Suppose Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab the Christmas Day underwear bomber had succeeded and blown up Northwest Airlines flight 253 killing nearly 300 people on board and perhaps others on the ground? Would the response of the Obama administration have been different?
The president probably would have attended memorial services for the dead expressed strong condemnation persuaded the United Nations to issue more worthless resolutions but little more. Thats because the president isnt fighting -- or speaking -- as if we are at war. He first called the attempted bombing an incident. In his Saturday radio address the president finally if belatedly tied the attempted attack to al-Qaidas branch in Yemen. Still there is great reluctance by this administration to state the obvious.
President Obama and his Cabinet apparently believe that by not calling it a war it becomes something less. This president refuses to call it a war and sometimes approaches pacifism in his rhetoric. If al-Qaida and its affiliates around the world behave as if they are at war and the United States views every attack as incidents and not part of a larger battle our enemies will win.
If Western leaders wont acknowledge a cultural clash between civilizations with the outcome being either freedom or slavery guess who is most likely to prevail?
Last week an ax-wielding Somali man with suspected links to al-Qaida broke into the home of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard whose drawings of the Prophet Muhammad caused global Muslim outrage. Police shot and wounded the intruder who appeared to be carrying out a fatwa against Westergaard that was issued in 2006 by Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi a Pakistani cleric. Apparently the outreach understanding and examples of pluralism and equal treatment of women by Western nations did not impress the attacker.
Neither are our enemies impressed with the growing number of Islamic studies courses at prominent American universities including Catholic ones like Georgetown. Whats to study? A significant number of radical Muslims hate us enough to desire our demise and will not be pacified or mollified. They are infiltrating Western nations with the purpose of undermining them.
In the Wests secular stupidity we mistakenly believe we can call this war by another name fight it with ineffective weapons and still win. We arrest those we catch send them to American prisons (and release them from Gitmo) and give them free lawyers who advise them to remain quiet thus depriving us of information that might dismantle terror cells and help prevent future attacks.
A new Rasmussen Poll shows a majority of Americans think this war should be fought in a different way. According to the poll 58 percent of U.S. voters believe Abdul Mutallab should be subjected to waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques in order to obtain useful information.
Instead we spend gobs of money on body scanners and TSA screeners who pat down innocent travelers and search their bags. Instead or in addition we should become more proactive.
During World War II we did not establish schools of Nazi studies at American universities. Neither did we seek to understand Japans Shinto religion which elevated Emperor Hirohito to the level of a god. We cared nothing about any of that. We carpet-bombed German cities and dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan. President Truman a Democrat was cut from different cloth than todays Democrats. Trumans goal (and that of his Democratic predecessor Franklin Roosevelt) was total victory.
We will not win this war with the current strategy of Eid stamps Ramadan observances in the White House or any of the other strategies employed by this administration and the Bush administration before it.
What is required is a new approach that seeks not accommodation but victory. Without it more lives will be lost. Dictionary.com defines war as a conflict carried on by force of arms as between nations or between parties within a nation. Calling it something else doesnt alter the reality.
Cal Thomas is co-author (with Bob Beckel) of the book Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That is Destroying America.
Suppose Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab the Christmas Day underwear bomber had succeeded and blown up Northwest Airlines flight 253 killing nearly 300 people on board and perhaps others on the ground? Would the response of the Obama administration have been different?
The president probably would have attended memorial services for the dead expressed strong condemnation persuaded the United Nations to issue more worthless resolutions but little more. Thats because the president isnt fighting -- or speaking -- as if we are at war. He first called the attempted bombing an incident. In his Saturday radio address the president finally if belatedly tied the attempted attack to al-Qaidas branch in Yemen. Still there is great reluctance by this administration to state the obvious.
President Obama and his Cabinet apparently believe that by not calling it a war it becomes something less. This president refuses to call it a war and sometimes approaches pacifism in his rhetoric. If al-Qaida and its affiliates around the world behave as if they are at war and the United States views every attack as incidents and not part of a larger battle our enemies will win.
If Western leaders wont acknowledge a cultural clash between civilizations with the outcome being either freedom or slavery guess who is most likely to prevail?
Last week an ax-wielding Somali man with suspected links to al-Qaida broke into the home of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard whose drawings of the Prophet Muhammad caused global Muslim outrage. Police shot and wounded the intruder who appeared to be carrying out a fatwa against Westergaard that was issued in 2006 by Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi a Pakistani cleric. Apparently the outreach understanding and examples of pluralism and equal treatment of women by Western nations did not impress the attacker.
Neither are our enemies impressed with the growing number of Islamic studies courses at prominent American universities including Catholic ones like Georgetown. Whats to study? A significant number of radical Muslims hate us enough to desire our demise and will not be pacified or mollified. They are infiltrating Western nations with the purpose of undermining them.
In the Wests secular stupidity we mistakenly believe we can call this war by another name fight it with ineffective weapons and still win. We arrest those we catch send them to American prisons (and release them from Gitmo) and give them free lawyers who advise them to remain quiet thus depriving us of information that might dismantle terror cells and help prevent future attacks.
A new Rasmussen Poll shows a majority of Americans think this war should be fought in a different way. According to the poll 58 percent of U.S. voters believe Abdul Mutallab should be subjected to waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques in order to obtain useful information.
Instead we spend gobs of money on body scanners and TSA screeners who pat down innocent travelers and search their bags. Instead or in addition we should become more proactive.
During World War II we did not establish schools of Nazi studies at American universities. Neither did we seek to understand Japans Shinto religion which elevated Emperor Hirohito to the level of a god. We cared nothing about any of that. We carpet-bombed German cities and dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan. President Truman a Democrat was cut from different cloth than todays Democrats. Trumans goal (and that of his Democratic predecessor Franklin Roosevelt) was total victory.
We will not win this war with the current strategy of Eid stamps Ramadan observances in the White House or any of the other strategies employed by this administration and the Bush administration before it.
What is required is a new approach that seeks not accommodation but victory. Without it more lives will be lost. Dictionary.com defines war as a conflict carried on by force of arms as between nations or between parties within a nation. Calling it something else doesnt alter the reality.
Cal Thomas is co-author (with Bob Beckel) of the book Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That is Destroying America.
