Who Are We Fighting? by Jerrold L. Sobel

by Jerrold L. Sobel

In a hard hitting essay, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich came out blazing this week proclaiming: ‘Radical Islamists’ Are the Enemy. To those that gasp at the mere sound of his name, try to put away the knee jerk reaction and listen to what the man has to say. “We are confronted by a mainstream movement that seeks gradually to infuse sharia, Islam's legal and political framework, into our legal, political, financial, economic, and educational systems — and throughout our culture.”
That’s irrefutable. Through both soft and hard jihad this insidious movement has accomplished more in subjugating Europe than it had been able to do militarily for hundreds of years. He goes on to say:
“One of our biggest mistakes in the aftermath of 9/11 was naming our response to the attacks ‘the war on terror’ instead of accurately identifying radical Islamists (and the underlying ideology of radical Islamism) as the target of our campaign.

Oh my, I can see the progressives dropping by the wayside on this one but for realists living in the here and now and are aware of what is going on in the world, who can disagree with this analysis? To categorize the dire conflict between two fundamentally opposed civilizations as compatible is nothing short of disingenuous. Unless of course you believe transparent jurisprudence, a free press, women’s rights, freedom of religion or no religion at all, and open elections is accordant with, forced marriages, misogyny, crimes punishable by stoning, amputations, homophobia, and other 7th century dandies called for under Sharia; Islamic law. Yet in spite of everything, two Administrations, first Bush and now Obama have tried to force feed the nation this absurd drivel following 9/11 .

Our nation lost more people on that dreadful day than we did at Pearl Harbor. Reasonable people can not deny that the attacks on the WTC, the Pentagon, and flight 93 which went down in Stoney Creek Pennsylvania were random acts. They were well financed, meticulously planned, and carried out by believers of a religion which preaches such hatred. Likewise, 9/11 didn’t occur in a vacuum.

An argument can be made that the first Islamic attack on the United States came on November 4, 1979 when Iranian militants under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini stormed the American Embassy in Teheran and took 63 Americans hostage. Emboldened by the tepid response of then President Carter, other Islamists began viewing the United States as a paper tiger which led to further aggression under the Clinton Administration: Feb. 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center; June 25, 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia where 19 American servicemen were killed; August 7, 1998 destruction of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; the October 12, 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole with the death of 17 sailors. Unfortunately, by treating each of these events as a criminal matter as opposed to a military one, the path to 9/11/2001 was cleared. Even in the days just subsequent that that dastardly day President Bush began showering the nation with mendacious statements such as, “Islam is a peaceful religion,” when both history and current events dismally failed to support that premise.

The former Speaker correctly rues the day this conflict was misnamed, “The War on Terror.” If that misnomer sticks to his craw, I wonder how he likes the latest politically correct banner this President is asking our nation to rally around, “Countering Violent Extremism,” rather than what it really is, ”The War Against Radical Islam?” Whether you admire Gingrich or hate him, on this topic more and more Americans are coming around to his way of thinking. How do you rally a nation to go to war without alerting them to who the enemy is? At the outbreak of the Second World World War can you imagine Roosevelt or Churchill referring to that conflict as: “The War Against Evil People” for fear of offending Americans of German, Italian, or Japanese descent? It’s ludicrous. This particular enemy is the most daunting and insidious foe our country and the Western World has ever faced. They represent a liberty usurping movement enveloped within a religious cult, yet are being fought both here and abroad with little passion except for our poor, brave men and women in the sweltering heat against an enemy our leadership refuses to properly identify. A foe whose doctrine embraces death over life to satisfy a God of punishments and hatred for all those which refuse adherence to its deity. As a political movement, as much a religion Gingrich bemoans the tactics radical Islam employs ranging from terrorism to legal means all for the ultimate purpose of imposing Sharia law and abrogating hundreds of years of Western enlightenment.

In response to the proposed building of a Mosque just two blocks from ground zero, Gingrich aptly points out, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man in charge of this proposal, (which just cleared another hurdle this week by the refusal of the landmark committee to grant the building landmark status) “Is an apologist for sharia supremacy and in a recent Op-Ed compared Sharia to the Declaration of Independence.” Whether this is true or not is not the point. If a container of milk obviously smells tainted, there’s no need in tasting it. With no transparency as to where the money for this project is coming from; most likely President Obama’s bowing partner King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and with the refusal of the organizers to divulge their sources, shouldn’t one stop and wonder? Forgetting the legalities but knowing the sensitivities this area evokes, would people of goodwill insist upon building their Mosque on what most Americans consider to be hallowed ground? Or are they, to use the vernacular, with the consent of loony, politically correct politicians such as Michael Bloomberg just sticking it to us because they can? To quote that obnoxious Ford commercial, “why here, why now?” The answer is, why not.

Qur’an (5:51)- "O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other” but an even more succinct message to adherents of this religion/cult is: “Qur'an (3:85) - "And whoever desires a religion other than Islam, it shall not be accepted from him, and in the hereafter he shall be one of the losers."
Mind you, these are just two out of many direct quotes from the pillar of Islamic deity, the Qur’an. The Hadith and Sunnah the two other foundational legs of Islam are replete with additional suras equally intolerant of other religions. With this as a backdrop, is it a stretch to say this Imam, his followers, and his financial backers could give two hoots about the feelings of people from different religions or for that matter, those that do not believe in religion at all?

Please read the following attached article: “On Bashing Muslims.” It’s a follow up to the Gingrich essay by Frank Gaffney, the American founder and President of the lobbyist group: Center for Security Policy.

http://townhall.com/columnists/FrankGaffney/2010/08/02/on_bashing_muslims