There's a first time for everything...POTUS got something right

For once POTUS was correct.   When he said "We are not at war with Islam," he was spot on because this is a one sided war in which we are not effectively engaging the enemy; an enemy that is and has been waging war against us and the west for centuries.  It only seems like mere decades due to the advent of instantaneous mass media and the increasing ferocity of the enemy.

To put the failings of our current and recent leadership in perspective, I think it’s time for a little history lesson.  On December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the nation and, after laying out a litany of other offenses and attacks in the immediate hours after that attack, asked Congress for a Declaration of War: 

Imagine if you would the reaction of the American public had FDR stated, “…we are not at war with Japan?!”  Clearly, he and all Americans knew and understood that Japan was at war with us and was intent upon our destruction!  God only knows what would have happened had we not taken immediate and decisive action against them and accordingly, the Axis Powers.  

Imagine further what the sentiment of the nation would have been had FDR surrounded himself with Japanese and/or Nazis and placed others of them in the Pentagon?!  It is not much of a stretch to assume that our military high command back then would have forcibly removed him from office and imprisoned him in Leavenworth for treason.  There’s a thought regarding some of our “leaders” today! 

America, we along with the rest of the West have been tested and found lacking.  Our common enemy has gotten away with much; they blew up our Marine Barracks in Lebanon, they almost sank the USS Cole, they attacked the WTC, not once but twice, finally bringing it down, and they have been allowed to infiltrate our society and culture at every level.  It is impossible to count the attacks and other heinous acts around the planet before and since 9/11.  

Even if we don’t have the collective resolve that would force our leadership to state emphatically that we are indeed at war and engage, we should at very least be defending ourselves at all costs against acts of war perpetrated against us at home and elsewhere.  And we are not!  

Instead, without a shred of common sense, we continue to maintain a “Chamberlainesque” policy of aiding and abetting this enemy on every front to the point of refusing to even name it.  We fund them, arm them, talk to them endlessly, now discuss offering them jobs, and release those we have captured only to find them back on the battlefield.  All the while, this enemy has patiently studied us and infiltrated us, they have been successful in learning our laws and using them against us, they have entrenched themselves into our schools and textbooks, they are in our Congress, on our courts, and they are close advisors to our president.      

Sure we know a lot of the names and faces of their leaders, however, we see most of the “soldiers” wearing hoods and masks, so we don’t know if the next day they are the guy sitting next to us on the bus, standing in front of a classroom, or a guest in the Oval Office.

There are also some very big differences in today’s war.  In the past, the enemy was very easy to spot; he wore a uniform, his planes and ships flew his flag, and we knew specifically where his base of operations was.  We could and did mount offensives in places like Iwo Jima, Midway, the Solomon Islands, Guadalcanal, Normandy, Bastogne, and countless others.

Of course we can’t simply answer evil with evil and mount an offensive on places like Mecca, Medina or Dearborn either.  That would not only be ineffective from a logistics standpoint, it would also merely add fuel to an already raging fire and cause many more to join in violent jihad.  Although we could and should immediately mount an offensive, taking no prisoners, against any and all hidden terror cells and so called “no go zones” here and abroad.  

Since the enemy doesn’t necessarily have a specific country; he/she could be from anywhere, unified not by any sort of national pride, but by loyalty to an ideology and the destruction of the US, Israel, and the West.  With every event of unanswered terror, more and more become emboldened and join their ranks.  Every nation should be meeting this growing threat head on in their own backyards while uniting in a cohesive force on larger battlefields.

We have to be smarter than them; we have to use our superior Intel to thwart them, we need to start rounding up their leadership and, unpleasant as it may be for some, execute them swiftly and publicly. We must remove them from places of authority and security within the US and Western governments, (i.e., remove the foxes from the hen house).  During WWII, we had to inter many innocent Japanese Americans, and it sucked for them.  However, it was as distastefully necessary then as it is becoming now, because there never was nor will there ever be an effective method of separating the friend from the foe when the foe lives freely in your midst. 

I don’t pretend to have all of the answers, however we are at a crossroads, and while it may very well be too late, it is time to “man up” with brute force and stop this enemy NOW!