Success in Preventing Future Horrors Like the Paris Terror Attacks is More in Our Own Hands Than You Might Think.
- We’re designing cool, artsy images and GIFs
- We’re sharing motivational sayings
- We’re sending our “thoughts & prayers”
- We’re waving the French flag
- We’re changing our Facebook profile pictures
Those are all wonderful gestures and expressions of genuine care and concern. They are the right and admirable things to do.
It’s what we’re not doing that condemns future victims to the same fate. I’d love to think ISIS members & potential recruits see flags on profiles, or read how this should be answered with love and light, and reconsider their ideology of murder and torture of the innocent. But I don’t.
What we’re not doing, which endangers us, is coalescing behind a few truths. We’re at war. The French President has said this is war. Even Pope Francis has said this is a part of the Third World War.
There’s an existential threat to those of us who want peace and harmony. We can no longer deny it, call it less than what it is, pretend there is no enemy, or refuse to call out the enemy. This is an ideological war with hijackers of Islam, it is not a series of crimes by individuals who must be “brought to justice.”
The war is against realistic people executing it brilliantly. Exploiting our tolerance, our addiction to political correctness, our pacifist inclinations, they know better than to put on uniforms, attack borders and fight as a state. They’d surely lose. But a quiet, steady infiltration of the world powers they then attack from within…that’s going to work.
The American public has an incredible power to win, but not if we aren’t clear-minded and unified behind the effort. When we are not, we have an incredible power to lose. The U.S. military did not “lose” the Vietnam War. We did that. All the enemy had to do was never surrender, not mind dying, and outlast us. This current enemy is willing to do all three to the extreme.
To unify behind defeat of this enemy, we have to let some things we’ve been doing go, or at least put them on hold. This ideological war is self-determination and liberty vs. tyranny and barbarism. You’d think that would be a commonality we could all get behind. But the “America has been the root of all evil and ills in the world throughout its history” dialogue has been pervasive, even in our education system. Is it a smart thing to do ISIS’ recruiting for them?
A friend recently pointed out how many Presidents have faced the radical Islam issue. It’s next to impossible for any President to successfully prosecute a war without the backing of the country. We need to give our leaders the support and confidence to address these challenges seriously, freeing them from attacks of racism, anti-immigration, or Islamaphobia. Just as America’s ideology was better for the world than the fascism of the Nazis, our ideals are better for the world than the fascism and brutality of ISIS and like-minded believers.
It must once again be okay to be patriotic. It must once again be okay to say American ideals are superior. It must once again be okay to believe in American exceptionalism and encourage the world to aspire to liberty. And it must once again be okay to say our country has been blessed with the wealth and power to lead the world’s fight against evil, and return to doing it. Standing down has plunged the world into a chaos that leaves young men with no viable survival opportunities other than joining ISIS and similar groups.
Oh that we could defeat and eliminate such threats with love and light. But the weak and innocent need a champion willing to guard their lives with more. Without that, we’ll get our chance again soon enough to extend our digital sympathies to victims of unchecked brutality.
Photo: Vichaya Kiatying-Angsulee, freedigitalphotos.net