such an embarkation results in the creation of a world empire and DOESN'T result in annihilation.

The important goal is not to launch a utopian crusade to convert them or treat them as second class citizens, just because they have different religious beliefs.

Come on! (1) Jihad is precisely that - a crusade. That's precisely how Islam became a world power. (2) Islam treats non-Muslims in their societies as "second class citizens." This is why the word of a non-Muslim is not equal to that of a Muslim in the courts, non-Muslims must pay an annual citizenship tax, and death is proscribed for any Muslim who converts to another religion. Thus, what's wrong with giving the goose what's good for the gander? Do you seriously think if you were to migrate to any Muslim country, you'll be guaranteed all the rights the Muslims enjoy?

The solution is a slow, incremental campaign to encourage the more private property, pro-freedom elements of Islam which have been dormant or suppressed for centuries. This is not a sexy campaign for those who want to go to "war" but it is ultimately more effective and can only be impeded by the theory of perpetual war.

Sorry, I disagree. History has shown time and time again that the attempts of non-Muslim societies to gradually "civilize" Muslim societies have ALWAYS ultimately resulted in FAILURE. Look at Bosnia. Look at Macedonia. Look at Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria. While you're certainly free to engage in idealistic pipe dreams, the reality is quite different.

Some of us don't have a medieval definition of the West (BTW, the West in Europe is already heavily non-Christian or, at best, nominally Christian). Some of us still hold to the quaint old notion of the enlightenment (the greatest contribution of the "West") including such values as religious freedom, free choice, suspicion of centralized power (including that of an imperial U.S.), limitation of the military to defense rather than social engineering or world policing. You seem to have a very different conception of the "West." I am not prepared to destroy the village in order to save it.

I find this absurd. I'm not equating "West" with "Christianity." Do you seriously believe WHEN (not if) the Arab Muslims get the bomb, they WON'T use it against the West? Furthermore, what good is the "Enlightenment" if only one side adheres to it? When has Islam promulgated the ideals espoused by the Enlightenment? On the contrary, Islam is the greatest opponent of the Enlightenment since the fall of communism.

Austin, the world has changed. The ideals we held in the past no longer apply when facing the greatest threat to our freedom and prosperity. I don't want to see my children and grandchildren enslaved by Islam and I especially don't want to see the West commit suicide.

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