News flash: The Islamists’ bloody war against the West is coming to our homeland, and we are not ready for it.
Perhaps Obama now realizes that ISIS is not the “jayvee” and is capable of committing atrocities of historical magnitude against the “infidels” in Europe and America. I say “perhaps,” but actually, I doubt it.
But it’s worse than that. We as a nation are not yet facing a deeper problem than Obama’s ideological sympathies toward Islam, as deplorable and dangerous as they are. As a nation, and as a culture, we have not yet confronted the nihilistic, apocalyptic nature of radical Islam. The nature of the enemy sets limits and moral mandates for defending ourselves.
Tragically, our leaders and too many Americans have so far chosen to ignore the first rule of warfare: know thy enemy. Put in everyday language, if you mistake a rabid dog for a frisky puppy, don’t blame the dog when he bites you; that’s what rabid dogs do. Blame yourself.
And yes, I am comparing radical Islam to a rabid dog that needs to be put down. And soon. Now, I really love my dog, but if one morning she starts behaving like Cujo, I am reconsidering the relationship.
The necessity of defining the enemy also leads to the necessity of defining who we are. Our own civilization has lost its way, and this makes us even more vulnerable to Islamist nihilism.
To Barack Obama and the American left, the “imperialist” West is always guilty, and so, radical Islam is seen as at least half right in attacking Western values and institutions. Okay, that’s how the left thinks. But what excuses mainstream America from avoiding the harsh reality of the Islamist threat?
It is a problem that has deep roots. Americans like optimists and shun “doomsayers.” Who loves a party-pooper? We are so addicted to optimistic thinking we need an “intervention” to break the addiction.
Clear thinking tells us American optimism regarding radical Islam is a dead-end street, literally: There is nothing but death and destruction are at the end of that street. It is now a dead certainty that Islamist radicals are planning a nuclear attack on the American homeland– and we have no plan to prevent it. Wishful thinking and whistling past the graveyard is not a plan.
The large majority of Americans living outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue understand that the United States is at war with radical Islam. Yet, our government is behaving like it is a backyard brawl. Obama has sent 50 Special Forces troops to fight ISIS in Syria, while ISIS has 100,000 jihadist sympathizers in Europe and America. You can call that “asymmetrical warfare,” but there are other words for it. One is suicide.
The United States faces a true “existential threat” from ISIS, al-Qaeda and their allied crusaders, but the main battlefield is not in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria, it is at home, in our minds. Until we have identified the enemy, we will not know how to protect our homeland.
ISIS and its Islamist allies intend to destroy our country and all of Western civilization; they are daily escalating that war; they are willing to die for the greater glory of Allah; and they will use any weapon available to inflict maximum death and destruction—including nuclear weapons.
What is our strategy for stopping them? We have none.
About ten years ago I stumbled upon the Tancredo strategy, and predictably was pummeled and ridiculed for it. I was being interviewed by a radio talk show and was asked this question, which at the time was very hypothetical but no longer is quite so hypothetical: What if al-Qaeda said they had a nuclear bomb inside the United States ready to detonate? “What should we do?” I was asked. I said, we should tell them if they do that, we will bomb Mecca, Islam’s holiest place… “With nuclear bombs?” was the next question. “Yes,” I said.
“Tancredo says we should nuke Mecca” was the headline. No, what I said was we should threaten to bomb Mecca if Islamists detonate a nuclear bomb in one of our cities. I believed then and believe now that only such a threat will cause Islamist radicals to reconsider their deadly plans.
I offer this plan as an invitation to others to come up with something better.
The Islamist threat of nuclear and chemical warfare inside our homeland is very real, so we had better get serious about coming up with a plan to deter it. Otherwise, the bomb shelter business is going to be a growth industry.
Tom Tancredo is the founder of the Rocky Mountain Foundation and founder and co-chairman of Team America PAC.
Tom represented Colorado’s sixth congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1999 to 2009, and he is a former presidential candidate.
He is the author of In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America’s Border and Security.
