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National NewsConservative News
World War III
By Gary Palmer
Posted on: August 2, 2006
As fighting rages between Israel and the terrorists forces of Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon, as Islamic terrorists continue to kill people all over the world and as Iran continues to threaten America, Europe, and Israel with complete and total destruction, there are a couple of things that should be fairly apparent to most Americans by now...we are in a world war and Islam is not a religion of peace.
In regard to world war, Newt Gingrich shocked many people when, during an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, he said that he is firmly convinced that that the world confronts a situation that is frighteningly similar to a Third World War.
Hopefully, Gingrich's declaration on national television that we are in the opening stages of World War III will force the Bush Administration and other leaders to confront the reality that the war is not about bringing democracy to Iraq or Afghanistan, it is about preserving democracy in the rest of the world and more specifically, about saving Western civilization.
While it is a laudable goal to establish a successful democracy in the Middle East, that goal will most likely never be achieved until we defeat radical Islamists worldwide. When there have been over 800 suicide attacks in Iraq alone and with the number of attacks increasing, it should be apparent that we cannot win this war simply by killing the terrorists in Iraq. We must stop them wherever they are.
Regardless of how reluctant we are to fight another world war, and anyone with any sense should be reluctant, the consequences of not fighting it or waiting too long to fight it simply cannot be ignored. As Gingrich points out, this is "Us Versus Them." The American people and free people everywhere must come to grips with the fact that radical Islamists and the countries that back them are already engaged in a global war to defeat us. The attacks against the U.S. and other nations are all connected to one source…radical Islamists intent on initiating a new Golden Age of Islam.
Which leads to my second point, that it is imperative that the American people and especially our leaders, understand that Islam is not a religion of peace.
This is not to say that Muslims cannot live at peace with others. Obviously there are Islamic countries that are at peace with other nations but it should be noted that those Islamic nations are mostly under secular rule, or at least a semblance of it. And as the Jordanians and Saudis have found out, they too are also targets of the radical Islamists.
It is likely that many Muslims in the Middle East that would be willing to live in peace. But I suspect that many of them, if not most, would not be dissatisfied with the defeat of the West. Even though they might not subscribe to the radical fundamentalism of the Islamists, they would find being on the winning side very appealing because they have been led to believe that by defeating the U.S. and the other Western powers they can make Islam the world's dominant religion and create an Islamic superpower.
This has happened before in other countries. For instance, leading up to World War II most of the people in Germany were not Nazis, yet there was a willingness to participate in Germany's aggression as long as they were winning. And much like the Germans, it is likely that the majority of Islamists would support global jihad, a world war, if they thought they were winning. Consequently, the longer we deny that we are fighting radical Islamists the weaker we look and the more emboldened the Islamists become and the more attractive their war will look to other Muslims, especially if we allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.
The time has passed for looking at this global conflict through politically correct lenses. There is a truth that we must come to grips with and it is that terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy. We cannot fight a war against terrorism; we can only fight those that use it as a tactic. And we know who that is…it is those individuals and nations that practice or support radical Islam. Moreover, we know that we cannot negotiate with this enemy and we cannot appease this enemy, we can only defeat them or be defeated by them.
Gingrich is right to call for a "…national debate-indeed, a worldwide debate-between those of us who believe we're in a war to defend civilization [and]…those who are made uncomfortable by the price of defeating terrorists and their state sponsors."
Moreover, the debate must be honest about the challenges and difficulties of fighting this war. Gingrich said, "We must convince the American people and our allies across the world that fighting this fight is hard but necessary and unavoidable. Losing to the murderous terrorists and their state sponsors who threaten us would be far harder."
Murderous Martyrs, August 2, 2006.
Saint Paul and the Liberal Agenda, July 19, 2006.
Islam, a Religion of Peace-- or of Violence?, March 25, 2006.
America Should Not Abandon Iraq, December 7, 2005.
Islam Is not a Religion of Peace, August 23, 2005.
Magnifying the Enemy, January 21, 2005.
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