I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.
--Message to Iraqi leaders from General Mattis, United States Marine Corps
At the end of 2014, The BBC did a thorough study of the number of Islamic terror incidents in November of that year. The researchers concluded that in 30 days there were 664 attacks in 14 countries, resulting in more than five thousand deaths.
--Message to Iraqi leaders from General Mattis, United States Marine Corps
At the end of 2014, The BBC did a thorough study of the number of Islamic terror incidents in November of that year. The researchers concluded that in 30 days there were 664 attacks in 14 countries, resulting in more than five thousand deaths.
In the past 30 days, June 29—July 28, Islamic terrorists have launched 161 attacks in 25 countries, killing 1,552 people and wounding 2, 295 others.
So it goes on, month after month of killing.
Reinforcing these vicious murders are various radical groups and imams. Daily they spew their words of hatred toward Sunni or Shi’ite, Jews, Christians, and the secular West. They regard as subhuman anyone who practices a way of life different than that preached in the Koran.
Meanwhile, leaders in the West have spent the last fifteen years waging war against “terrorism” while at the same time promoting Islam as a “way of peace.” They have opened their borders to Islamic refugees, many of whom are seeking safety, but at the same time they have failed to assimilate these refugees, in part because of a misguided policy of “multiculturalism,” in part because the refugees themselves refuse to assimilate.
And with each new terrorist attack, these same leaders blame the cause for the attack on anything but Islam.
Remember the attack on our embassy in Benghazi? Our administration declared it the work of protesters incited by a video no one had ever seen. The cold-blooded murders by Nidal Hasan? For years, officials labeled his terrorism “workplace violence.” The recent slaughter at a gay nightclub in Orlando? It was anti-homosexual violence.
Yet in all these cases the attackers were screaming “Allahu Akbar.”
The past year in France has seen a multitude of such attacks. After each one, French President Hollande has declared that France is at war with ISIS. The only problem with that statement is that ISIS individuals and cells are operating throughout France. There are radical mosques. There are supporters of ISIS, Muslims who will not themselves commit violence but who hate the West and its secular ways. In many cases, members of ISIS are also citizens of France. So is Hollande saying that France is engaged in civil war?
We are told that most Muslims spurn ISIS and other terrorist groups, that perhaps only ten percent support the terrorists. Demographers debate the number of Muslims in France, but it seems around 6 million of the population. Does that mean that 600,000 of them are supporters of murder and terror? No one truly knows.
Then there are the other assaults against Western values: the demands for sharia law, honor killings, rapes and sexual molestation, and various crimes. The official response? Bury the facts. Try to teach Muslims a gentler way. Prosecute as racists those who speak out against immigration.
With each of these terrorist horrors, both here in the United States and throughout Europe, out come the flowers and candles, the little notes of remembrance and the teddy bears, to cover the bloodstains of the victims. In the wake of each of these repulsive assaults, Christian priests and pastors tell their flocks to pray harder, to ask God to bring peace to “a troubled world,” as my own parish so monotonically repeats in prayer every Sunday throughout the year.
It’s time to wake up. It’s time to quit dreaming. We are at war.
Let that fact sink in for a moment. We are at war. And the victims aren’t all Christians or Westerners. They are Muslim as well.
And if we fight AK-47s with flowers and teddy bears, we are going to lose. If we fight car bombs, knives, and axes with prayers and good wishes, we are going to lose. If we fight the war by conventional methods, we will lose. And if we can’t call our enemies Islamic terrorists, we will lose.
I am unqualified to tell anyone how to fight such a war. But I can at least recognize a war when I see one. I also know that to go on lying to ourselves about our enemy is suicide.
Let me conclude with another remark by General Mattis: “There is only one ‘retirement plan’ for terrorists.”
Let us pray we retire as many of them as we can as quickly as possible.