OUTLIVING THE TERRORISTS
By Mike Evans
There was a moment of clarity just a few years ago, in the aftermath of 9/11, when Americans reacted as one in the baptism of fire rained down by Bin Laden and company. We were viciously attacked and we wanted justice. If in pursuing our attackers we were led to believe that ultimately democracy would defeat terrorism, well we could be excused for a little wishful thinking.
We had the historical example of Pearl Harbor on which to model our fight; a devastating sneak attack that brought us into the war of all wars to make the world safe for democracy. We fought our enemies to the bitter end, accepting nothing less than their total surrender. It was the only proportionate response in the cataclysmic struggle against the total evil of Nazism and its allies.
Today the free world is being targeted for destruction by an equally evil totalitarian ideology: the world jihad of Islamist extremism, led by Iran. The Iranian jihadists behind the destruction of 9/11 are the same bunch that is trying to restore fundamentalism in Afghanistan, that is trying to destroy the budding democracy in Iraq by fomenting civil war, and that is threatening to annihilate Israel – and in the meantime is serving up the basket case of Lebanon as a distraction while it pursues the development of nuclear weapons.
Iran is moving its proxies around the Middle East, sowing destruction by supplying the Hizbullah organization it created with an estimated 16,000 short- and long-range missiles and sending its Revolutionary Guards to help fire them at Israel. Meanwhile, the American public watches the resulting devastation on CNN – whose own reporters have admitted to being instructed what to film by their Hizbullah minders – and grows bored. So much killing, and it’s so confusing – why can’t those Israelis and Muslims just sit down and talk things over?
Americans are growing war weary, though for most of them, of course, that means weary of seeing reports of other Americans dying in Iraq or Israelis dying in their own country, and of course Lebanese dying in Lebanon. Do Americans have to be hit over the head again with another 9/11 in their own backyard to understand that the grave threat of totalitarian jihadism is just not going to go away? Do Americans not understand that this enemy will not stop at murdering just 3,000 of their countrymen, but will fight democracy to the bitter end? When will Americans understand what every Israeli schoolchild knows: that the war against terrorism is now, and must be won now?
This is not a dispute that can be negotiated or resolved through diplomacy. One doesn’t negotiate with an attacker. Democracies cannot bargain with an uncompromising extremism that considers their existence an historical mistake. The answer, as Israel is showing Hizbullah, is to defend democracy with all the force this requires.
For the moment, Iran is taking on Washington in the Middle East through its proxy Hizbullah’s unprovoked aggression against Israel. But while the world is watching the side show in Lebanon, Iran’s scientists are racing to put the finishing touches on the first Persian nuclear warheads. The ballistic missiles that can deliver them to any country in Europe are already in place. The question is whether a war weary America can let Iran call the shots in the Middle East, as a stepping stone to worldwide jihad.
Dr. Michael D. Evans is the New York Times bestselling author of Beyond Iraq: The Next Move and The American Prophecies. His latest book, Showdown with Nuclear Iran will be released by Thomas Nelson in mid-September.
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