We are at war

Your September 27 editorial, “We’re looking for criminals, not warriors,” came in like a lion and left like a pitiful lamb on the way to slaughter. One can only pray this nation’s reasoning and nerve won’t suffer the same fate. Pretending we’re dealing with a crazy war criminal yet to be proven guilty, and not a war against America, is a dangerous self-deception. America has been attacked by an evil force dedicated to wiping us out. It is a force that has already explicitly declared war on us. It is one that has repeatedly, and ever more successfully, escalated its attacks on us over a prolonged period. It has now brought the war to our own shores in an attempt to destroy the heart of our government and the nerve center of our industry.

That evil force is militant Islam, an international coalition of terrorists, that grows stronger every time we call it by some other name. We called it criminal behavior when they bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, when they killed our servicemen on humanitarian mission in Somalia, when they car-bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 more innocents (mostly Muslims) and when they attacked the U.S. Cole. We’ve pursued them in the courts, telling the world in 1998 that we would “respond vigorously and relentlessly to such terrorist attacks,” continuing a worldwide investigation “until all those responsible are brought to justice.” We’ve targeted missiles at their camps. We’ve imposed economic sanctions on their supporters, but they have continued and grown stronger all the while.

Bin Laden’s 1998 fatwah, signed by Islamic militant leaders, is unambiguous. They are at war with us whatever we choose to call it. They say to “kill Americans and their allies—civilian and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.” They instruct their followers to “fight them until there is no more tumult,” to “kill Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it” and to “launch the raid on U.S. troops.” Speaking of America, bin Laden has exhorted his followers to use “fast and light forces” to “kill it, fight it, destroy it, break it down, plot against it, ambush it... until it is gone.”

Yes, bin Laden and militant Islam are at war with us. What would be criminal is to deny it, with 6,000 dead bodies laying in our streets, pretending that we can meet this challenge by simply increasing our security, pursuing more legal action and aiming few more missiles at their camps. The first duty of a government is to guarantee the security of its citizens. It demands recognizing evil for what it is. Once loosed on a grand scale, it cannot be controlled and it cannot be negotiated away—it must be destroyed or we will be destroyed by it.

America is not the aggressor here however much self-flagellation some would put us through for “our policies.” We are at war with fanatics inspired by their own history, rejected by most of Islam and funded using the resources of an educated and privileged multi-millionaire. As Lincoln said about the Civil War, we didn’t ask for this conflict but it came anyway and we have to deal with it using every bit of our strength and resolve.

We will do well, also, to remember the lessons of pre-World War II England when “leaders” by the name of Baldwin and Chamberlain denied the truth about Nazi Germany and, in so doing, laid the foundation for the repeat of the Great War they so desperately wanted to avoid. While Churchill was condemning Hitler, they worried about “cowardly surrender” to warmongering and avoided those actions that might have taken out that particular evil force long before it started dropping bombs on London.

We face the same risk today. We can view this attack as one more case of criminal mischief and hope against hope that more of the same responses by us will somehow produce a better result this time. Or, we can recognize and call this evil by name, confronting the enemy were he resides before he brings the battle to our streets yet again.

Thomas Shepstone
Honesdale, PA