Let’s draw some analogies, shall we? Terrorism is spreading, just as communism did. They’re not spreading exactly the same way, but Islamofascism is on the move just as the communists were, in Africa, in Asia, in Iran (which is a non-Arab state), in the Philippines, and within our own country — and I think, actually, this is a little bit more dangerous in many ways, as it is a religion-based ideology and, as such, is above criticism.
You can’t criticize the fundamental aspects of militant Islam because it’s their religion.
Witnesss the cartoon fiasco that the Dutch endured and that inflamed, ostensibly, much of the world. Of course, the world media sides with this. “Oh, yes, we must all have religious freedom and nobody can say that anybody’s religion is extreme, is a faith-based belief system” and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but because it’s a religious-based ideology it can hole up in churches, mosques or what have you.
You know, in the old days when we have arguments about communism, many communists in this country — and they were here — they ran and hid. The worst thing in the world was to be called a communist. It was harmful, and that’s why the McCarthy era was what it was, why it roused so many and ruffled so many feathers.
But, in this case, it’s a religion, and you can’t argue with a religion. You really can’t argue.
They’re articles of faith and so forth. What you have here is an ideology that is bent on world domination as best it can, that hides behind a religion in practically every way it can.
It’s very smart, by the way, in doing this. I don’t think this is happenstance or coincidental.
These guys are also, I think, more dangerous than the old communists were because the communists operated out of nation states. Now, they funded terrorism, and they established little base camps around the world like Cuba and Nicaragua, but their mission there was to always have nuclear weapons pointed at us and to foment disruption and unrest in other parts of the hemisphere.
But these Islamofascists, I think, are even more dangerous because it only takes a handful of them to unleash all kinds of hell, and they don’t have to conquer countries to do it. They just have to move in, just have to move in and establish a neighborhood. Just have to establish a mosque.
They don’t have to go in with guns blazing and take over Nicaragua or Cuba or anything of the sort. More reason to fight this wherever it is, is simply because we are fighting through satellites as well directly. Iraq, Israel, Somalia, et cetera. Nobody wants to really call this what it is. It is a world war against Islamofascism and it has many fronts all over the world.
These clowns are trying to take over Africa as we speak, Indonesia, and they’re making inroads, and of course they do it, as I say, as a religion.
It’s not a perfect comparison here, folks, and I’m not trying to say that this is a flawless analogy, but there are similarities which ought not be ignored — and I think it’s important to point this out.
I think it might be easier for some people to wrap their brains around what we’re fighting and how we’re fighting it, if, for example, there’s some way to analogize it. It’s not conventional in any way, this war, and it’s not nation states. Look at what we’re having: arguments here over whether terrorists who are no more than enemy combatants have constitutional rights as though they were American citizens! It’s silly.
That Hamdan decision from the US Supreme Court was an absolute mistake. It may be a cloud with a silver lining given the congressional action, hopefully, that will follow it. You know, Mr. Buckley is opposed to the Iraq war. He doesn’t think we should have gone. He doesn’t think it’s been a success. In fact, it’s a huge failure. But he supported the Vietnam War, and he supported the Vietnam War not because it would defeat the Soviets or the Chinese, but because it was part of the war against the Soviets — and to the old cold warriors, the Soviet Union was enemy #1, and it was. I mean, they were not wrong. But the failure to see what has replaced it and to be consistent in opposing what has replaced it is a little perplexing.
The North Vietnamese never had weapons of mass destruction. They never sought to assassinate an American president. But it was a righteous effort by us to stop the spread of communism.
That was our objective. We might have goofed up in not understanding the vagaries of nationalism and pride on the part of Vietnamese people, the north Vietnamese people. We might have made some mistakes in that area, but the intentions were honorable. We were trying to stop the spread of communism which tortured its people, set up political internment camps, slaughtered millions.
Again, don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that the old commies and the current terrorists are exactly the same, but I’m saying that there are strong similarities which have to be understood and distinctions that make them more and not less dangerous.
The communists killed tens of millions. They conquered large areas. They had large standing armies. The terrorists don’t have large standing armies, obviously, and they don’t need them. We’re in the era now where they can get hold of weapons of mass destruction and they don’t need large standing armies. They don’t need nation states behind them, although they do.
My only point here, is that we have to fight this enemy directly and through allies: Israel, Iraq, tribal leaders in Somalia.
Their fight is our fight.
I don’t want to be confusing to anybody. I’m drawing this parallel in a limited sense.
It’s not us against this enemy. It’s the world against this enemy. So when Israel or most Iraqis or most Somalians fight the Islamofascists, that is our war, too. We can’t step back from it.
We’ve already declared it, in fact, a war on terror.
It’s time to take it seriously.
I have just a couple more thoughts on this…
This enemy, the Islamofascists, like the communists attack where they can. They attack in different ways. They’re more nimble. In many ways, they’re more dangerous, because it doesn’t take much anymore to blow up cities with millions of people, not nearly as much as it did back when the Cold War was at its peak. But let’s not forget — and I don’t want you to think I have — Stalin and Mao did, in fact, kill tens of millions of their own citizens. They were dangerous guys. The Cambodian communists killed around three million — and the list goes on.
There’s no question in my mind that if this enemy could do that, they would, and when they can, they will.
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