Imagine awakening some future morning and reading these stories on the front page of The New York Daily Bugle:
» Religious security officials in California publicly executed a group of women in Dodger Stadium minutes after they were convicted of public immorality. The women — including three high-schoolers — had worn sleeveless blouses and Capris to a friend’s private birthday party instead of approved burkas covering them from head to toe. Execution was by bullet to the head.
» Government administrators mobilized hundreds of bulldozers to be used in reducing to rubble “artifacts of the infidel culture, including St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, Constitution Hall in Philadelphia and the birthplaces of Abraham Lincoln in Kentucky and George Washington in Virginia.”
» Internal security leaders confirmed they expect to control “indefinitely” all travel by U.S. citizens. They also confirmed that people without internal passports will not be allowed on the streets, except to attend services at local mosques with an approved escort.
» Military officials warned that they will soon launch “no-surrender” assaults on remaining pockets of “infidel resistance” in Texas, Wyoming and rural Alabama, with “special thrusts aimed at permanently eradicating supporters of inferior faiths such as Jews and Baptists.”
Five years after the worst enemy attack on American soil in our nation’s history, how you react to this admittedly horrifying scenario depends very much on whether you see the War on Terror as a mere nuisance or the most dangerous threat to national survival since World War II.
The vast majority of the world’s estimated 1.2 billion Muslims are peaceful people of good will. To grasp just how real a threat is the War on Terror, however, consider if only 3 to 5 percent have taken to heart the radical Islamist’ vow to kill Americans and other Westerners at every opportunity. Thus 30 to 50 million Islamofascists are “out there” seeking America’s destruction and vowing to establish their violent and brutally intolerant vision of the Caliphate. They are well-trained, well-financed and extraordinarily patient and cunning. Terrorist experts say 30 million to 50 million is a conservative estimate of the number of fanatics who follow the most extreme preachers of hate and violence in the Middle East and Mulsim enclaves in the West.
Real threat? Or just a distant problem? If real, how many more 9/11s are needed to convince America’s leading opinion makers, political luminaries and intellectual elite that this is the reality we must deal with or face destruction? Detonation of a nuclear suitcase bomb in Los Angeles that kills tens of thousands more? An anthrax attack in Chicago that snuffs out 75,000? Nine commercial airlines filled with hundreds of people suddenly exploding over the Atlantic? The kidnapping and beheading of a U.S. senator or a Canadian prime minister?
Elsewhere in these pages readers will find a moving oped entitled “Why I love America” by Naguib Sawhiri of Egypt. Although a professing Christian, he is far from alone in the Middle East as an admirer of America. Because most Muslims are not terrorists, America has millions of actual and potential allies in the Middle East. We must recognize and value them. But doing that requires that we first be honest with them and ourselves about what is real and what is an illusion.
On this solemn day of reflection and resolve five years after 9/11, there is no more important task facing our nation.
