Fifteen years on from the attacks of September 11, 2001, and Osama bin Laden in dead. This serves as a symbolic victory in the war against Islamofascism. But the fact of the matter is we are less safe; more vulnerable to an attack by Islamic jihadists than we were eight years ago. The blame for this must be laid at the feet of the politically correct.
 
We have withstood eight years of foreign policy that has seen the Middle East turn from volatile region with pockets of jihadist activity to a centralized location for Islamofascist tyranny. Sharia Law has been invoked, in many places at the tip of the sword. Christians are being slaughtered at will by Islamic State barbarians. And Iran, the most prominent nation state sponsor of terrorism in the world, is now a budding nuclear power – and a Shi’ite counter to the Saudi Sunni balance on the delicate scales of explosive jihad.
 
We suffer these realities because of an American power vacuum courtesy of a squeamish and non-committal – and perhaps Islamofascist sympathetic – Obama Administration, who chose to anchor US influence as a “cog” in the global machine instead of a leading force for freedom and liberty around the world. This administration – which, no doubt, will go down as the most debilitating force against freedom and liberty, globally – employed a foreign policy with priorities based in macro-regional power realignment.
 
This realignment did not have battling Islamofascist terror operations as a priority. Instead it served to ignore reality in denying and refusing to recognize the problem as it facilitated “regime change” throughout the region. Clinging to the naïve and misguided hope that regime change would bring to power new “enlightened” governance; the hope that the new despots would be more accommodating to the United States than the old, the Obama Administration stood by as Islamofascists acquired power throughout the region.
 
Today the Islamic State is militarily active in six locations around the globe, al Qaeda is reconstituted – complete with its own glossy international magazine that indoctrinates single-cell operatives to action, and the Taliban attacks US installations and major institutions in downtown Kabul at it leisure.
 
Today, Islamic State barbarians capture Christian and Yazidi women and young girls and sell them into the sex slavery trade and/or use them for concubines. Those who refuse or fight off their rapists are executed, some locked in cages and set on fire for their insolence.
 
Today, radicalized Americans of Muslim descent take up arms and commit acts of mass murder on American soil. And instead of addressing this spreading cancer with fact-based information and empowering law enforcement to counter the evil, the Obama Administration seeks to make us – the innocent Americans threatened by this Islamofascist threat – “understand” why we deserve these acts of butchery.
 
We are fifteen years on from the slaughter of 2,996 innocents in the towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and our military men and women, still serving in harm’s way; still fighting the good fight against Islamofascist evil, are waging their battles with rules of engagement that keep them from taking the fight to the enemy, even as the Democrat candidate for President of the United States says we don’t have any military personnel deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
Fifteen years ago many of us who stood strong against those who accused us of being “racist” and “Islamophobic” screamed from the roof tops that this conflict; this war against Islamofascism; this Holy War declared against us by Osama bin Laden himself – twice, we said our country had to be dedicated in our efforts. We preached and wrote and talked and begged anyone who would listen to understand that the battle we were to undertake, the war not of our making but the war we needed to win at all cost, was multi-faceted and generational; one that encompassed military, educational, economic and cultural battlefields. Our efforts had to be equally applied in each theater and for the duration.
 
But with the election of Barack Obama, those efforts ceased almost entirely. Our military effort – not the military, but the effort; the orders being handed down to our capable troops – was hobbled. The policies of the United States facilitated economic wherewithal to the Islamofascists, even paying ransom to the Iranian mullahs who would, in turn, use that money for terror, and military and nuclear development operations.
 
It is, today, punishable to teach the true oppressive tenets of Islam in schools. And the administration itself is expediting the dilution of the American culture by the importation of Syrian and Muslim refugees from the volatile region into the United States; into our neighborhoods.
 
Today, fifteen years on, the United States is in the crosshairs of Islamofascists who seek to end the “Great Satan,” and unless we have a radical and immediate change in foreign policy and the approach with which we fight this generational war we are on track to lose, at the very least, by attrition.
 
I often think about the “Falling Man” of September 11, 2001. I wonder about the horror that must have gone through his mind – and all the minds of those who had the unenviable choice of either burning alive in the Twin Towers or leaping to their deaths to the street below. I wonder what he would think of the policies of the last eight years and the ceding of power in the Middle East to Islamofascists like those who affected his death on that fateful day.
 
I think about the Falling Man...and I weep for our country. Fifteen years on.
​

It has been 5,113 days since the al Qaeda attacks on New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and the failed third assault that was intercepted into a farm field in Shanksville, Pennsylviania, by American patriots. To borrow a phrase from a past generation that certainly applies to this event, it is a day that will live in infamy. But few would believe where our country is today given the events of that fateful day. Today Americans stand viciously divided in our politics as a society that rationalizes Islamofascist aggression (and, in the case of Iran, facilitates it), even as we harbor ideological factions that stand in protest of our law enforcement officers. We have moved away from the cohesive and united front we embraced shoulder-to-shoulder at the smoking pile of rubble that was the remnants of the World Trade Center; the tomb that holds so many souls.

Today, as we face the fourteenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, the United States government has radically shifted from the sworn obligation to confront and exterminate violent Islamofascism wherever it exists, to a tolerant acquiescence of co-existence with a culture dedicated opposing that state. Today, 3,115 days after 2,977 people were slaughtered by Islamofascists, the Islamic State is on the march, spreading its oppressive and murderous dogma of Islamofascism across the Middle East and Africa, even as its influence reaches the shores around the world, extending into our homes right here in the United States. Al Qaeda has a state of the art “inspirational” magazine for the discerning jihadi. And the United States, under President Barack Obama and the efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry and his predecessor Hilary Clinton, stands not only sympathetic to the Iranian mullahs, but have purposefully facilitated their path to a nuclear weapon.

Today, just 74,760-some hours after the first jetliner sliced through the North Tower, and on a day that would claim the lives of 71 law enforcement officers and 343 firefighters would lose their lives in the line of duty, the racists and supremacists of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement – a violent and intolerant ideological faction spurred on by those who benefit from divisive and race-based politics – march in the streets bastardizing statistics and calling for violence against police officers and first responders. The very people who were hailed as heroes for their courage and selfless acts fourteen years ago are, today the target of vile protestations, lies and vilification.
(CONTINUED BELOW)

These societal maladies are but two that exists in today’s United States, maladies born of selfish, ideological politics and a population that refuses to engage in the hard work of casting aside the special interest rhetoric of opportunistic skullduggery or even supporting those who fight daily to dilute the madness.

In all the wrong that exists today, and suffering the wickedness of the dividers, the political opportunists, the Islamofascists and the ideological zealots, we – the American people – must reach deep down into our souls to find the courage and the dedication to come together; to re-attain the brotherhood we shared on that fateful day fourteen years ago; 3,115 days ago; 74,760-some hours ago, that we can not only measure up to what we should be as Americans, but so that we can become what we need to be so that our Republic can survive; so that we can confront and defeat the things that divide us; so that we can achieve e pluribus unum.

Each September 11th, I remember – purposefully – Jonathan Briley, the “falling man” of September 11, 2001. I penned a piece titled, “Feeling the Pain of the Falling Man of September 11th” on the first anniversary of the attacks. Since then it has been updated to address current circumstances. I ask you – I implore you – to remember the pain you felt on September 11, 2001; to feel the loss and the immediate kinship you felt for being American and being in the cross-hairs. I implore you (and invite you) to remember Jonathan Briley:

Feeling the Pain of the Falling Man of September 11th: Redux
Everyone remembers the horrifying images of September 11, 2001. Anyone alive and aware on that date will live with those images the rest of their life. The scenes of havoc and panic, destruction and slaughter, demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that even though the United States military is the best trained and well equipped in the world, our country remains vulnerable to the wicked.

When one accepts the fact -- and it is a fact -- that the free world, not just the United States, is at war with violent Islamists, this story is all the more chilling and disturbing.

The mainstream media in the United States has taken the images of September 11th, 2001 off the television and out of the newspapers, but for the obligatory image on the anniversary itself. They say that the images are too disturbing, that they incite a want for revenge rather than allow for closure. But they are wrong to do this.

The United States should not and cannot simply forgive and forget just because the our current president fallaciously insisted that al Qaeda was on the run and that the Islamic State is "jayvee." Facts demonstrate that al Qaeda, the Taliban – and now the Islamic State and Boko Haram; violent Islamists, have been planning and preparing to implement their global campaign of terrorism -- their declared war against the Western World -- since before 1993, well before September 11th. Their central location for training may have been eliminated but they had prepared for that, splintering like roaches to the four corners of the world, preparing, planning and implementing their battle plans made decades before.

Make no mistake, they are a cunning adversary. They understood that the US would come after them. They planned for this event. Now they have metastasized and their threat is even greater than before September 11, 2001.

This war cannot be about "tolerance" or forgiving, or about understanding the "reasons why" someone would want to murder innocents whether it be with an airplane, a car bomb, a suicide vest or a saif. This battle has to be about freedom and the right of innocents to live their lives in liberty, free of fear from an unholy sect of genocidal totalitarians who offer only oppression, dominance and terror as their bounty.

The Progressive left and the complicit mainstream media would have us believe that it is America that is to blame for her audacity in the promotion of freedom and free markets, liberty and the vision of a world free of dictators who torture, murder and slaughter for power. To that extent, Progressives and the agenda-driven media are dangerous and a direct threat to the existence of our country, teetering on the brink of treason and sedition. They will attack these words by saying that I have intimated that they are not patriotic and un-American.

For the record, I hold the belief that anyone who believes the United States brought the attacks of September 11, 2001, onto itself IS unpatriotic and un-American. I believe that they have become toadies for our enemy and should be treated and opposed as such. While they manipulate the true meaning of the First Amendment's free speech clause, they attempt to indoctrinate and transform our youth and the less than suspecting among us into believing in the doctrine of self-loathing, an oppressive ideology born of the less than great thinkers of Europe almost a century ago.

In its March 15, 2006 edition, The Mirror, a British publication (the American mainstream media too gutless to publish such truth), revealed the identity of a man who had to make the unimaginable decision of whether to burn to death in the raging fires of the World Trade Center on September 11th or escape the pain of hell on earth by leaping from the top of one of the world's tallest buildings to his certain death.

The article was titled, Revealing the Identity of the Falling Man of 9/11. Jonathan Briley was "The Falling Man of 9/11."

I would beg each of you to read the article but The Mirror, along with Esquire and a number of publications who once cared about such things, has taken the article down. You can search his name – Jonathan Briley – and look at the pictures and feel Jonathan Briley's helplessness, his terror, and then try to imagine the split second of excruciating pain that he felt when his body hit the cement below with such force that he, a human being just seconds before, was left a bloodstain on a sidewalk, slaughtered like road kill by barbarian Islamists.

The people of the United States need to rekindle the flame of emotional anguish about the attacks of September 11th, 2001. We need to seethe. We need to employ the ingenuity and intelligence that is fostered in a free society dedicated to liberty, and scream our ire from the top of the world. Then we need to take definitive action.

If we are to wage war on terrorists; on violent Islamists, then let us be the ones who strike terror into the hearts of our enemies. Let us bring terror to those who blow-up innocents, saw the heads off hostages and threaten the world with words of annihilation and nuclear Armageddon. If we are to be in a war we did not choose to begin then in the memory of all who have fallen in the quest to provide freedom and liberty to the world, let us be the ones who act decisively to end it.

We need to embrace the undeniable truth that the free world is at war and cease pandering to those who would wake up one day in the future ruing the fact that we should have acted earlier.

A pre-emptive strike doctrine for the United States? Eradicating the world of the likes of al Qaeda, the Islamic State, Boko Haram and every other Islamist organization that preaches the conquest and servitude of the "dhimmi"? You're damn right!

A shorter version of this article was published in The Pensacola News Journal on March 13, 2015.

I awoke to the news that 7 Marines and 4 Army soldiers went missing, all presumed dead, after a special operations training mission helicopter crashed not far from where I live; not far from the pristine beach where I took the picture that sits atop my Facebook page. It is a sober reminder that those who volunteer to place themselves in harm’s way; between the evil and the innocent, face dangers even as they train to protect the nation they serve and the innocent they swear to protect.

ABC’s WEAR Channel 3 in Pensacola reports:

“Seven Marines and four soldiers went missing early Wednesday after an Army helicopter crashed during a night training exercise at Eglin Air Force Base in Navarre.

“Defense officials say the military members aboard the aircraft are presumed dead. Heavy fog is having an impact on recovery efforts. Human remains have washed up on shore but the number of remains has not be released at this time. This is still considered a search and rescue mission...Pentagon officials say the heavy fog played a role in the crash.”

In a time when the chattering class demands that we debate the ideological genesis of the deadly threat to our nation – and Western Civilization – emanating from the Middle East, it would well serve our nation’s collective soul to personalize not only the seriousness of the threat, but the guardians of our nation; the rough and ready men and women who step into the coarse void between our way of life and the oppression and cruelty many around the world would love to inflict upon us.

When we have the courage to confront and accept the truth, it is undeniable that there are vicious zealots committing atrocities; crimes against humanity, in the name of Islam. Yet, some among us whose ideological addictions force them to see everything through a morally relativistic lens, seek to designate our nation as one of many among equals; our military personnel as simple countermeasures to enemies who have equal claim to moral legitimacy. But this stunted line of thinking couldn’t be further from the truth and, in fact, serves to smear the brave men and women of the US Armed Forces; our sentinels who stand between “the barbarians and the gate.” I know this to be true because my wife and I live among them; we know them and love them like family.

Our enemies, those who willingly join the ranks of Daesh (the Islamic State, al Qaeda, Boko Haram, al Shabab, etc.), execute barbaric acts of tyranny in the name of their religion, committing unspeakable acts of ferocious cruelty in an effort to either convert the un-Islamic or cleanse the earth of those who refuse their dictate, all in an aggressive pursuit of global domination.

The men and women of the United States Armed Forces, in extreme contrast, step into the ugly void of a no-man’s land where the weak and oppressed suffer at the hands of tyrants; a land where the cowardly fear to tread. They inject themselves into situations to free the oppressed, to preserve the liberty of the innocent and to vanquish the tyrannical. And as they do they carry with them the moral clarity that understands “good versus evil”; “right verses wrong”; “duty, honor, country,” lessons gleaned from the righteousness of the American dream, not the ideological clap-trap of theorists hell-bent on believing in the impossibility of global utopia, or the manipulation of political creatures questing for power, influence and fame.

Our military men and women are sons and daughters, fathers and mothers. They and neighbors. They go to the store for food, fill-up their cars with gas, help their children with their school work, laugh, and cry, just like those who do not serve. They cut their grass, take out their garbage, pay their taxes and they socialize. They live, laugh and love. But sometimes when they kiss their spouses goodbye; sometimes when they kiss their children good night; sometimes when they promise to be back in a few days, sometimes those kisses have finality; those promises to return are broken, not of their own commission, but because their call to duty, their call to serve, sent them on a path that does not return home.

So it is with the 7 Marines and 4 US Army soldiers who kissed their loved ones goodbye with every intention of returning. So it is with many military families who have made the ultimate sacrifice.

A close friend of mine who teaches at a military special operations school wrote me after I queried him about the training accident. He closed by saying, “This business is a dangerous business.” Indeed it is. It is dangerous and it is necessary. It is necessary for the longevity of liberty and freedom. And it is rightly necessary for all of us to thank and honor them for their sacrifices; honor them like family, because they protect us like we are family.

Conjuring images of the dying who had clawed at the dank walls of the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Jordanian Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh grabbed at his head, screaming out in agony as he fell to his knees, his body burning, his brain slowly cooking. His Daesh (Islamic State) captors had abruptly abandoned disingenuous negotiations with the Jordanian government for his release, their hostage having actually been killed many days before. Instead, they decided to record al-Kaseasbeh's purposeful immolation. Having drenched him in accelerant, the savages lit the liquid fuse that set the young lieutenant ablaze. As he writhed, they filmed, indignant to his agony; his humanity. Barbarity for the purpose of terrorist propaganda had been achieved.

Just a month earlier, tens of thousands had taken to the streets in major Middle Eastern cities in support of Islamofascist assassins who slaughtered the staff at Charlie Hebdo. Turkey's president, Recip Tayyip Erdogan, publicly intimated that the attacks in Paris were justified due to the magazine staff's transgressions against Muslim sensibilities. And he went further than that, stating, obtusely, that Muslims have "never taken part in terrorist massacres." Erdogan made these alarming statements as Boko Haram waded through the blood of the 2,000 people they slaughtered in the Nigerian town of Baga, in the name of Islam. So, violent, intolerant Islam is on the march.

Islamists have always been an aggressive faction. Starting with Muhammad and continuing on through the Byzantine-Arab Wars (634-750), the conquests of Persia and Mesopotamia (633–651), Transoxiana (662–751), Sindh (664–712), Hispania (711–718) and Septimania (719–720), the attempts to conquer the Caucasus (711–750), the conquest of Nubia (700–1606) and Anatolia (1060-1360), the incursions into southern Italy, including the conquest of Rome (831–902) and the Byzantine-Ottoman Wars (1299-1453), Muslims have sought to establish control of any and all lands they set foot on, whether by violence or attrition. However, one chapter of Islamic conquest – or bid for conquest – is seldom mentioned in the history books, and perhaps for good reason: World War II.

It is common knowledge – although today that cannot be assumed, given the Progressive Movement's penchant for "nuancing history" – that during World War II Germany, Japan and Italy allied to form the Axis Powers in their war efforts. There were other affiliate and co-belligerent states (Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Thailand, Finland and Iraq), as well as "client states" (Albania, Burma, China, Croatia, India, Mengjiang, Manchukuo, Philippines, Slovakia and Vietnam), officially considered to be independent countries allied with Germany.

Furthermore, there were key geopolitical players who supported and collaborated with Adolf Hitler, the Nazis and the Axis Powers as a whole throughout the conflict. One such geopolitical player was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Sunni Muslim cleric in charge of Jerusalem's Islamic holy places, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The designation of "Grand Mufti" identifies the bearer as the:

"...highest official of religious law in a Sunni or Ibadi Muslim country. The Grand Mufti issues legal opinions and edicts, fatwas, on interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence...The collected opinions of the Grand Mufti serve as a valuable source of information on the practical application of Islamic law as opposed to its abstract formulation."

During World War II the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was Haj Amin al-Husseini, who:

"...collaborated with both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy by making propagandistic radio broadcasts and by helping the Nazis recruit Bosnian Muslims for the Waffen-SS. On meeting Adolf Hitler he requested backing for Arab independence and support in opposing the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national home. At war's end, he came under French protection, and then sought refuge in Cairo to avoid prosecution."

When al-Husseini first met with Hitler and Ribbentrop in 1941, he assured Hitler that:

"The Arabs were Germany's natural friends because they had the same enemies...namely the English, the Jews, and the Communists."

Al-Husseini's efforts in recruiting Muslim fighters for the Nazi cause resulted in the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS, the Handschar Brigade. The Handschar earned a reputation for being particularly brutal in exterminating partisans in north-eastern Bosnia. In fact, many local Muslims who stood witness to Handschar viciousness were driven to align with the Communist partisans.

The Grand Mufti was also integral in the organization of Arab students and North African immigrants to Germany into the Arabische Freiheitkorps, an Arab Legion in the German Army, that hunted down Allied parachutists in the Balkans and fought on the Russian front.

It would be right to conclude then that al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, home to one of Islam's holiest shrines, was a willing collaborator with the Nazis and Adolf Hitler; someone who willingly facilitated the Nazi SS and their "Final Solution"; the genocide of the Jews. Yet, in the end, al-Husseini, perhaps the principle Muslim leader throughout that period, walked away from the conflict paying no price for his murderous deeds.

From Hitler's Foreign Executioners; Europe's Dirty Secret by Christopher Hale, pages 373-374:

"By the Winter of 1944, Berlin was no longer a safe haven for men like the Grand Mufti. He had never been a brave man and was often found cowering under tables as the great armadas of Allied bombers pounded the capital of the Reich. His allies in the foreign office, like Erwin Ettel, did what they could to protect their esteemed Muslim guest and tried to coax him to escape Germany to whatever safe haven he chose by U-Boat. The Mufti was simply too timid to contemplate such a journey and held on in Berlin to the very end. At the end of May 1945, the Grand Mufti and his entourage at last picked up and fled. He knew that once the British reached Berlin they would waste little time tracking him down. After many tribulations, they managed to reach Constance in the French zone of occupation. Recalling how well he had been treated after his flight from Palestine, when he escaped to French Beirut from British Palestine, the Grand Mufti surrendered to the French authorities. He was soon relaxing in an opulent villa near Paris...

"The Mufti had little time to enjoy French hospitality. His protectors discovered that an 'Irgun' assassination squad had arrived in France. On 28 May 1945, el-Husseini bolted to Italy, then secretly boarded a British ship, the SS Devonshire, bound for the Egyptian port of Alexandria.

"The return of the Grand Mufti electrified the Arab world. At a rally at Heliopolis in Cairo exultant crowds swamped his convoy – and King Farouk offered him appropriately sumptuous accommodations in his 'Inshas Palace.' The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, breathlessly declared: 'The hearts of the Arabs palpitated with joy at hearing that the Grand Mufti had succeeded in reaching at Arab country...The lion is free at last and will roam the Arabian jungle to clear it of wolves. The great leader is back.'"

Today, as we witness the barbarous immolation of a warrior who dared to confront a culture of death, the Islamists remain. In the aftermath of the assassination of those who engage in free speech, as Daesh executes conquest after conquest leaving myriad atrocities in their wake, the Islamists remain. And as leaders of Islamic countries (read: Turkey) advance excuses for the barbarity of Islamist executioners; ideological operatives who slaughter ruthlessly in the name of Islam, the Islamists remain. Little has changed in the violent Islamist world from the days of the Handschar. Indeed, in a time when the president of the United States refuses to consider his country at war with Islamist extremists and the massive movement they represent – and as he maintains a refusal to even speak the phrase "Islamic terrorism," one can argue that violent Islamists are in a better position today than they were under Hitler.

At the end of World War II, the Allied Powers insisted on attaining unconditional surrender from each of the Axis Powers. Germany, Italy and Japan signed and agreed to unconditional surrender, their satellite nations in tow. Suspiciously absent from the list of Axis power aggressors agreeing to unconditional surrender is Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem; the Muslim facilitator of the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS, the Handschar. Why was this allowed to happen? Who was responsible for allowing this to happen?

I can't help but feel that had the Allied Powers exacted an unconditional surrender from the Grand Mufti of all forces under his influence; had the Grand Mufti been brought to his knees in capitulation, perhaps – just perhaps – we would not be facing the "emboldened swords" of Daesh on the streets of the Western World and in Islamofascist occupied territories throughout the Middle East. I cannot help but feel that somehow, for some reason, the job of winning World War II was left unfinished...and the rise of violent Islamist terrorism is the price we are paying.

The world – much like in the nascent days of World War II – must once again strive to put aside the geopolitics of the day to come together in a definitive effort to confront the inglorious barbarity of Islamofascism. The peoples of the world must attack Islamofascism militarily, economically, historically and ideologically. Just as we must physically vanquish jihadists who would behead the innocent and set ablaze those who fight against them, so too must we starve them of operating capital globally, even as we correct the fictionalized history of "the religion of peace," and especially as we deny them the ability to replenish their ranks; especially as we win – unconditionally – the war of ideas for all generations to come.

Today, the smoldering ashes of Jordanian Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, a warrior who came to the aid of those being slaughtered by Daesh, lay denigrated underneath a pile of rubble, an excruciatingly painful death his reward for humanity's service. And the Islamists remained. I can't help but feel that the free world has unfinished business...until no Islamist remains.

Masked gunman stormed the offices of a satirical French magazine, Charlie Hebdo (The Weekly Charlie), and slaughtered 12 people in cold blood. Their perceived "crime" was to have published caricatures of Muhammad.  And let's be clear, this was no act of the deranged. The terrorist gunmen were heard screaming, "Allahu Akbar" as they shot, with one assailant shouting, "The Prophet has been avenged," as they escaped the scene. This was a terrorist act carried out by ideological barbarians over a cartoon.

Aside from the deadly serious problem Islamists have with invoking violence at every turn – in protest, in conquest, in celebration of their "religion" – this incident stands as a pointed reminder that Islamists purposefully calculate these murderous actions; plotting them meticulously down to the second. But even in the perfection of their plans one thing is always a constant for the Islamist. They are willing to wait a lifetime to affect the moment, a concept antithetical to the Western "sitcom attention span" culture. To wit, the management of Charlie Hebdo was first warned of reprisals for their publishing of the Muhammad cartoons eight years ago.

As Daesh (the Islamic State) continues its conquest of the Middle East – leaving fathers crucified and dismembered, mothers sold into slavery or used as concubines and children's heads left on pikes as warnings against any refusal of subjugation, Yemeni suicide bombers kill scores each day. As Boko Haram kidnaps, rapes and slaughters Christian girls in Africa, axe wielding "lone wolf" Islamists slash people on subway platforms in New York and "home grown" terrorists are routinely thwarted in their murderous plans, but for the grace of God, by law enforcement around the world. Myriad evidence is provided every day that the Islamic ideology has a potent, malignant and metastasizing cancer for which the patient itself must seek treatment. Yet, but for a very few brave voices, the Islamic community does nothing to address the problem. There is no defense for their inaction or their deafening silence.

One excuse given for Muslim inaction – and "excuse" is an accurate portrayal of the abdication of responsibility practiced by many Muslims around the world, is that the Quran is the literal word of Allah; scripture from which deviation is forbidden. Of course, this contention is absurd for the fact that Muhammad was not literate – he could not read nor write:

"According to the traditional narrative, several companions of Muhammad served as scribes and were responsible for writing down the revelations. Shortly after Muhammad's death, the Quran was compiled by his companions who wrote down and memorized parts of it. These codices had differences that motivated the Caliph Uthman to establish a standard version now known as Uthman's codex, which is generally considered the archetype of the Quran we have today. However, the existence of variant readings, with mostly minor and some significant variations, and the early unvocalized Arabic script mean the relationship between Uthman's codex to both the text of today's Quran and to the revelations of Muhammad's time is still unclear."

For an edict to be literal the transcription can have no variance between versions; no competing narratives. By virtue of the competing narratives between Muhammad's scribes, and even the Uthman's codex, the "literal word of Allah," narrative stands as a patently false one. Yet, the excuse emanating from the Muslim community remains. The facts don't matter.

It is well past time that true leaders within the Islamic community emerge to brave the slings and arrows – or more accurately the suicide bombings and beheadings – of the Islamist fanatics in order to affect a radical and historical transformation of their beliefs; a reformation of Islam. This reformation can only commence from within the Islamic community for the movement to have any legitimacy.

The declaration of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi calling for a "religious revolution" within Islam is a promising event. And the work of people like Dr. Zuhdi Jasser and Dr. Walid Phares to motivate and educate is noble. But until rank and file Muslims take to the streets by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, around the world in protest; until Muslims of every class, sect and faction start rooting out the violent amongst them for punishment and ridicule; until the Muslim community itself starts teaching their children – all over the world – that martyrdom and violent jihad send them to Hell and not to virgins, nothing will change. Islamist conquest will continue. Innocent blood will continue to run in the streets. Liberty and freedom will continue to be denied.

As we contemplate the slaughter in France – a slaughter that happened in the name of Muhammad and because of a cartoon, let's also contemplate the concept of "enough." We, as a people emanating from the free world, must say, "enough." No more excuses. No more "religion of peace." Enough. Enough.

This article was originally published in a number of publications on September 11, 2002. With a slight edit to reflect our current circumstances, I present it to you as a tribute to the souls lost on September 11, 2001.

Everyone remembers the horrifying images of September 11, 2001. Anyone alive and aware on that date will live with those images the rest of their life. The scenes of havoc and panic, destruction and slaughter, demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that even though the United States military is the best trained and well equipped in the world, our country remains vulnerable to the wicked.

When one accepts the fact -- and it is a fact -- that the free world, not just the United States, is at war with violent Islamists, this story is all the more chilling and disturbing.

The mainstream media in the United States has taken the images of September 11th, 2001 off the television and out of the newspapers, but for the obligatory image on the anniversary itself. They say that the images are too disturbing, that they incite a want for revenge rather than allow for closure. But they are wrong to do this.

The United States should not and cannot simply forgive and forget just because the our current president fallaciously insisted that al Qaeda was on the run and that the Islamic State is "jayvee." Facts demonstrate that al Qaeda, the Taliban – and now the Islamic State and Boko Haram; violent Islamists, have been planning and preparing to implement their global campaign of terrorism -- their declared war against the Western World -- since before 1993, well before September 11th. Their central location for training may have been eliminated but they had prepared for that, splintering like roaches to the four corners of the world, preparing, planning and implementing their battle plans made decades before.

Make no mistake, they are a cunning adversary. They understood that the US would come after them. They planned for this event. Now they have metastasized and their threat is even greater than before September 11, 2001.

This war cannot be about "tolerance" or forgiving, or about understanding the "reasons why" someone would want to murder innocents whether it be with an airplane, a car bomb, a suicide vest or a saif. This battle has to be about freedom and the right of innocents to live their lives in liberty, free of fear from an unholy sect of genocidal totalitarians who offer only oppression, dominance and terror as their bounty.

The Progressive left and the complicit mainstream media would have us believe that it is America that is to blame for her audacity in the promotion of freedom and free markets, liberty and the vision of a world free of dictators who torture, murder and slaughter for power. To that extent, Progressives and the agenda-driven media are dangerous and a direct threat to the existence of our country, teetering on the brink of treason and sedition. They will attack these words by saying that I have intimated that they are not patriotic and un-American.

For the record, I hold the belief that anyone who believes the United States brought the attacks of September 11, 2001, onto itself IS unpatriotic and un-American. I believe that they have become toadies for our enemy and should be treated and opposed as such. While they manipulate the true meaning of the First Amendment's free speech clause, they attempt to indoctrinate and transform our youth and the less than suspecting among us into believing in the doctrine of self-loathing, an oppressive ideology born of the less than great thinkers of Europe almost a century ago.

In its March 15, 2006 edition, The Mirror, a British publication (the American mainstream media too gutless to publish such truth), revealed the identity of a man who had to make the unimaginable decision of whether to burn to death in the raging fires of the World Trade Center on September 11th or escape the pain of hell on earth by leaping from the top of one of the world's tallest buildings to his certain death.

The article was titled, Revealing the Identity of the Falling Man of 9/11. Jonathan Briley was "The Falling Man of 9/11."

I would beg each of you to read the article but The Mirror, along with Esquire and a number of publications who once cared about such things, has taken the article down. You can search his name – Jonathan Briley – and look at the pictures and feel Jonathan Briley's helplessness, his terror, and then try to imagine the split second of excruciating pain that he felt when his body hit the cement below with such force that he, a human being just seconds before, was left a bloodstain on a sidewalk, slaughtered like road kill by barbarian Islamists.

The people of the United States need to rekindle the flame of emotional anguish about the attacks of September 11th, 2001. We need to seethe. We need to employ the ingenuity and intelligence that is fostered in a free society dedicated to liberty, and scream our ire from the top of the world. Then we need to take definitive action.

If we are to wage war on terrorist; on violent Islamists, then let us be the ones who strike terror into the hearts of our enemies. Let us bring terror to those who blow-up innocents, saw the heads off hostages and threaten the world with words of annihilation and nuclear Armageddon. If we are to be in a war we did not choose to begin then in the memory of all who have fallen in the quest to provide freedom and liberty to the world, let us be the ones who act decisively to end it.

We need to embrace the undeniable truth that the free world is at war and cease pandering to those who would wake up one day in the future ruing the fact that we should have acted earlier.

A pre-emptive strike doctrine for the United States? Eradicating the world of the likes of al Qaeda, the Islamic State, Boko Haram and every other Islamist organization that preaches the conquest and servitude of the "dhimmi"? You're damn right!

Not too long ago if you supposed that President Obama was sympathetic to his Islamic experience as a child, inside the beltway Republicans would cringe and Progressives would howl. Non-engaged and no- and low-information voters would immediately call you a conspiracy theorist, an Obama-hating racist and other assorted kneejerk labels. But given the incredible inaction and indecisiveness on Mr. Obama’s part with regard to the Islamic State, this question not only needs to be braved, but has become one we all need a definitive answer to. In a 2007 New York Times article, Nicholas Kristoff wrote:

“‘I was a little Jakarta street kid,’ [Mr. Obama] said in a wide-ranging interview in his office...Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated..., Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as ‘one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.’

“Moreover, Mr. Obama’s own grandfather in Kenya was a Muslim. Mr. Obama never met his grandfather and says he isn’t sure if his grandfather’s two wives were simultaneous or consecutive, or even if he was Sunni or Shiite.”

Mr. Obama intended, from the very beginning, to bring a new perspective to the American people about the Islamic culture. His 2009 speech in Cairo, Egypt, was titled “A New Beginning.” In that speech Mr. Obama said:

“As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam – at places like Al-Azhar – that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.”

But as Victor Davis Hanson points out in his article “Obama’s Hazy Sense of History”:

“President Obama doesn't know much about history...In his therapeutic 2009 Cairo speech, Obama outlined all sorts of Islamic intellectual and technological pedigrees, several of which were undeserved. He exaggerated Muslim contributions to printing and medicine, for example, and was flat-out wrong about the catalysts for the European Renaissance and Enlightenment...”

I would sign on to what Mr. Hanson is selling, if in fact Mr. Obama isn’t either executing the Progressive tactic of purposefully re-writing history, exhibiting an open sympathy for the Islamist movement (this would be the only transparent thing that has ever come out of his administration), or both. And while many people allude to the notion that Mr. Obama might be apathetic to his responsibilities as President of the United States, others, looking at myriad events taking place around the world and on our own doorstep, simply label Mr. Obama as inept and wholly unqualified. Again, I would sign on to these theories if I could be assured that Mr. Obama and his advisors aren’t purposefully re-writing history and facilitating the advance of the Islamist movement.

The truth of it all is this. I cannot be sure, anymore, that Mr. Obama isn’t purposefully re-writing history and actively helping the Islamist movement. We have come to a moment in time, given the real-time events that are unfolding, when Mr. Obama must prove to the American people that he is not facilitating the Islamist cause. And make no mistake; the stakes are high, perhaps even higher than the bar set by the al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001.

American intelligence and law enforcement agencies are openly acknowledging that they are very concerned with the Islamist-sympathetic demographic here in the United States. The New York Times reports:

“American intelligence and law enforcement agencies have identified nearly a dozen Americans who have traveled to Syria to fight for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria... As ISIS has seized large expanses of territory in recent months, it has drawn more foreign men to Syria, requiring more American and European law enforcement resources in the attempt to stop the flow of fighters, senior American officials said... ISIS has become more attractive to would-be militants because, unlike Al Qaeda, it has seized territory that it rules by strict Islamic law. ‘ISIS is able to hold itself up as the true jihad,’ said a senior American official.”

Brietbart.com reports that the Texas Department of Public Safety has issued a memo warning that ISIS is taking advantage of the porous Texas-Mexico border in an effort to execute campaigns of terrorism against Americans on American soil. They also report that the US Border Patrol is taking the information seriously, with one Laredo Section Border Patrol agent saying they have credible information that ISIS is “attempting to find individuals and groups in Nuevo-Laredo Mexico to assist in gaining entry into the United States.”

Even Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, an individual intimate with the workings of radical Islam (lest we forget that Saudi riches fund almost all of Islam’s expansion into the West), is validating claims that ISIS has the United States, Europe and, in fact the whole of Western Civilization in its crossed-hairs. The Washington Times reports:

“Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has a stark warning to America: The Islamic State’s terror will visit American shores in one month if it is not confronted in Syria and Iraq.

“‘If we ignore them, I am sure they will reach Europe in a month and America in another month,’ the king said Saturday, Agence France Presse reported...‘Terrorism knows no border and its danger could affect several countries outside the Middle East...It is no secret to you, what they have done and what they have yet to do. I ask you to transmit this message to your leaders: Fight terrorism with force, reason and speed.’”

To reiterate, this is the King of Saudi Arabia, the guardian of Islam’s holiest place on Earth, Mecca, saying this.

Yet, Mr. Obama has taken to the presidential podium to admit that his administration has no strategy with which to counter the Islamic State threat. And while his handlers scramble to affect damage control at Mr. Obama’s statement, the reality of the matter is this: damage control is really all this administration is doing about the Islamic State threat. It appears that they are much more concerned about transforming the United States of America into a Socialist Democracy nanny-state than they are with executing the job of government, as well as the chief responsibility of that job, protecting the American people and guarding the homeland. It doesn’t matter what the issue is: securing our citizenry from illegal immigration, protecting our citizenry against foreign-born disease, guarding against violent drug cartels from disseminating death to our people, or violent jihadists courting drug cartels to mule them into the United States, the only angle Mr. Obama and his handlers cover – the only aspect with which this Progressive cabal is concerned – is the political angle.

But Mr. Obama has a response to accusations like mine. The Washington Times reports:

“President Obama told Democrat supporters Friday night that the news media is partly to blame for making Americans worry about emergencies overseas such as advances by Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

“‘If you watch the nightly news, it feels like the world is falling apart,’ Mr. Obama said at a fundraiser in Westchester County, New York. ‘I can see why a lot of folks are troubled... ‘The world’s always been messy...we’re just noticing now in part because of social media,’ he said.”

The Saudi King warns the world about the viciousness of the jihadists of the Islamic State and Mr. Obama blames social media for ginning up discontent? Seriously? Countless numbers of videos, photographs and eyewitnesses recount Christians and non-Christians alike – even Muslims – being slaughtered at the hands of Islamic State barbarians, women being inducted into sexual servitude and children being cut in half and behead, their tiny skulls impaled on stakes as death markers to all who shall pass, and Mr. Obama says “the world’s always been messy”? Seriously?

A few years ago it might have been condemned and dismissed as Right-Wing demagoguery or conspiracy, but we have arrived at a moment in time when these questions are not only valid, but ones that beg to be asked.

Mr. Obama:

▪ Are you with the American people or against us?
▪ Are you sympathetic to the jihadi Islamist cause?
▪ Or are you just completely over your head in your station; unqualified for the job of President of the United States?

Sadly, regardless of the answers, the song remains the same. We have a vicious, power-hungry, and ideologically and financially emboldened enemy at the gates of Western Civilization and the United States and her people are saddled with a Commander-in-Chief who will do little to impede their progress. This leads to additional questions:

1) Will Mr. Obama’s time in office end before it is too late to do the job he refuses to do?
2) Will the American people be smart enough to elect a leader who is actually qualified for the job in 2016?

God help all of us who brave the pursuit of these answers.

The foreign policy of the United States under President Barack Obama, who came to the White House with the resume of an untested community organizer, no experience in political leadership, nor an iota of insight into international relations, has moved the whole of the world to the brink of total war. Those who pay attention to only what affects their lives – those who are taken in by the false promises marketed by the Progressive political class – are partially to blame. I say this not with a viciously partisan eye, but with sadness and concern in my heart for all humanity. But the onus of responsibility for our current situation – the world’s situation – must lay at the feet of Mr. Obama and his closest advisors.

In the beginning, in his speeches to prospective voters, Mr. Obama preached the Progressive gospel of the peace movement and the demilitarization of American foreign policy. He pledged to end the Iraqi conflict expeditiously and end the Afghan conflict in a timely manner. Sadly, and to their own shame, a majority of American voters bought into the pre-packaged marketing of the idea of Obama, the “first Black president,” without realizing him as wholly unqualified for the job, and he was elected. It took him short order to keep his promises to the faithful voters who counted themselves amongst the anti-war movement; the “Bush-Lied-People-Died” chanters of so many protests around the country. In December of 2011, Mr. Obama, going so far as to supply the enemy with timelines and withdrawal dates, announced the end of the Iraq War for America’s military men and women. Of course, he failed to secure reasonable status of forces agreements and insisted that the Iraqis had “turned the corner,” and were now capable of defending their own country. This, of course, was the biggest miscalculation, with regard to foreign policy, that he has made as President of the United States.

In January of 2014, when the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (or Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), a small but fiercely pious group of jihadists were making initial advances on many locations in the rural outposts in Iraq and Syria, USA Today’s James Robbins pointed out to President Obama that the flag of al Qaeda was now flying in Fallujah and many other locations in Iraq, and among an increasing number of rebel factions in Syria. He also highlighted the fact that al Qaeda aligned groups has asserted a presence in parts of Africa, as well. Amazingly, arrogantly, but almost absolutely ignorantly, Mr. Obama responded:

“The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant...”

Ignore Mr. Obama’s substandard 7th Grade grammar for a moment, because, after all, it is “cool” to speak like one is uneducated.

Jim Geraghty of The National Review writes that today, as Mr. Obama and his family vacation – yet again – in Martha’s Vineyard, ISIS (now simply calling themselves the Islamic State) “controls a volume of resources and territory unmatched in the history of extremist organizations, makes $3 million per day selling oil on the black market,” have taken “control of Iraq’s largest dam and the power supply for the city of Mosul, are spreading into Lebanon, are threatening to starve or slaughter ‘at least 40,000 members of the Yazidi sect,’ is organizing protests in the Netherlands and is stepping up its recruitment of Westerners.”

In addition to these truths, the Islamic State, which is winning on every battlefront on which they are engaged (remember, victors in war control land, not the skies), has declared the existence of an Islamic Caliphate. They have instituted strict Sharia Law in every area they control and have made the ultimatum to all non-Muslims in the “occupied territories” that they must convert to Islam, pay a jizya and live subserviently as Dhimmis, expatriate or die. In Mosul, at least for the Christians, this ultimatum is nothing more than a formality.

In an interview with CNN’s Jonathan Mann, Chaldean-American leader Mark Arabo reported that in Mosul “a Christian holocaust is in our midst...children are being beheaded, mothers are being raped and killed, and fathers are being hung.”

Mr. Arabo continued:

“They are systematically beheading children...and mothers and fathers. The world hasn’t seen an evil like this for generations.

“There’s actually a park in Mosul where they actually beheaded children and put their heads on a stick...this is crimes against humanity. They are doing the most horrendous, the most heart-breaking crimes that you can think of.”

For the Islamic children in the ISIS “occupied territories” there only exists a future of jihad or martyrdom as ISIS jihadists execute an all-out recruiting effort throughout said “occupied territories,” recruiting children, young boys, as young as 7 years old.

This is ISIS, or the Islamic State. This is the barbarity that is being pursued in the name of the “religion of peace.” This is the savagery that has been facilitated by US foreign policy under the Obama Administration. This is the future under an Islamic Caliphate of any size, in any land, for everyone, all of the time.

Kirsten Powers, a columnist with The Daily Beast, a FOX News contributor, and usually an ardent defender of President Obama’s, lashed out at Mr. Obama over his response to ISIS’s attempt to “cleanse” the region of the “infidel”:

“He has not uttered the word ‘Christian,’ and now suddenly he throws it in with the Yazidis...We’re not doing any airdrops to the Christians, who are refugees in the Kurdish region. [Virginia Congressman Frank] Wolf has taken to the floor, I think, seven days in a row now, pleading with the administration: Please help these people. They need humanitarian aid; they need drinking water. They have nothing. They’ve lost their homes; they’ve lost everything.

“The White House has done nothing; they’ve said nothing. And then the president goes on and goes into quite a lot of detail about the Yazidis, and never really gets into the specifics about Christians. I mean, it’s really unbelievable, and he has no right to invoke humanitarianism, because he is not a humanitarian president. A humanitarian president does not sit quietly by, while hundreds of thousands of Christians in Iraq [are uprooted or killed] – forget about the rest of the Middle East – and doesn’t say a word.”

And how does Mr. Obama explain his administration’s underestimation of the savagery and barbarity of ISIS? How does he spin the issue to avoid responsibility for applying a “jayvee” foreign policy in a battle for control of first the Middle East and then the World? He blames it on “bad intelligence.” This excuse – and that’s what it is, an excuse – is inept, pathetic and infuriating. It is especially egregious in light of his unyielding criticism of the Bush Administration where skewed intelligence was concerned. And it projects to the cretinous barbarians of ISIS that they can rein down their savagery with little worry of any substantial response from the United States, sans a few drone and airstrikes.

There are many of us who fully understood the threat posed by barbarians the likes of ISIS years ago. We begged our fellow Americans and freedom loving people around the world to awaken from their self-important slumber, to question the blather of the Progressive mantra of Islam being the “religion of peace,” to realize that Muslims who follow the Quran and Hadith with fanatical devotion not only believe in their superiority to all other human beings, but believe it is their right to lord over them in the establishment of a global Islamic Caliphate. We were called haters and Islamophobes by the anointed chattering classes on both sides of the aisle. And we were delivered to today’s realities.

Perhaps we should revisit, with un-manipulated eyes, Mr. Obama’s words, courtesy of Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times:

“Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated..., Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as ‘one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.’”

I wonder. Are we who were sounding the alarm bell then about jihad, Islam, caliphates and Islamic conquest seen in such a despicable light now? Are we seen as haters and Islamophobes; uneducated and enlightened in the gentle spirit of the “religion of peace”? It’s actually hard to call us fanatical when you are staring at the severed head of a child impaled on a pike at a playground in Iraq. Isn’t it?

As we consider the anniversary of September 11th – now, both 2001 and 2012, it is important to consider some simple truths. These truths eluded our government and the nation in the early days after September 11th, 2001, because partisan politicians in Washington, DC, erected walls that kept our law enforcement and intelligence communities from honestly informing each other about the threats to our nation and her citizens. Even more disturbingly, today, little has changed. Twelve years after the initial attacks by al Qaeda on our country, most of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations are left unaddressed and an administration has been elected to office that refuses to identify the enemy for their common bond.

Sun Tzu wrote, in The Art of War, "If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt."

Before September 11th, 2001, we, as a nation, were unfamiliar with not only Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, but also the whole of the Islamist dogma. Now, after the slaughter of four brave Americans in Benghazi on September 11th, 2012, our nation's leadership, hobbled by the Progressive tenet of political correctness, refuses to accurately identify the enemy; to identify the root cause for the overwhelming number of terrorist acts around the world.

Before September 11th, 2001, we were ignorant of the lesson found in Sun Tzu's quote. After September 11th, 2012, our leadership simply ignores Sun Tzu's wisdom.

It is indisputable that with precious few exceptions, the perpetrators of almost every terrorist act in the world today have a direct connection to Islamist jihadis; who, in turn, exist solely under the ideological umbrella of the religion of Islam. Those who argue to the contrary are either uninformed, deniers, fools or intellectually stunted. Yet our current leadership exists so crippled by their ideological dogma that they, purposefully, refuse to identify the obvious enemy; the enemy who has declared, in no uncertain terms, that Islam will reign supreme; that they intend to conquer the world in the name of their religion.

A perfect example of this pig-ignorance comes in the issue of Syria.

Whether you believe President Obama and his team are inept in their foreign policy, unconcerned about anything but the "fundamental transformation" of the United States domestically, or sympathetic to the Islamist cause – or perhaps all three, the notion that there is a side to champion in the Syrian conflict is ignorant folly. Yes, Bashar al Assad is a tyrant, brutal to his own people in his quest to retain power in that country. And it is a distinct possibility that he or his field commanders may have used chemical weapons against civilians as well as rebel forces. But intervening in an effort to champion al Assad's opposition literally places the United States in an alliance with those who support and fight in the name of al Qaeda, the very people who both slaughtered 2,996 people and injured over 6,000 more on September 11th, 2001, and viciously murdered four Americans, including a US ambassador on September 11th, 2012.

Additionally, each action and non-action taken by this administration has not only decreased the standing of the United States in the Middle East, but has facilitated the rise of Islamists to positions of influence throughout the region. Even the Obama Administration's objection to the Egyptian military's deposing of the illegitimately elected Muslim Brotherhood to government, in the aftermath of Mubarak's fall from power, favored Islamists; those who would establish Sharia law and band together to form a regional caliphate.

So, the base question that each and every American should be asking him or herself is this. What the hell are we doing? Why are we aligning or aiding any faction, movement or government that exists sympathetic or in allegiance to anything Islamist?

Further, why haven't we had the courage – as a free people – to ask the questions that politically correct Progressives and the intellectually squeamish run from, like:

▪ Why isn't the Islamist ideology held accountable for the violent actions of those who commit atrocities in the name of Islam?

▪ Why hasn't Saudi Arabia – the protectors of the most holy locations in the Islamic religion, been held to account for not only the actions of their charge, but for literally exporting the most virulent strain of Islam (Wahhabism) to foreign shores?

▪ Why are our elected officials so adverse to recognizing – and then stating as their positions – that the tenets of Sharia law are not compatible with the freedoms and liberties enshrined in our Charters of Freedom and in Western ideology?

▪ Why – why – are our leaders so frightened of identifying an enemy who has declared war on the West – and the United States and Israel, specifically, for years and years and years...?

▪ Why – why – is the West so terrified of confronting the evil that exists in the Islamist ideology; the evil that cuts the heads of innocents, eats the organs of its foes, burns Christian churches to the ground as they execute priests and nuns; the evil that wants to finish what Adolf Hitler started with regard to the world's Jewish population?

▪ And why, why, why, do we elect idiot politicians who make excuses for bloodthirsty jihadis, even to the points of denying that "Allahu Akbar!" is an Islamist battle cry and lobbying for weaponry and alliance?

The issue of whether the United States should act because chemical weapons were used in Syria is a serious matter. The use of WMD is something that the entire world community should take very seriously. But when both sides of the conflict despise you; when both combatants in the fight hold you, your nation, your nation's citizens and the whole of the Western world in contempt, perhaps that fight; perhaps the action needed in the aftermath of the use of those WMD, must come from within that faction's own world. If the use of WMD is so outrageous to the whole of humanity, perhaps Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain should take action against Syria, the rebels or whoever else is eventually found to be guilty of this atrocity.

To wit, the fact is undeniable: Whoever wins in Syria will not be a friend to the United States and the West, so aiding one side over another is a pretty stupid investment of blood and/or treasure.

And while the debate on the use of WMD in Syria is one that should be undertaken, it should be undertaken with the pre-condition that we in the West – and especially we here in the United States – realize that Islamists are not our friends, evidenced not only by their actions, but by their words; their threats, their promises and their declarations.

The battle – both ideologically and physically – between the West and Islamism is a fundamental battle between good and evil; between the cultures of personal liberty and oppression. Islamism, Sharia and all of the Islamist tenets that entangle that dogma in conquest, oppression, violence and the worship of death, exist as nemesis to the free world; the enemy of freedom itself.

That limp-wristed politicians, Progressives and sympathetic apologists from the West refuse to admit the obvious doesn't make the fact any less real. It just makes the West – and the people of the West – subject to the dangers, subject to the murderous violence, that Islamism projects onto the world.

On this observance of September 11th, 2001 – and now September 11th, 2012, I, again, offer my condolences to all those directly affected by the loss of life, and offer my appreciation to all those who have answered the call to defend liberty and freedom around the world.

On this observance of the "September 11ths," I stand unashamed to say, I know who the enemy is...both inside and outside the gates.

Copyright©2014 Frank Salvato